Final hybrid drawing of Jodhpur’s stepped well created using Rhino, Photoshop, Illustrator, acrylic paint, and pencil drawings
Completed for INTAR-2377 Advanced Drawing and Computing Tectonics at RISD, Fall 2022, Professor Rachel Stopka
Jodhpur’s Stepwell
The Design Process
1) Site and Context
The first step of my design project was developing a sense of the site. We were given the option to use a rural or urban site to situate our underground space in; I created digital models of both to explore either possibility.
After modeling the steep topography of the rural site and the skyscrapers of the urban site in Rhino, I decided to situate my underground space within an urban context, given that the contrast of height could provide the possibility for interesting spatial relationships.
2) Underground Space
We were then tasked with choosing an underground space to model in Rhino and place into our site - I chose the stepwell in Jodhpur, India as I found its repetitive yet complex geometry fascinating.
I approached the task of building the digital model of the stepwell through a modular strategy using the dimensions from the floor plans and sections.
3) Hybrid Drawing
After situating my model of the Jodhpur stepped well into my urban site, our final assignment was to create a hybrid drawing - a drawing that combines both analogue and digital media.
I turned to a piece by Henri Sauvage called Metropolis for inspiration. Specifically, the unique color palette and painterly feel of the work is what I wanted to incorporate.
I then created a large collection of paint swatches, tree drawings, and sketches of friends that I would use to color and populate the section perspective of my model from Rhino in Photoshop. Overlaying the thick textures of acrylic paint and unnatural colors with the smooth precise lines of the digital model resulted in a surreal environment for the stepped well.