Lucent Diamonds

During my final module in the second semester of my first year architecture, I created a space to escape. Lucent Diamonds is a space to escape, located in the forest on my college campus, for students to study, hold events, and to look out into the forest around them.

Various materials were used such as the following:

Poplar Wood

Walnut Wood Stain

Plastic Sheets

Dried Baby’s Breath

Cardboard

Wooden Dowels

In the first phase of this module, my class came together to make a topography of the area where our models would be in real life, and the area around the forest. Some groups worked only on cutting out cardboard, while some created the buildings surrounding the forest, as well as the paths and trees. The size of the topography is roughly 3ft x 2ft.

Before creating the study models, I made sketches of different shapes and combined them to see what clicked. After sketching for a while, I came up with the rough idea of my final model. I placed three diamond shapes next to each other with the thought of connection through platforms, being flush with each other, or intersecting each other.

Creation of the final model consisted of cutting wood slabs with a bandsaw for the walls, sanding the edges of the slabs for the floors, and carefully supergluing the plastic sheets for the windows. Each building was stained with walnut wood stain, and every interior is white to counteract the exterior color. Stairs are placed for people to enter each diamond through the previous room. The shapes created by the walls’ movements frame the views of those who are inside. The topography is a direct translation of what the landmass is in real life as seen in the group topography, just scaled up. Digital drawings were created through Rhino and Adobe Illustrator.