The Cafe Itself

Escondido Village was built for economy. Many of the buildings are made with cheap siding and seem very flimsy. I wanted to import the solidity of the heavy brick East coast buildings without being too offensive to the California setting.

I thought if I opened up the building with lots of glass, I could let the California sunlight in, but also let viewers on the outside explore the brick structure. Think of it as a sort of East Coast/West Coast cultural exchange.

What I ended up with was this sort of glass box punctuated by brick pillars. The project became about contrast: heavy and light, transparent and solid:






What's important to me here is that the planes of brick and glass are offset. The brick extends beyond the glass in the vertical direction, as you can see above, and on each side of the building, as you can see in the plan:



I also like this following perspective, even though it's not technically correct, because it shows how the glass box is meant to appear sort of squat:



In this way, it is the glass that is enclosing you up in a box, but the brick that is crashing through the glass and setting you free from it. This subverts how these materials normally behave (glass usually provides windows, escapes out of a brick box) which is intended to emphasize the solid/transparent contrast.


here are a few more drawings about which I will comment later:

Cafe Site

The site was not hard to find (it's the view from my apartment). It's this nice big field which, as far as I can tell, no one ever uses for anything.

The field is surrounded by graduate residences. It seemed like an ideal location for my design. The cafe is intended to be penetrated by light from all directions, so this way it can be on display from 360 degrees. It's also surrounded by the residences of its target clientele.

During the day, the transparency of the cafe will make it unobtrusive, but it will advertise itself by way of augmenting the light that passes through it with the activity of the inside. At night, the cafe will be like a lantern illuminating this space.

People can eat inside, or sit in the grass around the building. Finally, an Escondido Village eatery that doesn't suck.











And here it is: the structure embedded in the site. Looks so natural, doesn't it?

The Road to the Cafe

Our final project was to choose a site and design a cafe, more or less from scratch. This resulted in a flurry of initial ideas: a cafe in the surf of a beach, a cafe under a bridge ('Leebow's Under the Bridge' from the 2002 unpublished work "Restaurants."), and so on. At the same time, I felt a strong urge to come up with a design principle that wasn't parasitic on a gimmick.

What eventually became the idea for the final design struck me when I spent a week back on the East Coast. The architecture of Boston and New York has a richness to it that is lacking out here in the South Bay. Once you start paying attention to Stanford, and begin to notice more besides the whole faux Spanish mission thing, it turns out that campus is stuffed with monstrously depressing ranch houses (ultra modern monoliths near the medical school notwithstanding).

At the same time, Boston interiors with their wall moldings and leather upholstery have a tendency to get stuffy. I wanted to build something in the spirit of a Boston brownstone to inject a little life and texture into the thin siding jungle of Escondido Village. At the same time, I wanted my building to be open, bright - to let the Californianess of the outside penetrate into the interior.

I began with a freehand sketch of a cafe in the spirit of a brownstone, just with more windows.



sketch.

But this was a bit too literal (I won't bother to explain the details of the sketch above, it's just meant to set a brownstone-y mood). Please note, however, the shape of the bay window (top left sketch), as it was important in the segue to the next step, and fragments of it are still around in the final design.


It then occurred to me that what I was really trying to do was contrast the heavy brick of the brownstone with the brightness of Sunny Palo Alto. I took those bay windows and wrapped them all the way around the building, and sometimes used the same shape in solid brick. I kept trying to create more faces within the building, to heighten the contrast between bay windows and brick walls (and also to have more surfaces to display art), and ended up with this octagonal interior:


front.



I liked this perspective because it really emphasized the play of solid and glass.


I showed this design to Charles who said something very interesting, which was "don't let the architecture interfere with the design." That certainly sounds very wise, and it struck me as a curious use of the word 'architecture,' which here means "windowpanes and things." Of course, he was right. I was trying to suggest the bay windows of the brownstone with large picture windows set into the brick. But those don't juxtapose against the solid brick nearly as well as simple panes of glass.

Here's the same building, but with glass faces where there were once windows (also the material is rendered with color):


front.



perspective from top.




Here's that same perspective I liked earlier. But this also led me to the idea of offsetting the faces of glass and brick. The idea that the brick faces are penetrating though, almost shattering, the glass faces. This idea led me all the way to the final design.

Axonometrics

This was a study in Axonometric Drawings, the 3D but not-to-perspective design renderings. This is a very simple structure.



There's something different wrong with the door in each drawing except the bottom right. Fourth time's the charm?

Intro to Design Drawing: BUS STOP

The assignment here was to measure a bus stop very carefully and draw it schematically. The idea was to get some practice drawing plans, sections, and elevations. I stole a tape measure from the lab (most of my design drawings have been enabled by thieving) and did this rendering of a stop for the Marguerite. It turned out kind of boring but it is technically correct.


