Days Past - Architectural Blend, Ava Shuman

My project for Architectural Blend combines the building of a school and the monumental Charlotte Motor Speedway. A common theme between my projects during college has been childhood and growing older, and this was no exception. I wanted to express the feeling of childhood going by quickly (like a race) or being rushed through by combining a familiar-looking, modern K-12 building with the Motor Speedway, used for racing cars and other sports/events. Removing any words from the building makes the type of school (elementary, middle, high) ambiguous and replacing them with the Speedway's logo makes the building feel more like it's part of the architecture. I only muted the color of the bricks rather than matching their color to the stadium's color because I felt that it was important to have red bricks in order to keep the building easily recognizable as a school. To lower the perceived 'age' of the subject matter, I also added a play area in the foreground, associated with younger students. To hammer in the growing-up theme, I also added falling leaves into the foreground to represent natural and unavoidable change. Lastly, to emphasize the speed aspect of the composition, I added a motion-blurred school bus driving through the road.

Images Used:
https://pixabay.com/photos/playground-winter-playground-slides-6995674/
https://pixabay.com/photos/football-player-soccer-sport-ball-5180297/
https://www.pexels.com/photo/farmington-high-school-modern-architecture-37820241/
https://www.pexels.com/photo/yellow-school-bus-in-usa-19524286/
Photo of Charlotte Motor Speedway taken by myself
Photo of leaves created with Generative Fill (Firefly) and heavily edited