portfolio 2016 - michal kasperski

MICHAL KASPERSKI

2013 - 2016P O R T F O L I O

A R C H I T E C T U R ED E S I G ND R A W I N G

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Light Pollution MaskWinter 2016Tutor: Nicola [email protected] Work

Design of wearable garment that is changing your perception of the night sky. I Came up with the proposal of a mask that increases user’s awarness of light pollution effect.

IIElan Valley Dark Sky CentreSpring 2016Tutor: Nicola [email protected] Work

Building proposal in Elan Valley in Wales aiming to involve vis-itors to creative work and appreciation of purely dark sky influ-encing the effect of light pollution.

I Floating PavilionWinter 2015Tutor: Carles Sala [email protected] Work

Design of floating pavilions located in Cardiff Bay Reservoir in-forming visitors about rich history of this place and providing constantly changing floating space for leisure and events.

III 60m2 House ProjectSummer 2014, updated Spring 2016Tutor: Karolina KoseckaIndividual Work

The challange of the project was to accomodate two functions of studio office and house for young couple of designers on space limmited to 60 square meters.

IVpages: 4-9 pages: 10-11 pages: 12-15 pages: 16-17

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Creative Cardiff Events Space

Spring 2016Tutor: Wayne Foster and Creative Cardiff [email protected] Work

Work for Creative Cardiff company to design and construct a pop-up event space in Main Building of Cardiff University to held a series of events for local creative community.

VISoundscape Modeling

Autumn 2015Tutor: Sergio [email protected] Work

Big artistic project that involved recording and surveying sound experience of whole span of River Taff and transforming the data into physical form of plaster sculpture.

V Hand Drawing and Watercolors

2013-2016Individual work

Each drawing is a different lesson for me. I believe that deep un-derstanding of forms and structures is achievable by conscius drawing more than by any other means.

VIIITechnical surveying

2015/2016Individual work

It is easy to measure objects. But it is hard and important task to present these data in beautiful and easly readable form which determines how people percieve objects.

VIIpages: 18-19 pages: 20-21 pages: 22-23 pages: 24-27

MICHAL KASPERSKI ELLAN VALLEY DARK SKY CENTRE

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Site analysis map showith walking path leading from the valley through the biggest dam in Elan Valley up to the top of a hill with marked potentioal place for building intervention.

The aim of this project was to design a building proposal for visitors of Elan Valley in central Wales. A site which is very specific due to its pristine char-acter yet with huge marks of Victorian era - being changed by several huge water dams providing fresh water to many cities.

Other than that, space is untouched by civilisation and Elan Valley was re-cently awared a Dark Sky certificate making it one of the very few places in Great Britain and Europe, where you can enjoy truly dark sky without light pollustion.

Through my design I want to put an emphasis on this unique conditions of environment and make people more aware about effect of light pol-lution.

ELLAN VALLEY DARK SKY CENTRESPRING 2016ELAN VALLEY - MID WALESINDIVIDUAL WORKTUTOR: NICOLA CHAN

- 5 - MICHAL KASPERSKI ELLAN VALLEY DARK SKY CENTREMICHAL KASPERSKI ELLAN VALLEY DARK SKY CENTRE

I paid a lot of attention to deeply investigate qualities of this specific site. Plaster model of a site I casted was very helpfull throughout design process and enabled me to work with site like with sculpture.V I treated it as a base for sketches and design decissions. It gave me possibility to crave inside a hill, checking various concepts using cardboard models and choose the final one which I casted from cement.

You can see how partially submerged long gallery volume is a continuation of slate rock cliff being very characteristic part of this site and leading to the main entrance.

This way of working make the project trurly site specific with a lot of connections to the Elan Valley and very well fittend within landscape context.

W O R K I N G W I T H S I T E - P L A S T E R M O D E L

(left hand side) A star chart produced as a part of site analysis. As build-ing would be focusing on the night sky I investigated patterns of con-stellations over this specific site throughout four seasons of the year. Drawing emphasise the stability of a North Star among ever changing image of the sky giving you a reference point to stargazing.

MICHAL KASPERSKI ELLAN VALLEY DARK SKY CENTRE - 6 -

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Main element of the building is ‘Light pollution gallery’’ - long space divided into smaller rooms separated by bufours made of heavy black courtains.

