Project Description
The Sine City San Marcos Creek Development Project was a project focused around real events that will take place in the future regarding the design and structure of a downtown San Marcos area. The purpose of the project was to delve deep into how exactly plans like these are made and the complexity of each design while perfectly integrating math into each nook and cranny of our progression through the course of the project. What we aimed to create was a small glimpse into the possibility of what exactly this development project can look like. This allowed us to really open up our collective creative lenses and come up with some very interesting and exciting structures on each parcel of land involved in the project.
Process
We first began the project by looking over the specific requirements for each building within the project by reading texts that were made public by the city of San Marcos here. Once we read thoroughly through the design requirements, it was time to survey land and measure out what exactly we had to work with. Each group was assigned a certain parcel of land and was tasked with coming up with buildings that can be built on that specific area. My group was assigned the parcel of land that included the restaurant Tom's Burgers and an auto shop directly next to it. Once we have measured out our land, we were able to come up with site plans and elevation views of what are building may look like. Before going deeper into this, we were introduced to such concepts as sun path diagrams and the golden ratio, two very important factors in creating and designing buildings. The Sun Path Diagrams essentially calculate the location of the sun throughout a given time during the year, and the gold ratio is essentially the ratio of measurement that makes a building aesthetically pleasing to look at. The ratio is 1:1.618. Once all of the designs for our buildings were hand drawn, we then translated them into Adobe Illustrator, and from there, we laser cut wood to look like our designed building. To go along with the visual example of our lot, we also created an interactive through the video game Minecraft, which gave a more accurate perspective of where exactly we were going with out design. With our interactive, we could essentially give a tour of our buildings while still being able to see a some-what more accurate representation of our intentional design.
Pictures
Reflection
Throughout the entirety of the project, I can say without a doubt that it was constantly exposing us to trigonometry and learning more about it and how to apply it to other things. I think that this is the most I have ever had to apply what I have learned in class to a project because of the fact we were constantly measuring, converting, and calculating the ratios of how one thing should fit with another. I think that one Habit of a Mathematician I used was thinking systematically because of the way the project was shaped. I felt like I used this habit, among other ones to really put a better effort than without using it. one challenge we faced was we ran out of wood for our buildings, so we had to bring in balsa wood and hand-create three of four of our models, but in the end, our team pulled together and came through and we had a solid piece to exhibit in the end.
Exhibition
I think that the exhibition went off without a hitch and that each group member played a key role in the outcome of the final product. It all came together in the end and people were amazed at how our design was both different and unique to many other designs. My group essentially didn't have specific assigned roles, we just worked on what we felt needed to be worked on because we didn't want to divide and conquer in this project, we wanted it to be more of a team effort so everyone had a say in what our product was going to be. It was a good thing we did that because otherwise, I don't think it would've come out just as good. All in all, it was a solid exhibition with a solid product, making a good show, sparking real conversation with many other people.