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.

Ikabana Vase Sketch Models

Just a few of the sketch models I've made in deciding what design to pursue for my final piece. The models are made out of foam core and chip board which is laser cut and then either glued or pinned together.

In these models, the foam core represents the reservoir of the vase and will be made out of Rockite and the chipboard represents stainless steel which will be water jet cut and bent into shape around the Rockite.

Iterations of two designs I'm working with.

The first design is a tall reservoir with a stainless piece of steel straddling the Rockite. I wanted to create a strong, grounded receptacle rising out of a light, kinetic form drawing the eye upward to focus on the flowers using the vase as a way to focus the viewer on the natural beauty of the arrangement. The tab of the stainless steel on the top of the vase would act as a divider between the heavier plant material and the more delicate flowers and would reinforce the upward motion of the vase.

This design will be 8" tall, with a 3" x 2" reservoir.

The only difference between these two iterations is that the model on the left has a shorter piece of chipboard which creates a smaller foot at the bottom with a straighter line as it travels up the Rockite.

This is the other of the two designs I've been working on. This is a much more rectangular, low to the ground vase. I wanted to be able to spread the flowers of the arrangement out horizontally and create some arcs with the plant material. This is a much more static vase, sitting only 1/2" off the table surface and with a horizontal rather than vertical flow of the lines.

The bottom of the two, short feet support the vase and two longer tabs support the base of the Rockite reservoir. This design really focuses the attention of the vase on the stainless steel as it wraps the Rockite almost completely. The Rockite is viewable from two 1/2" strips along the top of the vase and on the small ends of the vase. I wanted the Rockite to simply peak out from the steel.

I prefer the skinnier of the two low vases. It would be only 2 1/2" wide versus 4" wide for the larger version. I felt the increased size of the larger version would create to large and cumbersome of a base for the delicate natural plant material. The final piece will be 8" long x 3" tall x 2 1/2" wide, with a 2" deep reservoir.

I've decided to move forward with the low, horizontal Ikabana vase as I appreciate it's simplicity of form and simplicity of materials in manufacturing. A theme for me in this class has been designing for ease of mass production and I hope to produce these vases on a larger scale if possible after this semester is done. The simpler form and straight lines of this vase lend themselves to reproduction. While there is always value in the one off hand made object, the challenge of reproduction on a large scale interests me as a designer looking to soon move into the work force.

This week I will be milling a mold out of MDF to cast the Rockite in and water jet cutting out my stainless steel piece.

Thanks for reading!

Ikabana Flower Arrangement

Last week in Architecture of Objects, Shaun had a master of the Japanese art of flower arrangement, Ikabana, come in to talk to us and give a demonstration on Ikabana. Sort of a crash course into a delicate, purposeful art form if there can be such a thing.

I feel terrible that I cannot remember the woman's name who came to talk to us, but I do remember that she owns the Chelsea Flower Shop and is from the modern school of Ikabana. What is the modern school? I as a non-Japanese person would have a hard time telling you what exactly that means. She couldn't even really explain it to us.

Manipulating grasses by hand. She was amazing working with the plant material, very purposeful with force, never overly stressing the plant.

My favorite arrangement of the six she made. The arrangements were put in the TCAUP Architecture office and the Art & Design office.

It was really quite enjoyable, I was a bit dubious before the class that we were doing flower arrangement, but I'm glad to say it was much more interesting than I had anticipated.

Our assignment now is to make Ikabana vases and flower arrangements for them. We are of course limited to certain materials, but for a Shaun Jackson project, it's really quite a wide palate. We could use metals, woods, stone, cement, rubber, or plastic. Our designs have to incorporate at least two of the materials and use both in an non-token elemental way.

This should be an interesting project over the next few weeks, I think the biggest challenge for me will be making sure to think of the organic plant material as a primary part of the design and not a secondary piece.

Thanks for reading!