First room is an overilluminated space that hits vis-itors eyes making him avare to what light intensity we are exposed every day in highly illuminated cities. Being introduced to information about light pollution problem visitor cross the boundary of double cour-tains and suddenly finds himself in a completely dark room just with sitting space and big roof opening above.

One starts to realise that he cannot actually see that much after being exposed to artificial light, but our eyes start to adapt slowly and we can see more and more...

Going through the journey of rooms with gradual-ly decreasing illumination visitor he can appreciate the beauty of dark sky more fully each time. Finally leaving the gallery being exposed to the vastness of universe that we are part of and being aware of what we are loosing every night.

The point of this experience is to draw our attention to ignored problem of light pollution and how we get used to living in artificially illuminated environments even though consequences of this state for hu-mand being are not yet understood.

(left side) A section and plan showing how building proposal of dark sky visitor centre fits within topog-raphy of investigated site.

MICHAL KASPERSKI ELLAN VALLEY DARK SKY CENTRE - 8 -

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Visualisations of the interior spaces. On the right hand side you can see a dark sky room interior with sculptural concrete bench standing under wide roof opening in a space iso-lated completelty from artificial light. Space itself focuses user on the night sky and gives you a moment to think about its beauty which is usually lost in highly illuminated cities.

Below there is a visualisation from workshop room - a space which gives opportunity to gather for stargazing or discuss and present recent findings in Elan Valley.

Proposal of a slate wall surrounding build-ing which would work not only as a wall but more as a sculpture which through various positioning of slate plates would create overhangs or places for people to sit or climb into.

- 10 - MICHAL KASPERSKI LIGHT POLLUTION MASK

WINTER 2015/16ELAN VALLEY DARK SKY PARKINDIVIDUAL WORKTUTOR: NICOLA CHANIILIGHT POLLUTION MASK

LIGHT POLLUTION - is a problem of an ex-cessive pressence of misdirect artificial light that poses a serious threat to world’s ecosys-tem: washing out the starlight on the night sky, causing adverse health effects on living organ-isms and simply being just a waste of energy.

The aim of this project was to desing a warable garment that would change user’s experience of night sky. I came up with the idea of light pollution mask after being thrilled by the amount of negative effects this highly ignored phenomena has on nature and human life.

With more than a half od the world’s population living in cities 3 out of 4 have never experienced a wonderment of pristinely dark sky. I was lucky enough to had this opportunity every single night of my childhood. That’s why in this project I want to focus people attention on LIGHT POLLUTION - phenomena which is washing out pristinely dark skies forever.

We need to start being aware of light pollutionto let our children see the vastness of universe as well, to let them wonder looking up the stars,to let them dream...

INTERNAL SKULL STRUCTURE - PROVIDING SOLID SUPPORT FOR A MASK

EXTERNAL GEOMETRICAL NET STRUCTURE - CREATING EXPERIENCE OF USER LOOKING FROM INSIDE

FINAL MASK FORM WITH FABRIC STRETCHED OVER THE EXTERNAL NET STRUCTURE - CREATING REFLECTIVE SURFACE FOR A LIGHT

SOURCE PLACED INSIDE

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LIGHT POLLUTION MASK IN USE - LOOK WHAT YOU ARE LOOSING...

These diagrams explain the way light pollution mask works. When the user is exposed to a dark sky and look through a mask when the light inside is turned off, he can clearly see all the stars and

details on the night sky and landscape outline.

But as soon as he turns the light on, the fabric stretched over the external net reflects the light inside the mask creating a light dome - simmilar to the one created over illuminated cities. Now user realises that he can barely see only most bright stars and all

the deails and spectacular view of night sky is gone.

By designing this device I wanted to make this global problem of light pollution more personal - as the global problems are the ones we usually ignore. By making user switch the light on and off on his own I tried to make him realise that he is also part of this global problem and his small decissions influence big image

of dark sky.

- 12 - MICHAL KASPERSKI FLOATING PAVILION

FLOATING PAVILIONIIIWINTER 2015/16CARDIFF BAYINDIVIDUAL WORKTUTOR: CARLES SALA

Have you ever wondered what is the very basic reason for existence of Cardiff Bay and Cardiff city itself?

