Our final project in Interior Design I was to make a construction that combined volumes, planes, and lines, and would make exciting black and white photographs, since we were still working on the theme “light as inhabitant,” with the goals of learning composition, light, texture, and craft.

Since it began with my hacking holes out of hotglued boxes of battered foamcore board, and wedging them into each other, I called it the agglomeration. The official project name “Light as Inhabitant Part Three” was much too pretentious for it then, and the nickname stuck.

Even though it was constructed entirely out of right-angled boxes and planes, the final composition feels much more dynamic than you would expect from that. Again, we were invited to craft interesting joints, and I did. Headache-inducing joints, like these multiple angled crossings and wedgings:

The leaf tower was one of my favourite assignments of the year, since I managed to make it do something a bit special. The rules were to make a three-dimensional structure out of one sheet of bristol board, with only cuts and folds, and without removing any of the paper. Here’s what I came up with.

The zipper up the back holds the two edges of the sheet together into a circle, and the “windows” on the back are really tensioning struts that hold the front to the back. These struts are then folded on the front side to lock them in place, which along with the fold between them, brings the tower to form an asymmetrical heart shape. I then added the ornamental leaf cut-outs, and bent the leaves slightly outward to make it look as though it was covered with vines.

After our two-dimensional work, our professor had us tackle the third.

This piece was to make us experiment with using the height and texture of the cardboard to create an effect. Having done a lot of cutting of cardboard recently, I made a grid and then blocked out the size, height, and directions I wanted, so that everything would be easy to measure and cut. It worked out quite well and the professor kept it for the next CIDA review.

For Interior Design I, Tony wanted us to learn about composition, light, texture, and craft. Our first project was to make three-volume assemblies out of corrugated cardboard and then photograph them. Each was supposed to have a clear dominant, subdominant, and subordinate volume, and to make use of the cardboard’s texture. We started by creating ten sketches:

Since Tony was interested in joinery I borrowed some ideas from woodworking, such as pegs and dovetails.

The next stage was to pick the best two. Number three (the feature photo) was one of my favourites, but I had to admit it didn’t make an exciting photo in elevation and display the light-pipe effects that made me love it. Tony and I selected sketches five and seven as the best. I remade them at higher quality and took a full set of photographs for each.

My favourite pieces played with balance, in both physical and power terms. They were supported or held together by the subordinate piece, such as the slices in five and seven, and the slender column in three. If that piece was taken away, the assembly would tip over or fall apart, so it was subordinate and dominant at the same time.