Week 3: Final draft + Inspirations

The final result was much more interesting than I had expected. The staircases took a life of their own, shaping both the look and feel of how both above and below ground spaces were intended to look like:

Staircase no. 1 and 2, combined together into a single structure

Closeup of the textures used for the above-ground space. Both the "scratched" (on floor) and "woven" (on walls) textures had a strong stone-like textural quality 

Corner of the below-ground staircase. The tube pokes out of the below-ground space to interact with the soil all around it, entering back into the rounded glass cube to continue its journey

Staircase no. 1 essentially forms its own space for Bourgeois to use for work and personal recreation. Staircase no. 2 goes along a route that starts in the middle of the above-ground structure and finishes somewhere outside of the entire gallery space. The entire journey will either start from the main entrance for the above-ground gallery or the endpoint of the tube-like staircase for the below-ground gallery located outdoors.

One of many sketches done by Bourgeois in her Insomnia Drawings collection from 1994-95

One of many concept artworks accompanying Stelarc's exploratory essay on the nature of the human body as a form of telecommunications from 2009 

The two above images are what I plan to intersperse across the gallery as a form of artwork to be displayed. The pieces by Bourgeois will imitate her organic and abstract structures often seen in her early career, while Stelarc's work will be a representational variation on his many two-dimensional digitally-made concept art. Both rectangular prisms seen above are about ten meters long, with a height of at least 5 meters. The textures are sized so as to fit its format of choice.

My final gallery space will be based on the concept of overwhelming the human senses by exaggerating normally familiar scale and proportions to make it look foreign, or even alien-like, in an unsettling way as seen in the clip below, taken from the 1979 movie Alien:

Promotional picture for  Prometheus, the upcoming prequel to the movie Alien

The above picture sums up the overall impression I want to achieve with the gallery space most accurately. The above-ground structure consists of a massive egg-like dome that has minute cracks wide enough to let limited light and a few visitors in. Staircase no. 1 would be situated right in the middle and loom over a person entering the above-ground space, much like the monolithic head in the spaceship's central chamber. Staircase no. 2 allows a person to go below-ground to witness a jumble of pipes, tubes and tunnels that criss-cross the volume inside the rounded glass cube. The entire structure will be situated in a custom-made jungle that looks lush and wild, completing the overall look of an abandoned construct left behind by some enigmatic society.