This reason is coal and coal indus-try which expanded rapidly during industrial revolution. On one hand coal become foundation stone for the city and its economy and on the other hand it become main reason of environmental degradation.

As industry fell into decline, so did Cardiff Bay and government decid-ed to change its image introducing redevelopment plan in 1987 with its 5 main postulates:

1. Provide environment in which people want to live, work and play.2. Re-unite city with its waterfront.3. Create job opportunities.4. Achieve high standard of design.5. Make Cardiff Bay recognisable area and centre of events.

Throughout my design project I tried to follow these postulates designing floating pavilion which will meet the needs of new Cardiff image yet pre-serve history of the Bay and empha-size its importance.

This site analysis is showing interesting result of investigation I made. It turned out that nearly all buildings on Cardiff Bay waterfront are either shops or restaurants and the ones important to history and heritage are pushed away from people attention.

So my idea was to, through location of floating pavilions, bring the history as well as entartainement and recreation back to the heart of the bay. This spot has also potential to be used for bigger events as many people could gather around the coastline.


I created main working model of one pavilion showing details of bamboo joinery and the opening mechanism in a scale of 1:20

Diagram showing possible configuration of 2 or 3 pavilions when docked or floating

Tetrahedral shape of pavilions enable to create various configurations by manipulating the degree of openness of whole structure. Using bamboo was a part of design restrictions so by creating external fasade out of bamboo I also get a degree of bouyancy when the walls were opened.

Interior surface is covered with triangular wooden cladding interfered with hexagonal panels containing information about history of Cardiff Bay so people can get familliar with it while actually floating around modern Bay.


Technical study showing both interior and exterior of a pavilion as well as

banboo joinery details.


Visualisation of floating pavilions composed to the panorama of Cardiff Bay. Developed docks system make them easly accessible for public.

Stop motion footage showing different pavilion configurations:

Direct link: https://vimeo.com/169484860

Whole stop-motion animation of floating pavilions I created can be seen here.

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SUMMER 2015WROCLAW, POLANDINDIVIDUAL WORKTUTOR: KAROLNIA KOSECKA

60M2 HOUSE PROJECT

House model made in scale shows both parts of the building - studio space on the top of city square and living space underneath - both fits to style and proportions of checkered city square.

Simple pictogram designed to reflect basic concept of whole project.

The aim of this project was to de-sign a house limited to 60 square meters withing specific demands. The client was a young couple of designers who needed both studio and living space locaded on char-acteristic, checkered city square.

Main idea was to divide two func-tions of the house, leaving the rep-resentative one, visited by many people - studio space - overground and more private living space under-ground.

On top plan view you can see the idea of dividing interior of living space into spaces of increasing privacy and calmness . From far right the first one is kitchen - highly used space where guests udually come, then living room and finally most quiet and private bathroom and bedroom space in the end.

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Photos of foamboard model showing different parts of the building with human scale and lighting during the night.

VAUTUMN 2015CARDIFF BAYGROUP WORKTUTOR: SERGIO PINEDA

SOUNDSCAPE MODELING

MICHAL KASPERSKI SOUNDSCAPE MODELING - 18 -

The aim of this taks was to submerge ourselves into a specific space of River Taff but rather than on typical visual level, our focus was sonic experience of space. Through several site visits and workshops with musicians we get better understanding of what sound in a space really is and started to realise how important it is in architecture.

The goal was to develop a 3D physical language of what we have recorded on the site and through modelling with plaster and sand represent this expe-rience in a form of sculpture.

Each student had his own specific part of a river around 0.5 mile long so as a year group we covered whole span of River Taff - creating first soundscape mapping of this geographical object.

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Finally we have put together individual soundscape models into

a one single piece - creating intriguing installation in the middle

of Bute Park in Cardiff. Whole piece together is is also a mark in

a shape of River Taff in 1:1000 scale - from small stream in the

mountains down to the Cardiff Bay.

Individual pieces fitting together Blind people appreciated our ehxibition as they had opportunity to experience whole river Taff in one room.

Exhibition of completed work in one piece.


Link to an interesting movie - STOP LOOK LISTEN - me and my freinds created during site visit investigat-ing soundscape of River Taff together with stop motion animation of coloured pencil drawing and watercolors.

