UP House
Samantha Massey
Professor: Jaime Sanz
Semester: Spring 2021
Type: Quarter Semester Project
This project focused on the imagination of space through experience. We were tasked to draw a domestic space based on a film and to then transform the space into a dwelling best fit for its characters with the addition of ourselves. I focused on diagramming the most important features of my space to best illustrate its atmosphere. In the movie Up, a man builds his forever home with his wife. In the Disney movie, upon his wife’s passing he flies the house, with some companions he meets along the way, to a beautiful place he and his wife had always dreamed of visiting. I wanted to capture the fantastical experience of the house in its brilliant colors.
I learned to capture the spirit of a place through drawing this film in all its child-like wonder.
With my new addition, I proposed a similarly fantastical approach. In this world, I imagine an additional bubble level above the original house to make more space for the new additions to the story. As a similar motif to the original balloons, the “bubble architecture” continues the character of the movie with a new addition without losing the classic image of the house his wife once loved.
With equal animated charm, I began building a newly fantastical reality for the characters and myself to live. I enjoyed making the new reality of the “forever home” just as colorful and exciting as the film.
New opportunities for space are explored through the addition of balloon-like rooms where the previous flying mechanisms existed in the movie. Thinking of adapting a cartoon film space to real drawing was challenging and helpful in increasing my capabilities of imagining 2D space in real life.
The project helped me to grow my creative drawing side when still a new architecture student. I think this project was important in my skills of digital visualization and drawing. I try to capture even a small taste of this child-like excitement in my current designs.