Artefact
Fastow's Lair; Enron- Model Making
MY IDEA:
I admire model making, looking at tiny models of buildings, rooms, furniture and objects just completely inspires and impresses me. When we got given this brief of being able to make any type of artefact that we liked, I straight away thought of model making. Andy Fastow's 'lair' really stuck with me from one of the the previous projects, Enron. At that time, I focused a lot on his habitat and what his room's atmosphere was, that I though this would be a perfect opportunity to create it but with more depth into this new project.
RESEARCH:
My initial drawing of the corporate building was inspired by a lecture given by Andrea Montaea about perspective drawing. This allowed me to draw up a corporate building, with the correct angle to make it look imposing. The building that I had seen was off a website that really kick started my ideas for the hollow company idea.
Contemporary corporate building designed by STARH Architect practise, based in Varna, Bulgaria.
Constructed in 2019 with an area of 2213 square metre.
Lead Architects:
Svtoslav Stanislavov
Design Team:
Radostina Petkova, Dimitar Katasarov, Iva Kostova, Hristo Dushev, Petar Nikolov, Georgi Pasev, Rumyana Kirova
Also, an artist who does model making really inspired me and pushed my ideas forward for Fastow's room, she's known as Miss Mini life. I think she's amazing at model making, her designs are all her own, and she puts a lot of time and effort into the little details that makes the model look so realistic.
“An artist who makes teeny tiny miniature versions of everyday things.”
Her Instagram: @missminilife
Her Youtube: Miss Minilife
Next, I worked on the breeze block walls that were to be crumbled away. The purpose of them were to show the deterioration of the company, starting from the heart of the disaster, Fastow's lair, or showing the true self of it. A nice warm room was really just grey, cold, blocks.
I carried on the half wall but made it also crumble away along with the breeze blocks.
The shelf was looking a little bland, so I thought I'd spruce it up with some fake plants. He's in the basement with no windows so he wouldn't get any sunlight, so no real plants would survive. But I thought the deceitfulness would be fitting. I made this from paper that was cut out, with wire for the stems stuck on with hot glue.
Here, I made a little blanket and a couple of cushions. This is to show his dedication to the company and his plan, but also his broken marriage, if he has to sleep or take naps here in his basement on his own, it says that he doesn't spend enough time away from his work, and so his marriage and personal time suffers.
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From this point, I rearranged the room so that the desk was in the direct view point of the door when it is cracked ajar, created more piles of papers, scattered dollar bills, and made a mini fridge.
CHANGE FROM INITIAL IDEA:
Originally, I was wanting to make a full building, the glass classy building which was hollow, with only the lair as the thing that still stands and had furiture in it. However, as I was creating the room, I started to realise that the room spoke for itself when I thought of the breeze blocks. This showed the room crumbling away, yet still being fully functional as an office.
At this point I decided that I didnt need to waste time and materials by doing the whole thing. Instead, I could just focus on the room and put a lot of detail in to that. That is why my final outcome is the only one room.
*A single cold bulb from directly outside the room and a soft cold bulb inside the room*
The lighting coming from the door in my mind again is the light coming from a single COLD bulb at the bottom of the long staircase which leads down to Fastow's basement office.
However, she shadowing and the stream of light is not so strong this time, because of another light thats also cold, which is within the room, maybe on the ceiling. This illuminates the rest of the room, so it's not dark but it's not light enough to comfortably see, either. It's artificially eerie.
Thank you for reading about my artefact journey, it has been very fun and rewarding. I have learnt a lot through the past few weeks and I feel my model making skills have improved since my last projects involving model making.
DRAWING MY DESIGN:
My initial idea was to make a 3D box that is representative of the world of Enron. However, the building would be hollow, no finished higher levels/floors with interior or any furniture, except for the basement- Andy Fastow's lair. Which is representative of the fake work going on there; the only real thing that’s happening is the underlying scam that was cooked up in specifically only the basement.
