Pedro Pitarch led a Visual Intelligence course, and our assignment was to take the plans of Valldaura’s main building, and implement a “condition” of our choosing: a way to alter the building, or represent certain existing characteristics in a unique and interesting way.
For my project, I decided to see what it could look like to incorporate our gardening and forestry activities within the building, imagining Valldaura as a greenhouse. This included the placement of larger windows, skylights, garden beds, wall-mounted plant boxes, and vertical trellises within the main dining room, the studio room, and the first floor common spaces. A tree runs through the center of the dining room and studio, representing the focus and importance of wood and forestry in our program. I also redesigned the furniture in these spaces to blend in with the environment that we see around Valldaura, using mainly wood and stones.
Plan View
Perspective View
Takeaways
While I am pleased with the images presented above, I would love to further iterate the design and its representations, perhaps through an exploded axon, playing more with color in the perspective view, or experimenting with more diverse line weights. It would also be interesting to study the climate conditions of each room, to see what plants can grow well in each area, depending on temperature and sunlight. Valldaura is such a unique building with so much history, and I really enjoyed the process of reimagining its design and purpose. I hope that the building can maintain its cultural roots, while also evolving overtime to continue providing for the community and its visitors.
