As a whole, from reading and listening to the research, I find that shelter can be interpreted in many different ways. In John Updike’s A Sense of Shelter I felt an invisible sheltering/enveloping feeling throughout the whole story. The first sense of this was in the description of the snowy cold outside in contrast to the warmth of the crowded classroom that filled the protagonist’s senses. I could relate to this in instances where you walk into an empty room that was just recently full of people and you can still feel the warmth they created and left behind. Additionally in the story, the main character felt great comfort and shelter in school. There were many references to the different classrooms, the halls, the lockers, the radiators in the hall. All these elements built an environment where the main character had felt at home all his years at school. Finally, there was a sense of shelter in the main character’s crush, Mary. She seemed to be the most important sense of shelter for him because he placed his affections, his concept of daily school life, and his emotions onto her. But when he realized she did not like school and did not like who she was, everything he had built up began to crumble. School was no longer a place of familiarity as she was a sort of foundation for him.

Out of the TEDTalks I particularly liked Shigeru Ban’s talk on how he uses paper to create architectural works. Even more than that, he uses his skill to help people that have recently been in natural disasters. This action was very admirable and impressive because many times artists have a sense that is very centered around themselves. I admire that such a talented architect did not just work with wealthy developers and clients, who are really the only ones able to afford his works. He chose to work and fundraise money in order to help people live with more dignity and privacy while going through hardship.  I also very much enjoyed that his medium was paper. Ever since the Photography project in Foundation Art and Design, I was impressed by the strength and versatility of paper. Previous to the project, the furthest I had gone with paper was origami, and while researching for the project I realized that paper had many more uses. This leads also into the idea of what is temporary and what is permanent. I like that a shelter’s lifetime is not bound to its building material. Like in Shigeru Ban’s talk, many concrete buildings fall in earthquakes and are totally gone, even though they were considered “permanent” On the contrary, some of Ban’s paper structures lasted far beyond the projected time or are permanently installed because people like them so much, even though they were paper. Furthermore, some of the paper structures were ultimately taken down yet had the ability to be recycled or re-purposed, so in that sense they were temporary or almost never even there.The Michael McDaniel talk was also very interesting as it kept the disaster relief theme going but with a different solution. I thought it was clever to make the structures so interchangeable and versatile, like you could stack them or connect them. It somewhat reminded me of furniture styles like IKEA’s where different parts can work together to make something customized to your needs. Customization could be very important in disaster relief based on, for example, the amount of space you have to home refugees or different sized families needing different amount of living space.

Maslow’s Hierarchy I found to be important and very correlated to our basic need for shelter. Overall, having a shelter fits into every stage of the pyramid. First, to be fully actualized (having a family, a job, painting, expressing yourself, etc.) A person needs a shelter to base themselves out of. Second, Self-Esteem is related to shelters because having a place where you can be protected brings a lot of peace of mind, you and society value you because you have a certain degree of stability when you have a place to reside. It is also correlated to some people’s egos, as having a bigger shelter than everyone else boosts their self esteem. Third, shelters foster love and belonging. Often to have love and belonging, like a family or a spouse, you need a private place to foster intimacy and bonds. A place outside the normal world where you can have your own social group working based on your own social patterns. Finally shelters help fulfill the last two levels of the hierarchy. They provide physical safety and provide a space to safely sleep, eat, and maintain homeostasis.

For my own research, I looked at artists that work with light and color to create spaces. I think that by using light and color, these unique spaces are made in a way where they are not physically cut off from the rest of the space but instead are intangibly recognized. This is an idea that is of interest to me. Artists Chris Wood and Soo Sunny Park use tiles of colored and iridescent glass and light sources to extend their works beyond their physical structure.

http://www.boredpanda.com/colored-glass-light-installations-chris-wood/

http://www.visualnews.com/test/2013/11/brilliant-refraction-action-soo-sunny-parks-shimmering-mosaic-sculptures/

Another artist, Tom Fruin, also uses light sources and colored glass panes. He creates glass buildings, divides the glass into panes, and decorates each pane with a different color. In a way, like stained glass but modern. Again, I really like how the element of light helps project the structure beyond its physical limitations.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/10/tom-fruins-stained-glass-house-installed-at-brooklyn-bridge-park/

I took these ideas into consideration when I came up with the idea of my shelter project. Being outside, I thought taking advantage of the sun’s bright light would be come something I needed to harness. It is like a free spotlight. At the same time, the sun is not in the same spot or shining with the same intensity, so it was appealing to work with this constantly changing, random light source. With the addition of color, the shelter would have an element of mood. And finally, for the framework of the shelter, using paper appealed to me more than my second choice–pvc pipe–because it was more organic and could all be recycled in the end, almost like nothing ever existed there to begin with. I liked how this tied into our building space, which was a natural, green setting.