May 9, 2008

Room & Narrative

The Doctor's Visit by Gabriel Metsu

In this 17th century painting, we have a young girl sitting on a chair looking ill, and an older, well dressed, middle age man examining what looks like the girl's urine in a flask. This is the artist's humorous depiction on the subject of Love. The ill looking girl on the chair is actually lovesick.

From this painting I derived the following Narrative.

"Rooms To Eat Chocolate For A Young Girl In Love".

Room & Narrative - Idea

The basic geometry of the whold structure is a square, which was dictated by the base described in the project brief. The focus of the rooms are at the three coners of the square and the fourth corner is the entrance.

The design of these rooms are to reflect & accommodate the stages of the girl's love, and there are three stages, according to the three types of chocolate, the White, the Milk and the Dark.


The White chocolate room would be visited in the early stage of her love affair, when she's feeling excitement and joy for her new found "feelings". The room is to uplift her and draw her outwards, feeling light and airy. She would stand at the corner where the big glass wall is, too excited to sit, and she would eat her white chocolate.

The second stage is when she realised what these "feelings" means. A stage when she sees a change within herself & her surroundings. When everything is clear in her mind & she has made a decision on her choices, and the room is to be cleared, grounded and solid. She would sit to eat her Milk chocolate on a high banch at the corner of the room, filled with clear beams of light coming from the windows and the gaps between the walls & the gap above the corner.

The third stage, which may not be the last stage, is the negative side of her love. This is part with all the jealousy, and possiveness that could suffocate a person. So the room shows a lot of tension and compression, introverted and compressed. She would be sitting almost on a fetus position on a low platform surrounded by strained back piece and over head piece, and there she would have her Dark chocolate.

Room & Narrative - Drawings









Room & Narrative - Model