preliminary powerpoint

Movie Analysis

Richard Tyler Hoback

UKC 100-001           

3/6/2014

Movie Analysis

            During the week of February 24, 2014, we watched three movies that all had to do with design.  The three movies that we watched were Helvetica, Monuments Men, and Disney’s Wall-e.  All of these movies had some things in common.  Helvetica was all about the typeface, Helvetica, and how it’s created and used in everyday life.  Monuments Men is about these men who travel Europe to find the treasure that the Nazis stole and hid during the World War II era.  Disney’s, Wall-e, is all about this little robot on earth and him, unknowingly, bringing the humans back to Earth.  They may sound like they have nothing at all in common, however, the one thing they all do have is design.  Design is everywhere in these movies, from the lighting of the scenes, to the story behind it all.

            Helvetia, the movie, is all about the typeface, Helvetica.  Helvetica is the most commonly used typeface in the world.  In Helvetica, they show us how the typeface is created and distributed everywhere.  There are people in the world whose job it is to create different typefaces and make them better.  These people’s titles are Topologists and they live to design typefaces.  They have designed Helvetica and it became the most commonly used typeface in the world because of its simplicity and because of how easy it is to read and produce.  The type is used everywhere in the world from advertisements to documents.

            Instead of Everything is Illuminated, I watched Monuments Men.  Monuments Men is a true story about a group of people who go on a hunt around Europe to find the treasure and artwork that Hitler and the Nazis stole from the Jews and hid for themselves because they didn’t want the west to find it.  One way there is design in this movie is, obviously, from the artwork that they are trying to recover.  The artwork they are looking for is some of the best work in the world and is very valuable.  Also, they were traveling all across Europe, so they showed the big landmarks that each place is known for.  They spent years looking for the artwork that the Nazis hid and the Nazis destroyed some of it and hid the rest in places like mines, that they thought no one would ever look in.

            In Disney’s, Wall-e, all of the humans have left the Earth after thousands of years of trash covering the Earth and the big cities.  Wall-e is a robot that was created to stay behind and clean up the trash but after so many years, Wall-e is the only one left because all of the other ones broke down.  After awhile, the humans, who live in space now, send a robot back to Earth to look for any kind of life, like trees or grass.  This robot is names Eve and she meets Wall-e and he shows her the plant that he had found just a couple days before she came down to Earth.  It is up to them to get it back to the captain of the ship in space and let them know that its okay to come back to Earth.  Design is in this movie from creating the visual of the earth being covered in trash, to the way that the people out in space move around on their little hover chairs so they do not have to walk.  There is also a special case of design in this movie that most movies do not have.  The main characters don’t really talk.  The two robots can really only say each others names so you have to really pay attention to the design and the detail of what is going on to understand what is going on in the movie.

            The overall theme that all of these movies have in common, is design.  However, when you look deeper, they all are related to each other in some way. All three movies used the typeface Helvetica in them.  All Three movies had one main goal that they achieved in the films. In Helvetica, they strived to create the best typeface ever.  In Monuments Men, they searched Europe to find treasure that had been hidden for years.  And in Wall-e, Wall-e and Eve tried to save the humans and let them be able to come back to Earth.  However, they all differed immensely.  Helvetica took place in present time, it is going on right now.  Monuments Men took place many years ago and it involved things from the Nazi era.  Wall-e took place many, many years in the future when the world was uninhabited.

            What I took away from this is that you can find design everywhere.  Everything in movies is all about the design, from the lighting to the story line, to the way they characters talk and act.  It all tells a story in a different way.  Some of it is very informative and some is just amusing to see and watch.  Design is literally everywhere and is involved with everything.

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Design

Tyler Hoback

UKC 100

Design

            This house needed to be as weather resistant as possible due to the fact that it is in the heart of hurricane country.  They needed a material to cover the outside of the house so that it would not break under the conditions.  They finally decided to go with DensGlass Gold Exterior Guard because it is the best weather resistant covering for a house that you can get.  They also used foam in the making of the house.  In between the walls of the house, everything is lined with foam.  This foam lets cool air stay in and keeps the heat out.  It also does not absorb water or moisture so there is no need to worry about mold forming in the walls.

Context for My House

Tyler Hoback

UKC 100

Context

            The idea for this home came from the idea of making a hurricane proof house.  Living on the coast of one of the most hurricane prone places in America, Pensacola Beach, the Siglers were sick of rebuilding their entire home after almost every tropical storm season.  They came up with a plan to try to get a house that could withstand a hurricane.  Then they found Dragon Speed Design Group who designs Dome’s.  They then came up with the idea to create the Hurricane Proof house.   They used curved walls and roofs to “bend” water and wind around the building so that the house can withstand the drastic weather conditions the area experiences.  They really came up with some very new and creative ways to build magnificent houses with great strength.

Description for my Building

Dome of a Home

            Built by Mark and Valerie Sigler, “Dome of a Home” is a architectural masterpiece.  This 6,000 square foot home, designed by Dragon Speed Design Group, is built to withstand great forces of nature and at the same time, has some of the most advanced design features inside and outside the house.

            Located on Pensacola Beach, Florida, this magnificent house have fantastic views of the Gulf of Mexico and Santa Rosa Sound.  Standing just hundrends of feet off the beach, it is known that the Dome will take tropical storm damage almost on a yearly basis.  In 2004, when Hurricane Ivan hit the coast, dozens of houses around Pensacola were destroyed.  The Dome, however, suffered no structural damage.  And in 2005, as many home were still recovering from the tropical storm season the year before, Hurricane Dennis came and again destroyed the community and left the Dome with zero damage!  All of this is partly due to the Dome’s front staircase that was built to “give away” when winds and conditions turned bad so that the house would not suffer any structural damage.

            The shape of the Dome is just enough to help the home withstand winds from a force 5 storm.  Hurricane Keith, a force 4 storm was off the coast of Belize for three days and did not damage any of the domes there.  Since the walls of the Dome are rounded they are four times more wind resistant than flat walls.  The Dome can withstand over 2000psf, and to put that in perspective, a tornado with 300mph winds only creates 400psf.  Even if an object put a small hole in the Dome, it would be very localized and easy to replace, and wouldn’t cause the rest of the building to collapse.  Also, the building has no singles or gutters, so when the tropical storms come, they do not have to worry about replacing the roof every time.

            The Dome is build out of concrete.  Because of this, there is no wood in the house, which reduces the chance of fire down dramatically.  Also, since there is no wood, and the walls are made out of concrete, there are no places to termites and other infesting bugs to live, as there is no air pockets or spaces in the walls for them to live.  Even earthquakes cannot shake this house; it would take an earthquake of record magnitude to shake this house down to the ground.  Also, because of the concrete walls and basically airtight building, the Dome has no hot or cold corners in the house and heat and air does not escape through the concrete like it would in wood.  This results in significantly lower heat and air conditioning bills at the end of the month.  In Alaska, there is an 8,000 square foot dome building and its heating bill was $72.  With rising energy costs, the Dome definitely can lower energy expenses over the years.

            These are just some of the great design features that were put into the house.  The Dome is beautiful with large, curved edges all around it to not only defend against tropical storms, but to catch the eyes as you look around.  It is very hard not to notice this Dome of a Home.

           

            

My Building

- Located in Pensacola, Florida 

- Modeled after a "dome"

- Created Jonathan Zimmerman

- Built to withstand a hurricane