- 20 - MICHAL KASPERSKI CREATIVE CARDIFF EVENTS SPACE

VISPRING 2016VIRIAMU JONES GALLERY, CARDIFFGROUP WORK WITH SPONSOR: CREATIVE CARDIFFTUTOR: WAYNE FOSTER

CREATIVE CARDIFF EVENTS SPACE

VERTICAL STUDIOPOP-UP CREATIVE CARDIFF

Our studio worked for Creative Cardiff company to design and construct a pop-up event space in Main Building Viriamu Jones Gallery of Cardiff University to held a series of events to engage and connect local creative

community.As a part of Vertical Studio - connecting students from 1st and 2nd year - we worked for the Creative Cardiff company which aims to develop and connect Cardiff’s creative economy sector. Our aim was to design, plan and finally construct modular space for variety of different events - from show and tell to book launch and music concerts.

Whole process was very exciting because what we have designed and presented to our sponsors needed to actually get built in 1:1 scale with materials that we’ve ordered. It was a great opportunity to meet all these challanges of real-life architecture practice and finally deliver a space which worked really well.

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I documented whole process from design

ideas through construction up untill final

events and created this promotional film

of our studio. I highly encourage you to

watch this short film which will provide you

an insight to all the work out team have

done preparing these exciting events

toghether with time-llapse videos from

construction site!


- 22 - MICHAL KASPERSKI TECHNICAL SURVEYING

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VII2015-2016CARDIFF UNIVERSITYINDIVIDUAL WORKTUTOR: SAM CLARK

TECHNICAL SURVEYING

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BALLUSTRADE DETAIL 1:20

SECTION B, B’ - 1:100 SECTION A, A’ - 1:100

WINDOW DETAIL 1:100

BUTE BUILDING PLAN 1:1000

1st YEAR STUDIO ESCAPE PATH, PLAN 1:5002nd FLOOR PLAN 1:100

As a part of Design Principles and Methods Module I went through very interesting challange to present detailed techni-cal construction of Coffee Grinder and later on - whole stair-case.

Collecting measurements was just a beginning. Later I went through whole process from critical thinking about the way of representing collected information, composition and how 3D object actually works - everything by using 2D pencil draw-ing.These are all crucial architectural skills that I developed through this exervise and I will use in every single project

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VIII2013-2016VARIOUS LOCATIONSINDIVIDUAL WORK

HAND DRAWING AND WATERCOLORS

MICHAL KASPERSKI HAND DRAWING AND WATERCOLORS - 24 -

Drawing is a crucial skill for me. When I draw for exercise, from nature, it teaches me a lot about objects I draw - how are they connected, how they act, what scale they are operating in, what kind of texutre they have etc. To draw an object well is to un-derstand the object well. I believe that the better we understand perspecive and the more examples we sketch through the less limmited our imagination is when we then face design challange. Yes, I would call drawing - a workout for imagination.

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A cover of a book about famous bodybuilder I designed for writer who noticed my anatomical sketches.

Leonardo da Vinci once said: “Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple and more direct than does nature - because in her inven-tions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.”

I believe thats why I am so fascinated about human figure study. Anatomy as a na-ture masterpiece teaches form, structure, even force distribution and beauty, simply is an example of great design, where “nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.”

MICHAL KASPERSKI HAND DRAWING AND WATERCOLORS - 25 -

MICHAL KASPERSKI HAND DRAWING AND WATERCOLORS

Sketchbook quick on-site sketches are one of the best ways of keeping memory of place for me. In era of smartphones a digital photo would probably be more accurate and sometimes more informative than rough sketch - but not for sketcher. The time you spend analysing the scene is worth 100 photos, composition, scene, particular detail, being drawn - have been well though through and so, memorized in much more depth and on different layers.

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Paint adds another layer of quality to the image. I especially like watercolor medium for its transparency, delica-cy and for it being really quick medi-um, like sketching.

As there are number of ways to rep-resent atmosphere in pencil sketch I find watercolors way much quicker to grasp this hidden atmosphere of place.

Like an impression of window of an old barn glittering with colour of fresh green grass and surrounding flowers on a sunny airless summer day...

portfolio 2016 - michal kasperski

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