Week 6

During my break I wanted to continue a small part of the project which was sketching and drawing my final designs before my return in April. I did begin during my time away and continue into the sixth week of Othello. The first element that needed attention based on my feedback from the Formative presentation was the interior design. I had initially left the space of the Zenana Mahal as it was without changing it and it was at this stage begun my own design.

initial sketch of the interior design

The interior location was simply a room in the palace fort that I wanted to convert to a bath for a number of reasons. The first being I chose, the last Act- V to base the design on which was the final murder scene in which Othello takes Desdamona’s life. This was naturally a climax in the play where everything comes to a conclusion and meant it had to look and feel as dramatic.

Why a bath as the interior

My second reason was because of the symbolism of water in Othello. A number of quotes from the original text mention the way it reflected violence and brought death like a wave. Desdamona was compared to it by Othello as being as inconsistent as water herself, which was a description of her moral character being unfaithful in his eyes.

in greyscale with shadows and original window pattern

Stone texture

The last reason that accompanied the design choice was the texture of the space, stone. Othello had previously spoken of how he felt his heart had turned to stone which by texture was cold and hard. The interior location itself was made of sandstone by material that I wanted to combine with marble which was another common element used in that time period.

illustration of the real flower

Cerbera Odollam

The Cerbera Odollam flower is a common plant found in India and I was drawn to this particular species because of its rather dark and misleading purpose. The seeds of this flower are so poisonous that they have been used countless times in suicides and murders that the plant is infamously known to bring death.

complete jaali window pattern

making the pattern on the outline of the flower

I used the shape of this flower to create my own Jaali window pattern by outlining the shape of it and creating a sequence I drew in procreate and then overlayed on my design of the interior bath. The main reason for this choice was the fact poison and venom has also been referenced by Othello as a means to bring death upon those who wronged him and I felt this was a subtle yet clever way of adding character to the space while connecting it to Othello, because my aim was to re interpret the story in my original way and not simply design a grand space with no thought behind the design elements. For this unpleasant reason and its deceptive appearances I used the flower to trace a pattern for my jaali window design on procreate which I placed into the interior concept I drew earlier.

concept sketch of the interior through the doorway in darkness

Flower Dome

The last visual symbol tied to Othello was the ceiling of my interior which is a dome but when viewed from below, an inverted flower is visible and this is tied to Othello’s comparison of Desdamona’s life to a flower- fragile and breakable. The meaning of a flower in Mughal architecture is even considered sacred and a gift of love from a king to his queen, which is why it is common in places of worship or a tomb. The inclusion of this element is bittersweet and a haunting reminder that the bath would be her tomb in the end.

initial plan of measurements

measurements of the elevations and window depth

Measuring the space

This was my first exercise working in Imperial scale which meant calculating the size of each surface area into feet. At this point in when I began to attempt the measurements, I was back at home with a tape measure that only gave cm and meter on the tape.

I did however use it and converted everything from cm to feet and used the decimal to get the inches as well. This was time consuming and a bit confusing at first which led to pillars or walls being smaller and the overall space adding up to a small value however it did help me practice working in Imperial which was really useful for the weeks to follow.

elevation over my designs of the original concept

I finished the measurements for my Plan view of the interior location after a few iterations and came to the approximation of it being 13 ft x 14 ft at the time.