Museum of
Emotions

The submission makes excellent use of a clear grid of drawings, separated by thin white borders that give the sheet breathing room despite its overall density. The project successfully contrasts light and dark, and achieves a natural color balance with the use of browns and greens. It also mixes larger and smaller imagery without one overpowering another. Visually the reader’s eye tends towards the image on the center-right, of the rock balanced in space, as a starting point for reading the project. One visual oddity is the placement of the lightest drawings at the base with darker drawings above, lending towards a top-heavy layout. While the layout is undoubtedly related to the spatial sequencing of the project, a slightly more visually balanced organization in terms of color balance would benefit the presentation. Given this is a single-sheet presentation, space is critical, yet the two exhibition space images at the center bottom are repetitive with the more successful, larger perspectives just to the right. It is best to avoid repetitive imagery, especially when the drawings do not yield additional project details. To fully understand the project, it would be useful, for example, to instead include a perspective within the ‘maze’ that is seen in the plan but not rendered as part of the imagery.

The project is defined by its use of white versus black. The black clearly ‘wins’ visually, thereby successfully putting into focus the important white portions of the presentation. It mixes historical photography with rendered imagery and plans to fully explain a complex idea on one sheet. The one drawing which is not crystal clear is the axonometric plan-section. This uses a mix of black and white to describe, it is assumed, above and below grade portions of the project. The linework, however, is all one weight, and so the ‘cut’ versus elevational components are not evident. The final space of the sequence is rendered in perspective as triangular or A-frame in nature, but it is not fully evident how this relates to the forms in the axonometric, which are all block forms without canted or angled walls. Finally, the use of a scale figure would be especially beneficial in the exterior perspective of the project, to comprehend its size within its environment. On the interior, however, the author has cleverly inserted a chair, as well as a window at head height, so that a (seasoned) reader may clearly visualize the scale of the interior spaces.

The layout of this presentation is clear and clean. The use of colored imagery which includes one darker colored rendering seems imbalanced floating above the fine light line drawings. While the project consists of outstanding imagery, the author’s use of a clouded effect dilutes the overall impact, with drawings that are visually muted. The presentation would benefit from a stronger color balance if the blue sky, green trees and green grass were put into starker contrast with richer, more enticing colors. Similar commentary extends to the line drawings. The drawings make use of lines that are all a single gray tone and weight. When reviewing the sheet in full, it is difficult to comprehend the details embedded in the plans and section. The author would benefit from the use of black lines with clear delineation between cut and elevational information. Stronger, thicker lines would furthermore add more visual weight to the base of the sheet and aid in its overall balance and hierarchy.