Picture of a Home: Find a picture of a home in a magazine or on the Internet, write a short story (one page) about the family that might live in the house. Who are they, what might they do. What do our homes say about us? Include the picture and short story in your portfolio.
This is the house of three sisters. In younger years they both led very different lives, lives that led all of them to this little house until the end. The sisters were born on the same day on three consecutive years, first Sara, then Jane, followed by Emily. They grew up getting along on most days but they definitely had a hard time getting along on other days. But love won out in the end and they supported each other from near and far through out the years.
Sara went away for college. Her dream was to become a dancer and live in New York, so she did. She went to New York to attend NYU to study English, and she joined a ballet company in the city. She lived in a studio apartment just off of Times Square. The apartment had hard wood floors, she had red kitchen appliances, and white furniture. She stayed in New York for most of her life, opened a ballet studio and wrote a number of books on fiction and a few full of poetry. She waited until the age of 35 when she married a man named Mark, but they never had children. They moved to New Jersey to live in the country, but close enough for Sara to commute into the city. After 35 years of marriage, Mark passed away leaving Sara with a huge amount of money.
Jane stayed in Utah for college but still moved out of her parents house. She met and very quickly fell in love with a man named Matt, who she met in class as they were both studying to be teachers, and they were married soon after. After being married for 2 years they had a son, followed by twin girls, a a few years later another son. They moved into the house above and raised their family there. All of their children grew up, moved out, got married and brought fifteen beautiful grandchildren into Jane and Matt's life.
Emily started out being a professional student. She decided to send that and travel the world. She traveled all over Europe, Asia, Africa, and lived in Greece for a time. In her mid-twenties she was visiting Rome and met a man named Sean while she touring the Vatican. They had a long courtship traveling back and forth between Rome and Greece, and after 2 years of dating Sean finally proposed on a gondola ride. They built a cottage in the country of Ireland, had 2 little boys, who grew up, married, and brought Emily and Sean seven grandchildren.
Sara moved into the apartment to the side of Jane and Matt's house. She added hard wood floors into her part of the house and few other rooms in the main house. She also added the plant baskets hanging from the awnings around the porch. Emily and Sean decided to return to America to be closer to family and moved in with Emily's sisters in the basement of the house. They started growing the vines up the banisters and added the décor to the edge of the roofs brought from their house in the England.
The house became parts of all three families. Almost all if it represented Matt and Jane's memories, and Sara and Emily both added touches of their lives to add. It became a place for children and grandchildren to come and visit, where grandchildren received ballet lessons in from Aunt Sara, and piano lessons from Grandpa Matt. It is a place where holidays are celebrated, losses mourned and comforted, and where lots of love abides.
Homes are all about what happens there. Homes can be simple enough to satisfy your needs at the time and still be made personal like Sara's first apartment in New York. The home that the sisters ended up in tells about the bonds of family and tells the stories of the three sisters by the elements in it, the pictures on the walls, and the people that visit there.
Creativity: Envision a living room with white walls, a beige sofa, and two brown chairs. Create a plan to personalize the room without removing or replacing any furniture, present proposed changes visually.
Design Challenge:
You have been hired by the assistant curator for a large museum. The museum is planning an exhibit on the evolution of housing in America. The curator has asked you to create a plan for the exhibit. Think about the materials that you will include, and answer the following questions in your written plan:
- Should the museum display photographs, drawings or scale models?
- How will the exhibit be organized?
- How much space will you need?
- Will you include an interactive computer display?
- Will you include a virtual tour of the exhibit on the museum's website?
- Include sketches of pictures to illustrate your ideas.
- The museum will be using scale models. Using scale models may use more space but they are more inviting and more people can view them at a time because they can be viewed on all sides.
- The exhibit will be organized chronologically around the edges of the room. The scale models will be on free standing pedestals with descriptions on the wall behind the pedestals and on the pedestals themselves.
- I will only need one room to do it. The size will depend on the number of scale models that will be used.
- There will not be a computer display. Computer displays take away from the point of the exhibit which is the scale models. People think that that most important information is on the computer instead of the scale models and information in the room.
- I will have a portion of the exhibit online but visitors will need to visit the exhibit to get all of the information and see all of the scale models.
