Once we had all completed our mood boards, we got together as a group and presented our ideas to Andy, Simon and Colin. Our ideas were taken on board but the only issue that arose was about the screen. The screen was wanted to be portrayed as though death was behind it, so there would be a darkness coming out of the corner and ‘death’ tearing its way through the screen as a metaphorical representation of what Ivan saw. We were told by the tutors that we were supposed to be creating a metaphor for death rather than physically presenting it. I thought that involving the darkness in the corner would have been a metaphor for death but on the other hand would still have been presenting death as a physical. We decided to keep death as a dark corner in the room as Sarah had put a lot of research in to it and we couldn't find an alternative.

Nicole and my ideas about the sofas were discussed and we decided that a chaise lounges would be best used as the ‘bed’ in which Ivan died because it probably would have been as easier piece of furniture for Ivan to get up from when the doctors came to see him whilst keeping within the elegant styles of Baroque. My idea of using hands as the symbolism was included as a concept for other possible furniture as well. Sarah’s idea of a bat for the symbolism with an egg timer in the centre of it was to be used on the screen so perhaps could have reciprocated on the chaise.

After the presentation we stayed behind to plan out the arrangement and layout of the two rooms. We made a plan on the whiteboard which enabled us to make alterations as we needed and other members of the group measured out the lengths in which we were deciding the walls and windows could have been. From doing this we realised how little space we were left to work with which made us doubt how we were going to fit all the furniture in that we wanted to include. We decided the drawing room was going to be 10x10.ft and the study coming off it would be 10x8ft.

We were then each assigned a different aspect of the room to produce an autocad drawing with the correct measurements with views from the top, side and front.

I was given doors to look at.

I looked at The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersberg, Russia for my research on doors as it is a Russian building so the architecture and furniture design would be legitimate. Here are the images I found...

(Figure 14)

(Figure 15)

(Figure 16)

(Figure 17)

(Figure 18)

Through my research I have found that Russian doors tend to have column-like beams either side of the door way and a large header above it. Some of the doors have drapery around them, suggesting wealth and power, perhaps the drapery was only used in certain grand rooms - halls, important lounges, dining rooms.

The doors also have paneling on them, creating a 3d effect. Some of headers above the doorways have are arched, some also with panels in them, others are flat almost like shelves.

I decided to use an arched top door for my autocad drawing as I thought it would be fitting with the curved shapes of the Baroque interiors.

Figures 14-18 - http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/index.html