So, where did I see this design heading? What were the main themes I wanted it to encapsulate? I wanted to design something with two parts, the individual and the collective. A space where you could work by yourself but also a place you could slot your individual workspace into to come together with those you work with. A place to do divergent thinking out in the world and then a place to come back to to process your work through convergent thinking. This should be a space that facilitates conversations, encourages movement, helps structure your time and allows you to connect with the space around you.

Found in a book about the work of Ronan and Erwan Bourouillec, I took to sketch modelling to find the form of my project :

“The living office idea triggered the final iteration of their office design called Net’n’Nest (Vitra, 2006). The office’s functions can be defined by two opposing yet complimentary impulses: an office is a meeting place for teamworking ‘networking’ - and a place for where employees can retreat to for concentrated working - nesting.”

I realised this described exactly what I had been researching about balancing divergent and convergent thinking. Their word choice of net and nest got me thinking and led me to my first attempt at sketch models which saw me printing out photographs I had taken in and around the art school to make my own ‘net’.

I had decided I wanted photography to continue to be part of my process and so in this way I would build my models from the photographs themselves. Using a scalpel to follow the lines and angles within the photos I lifted and folded elements of the 2D images to create a new 3D landscape within them, building from a ‘net’. What caught my attention the most with these models was the contrast in colours that were occuring despite the fact that they had been taken in similar spaces. This colour palette is one I wanted to carry through the process to maintain the connection that the final design has with the photography that informed it.