Talking with Judy, agreeing with what to present

I had a talk with Judy today about the strengths of my design, what I could improve on, develop further and what I would need to present during the final crit (along with that which is required on the brief)

I told her about the idea of stacking the office structure based on my 1:1 model, and she wasn't sure about the use of generic shapes, however I told her that my intention was not simply to have one box on another, but to rotate their angles so that the building would look more like an uno stack. The example I gave her was one from our Holiday Readings, by Chandavarker and Thacker:

 She suggested that in a design similar to this, I could explore the edges of the building (as they are so distinct when places on different angles) Perhaps these edges would be frayed, made of some perforated material?As well as how the various elements in the edge could come together. Furthermore, the colours that deign the different rooms in the building could be decided by the allocation of different types of material.

For the final crit, I am to present an A1 animation (this, I felt, was my weakest workshop and would like to re-do it) that is one minute long and shows my final design and it's various details and a lot of information. As well as this a model done in 1:100 scale that shows one part/section of my building, the interior and wall edges.

I did some sketches on both the form and the idea of a "frayed" edge:

I explored examples of architecture in Morocco, which are well known for detailing on the edges of buildings. Here are some examples:

I drew an example of how a detail such as this as would be incorporated into my design so far:

As interesting as this edge detail is however, I don't feel like it shows the abstract ripping/tearing and contrast with whole parts that I associate with fraying. Fraying for me, appears as something that was once whole but is coming of into pieces. My next drawing was using the "stick" idea Judy suggested, but following an inward/outward curve that would show a degradation/weathering of materials.

Finally, I tried a more hands on approach and began tearing at a piece of leftover cork with my craft knife. I was quite pleased with the result, as it cork is like a mix of fabric and a harder material such as MDF, it can be easily teared (like fabric) but still hold it's shape (like MDF) the details are also very small and appear very intricate:

  The strip showing evidence of my tearing with the craft knife, quite interesting since you don't know what pattern you will get.

Shown in relation to a thin strip of MDF, so that it is more evident how they would look in terms of being parts of the edge of the building. Since Judy broached the idea of how these pieces come together, I thought it would be best that they be layered. This was a technique I used in my lazer cutting design and I feel it served the design very well, as well as being visually appealing and allowing for a wide range of shapes to be made/mixes of material. With layering in mind, I then sought to see how the fraying cork would look with more on top of it:

With two layers:

With three layers! Much better

I really love the stacked effect of three of these sheets of cork, it not only evoke the idea of a frayed material but also harks back to my growth idea as they seem to be competing to grow outwards whilst being held back and fraying inwards.