This project was created by Jane Parson, Aurelia Peterson Rajalingam, and Breanna Lefevers-Scott, with special thanks to David Bliss in the archives and our professor, Christopher Saladin.
Overview
Our project is all about investigating buildings that were never built at Carleton. As a group, we wanted our project to revolve around 3D modeling. Therefore, we started looking into what we could model. Our first thought was older buildings or buildings that were never built. However, we ran into issues with all of our three first contenders: the old Goodsell Observatory, Willis Hall, or the 1855 unbuilt Men’s Gymnasium. Through various contacts, we found out that there was already interest or models regarding the observatory, Willis Hall, and others similar to those. As for the gymnasium, we found that the blueprints were not uploaded to the archives website, and we could not make it to the archives to leave a reasonable amount of time to model it. Therefore, we forwent the idea of a currently standing building to one that was unbuilt and had uploaded blueprints. This turned out to be a library that was proposed in 1921. Although through our research for attempting to locate these buildings, we came across quite a few buildings that did not have blueprints and put them on an ever-growing list. Then, it was mentioned to us by our professor that it could be interesting to see what we found in regards to this idea on a timeline. So this is what we decided to do. To keep everything regarding this project in a centralized area and to showcase our final project, we have created this website, which has both halves of our project and all of our sources.
Our Sources
Our starting source was Timeline – Imagined Futures, Forgotten Pasts from previous Carleton classes taught in the fall of 2021 and winter of 2022. We used this source to develop our idea and get a starting point of some of the buildings that they included that went unbuilt. We also used this source to request primary sources rather than relying on the secondary source. Otherwise, the vast majority of our sources were primary sources from the Gould Library Archives. They have a comprehensive documentation of the documents and blueprints in the archives. We specifically found one that was scanned in and presented on their website that we used for the model part of this project. However, we also went to the archives after requesting to look at the unbuilt women’s and men’s gymnasiums. We took pictures and have used them for the purposes of this project. Otherwise, we used the fact that we know that the building blueprints are in the archives to justify a place on our timeline. To get pictures of the ones not uploaded, we just inquired about getting a photo of them for our timeline.
Our Presentation
We decided to create a 3D model to enhance the viewing experience from a blueprint to something that you can interact with and move around to view from different angles. We wanted to showcase a building in a new format that showcases the features and intricate details of the library as if it were to exist in a 3D space rather than as a 2D drawing. It adds the depth and dimension you can’t experience when looking at a blueprint. Sketchfab lent itself to this well. It allows for the interactivity that we require and is embedded well into our website.
However, 3D models require a lot of time and effort. It was not feasible to create a model for every building we encountered. Even so, we did want to provide insight into the rest of the buildings that were proposed. Thus, we decided that creating an interactive timeline was the best way to consolidate information about buildings proposed by different architects for Carleton’s Campus over time. TimelineJS was a tool that worked well for our needs. It allows for a sleek design that is intuitive to use. The ability to embed it into our website was another thing that was important to us to have, and it embed rather well into the website.
Other than the fact that it was required, a website seems like the best way to consolidate both sides of our project so that we can present it in an easily accessible way that tells the story of how we created this project. It allows us to deliver a narrative of how we would like the viewer to explore our thought process while also allowing them to maintain their own agency in exploration. This website’s simple theme and muted colors allow the viewer to focus on the project rather than be distracted by bright colors and convoluted ideas.
Our Process
To make the model, the blueprints of the floors where were we started. First, they imported each floor into a blender and scaled them appropriately according to other pictures we had. Then, the walls were drawn out to match the shape of each floor. Then came the details. Last was the texturing. If you would like to learn more about our process, a more in-depth explanation can be found by looking at our model page.
To make the interactive timeline, we first had to gather all the information about each building that we wanted to include. Using that information, we used Timeline Js and followed the directions to create the timeline. First, we copied the provided Google spreadsheet and entered the collected information. After changing some settings, we copied and pasted the link to the sheets and had our timeline. If you would like to learn more about our process, a more in-depth explanation can be found by looking at our timeline page.
To make the website, we chose to use the WordPress. The first step was requesting the website domain, which was as easy as filling out a form and deciding on the name of our project. Then, it was time to choose a theme to fit our purposes. We agreed on Riverbank by ThemeIsle as it had a color pallet that was simple and muted to showcase our project pieces. Next was creating our pages that would hold all of the work that we have done. We wanted each page to maintain a sense of continuity, so we started with the same template, with the only alteration being the buttons at the bottom of the page that lead to the next page. The only exception was the front page. It’s a static page that has all the links to our other pages laid out for easy access, along with different images. Then was, embedding the timeline and model. It was relatively easy as both could use the embedding function or provided HTML code. Finally, we wrote up everything to be included in the website. All this together created the website that you see now.
