Finished Ikabana Vase

Last Thursday we finished up our Ikabana vases and had our crit. I'll get to the crit in a second, first a bit on my vase and how it was made.

The vase is made of Quickrete exterior anchoring concrete wrapped with aluminum. The concrete was cast in a mold made from mdf. The casting was the biggest headache of the process, mainly because of poor molds made by yours truly. I originally also used Rockite instead of Quickrete. I switched because I wanted the waterproofing that exterior concrete that could be used below the water line would afford and the roughness of the Quickrete versus Rockite's smoothness as a contrast to the precision of the aluminum.

Rockite and mold headaches early on.

The Quickrete in the new improved mold which didn't break part on me. I also wised up on the concrete breaking and soldered together a supporting skeleton using welding wire, mini rebar basically.

The Quickrete vase after coming out of the mold, being sanded to fit the aluminum wrap and being sprayed with a polyethylene gloss. The dark sections on the interior of the vase are leftovers from previous molds attempted with cement colors added. I didn't use the colors (I was using a charcoal) because they pushed the curing time of the Quickrete out to 24 hours instead of 1 hour. It was a result of the process and not planned, but the coloration on the concrete was welcome as it gave the vase a weathered look.

The aluminum being water jet cut in the Digital Fab. Lab.

Aluminum wrap, pre bending. It was bent using the brake in the cold metals shop.

And, the final result with flower arrangement in crit.

So, how did the crit go? It was rough. The worse part about rough crits are when you aren't expecting a rough crit before you show your piece.

The biggest issue was that I wanted to contrast the precision and reflectiveness of the aluminum wrap and support structure against the dark roughness and uneven qualities of the concrete. The issue became that when contrasting precision against rough you have to push precision to its most precise and roughness to its most rough. I felt the aluminum was precise enough considering that I unfortunately had to hand bend the lower tabs holding the concrete and that the concrete it self was visibly chipped, porous and rough but this is a grad level course and ultimately my level of precision and roughness was not up to the class standards.

Also, the aluminum more than dominated the vase, especially when filled with flowers. This was actually a very real problem and looking back on the vase now I feel like it was really the root of all the problems with my vase. With more concrete in view the roughness would be stronger and take all of the emphasis off the precision and allow a more well rounded viewing of the vase.

A lesser bone that they had to pick was the gloss on the concrete made it to finished if I wanted to portray roughness. Jeeze, I want it to be rough but not so rough that it would look out of place in a home so I really didn't know what to make of this one. Since only a few people held this opinion I think I'm chalking that one up to personal opinion and architects who are destined to become professors instead of practicing architects.

My flower arrangement was also a problem for my classmates. It was not dramatic and voluminous enough to work with such a strong, grounded (read heavy) vase. I completely agree on this account and I really didn't care about this issue. I have never arranged flowers before and it was incredibly challenging. Shaun Jackson acknowledged that the whole class had issues with arrangement, but I really feel like he was expecting gold from us on the flower front. All I know is, I'll design the vase, someone else can put the flowers in it.

Really the only good thing anyone had to say about my vase was that they liked the way it was presented with the flowers dominating the foreground of the table and not pushed to the background and the flowers being off center in the vase. A few people also mentioned to me later that they felt some people were being to nitpicky in criticizing my choice of gloss and the concrete not being rough enough. This was nice to hear, but frustrating because they had failed to speak up during the crit.

So, how can I make this a better vase? Well, number one would be adding long thing rectangular windows of sorts to the long aluminum dominated sides to bring the dark concrete through. I really feel this would solve allot of the vase's problems. Also, there was one corner where the aluminum was not completely flush against the concrete, this has to be rectified on the next model with more careful assembly of the vase and the aluminum.

One of the biggest issues for me as a designer over all that has come out during this project (and this intensive class in general) is that I need to get better at speaking about my work. I've taken classes dedicated to the language of design so attempting to put my designs into words is not as much an issue for me. The issue lies in vocalizing my designs during the crit itself. I think this really is an issue of pubic speaking, something which I am not particularly afraid of when I have practiced what I am going to say. There in lies the issue, I am not in the habit of preparing what I am going to say before a crit beyond a few words. Therefore I end up stumbling through my ideas and not effectively portraying them. So, practice, practice, practice.

On a fun note, my vase is now on display outside of the Media Union here. It looks pretty good in a little nook Shaun Jackson found for it. Little win!

Thanks for reading.