Skeletons
Spring 2020
Team
Individual
Skills
Hand-drawing
Course
ARCH 1612 - Structural Concepts
Goal
Document the structural systems creating the backbones of various Cornell landmarks.
Johnson Art Museum
When people mention the word “skeleton”, we commonly envision the bony structure of our body — the one that keeps our organs, muscles, and skin positioned as they are. However, buildings can be regarded as having skeletons as well, at least from an architectural point of view. Skeletons provide the structural support for nearly everything in nature, whether it be organic or manufactured. This sketched sequence follows a journey into discovering the intricate components of some buildings’ “skeletons”, encouraging a novel perspective when considering the built environment around us.
The work took into account observation, as well as abstraction, of some of Cornell University’s most curious architectural demonstrations. My process involved witnessing and photographing various selected structural elements and portraying them through paper media. Various considerations such as proportion, scale, and diagram had to be thought about when constructing a comprehensive manual depiction. Therefore, I developed many skills in freehand representation as well as thinking abstractly about architecture in terms of individual components rather than a uniform and collective whole throughout the documentation of my journey.
Pedestrian Suspension Bridge
