Margot EltonSelected WorkM. Arch Path A ApplicantHaverford College Class of 2007

913 St. Clair AvenueCharlottesville, Virginia 22901

my father’s footsteps

When I was seven, I waited up, lying in the dark, until I heard the car in the driveway and the back door slam. Minutes later, footsteps creaked on the stairs and I called out, “Daddyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.” The footsteps stopped, change direction, and my bedroom door slowly opened. “What are you still doing awake?” he asked me, a smile in his voice. “I missed you.” He came and sat on the side of my bed and talked to me, for just a few minutes, before kissing me on the fore-head and telling me that now it was really bedtime. Finally, I was able to fall asleep.

Iwasfouryearsoldwhenmyfatherleftthearchitecturefirmhewasworkingforandwentoutonhisown.Hebought a building to house Elton & Associates and my sister and I stood watching as he and my mother painted, lay downcarpets,andconfigureddesks.Weplayedwitholdsetsofdrawings,pretendingtobearchitectsourselves,hunch-ing over plans and sections like we knew what we were looking at.

Last year, my sister told me that she thinks we were deprived children. “He was never around,” she explained. “Mom fed us dinner, gave us baths, and put us to bed. He came in after we were asleep and left before we woke up.” The words, “deprived children” seemed harsh to me. That day, I defended our daddy when my sister attacked, recounting memories from photographs on the walls of our house.

The summer before my senior year of college, I discovered a passion. During an intensive studio architecture course, I found myself truly happy. My studio instructor would rip apart two full days of work in twenty minutes and I would have to leave the studio to go cry outside, but even in those moments I was inspired and excited. Afterwards, my father asked me what I thought. “I want to go to architecture school,” I told him. “You’ve got the bug,” he said, smiling. “I can tell.”

My father never sits still and never relaxes. When we go to our country house for the weekends, he tinkers until the sun sets. He rebuilt our barn two years ago, even harnessing himself to the roof to re-tar and shingle it. The cur-rent project is a garage with a woodshop for himself and a bedroom for when “the girls bring home boyfriends.” Last summer, I spent every Saturday outside with my father, listening to country western music, laying concrete block. Our hands were raw and cracked and sweat poured down our faces as we maneuvered eighty pound bags of mortar mix into the mixer, and my father never stopped humming.

Creative writing has always been a passion of mine. Through writing, I have been able to explore my personal relationships, record memories, and create worlds into which I can escape. This piece was written for a creative nonfiction course, for which we were asked to write a relationship piece.

I asked my boyfriend to tell me something about himself that no one else knew. We had just started dating, and I wantedtofeelspecial.Hedidn’tgivemearesponse,andaweeklater,Ifiguredhewasn’tcomfortableenoughyet.Thatnight, he called me. “My biggest goal in life and my dream is to be an outstanding father,” he started in when I picked up. “My father leftwhenIwasyoungsoIneverhadthatquintessentialfatherfigure.Thescarypartofthisdreamofmineis,asIgetdeeper and deeper into medical school, I’m realizing that being a physician is entirely incompatible with being an invest-ed father. I’m worried I’m not going to be able to be the parent I want to be. Chew on that.”

In the country, the sun streams through my curtains as it rises and as I hear the rustles of my parents beginning the day, I turn my back to the windows and bury my face in a pillow. Until the buttery smell of frying eggs sneaks into my bedroom, I stay curled up in a warm ball underneath my down comforter. My mother grinds her coffee, and I hear them place the heavy skillet on the stove burner. “Oh,damn.”Inmyfather’svoice,Ihearthefamilymorningslipaway.“I’vegottocalltheoffice.” His footsteps pad out of the kitchen, and disappear. I drift off, and the next thing I know is the sound of eggs spattering in their pan. I pull myself out of my warm cocoon only because I love family breakfast. We eat and laugh and sometimes it goes on for hours. Mymotherisstandingatthestove,abouttofliptheeggsovereasy.Theflippingisalwaysdaddy’sjob.Ipeekupstairs: my father sits in his swivel chair, poring over a set of working drawings, phone at his ear, speaking intently to anemployeestuckintheoffice. Theeggshavebeenflipped,andmymotherandIsitdownatthekitchentable.Weeat,andtalk,andevenlaugha little, but mostly we stare at my father’s empty chair.

My father and I took tennis lessons together during my senior year of high school. Every Thursday night, he’d pull up in front of our house at 7:50, honk three times, and wait. During the ten minute drive, we talked. About school, about my friends, about his work, about nothing in particular. I always brought music, CDs of the Backstreet Boys or 98 Degrees. My daddy learned the lyrics almost as fast as I did, and sang along in a falsetto, swinging his head back and forth in a parody of the “Backyard Boys,” as he called them. Thursdays were special days, because after tennis, daddy came home instead of going back to work. We joined him at the kitchen table while he ate his microwaved meal. Mostly, the conversation consisted of my father spilling out all the problems he was having at work: a zoning hearing he wasn’t going to win, an employee who wanted extra time off, or a contractor who suddenly had decided the job would cost a four hundred thousand more than he had bid for. My mother brainstormed with him, usually just to have something to say. I mostly stayed silent and listened, soaking up the presence of daddy.

