Yoonjin Son
Built Metropolis
Prompt: Each person will create one small clay building structure. During the final presentation, they will all be placed together to form our own metropolis.
For this project, I chose Northern Dispensary as a model to build my own small clay building structure. Along the process, I focused on both the concept and the goal. In terms of the concept, I wanted to emphasize the shape of the building and its simplistic design. Other than a unique shape of the building, triangular shape, I added 12 windows on each side of the building. I didn’t add a door in purpose because nowadays this building is known to be closed permanently. Because I wanted to show this fact through its design, I removed the doors that exist in real life. Moreover, in terms of the goal, I spent many hours to increase its degree of completeness. I put my best effort to enhance the craftsmanship of the project and tried my best to interpret the building with my own visions and values. Between the white clay and the red clay, I chose the red clay in order to give a realistic feeling of the building; Northern Dispensary is made out of red bricks. However, when I went to the ceramics lab to pick up my building structure, it was fired into a pinkish color. It was unexpected, but I liked it. I thought it raised more of my unique artistic value than a realistic feeling of the building. Through this project, I was able to learn ceramics again and make a building structure, which was a rare choice of ceramics that I can think of. Also, it was a pleasure for me to use different tools and materials to recreate the existing building through my own exploration. Thus, even though there were some unexpected surprises in the process, I feel very satisfied with the learning experiences and the outcome of this project.