HELMLE FELLOWSHIP - GEO PORTRAITS
3D DESIGN, RESEARCH, & EXHIBITION
Designers: Kaylyne Pham, Paul Garcia, Hannah McAllister
As part of the Helmle Fellowship at Cal Poly Pomona’s College of Environmental Design, I was accepted into an interdisciplinary fellowship led by architects Brittany Utting and Daniel Jacobs of Home-Office.
Collaborating across majors with an architect and landscape architect, our team focused on the material bitumen. We researched its industrial uses, physical properties, and environmental and societal impact, translating our findings into a visual 3D composition that functioned as a comprehensive material profile. Utilizing Rhino, Unreal Engine, and Photoshop, we combined diagrams, textures, graphic elements, and 3D models and scans to communicate the material’s lifecycle, applications, and connections to infrastructure and landscape.
The workshop concluded with an exhibition that ran for 3 weeks at Cal Poly Pomona’s ENV Archives and Special Collections and lecture with 100+ attendees at the College of Environmental Design. A culminative research book will be published featuring the 3D composition, exhibition and lecture, and our written research about the different materials.
PART 1: RESEARCH
In the first phase of this project, our cohort of fellowship members were split into groups based on our interests in 7 common materials used in construction and design that Brittany and Daniel chose to focus on for this project: aluminum, bitumen, silica sand, foam insulation, PVC plastics, rubber, and gypsum. Our group compiled and materials related to our assigned material, bitumen, to 3D scan and researched the material, from its chemical and physical composition and properties to its impacts on society.
PART 2: IN PERSON WORKSHOP
After a couple of weeks of research, our cohort met in person for a weekend intensive where we worked with our groups to create a 3D visual profile of our material in Rhino in addition to gathering more objects and textures related to our material to 3D scan and include in the profile using Unreal Engine's Reality Scan. "Our project investigates bitumen as both a geological artifact and a contemporary construction material, situating it within a continuous cycle of extraction, use, decay, and reuse. Working through layered image-making, we constructed a staged tableau that collapses geological history and present-day construction into a single scene" (Geo Portraits research book).
PART 3: GEO PORTRAITS LECTURE & EXHIBITION
The weekend intensive ended with a guest lecture to the College of Environmental Design (ENV) at Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) by Brittany and Daniel, along with a three week long exhibition at the ENV Archives building and a cumulative research book that will be published.
