Week 5: The Degustation

This week is about building complexity and consideration into our creative practices

My Over-arching Research Question (Version-9)

How can we create an experiential, dynamic, biophilic free play space for children in order to nurture holistic development and provide a prototype for developing a child-friendly community space?

Reflection on Practice (500 words)

In the past few weeks, the DP-2 class has enabled me to be engaged in new methods and concepts for generating creative practice. Through the creative artefacts I produced in this class, I have been exploring various key concepts in my research project. I have been trying to investigate the elements which will formulate interesting free play spaces for children. At the start of this class I selected 3 key ingredients and incidentally these related very closely to my key concepts. I could immediately connect these ingredients to my practice. Through my research I am exploring spatial qualities of being raw (infused with nature), porous (absorb children and alter movements through spaces to make them interesting) and sticky (so they engage children and keep them hooked on) which were my 3 key ingredients for creative practice. I explored elements for free play spaces based on these ingredients. Most things that I intended to create worked while few I could not manage with the constraints on time and material availability. I did find it difficult to continuously produce artefacts in the stipulated time. I was very ambitious while planning the making of models but many times I failed as I did not have access to the right tools and machines at that moment. To be honest I really failed with the finishing of few models due to the same reason – but I gave more importance to the concepts and moved forward. For me these handmade sketches and models have been a good method to explore initial concepts as by using my hands along with the mind I can be a part of each representation. Mostly, I was disciplined about the constraints and challenged myself to work around them. This concept of rationing has been continuously pushing me to extend myself towards more making which has allowed me to explore concepts with different guidelines. Moving on with the 3 ingredients I selected the two methods for cooking- which were Amalgamation and Dissolve as they best suited my methods towards creative practice. Amalgamation helped me to combine my ideas and concepts (the 3 ingredients) together and explore how my key concepts could be blended together to form more experiential spatial narratives. The two key contexts which I selected were Interpret and Compose. I found both these methodologies to be very closely related to my design process. As spatial designers we are continuously interpreting ideas and concepts, assessing them and formulating them to create compositions. Although these contexts have been always part of my process, it is only through this class that I consciously explored them. The two key distribution terms that I selected were Physical and Augment. Since I’m trying to explore multi-sensorial spaces through my research, physical experience of the space is essential. I also intend to augment the experience of the users through my spatial narratives and empower children by enhancing their learning process through play. These two distribution channels directed my exploration towards the goals of my research project. I intend to enhance the experiential and sensorial qualities of children’s play spaces through my research.

Action Plan / Shopping List:

In the next two weeks –

I would like explore more with the 3 ingredients by creating more artefacts.
I would like to combine the artefacts into a spatial narrative.
I would like to investigate my methodologies and distribution channels in depth by relating to a few theorists.
I would like to check on case studies mentioned in the formative feedback.
I would like to explore more materials and techniques for model making.

Key Ingredients- Raw, Porous, Sticky

Key Methods – Amalgamation, Dissolve

Key Contexts/ Methodologies – Interpret, Compose

Key Distribution Channels – Physical, Augment

Time Constraint – 2 weeks