Interior Design 2.1

Small – Detailed Spatial Understanding

Project 1: The Concept of Scale

I watched a video lecture on the concept of scale, whilst listening I made notes on the understanding of scale, I have listed a few here.

• How we use scale as a tool to communicate
• How we add a human figure to our drawings to show relative scale
• How we change the scale of the object when drawing to communicate a design
• How scale helps us to work out how things work in a space
• How scale changes the way we feel about a space
• How scale is important to help us understand the size of objects

I then started a conversation in a student WhatsApp group chat, I asked them their perception of ‘scale’. Some really interesting replies. One student said that “scale is probably one of the most interesting design aspects to use at it can bring a lot of drama but also make things totally ordinary.” Another student said “that scale is invaluable due to the fact it would be impossible to portray a concept clearly to anyone else without it”. It was also pointed out that “scale is also probably one of the design aspects that feels like it has a right and a wrong. That we accept colour, shapes etc can be subjectively pleasing but scale can make us feel weird when it’s ‘off'”.

I would agree with these statements, I’m also still working on how I would know which scale to use when drawing a design, I guess that will come with more practice?

Whilst studying this part of the unit I have been invested in a series on Netflix called Abstract Design. Each episode takes a look at the designer and their life before and during their career and their design role. It has been so interesting and one episode in-particular caught my attention. Es Devlin is a Stage Designer, she talks briefly about her childhood influences and that there is a model village in her hometown of Rye, East Sussex. She remembers how her home had two roofs and that she would climb out and sit of the roof and look out over the town, she soon started associating storytelling with model making. Her work is very much a reaction against this whilst continuing to influence her, she plays with scale each day in her stage design work. I found all the episodes in this series fascinating, I would highly recommend this series to anybody interested in design.