I was home for a week in October, and my father left work one night to go to dinner with me. We walked from our house to the Chinese restaurant he knows I love, and for hours, just talked. About my summer class, and my fall semester at Haverford, about my thesis, and my plans for next year. We talked about his new six-story steel-frame build-ing, and the window design he wants to put in the garage when he starts framing it this summer. On the walk home, we talked about my choice to go to architecture school. I told him that I knew I wanted to be an architect, and I told him that I was scared. “Why?” I took a deep breath. “Daddy, I don’t want to be you.”

figure drawing

sleeping nude; charcoal on paper

Drawing nudes allowed me to study a form I know well, the human body, in a new medium. I was forced to think of the human form in a spatial sense, and forget the proportions my mind believed to be true.

nude; charcoal and conte crayon on paper

dancers

dancer; conte crayon on paper

Drawing dancers allowed me to think about grace and fluidity of form in relation to the human body. These are principles that I believe can be effectively applied to good architectural design.

dancer; conte crayon on paper

dancers

dancer; conte crayon on paper

dancer; conte crayon on paper

portraiture

self portrait; charcoal on paper

Drawing the face helped me think about the human form in terms of light and shadow. The portraits above employ no line work, using only shading and shadow to create the features.

portrait; charcoal on paper

portraiture

sketchbook portraits; pencil on paper

portraits; charcoal and pencil on paper

landscape Drawing landscape helped me think about proportion and its relation to successful building, as well as the way a drawing can capture movement.

copy of monet’s the rocks at pourville, low tide; pencil on paper

mendon landscape; charcoal and colored pencil on paper

the built environment Drawing landscape helped me think about proportion and its relation to successful building, as well as the way a drawing can capture movement.

eric goodwin pavilion; pencil on paper

fanueil hall, boston; pencil on paper

metalsmithing

Tie Clip: Cut and brushed silver

The process of metalsmithing forces one to carefully plan a design before constructing, as all pieces need to fit together precisely. I believe that there are many similarities between the craft involved in metalsmithing and the practice of architecture.

Jewelry Box: Cut, brushed, and welded silver and bronze.

Lightning Bolt Lapel Pin: Cut, brushed, and welded bronze and copper.

artists complex

ramp study

program massing sketch

artist live/work unitsclassroom/studiocirculation/exhibitionretailcinemacafé/baroutdoor terrace

I studied the site to explore the different ways the artists complex could interact with the adjacent park, and the Charles River. I created study sketches of the building to look at the different ways in which daylight would enter the build-ing, as well as the many angles at which residents and visitors would be able to view the outdoors from the different spaces.

In developingmy design for this artists complex, I firststudied a variety of building organizations and circulation patterns. Simultaneously, I studied the building in pro-grammatic sketches as well as figure ground elevationsand sections to get a sense of the shapes and feel of the complex as a whole. I ultimately designed the complex around a ramped circulation/exhibition space with a pub-lic courtyard in the center.

Project: Design an artists’ complex for the Fort Point area of Boston. The program includes artists’ live/work spaces, gallery/exhibition space, classroom/studio spaces, retail, cinema, café, bar, and community outdoor spaces.

final model

final model

Thefinaldesignforthisartist’scomplexutilizedtherampasbothformal gallery space and informal exhibition space, allowing for artists to open their studio onto the ramp, and to the public, if they so desired. The design also incorporated outdoor spaces by bringing the adjacent park into the central courtyard of the building and employing a series of outdoor terraces on the upper levels.

study spaces

For an entrance to my medium study space, I used a ramp to pay homage to the ramp that snakes through the center of the Carpenter Center. Le Corbusier intended the ramp to be a focal point of the building and of pedestrian traffic. With this studyspace, I tried to do the same.

medium study space (5-8 occupants)

small study space (1 occupant)

I chose to construct my study spaces out of poured-in-place concrete to establish a sense of congruity with the concrete Carpenter Center. The plaster casts gave the models the same sense of weight and substance that the actual concrete forms would display.

site model, hand drawn, colored in photoshop

Project: Design three outdoor study spaces of varying size to be built into the grounds of Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center at Harvard University, using a given kit of parts. The study spaces must be built physically into the ground, below ground level.

large study space (20-30 occupants)

The Carpenter Center is composed of several curves and angles that I wanted to imitate in my design for the study spaces. To generate forms for the study spaces, I overlapped the outlines of the carpenter center with the outline of a building section. I stud-ied the overlapping areas and found shapes that in-trigued me.

The Carpenter Center is composed of several curves and angles that I wanted to imitate in my design for the study spaces. To generate forms for the study spaces, I overlapped the outlines of the carpenter center with the outline of a building section. I stud-ied the overlapping areas and found shapes that in-

campus bus stop

final model

Project: Create a bus stop for the campus bus system between three college campuses. Structure must have minimum 3 sides enclosed.

The inter-campus bus lines are used frequently by students at Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges to travel be-tween and connect the tri-college system. My goal with this proj-ect was to make a structure that would be easily recognizable for students unfamiliar with a sister campus that would still maintain beauty through simplicity.

I am fascinated by the beauty of structure. In this project, I at-tempted to accentuate the steel trusses in the roof as the focal point of the bus stop to share this admiration.

final model

front elevation, hand drawn

CAD

cardboard chair

To create the joints in this chair, I primarily used notching. The slats of the chair are notched into the base. The base is composed of several pieces alternating and offset from each other rather than one solid edge to add an element of stability and allow one to look inside and see the structure of the chair more easily.