Week 1 Lab 1 (Prison and toontown)

When you speak of a prison, you will be reminded of a vast and square or rectangular shaped building. This is because the way that a prison is designed is used to represent solitude, dull and trapped feeling. A common property of a prison building is that it will be too high because height represents freedom. Hence, in terms of lines and angles of the prison, it will indefinitely be straight and always have a pointy angle. With these 2 features, the place becomes powerful and scary looking.

On the other hand, Toontown reminds us of a fun and cheery looking place, as it is designed as a kids' theme park. With this concept in mind, the building will be made up of rounded angles and shapes that are not as dull as squares or rectangles. Also, it is almost impossible to find a pointy angle in this place, as kids will find that scary, thus the blunt angles and surfaces.

Talking about scale wise, we will notice that prisons look vast and big, while Toontown looks to be small and cramped. This is because of the purposes that both buildings wants to serve. If a place looks vast and big, people would be able to sense the solitude and loneliness of the place. And this is exactly the feeling what a prison would want to give out. But when a place looks small and cramped, people begin to feel warmth and even coziness because people are closer to each other. Therefore, as Toontown is a theme park for kids, that small scale of the building has served its purpose of building a friendly and warm environment for people. In other words, both buildings are opposite of each other in terms of the feelings that they give out.