PLAN


ELEVATION

Not content with this, but unable to cruise for new and exciting bus stops after selling Galactica, I decided to design a bus stop myself. When it came time to present these drawings to the class, I thought it would seem a bit too eager to admit I conjured this up on my own. I lied and said I found it in Mountainview.


PLAN Yes, it's important to use a template whenever drawing a curve rather than attempting it freehand. Lesson learned.


SECTION




ELEVATIONS - The bus stop in "Mountainview."


The next day I looked at my drawings and decided I should add a perspective sketch to show off the idea I was getting at. I wish I hadn't waited a day, since I really lost a sense of it and the perspective here is technically pretty poor. Also, the dark lines on either side shouldn't be there. According to all the other drawings, the clear glass just wraps around.

For Kyle

Kyle wants to live in a house with a complete breakdown between the signifier and the signified. While I can't make all of that happen for him quite yet, here's what I can offer:

A Foray Into Design

The drawings in this post are entirely fictional.




A rough mock up of a modern airport terminal. You see stuff like this all over the place.


You used to see stuff like this all over the place. I got bored and stopped drawing all the stones.


I often joke that I'm going to quit my career (whatever that is) and open an existential sandwich shop. Here it is, the 'Death is Inevitable. Sandwich Shoppe.'


Here's a sort of modern Northern California house.


A marina. Charles really liked the boats. I've been drawing boats in the margins of my notes since Ninth Grade, so they'd better be good.


You got me. This "tower" is based on a sculpture I made out of legos. It's still in my bedroom somewhere at home. i.e. this is the real vernacular from my childhood.


Here's some Greek thing. These seem to have fallen out of fashion.


I like this little factory. Complete with helipad.


Here's an idea for a red brick kitchen that opens into a dining room. I particularly like the shelf built into the wall for the cookbooks. I never know where to put all these cookbooks.


Here's a sort of LDS-type church. Pretty creepy.


The perspective here is all kinds of wrong, but I like this bridge.


Weird, right? Maybe in a Swiss Ski Resort town? I really like this modern meets fairytale style. I'm sure we'll see it again.


This bedroom has all the things I'd want in a bedroom. Windows over the pillow, pop art, and a table. Rebecca Nie suggested that the windows could have an ocean view (great idea!) To which Jesse observed that carrying around a book full of sketches would be a great way to sleep with Rebecca Nie. Charles said it reminded him of a Matisse, so I'm not sweating it either.


Okay, more New England stuff. But don't the large modern windows count as a subversion?


The bathroom is to Lily's specifications with the walk-in shower. If the illustration looks jarring, it's because the walls have no thickness. Lesson learned.

MEMORABLE PLACES

Okay, this batch is a series of "real" places, or variations on real places, that I know. All of the drawings were done remotely, from memory, sometimes with deliberate changes. You'll see what I mean.


Here's my parents' living room on the Cape. I'm pretty sure I got this right, though I don't know if that weird Mexican print is still hanging there.


And here's something like the kitchen in Adam Bellow's apartment. This is also the first piece of 'design' I've done since there are deliberate modifications. The window seat, for example, since I've always found that my feet start hurting if I'm cooking in there. There's also a cut out in the wall above the sink (although in Adam's apartment that would face into a bathroom...), and I think I changed the pattern on the floor.


This is sort of like, or at least inspired by, the balcony in Jon Reeder's apartment in Amsterdam. The perspective is a little screwy, but it was mostly an exercise in texture. It seems to me a comfortable place to spend a cool summer night (which I have done, on psychedelics).


This is not a real place, but it's in the spirit of New Englandy homes and not entirely unlike my parents' house on the Cape. Charles really liked this sketch, and I do too. It was my first attempt to use a fountain pen. Sadly, the sharpie lines from the drawing of Adam Bellow's kitchen on the reverse side bled through and are hard to ignore. In the future, I'll stick to one drawing per piece of paper. Lesson learned.


Again, not a real place per se. Charles' response to this one was that I like to draw in this "vernacular" style because it comes from my childhood. I was a little surprised by that; maybe people in California think this is what New England looks like? I guess they're pretty much right, actually. In any case, I promise that if I design anything too New Englandy, I'll try to subvert it in some way.

SOME PRELIMINARY SKETCHES

I thought I'd begin by displaying some very literal representations that were done while looking at the subject.


Here's a rendering of a little metal horse statuette that Charles brought into class. The rendering is done in pencil.

Next, here's a gear propped up against my laptop. I was using this as a study in shadow and shading. It's a little warped, but not a bad place to start. I hope it will give this blog that needed element of steampunk.


And here are some Stanfordy arches:


Then there are these drawings of the Hoover Tower and the fountain in front of the Hoover Tower. With the fountain, I tried to capture the downward motion of the water. Very difficult.





Here are some cafe chairs at Bytes (this is my favorite of this group):



And this is a picnic table outside the material science buildings. Charles had a lot of praise for the perspective, but I don't know...