Thomas J. Creedon
Other Design and Creative Work
Managing the River
In my second year, I took a designing detour and enrolled in a Landscape Architecture course. This was fantastic in learning how best to deal with larger scales, different 'perspectives' and applying new design techniques.
Here, we were to imagine that OSU's famed St. John's Arena was demolished and that we had the entire site to design - but we had to also create 'building footprints' around which to draft our plans. This was, strangely, rather difficult (for I'd never created 'dummy footprints' for a building). But the results were stylistically terrific and I got great feedback about my designs. I also began applying a good deal of hand-drawn drafting into my work (the final site plan is entirely watercolor pencil while the section cuts are graphite).
Overall, I'd have to say that, though this course was a bit unorthodox, the lessons were unique and incredibly applicable to my main field of architecture. I enjoyed it greatly and would recommend such a derivation to any Architecture student.
University Library Reception Desk
This desk design project was a central part of my overall scheme for the new layout for a university library entryway. Here, I had to design an aesthetically pleasing, large front reception desk while also trying to be mindful of its central placement in the room. Handicap accomodations were met, plenty of manouverability allowances were achieved and the overall detailing was pleasing to both my client and my employer. If you wish to see it "in situ," please see the video for 'A New Library Entryway' on the "Architectural Projects" page.
Image courtesy of Craig E. Dillon AIA Architects, Inc.
Desk Design Furniture Project
Here, I created a small-scale object that helped to instill a sense of proportion with ourselves. The idea was to design something that was utilitarian and aesthetically pleasing. I simply chose to examine the traditional base model of "The Desk" and give it a 'twist' of my own. Something functional, smooth, a-symmetrical and totally unique in design. From the front, it may look like a sliding stack of plates, but from one side it's a path going up a mountain or hill. The surface is deceptively large since, from the floor upwards, it not only 'slides,' but it also swells. All in all, this was a great project for dealing with human dimensions while also flexing some creative muscle.
Room Lighting and Ambiance Project
In conjunction with other team members, I helped to direct the organization of a room for a lighting class project. In this experiment, a red room was provided with a wall that was a display window to a pedestrian walkway. Our personal goal was to endow the scene with a sense of "aliveness." Thus, we added mirrors to give a sense of some depth (as well as placing the door mirror such that it reflected into another plate glass window across the walkway), we hung styrofoam balls with fishing line (to make them seem like floating orbs), we added a small fan (to keep the balls always slightly moving) and we adjusted various light sources to either add strong shadows (so the balls seem to move and multiply) or to accent the room with tinges of red, pink and magenta. The effect, as told to us afterwards, was that the room seemed to have it's own respiration - it was alive and, possibly, self-aware! Overall, this was a better result than we had desired.
Personal Artwork
Over the years, I've ventured into sketching 'Art of art's sake.' This has, in turn, led to some of the following images. Indeed, these are some of the very works that helped to accentuate my first foray into spatial design as well as eventually finding their way into my graduate school entry portfolio. But above all, these works were just simple expressions of my own emotional release. Creating these was a pleasure.