Coursework_California College of the Arts_MArch_Fall 2015
Instructor_Brian Price
Case Study_Casa Da Musica_OMA

This course looked at drawing and analysis as methods for discovery and interpretation – a kind of ‘thinking through drawing’. It is based on the premise that drawings are non-objective translators of the things they represents; and as such, become instrumental in both the condition and proposition of architectural and urban space.

Project two analyzed OMA’s Casa Da Musica in Porto, Portugal to gain thorough understanding of the work’s spatial nature through a diagrammatic process of operation and manipulation. The intentional layout of the building revolves various public rooms around  the central performance hall, providing glimpses of the surrounding city as one meanders through the spaces. My thesis with these drawings is to understand the building as it is organized inversely to the plan’s diagram – that is, centered (visually) around the city of Porto rather than (physically) around the auditorium. As one moves through the flow of the building, the exterior views become your central point of reference within the project.

My process in this analysis was to operate on the surfaces of the project at three scales, and physically invert the architecture to explore my thesis. Drawing one flips the public rooms’ orientations to create a panoramic interior view of Porto and an exterior wrapping of the auditorium surface. Drawing two bends a primary stair to explain one’s ‘x,’  ‘y,’ and ‘z’ movement around this new interior. Drawing three then turns inside out the exterior facade, creating a new map of Porto’s historic center in its relation to the views from the Casa da Musica. Lastly, a stereotomic drawing explains my rigorous process of operation on the architecture, and the upholding of scale and spatial relationship in each image.