Project 2: Hopper and Empty Rooms

Sunlight in an empty room, Edward Hopper.
The painting is notably devoid of a human presence. This is especially noteworthy because contemplative human figures had played a pivotle role in Hopper's painting, especially when he was addressing the relationship between exterior and interior. The painting was also one of Hopper's last. Within this context the painting can be read to speak of loss, of time running out, of opportunities running out, a sense of mortality, or generally a rather sombre mood. In this sense, I see that the room isn't just empty, it is vacant, there is a sense that there is someone, or something missing.
It is also evident that Hopper is trying to address/ experiment with the definitions of interior and exterior. In fact it is with this painting that Hopper stated how very difficult he found painting interiors and exteriors at the same time, and also that he decided not to include a figure, because the social indicators implicit in human figures would have disturbed the ambiguity that he was attempting to create between inside and outside.
It is with the use of sunlight cutting across and dividing the room into two areas (shadow and sunlight), that Hopper suggests a different notion of interior/exterior. It is worth noting that the darkest point in the whole painting is in fact outside the window, the very source of the sunlight, here Hopper is perhaps guiding us to focus our attention entirely to the relationships inside the room. The sunlight creates clear demarcations of space, definitive pockets of space, such as the corner in the middle of the painting, which appears almost like a little room in itself. The interior can almost be seen as a landscape, with sunlight rising over a hill, flooding some areas with light and leaving others in shadow, like valleys.




I did quick sketches of Hopper's work, to get a sense of how it was put together. Treating the light and the dark as two different spaces, definitely helped in the rendering process, it also alerted my attention to the fact that Hopper omitted the shadow of the window cross-frame, perhaps because it disturbed his experiment.




While pondering possible reasons why the room is empty, I came to my notion of who my character might be. I decided that the room was being saved for later use. It is a room that has been collected, and put away for later...

Hoarding and building up haphazardly

Following this theme, I decided to add an extra layer; my character would be not just a collector, but a compulsive collector, who fills all their space with stuff; a hoarder. However the notion of a compulsive hoarder who has an empty room, does present itself as something of a paradox. So why?
The room can be seen as a collected item; kept to be put to use for some unknown purpose, at some unknown time in the future, just as the collector might keep an empty jar, or an old floppy disc. The empty room also can be seen as a place of respite. A place for the self aware hoarder, to escape their compulsion to collect. A last bastion against their overwhelming compulsion.
I therefore decided my short narrative would be:

The compulsive hoarder dared not step foot into his room of respite. First he had to get things in order.



I then had to address the problems implicit in designing a space for a compulsive hoarder. How does one design a space for someone who ignores the very function of spaces, and just fills them with stuff? Would it just be a cube? a sphere full of shelves? The whole notion of walls, and their placement seemed suddenly redundant. Therefore, I decided to have no walls, instead I would just build upward, stacking one thing on top of another, in an entirely haphazard way. And the structure would be entirely made of shelves.

What I aimed to create was a precarious structure, built without a master plan. The structure would in fact be designed by the inhabitants complusion. And I based the aesthetic of this on scaffolding, and structures built out of 'things', as the pictures above illustrate.

Conceptual sketches

Early conceptural sketch. I wanted the building to resemble a pile of stuff, of hoarded junk.




And that this mass of 'stuff' would be like a growth out of control, sitting on top of the 'room of respite' or the 'waiting room' (waiting- in the sense that the room is waiting for the collector to put it to use, to fulfill its potential, and by extension , for the collector to fulfill their own potential; to make something of their life).The 'waiting room', as a representation of time, as a finite resource, slipping out of the grasp of the collector. And the structure above (the collector's compulsion), is hastening the departure of the 'waiting room'; of a chance to make something of the collector's life.


Fine line sketches of the model.

Final Presentation Drawings

Plan view poche: with foreboding shadow. I decided to only do a plan of the 'waiting room' because the levels above are supposed to be chaotic and unplanned, and therefore I did not want to give the impression that there was a specific layout to those levels. Instead I emphasised their ever-present nature through the shadow that would be cast down onto the ground surrounding the structure, and could be seen from the 'waiting room'.



Sectional Poche, showing the bare-bones structure, emphasising the difference between the chaotic shelves structure and the clean & simple room. Also revealing the way in which the 'waiting room' is being forced into the ground by the weight of the collectors compulsion, this is also emphasised by the squashing of earth underneith, which I rendered with the lines of ink.



Elevation Poche, similar to the sectional poche, but with this one, I wanted to show the structure as if it was full of collected items, as it is meant to be.



Axonometric poche, which was omitted from the in-class presentation because, due to the chaotic nature of the structure, I felt it did not serve the usual function of an axonometric, but rather was cluttered, unclear, and confusing (and very hard to draw accurately!).

Model

The doggy structure above can be seen here to be pushing the 'waiting room' into the earth.

And the bracing seen here, is a futile attempt to fight the weight of the structure above.


The 'waiting room'. This space is supposed to be calm, and plain, much like Hopper's painting, it is a place devoid of references, and the only thing in it, is potential.

However, even from inside this 'calm' space, one can see that something is wrong, almost like looking out the window of a sinking ship at the angled horizon, the weight of the structure above is destroying the tranquility, and time is running out to put the space to use.


The structure above is deliberately haphazard. As if built one part upon another, the structure is held together with a series of doggily placed nails, screws, rope, and and bracing.

Although it is not obviously evident, the chaotic structure has throughout it a series of walkways and ramps connecting each area, what it does not have however, is any space where one could stop, and be sheltered, or relax.

The structure is made up almost entirely of shelves.



This image deliberately captures the foreboding shadow of the structure above, encompassing the 'waiting room'.