Since It is the anniversary of my completion of the plaster project and being on the other side of it witnessing the new class cross the threshold of completion, I thought I’d reminisce a bit.
In the second year of architecture at California Baptist University (CBU), Interval aka the plaster project arrives like a quiet storm, unassuming at first, then all-consuming. It’s a rite of passage, a test of patience, time management and the ability to find the message in the mess. We were led with an essay “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal,” by architectural theorists Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky expressing the nuance of phenomenal transparencies.
For my cube study, I chose the words rhythm & repition. I found my muse in the tortoise, a creature whose movement is deliberate, and it’s shell is both armor and architecture.
The turtle doesn’t rush because it can’t: its form demands intention. Every step is calculated and every pause is deliberate. That slow, steady rhythm became my design ethos; I consider it the pulse of my project. I studied the geometric patterns on its shell, which were interlocking and calmly complex. I saw in them a spatial logic, a natural tessellation that poises strength and phenomenology.
When I began the plaster cube project, I knew I wanted my exploration to go a little deeper than form, I wanted it to be ethnic. I turned to the textiles and patterns of my Indigenous heritage. The geometry found in fabric and bead work, in my own way, was me addressing my very own transparency. They became my visual language.
The tortoise remained my anchor. Its shell, a resilient architecture of interlocking forms, reminded me of the patience required in design and life. It moves with intention, armored yet vulnerable and that guided my iterations.
In cardboard, I explored rhythm through voids and patterning; cutting, folding, and layering to test how space could pulse and breathe. Each model was a study in rhythm. And then, somewhere between the third and fourth iteration, something clicked. I had sculpted an abstract tortoise emerging from the shell (literally and figuratively)!! Not planned, but emergent. It felt like a convergence of everything: the tortoise’s steady geometry, the rhythm of repetition, and the cultural memory embedded in fabric motifs.
The second phase of the plaster cube project introduced a larger scale of the cube. This time I used foam core. We were tasked with translating our chosen iteration into a moldable form, one that could eventually be inverted to hold plaster and preserve the design. Time was tight, the process was unforgiving and yet, it was in this constraint that my concept began to become transparently clear.
I started thinking about rhythm, and more proactively about time itself…how it moves, how it’s marked, how it’s remembered. In my culture, the tortoise is a creature of patience and a keeper of time. Ancient stories speak of its shell as a divine calendar, mapping cosmological cycles across its back. Each patch holds a rhythm and means something beyond the tangible and that is the essence of phenomenology.
As I refined my foam core models, I searched for a form that could carry that symbolism. The final design emerged as an abstract tortoise, it wasn’t in a literal sense but more so evocative. The abstraction left an element to be seen without being seen – I believe that is what Rowe and Slutzky expressed in the essay. To come to this revelation through a form, felt like a monument to time, and ancestral wisdom.
Getting the plaster to the right consistency was pure chaos. There’s no sugarcoating it. My first pour was a surprise, not a failure, but definitely not what I had envisioned. I hadn’t fully transliterated my voids into solids or my solids into voids. The spatial logic was off, but the result had a raw beauty to it. It looked cool, although unintended, it was compelling.
By the second pour, I had cracked a crucial hack: lining the entire interior of my foam core mold with thick, clear duct tape. Without it, the plaster seeps into the paper lining and bonds like concrete to foam core. With it, the mold releases cleanly. Hack mastered. The second pour came out beautifully.
But then came the waiting. Forty-eight hours passed, and the plaster still hadn’t fully cured. It was dense, but damp. And in that liminal space between wet, dry, frustration and possibility…I began to work with the substance itself.
During desk crit, Professor Youseff encouraged me to carve. To treat the plaster not just as a cast, but as a medium. The moment I scraped away that first slice, something shifted. I felt ancient and connected. My hands were shaping the material, they had become the hands of a maker. It was meditative, almost sacred. A classmate stopped by my desk and was like, “Whoa, that kind of looks like a temple… and my only thought was, “Perfect!”
I fell in love with that second model. It held the story of sacred discovery. But the assignment required three final pieces, so I had to keep going. This time, I secretly hoped the plaster wouldn’t cure all the way. I wanted to carve again and return to that ancestral joy.
Success. The third model demolded cleanly, and the plaster consistency was perfect, soft enough to carve, strong enough to hold form. Plaster had gone from mystery to muse, and I had learned to listen to it.Three models in, and I had made an underrated discovery about myself…I’m indeed a phenomenologist.
Reusing the mold from my second pour (thanks to the duct tape lining and careful unboxing) saved me precious time. I was down to my final night before presentations, and still had to complete an orthographic graphite wash of my final model on vellum. Truth be told, my second model was my final model. It held the soul of the project, the rhythm, and the story.
I carved the third using the same meditative technique, letting my hands move with memory. Then came the graphite wash, which was my first ever. Equipped with nothing but painters’ tape, graphite, and a few cotton pads, I made it happen. The process was intuitive, and surprisingly satisfying.
I carved the third using the same meditative technique, letting my hands move with memory. Then came the graphite wash, which was my first ever. Equipped with nothing but painters’ tape, graphite, and a few cotton pads, I made it happen. The process was intuitive, and surprisingly satisfying.
At critique, I received generous feedback on the model and the narrative of my process. The carving, cultural symbolism, the graphite wash and rhythm all came together.
Through this project, I found artistry in iteration and, most importantly, comradeship. We were all in it together, carving, casting, and surviving. The plaster project was grueling, no doubt but it was also transformative.
I survived with three models, and a profound understanding of phenomenal transparency. My surprise takeaway was the reunion with the maker within.
I even designed a graphic tee in commemoration of the project.