Floor 1,2 & 3 were to somewhat have the traces of long lost floors, but they'd be crumbled away as if the building was hit by a bomb and all that’s left of it is some flooring attached to the walls/glass windows, with the odd dishevelled bits of company remains. This fore-shadows the immediate crash of their stocks and ultimately, the company.
Going in from the front door, there would be a staircase getting more and more skewed and disarrayed the further down it does.
Eventually this lead to Fastow’s office door, and reveals the hidden dark and dingy heart of the scam.
This room will be full of papers, documents, a desk, some thrown around extra clothes, a mini fridge and beers.
THE MAKING PROCESS:
I started with making Fastow's room, working in 1:20 scale. I measured out the room to be 16.5cm which is 330cm (10 ft 9 Inch)
The door and the doorframe is a model making technique that I documented on my website, over at the skills passport model making section, but I made that to be 8.7cm, 174cm in real scale. This is obviously quite short for a door, but I wanted to accentuate the fact that this lair is in the basement, so it would feel quite claustrophobic and stuffy. The low ceiling and door will really push that. What I've also done to help with a claustrophobic feel is make the books and paper a bit enlarged, 2cm but 40cm in real scale, so as to 'flood' the room and cramp big things in a relatively small room. The books on the shelves are supposed to be big books anyway, because they are those vintage hefty books you see in gigantic libraries.
You will see I made a dingy colour base layer for the wall and then ripped pieces so that when I put the next layer of wall paint on again, the colours would be uneven, and it'd look like a poly filler job gone wrong.
Then I added the wooden panel half wall that you see in really nice old Tudor houses. I thought this would give this that darker, older, more homey feel, compared to the upstairs that is the contemporary, classy and clean cut. When I say 'homey' I don't mean that in the comfortable good feel, just that it's the literal home and heart of the company, the place where LGM was realised and used to destroy the company and everyone in it.
Wood finished and a yellowish paint colour for the walls. I love how the wall on the right turned out, the rip of the paper over the foam board really made it look like the wall was previously damaged and someone tried to smooth it out with poly filler and it just didn't work.
The desk, chair and shelving was to be made next. I wanted them to be a different colour to that of the half walls and the floor, as they were the same lighter brown. I wanted the wood on the three piece set of furniture to be darker in colour. A dark brown almost black. This made them stand out but also be known that they were the main pieces of furniture in the room.
After they were done, i started to play around with making piles of paper, magazines and news papers. As you can see, the news papers and magazine were connected, featuring either George Bush winning election, the company going well or Ken Lay being found guilty.
* The collection of these papers showed that Fastow was keeping up with the slowly unfolding events, and to see that he kept them all within course of quite a few years, without throwing them out, showed that he saw it coming and rode with the Enron downfall, silently suffering. *
I also noted that conversation he had with Skilling where he said he had a wife, but thought that adult entertainment saved marriages, so I think he'd be the type of guy to have naked women calenders and that kind of stuff. So i threw in the pole dancer behind the door. This showed that he was that kind of person, but he hid it, hence why it's behind the door. Perfect eye view from his seat but hidden from anyone if they walk in.
FINAL PHOTOS WITH TRUE LIGHTING:
*A single strong warm bulb from directly outside the room ONLY.*
The lighting coming from the door in my mind is a light coming from a single warm bulb at the bottom of the long staircase which leads down to Fastow's basement office.
I love the overpowering look and feel from this light, its like artifical sunlight with how strong it is, but its the shadowing on the chair that it creates and the details it picks up in the floor and wall that I love.
*General lighting perhaps seen at a theatre performance to see everything in the room *
This is the kind of lighting that I would imagine is generally seen at a show, so you can see the items in the room and the characters enough.
It could also be seen as spot lights you have in a house with a low ceiling so as not to hit your head on any dangling light fixtures. So it would be fitting to say that this lighting can be interpreted as Fastow having four or five spot lights fixed into his ceiling in each corner of the room, and they're casting multiple shadows on each object.
