Charrettes

This week I have been developing my designs. I gave myself a 30 minute session in which to come up with each design. I began by using my model and then photograph it and annotate it on Photoshop. Each design brought out an idea for the next one although not all of them were as successful as I hoped.
I became quite attached to my first design, it seemed to convey everything I wanted but once I had begun playing about with the site axes, it mixed up the arrangement and I felt that it grounded the design to the site and wider area.

I had no luck finding any of the original plans so I guess this project will just be façade retention but there was no guarantee that the building as it stands would be suitable for my  building anyway. I'm not exactly sure how to go about navigating this problem.

I still need to start work on my designs for the housing aspect of my programme. After considering that 'cohousing' might not be the way forward, I started looking at Byker again, especially at the enclosed spaces shared by a small group of housing. I think something like this would work as having shared spaces would encourage small communities to form, much like as was discussed in Matrix's book.

Studio 2014

Just had my first tutorial of 2014. Over the holidays I felt that my work had progressed and I was feeling better about it but to have it confirmed by my tutors has really helped. I think I was beginning to loose momentum a little bit but after talking through my progress, I think I can pick up again and I have some thinks to think through and work on and generally continue with what I'm doing. 

My programme layout needs to continue to develop and more importantly (?) I need to show the development so my task this afternoon is to annotate the photos of my model to death. Explain why it works/why it doesn't/how it could/should be improved and then show where I went from there. 

I also really want/need to start looking at the library. As I am using the existing building as part of my design, I don't want to go too far without taking it into account although we've been told that we only need to be considering façade retention - and I can see why. I spent some of this morning scouring the web/library catalogues for the plans or at least a clue as to where I can get them from. Zip. Nope. Not. A. Thing. There are a handful of photos of the interior - enough to give a general idea of the inside but not enough to put together a full plan. It feels almost like cheating to completely disregard the interior, especially when I potentially have the opportunity to focus on an aspect of architecture that really interests me. I'll just have to see what I can find. At the very least, I want to be conscious of the building and what I know of it's interior.

Something that was also brought up in my tutorial was the housing aspect of my project. It was something that had crossed my mind but I didn't really think about it too much. It was suggested that 'cohousing' might not be the exact solution to my design. Rather, something similar that achieves the same thing and functions the same way. Cohousing is something that grows rather than is built then occupied and everything's hunky dory. This probably wouldn't work in for my project. There aren't any of those connections required to create this cohousing. In essence, cohousing is a group of friends who decided to live very close together. You can't just throw a group of strangers together and expect to get the same results. So in this sense, back to the drawing board, but I think that this is something that will also develop when I begin to make the appropriate marks on the site. 

Models!: Part 2

I've continued to use my model in order to help develop my design ideas. Today I added to it by making representations of the surrounding buildings and the 'walls' of the library. The more I use it the pickier I get about my design. At the moment it seems to be just a long list of things I want to incorporate into my building such as double height spaces etc. After looking back at photos of some of the layouts I tried, I found that a lot of them didn't actually work although I've begun to expand on a couple of ideas.

Something that has really helped is turning the boxes upside down so that I'm looking inside rooms rather than at blocks. This way, I've been able to design with the height of the rooms in mind.

Creating different shaped spaces has also helped to develop my design as it gives me more options. I started to combine some spaces as well, for example, the cafe, kitchen, staff room and storage. These would be adjacent in the building anyway so I thought about creating a combined area and then splitting it up internally. This creates a simpler layout within the building. 
 

Models!

Yesterday I built my sketch model to help me plan out my building. I used the spatial values and made small boxes to represent each space - based on the capacities and therefore the area of each space.

I began to have a play around with the layout and started to notice the axes of the site. This caused some small problems as it was something I hadn't noticed or looked into before and I was questioning whether a particular space should line up with this axis or the other. I then went back to the plan and Photoshop and started to look at these closely. Obviously, these conflicting axes need to be taken into consideration in my design. 

Another "problem" I came across was the multi storey aspect of my design. While I am using the old library as part of my building, I need to take into account the fact that it has a first floor, something I had to keep reminding myself of when playing around with my model. There are pros and cons for the different 'zones' of my building to be on either floor and now I need to decided which should go where.

The creche would be suitable to be on the first floor as it removes it from the street, therefore creating a safer and more private environment for children, however, I want to create an outdoor space as part of the creche, which would be better off on the ground floor although there is no reason why I can't create a roof space (but that comes with it's own health and safety issues!)

The cafe needs to connect with the street as this is the most public part of my building although by being on the first floor, it can over look the other areas of the building, therefore creating connections through the building that way.

The community part of my building, like the cafe, should connect the community to the building but by being on the first floor, it can make the most of using a whole floor and can also be kept apart from the creche. 

I think I need to make more boxes to represent different shapes of the rooms, and maybe split the spaces up in order to split the spaces over both floors.

Library Day

Being back in Manchester now, I spent Sunday and Monday reading. Monday was spent in the library and while some of the books I was reading didn't exactly seem relevant to my project, I was reminded about the houses of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was something that I remember reading but I've got a feeling it was from the book that my old Geography teacher lent me once briefly. 
The idea behind Wright's housing was to open up the living space, bringing the kitchen into the main part of the house rather than hiding it away. For the time, I can imagine this being quite a radical idea. Part of it was to allow women to continue to cook and prepare dinner while still being able to entertain guests etc. 

This idea can be carried into my own project and I've started to look at his Usonian Houses in an analytical way. Having one large living space makes a more manageable house for women (or men) who stay at home and also makes child care easier as most of the day time activities happen in this central space.

Spatial Values

After thinking about the diurnal programme of the building and the key connections between the spaces, I started thinking about how exactly the spaces would be used. Just having a room labelled 'creche' doesn't necessarily make it suitable to be one. The same was for the 'event space'. By breaking by building into zones - Cafe, Crèche and Community - I was able to think in more detail of each space. 

I though about what kind of spaces would make up a creche; what do small children need. I was reminded of the nursery at my old primary school and how there were spaces to paint and other spaces to play in the sandpit and another again to play with toys or read. In the same way a building has different rooms for different purposes, a creche should have different spaces for different activities. By breaking up this part of my building, it becomes more than just a large room.

I did a similar exercise with the community space. Rather than having one large space, having a large space and some smaller rooms mean that a variety of community events can take place. As a bit of an after thought, I also decided to incorporate a prayer room into my design. Cheetham Hill is an area with a diverse population and in order to engage with the whole community, I felt that it was necessary, particularly if the building is to be used at all times of the day and most, if not all, days of the year. 

Before I can start working on the model, I needed to decide how big each space would be. This of course determined by the activities in the room and the capacity.

My next step is to start designing and formally arranging my building using a model.
 

Precedents and development

My primary programme is to allow stay at home women to become integrated in the community to remove the isolation felt by many of them.

I began to look at precedents of communal housing, the idea that while there are individual homes, there are also spaces within the site that are shared between the households. This would allow for interaction and a community to be formed.

The example I looked at was the first cohousing project in the UK. It comprises of 34 residences and a central 'common house' where communal meal take place a few times a week. There is also a large common room and communal garden.

I also started looking at precedents for the community building. I remembered the New Arts Exchange from a lecture I went to by Habinder Birdi from Hawkins\Brown Architects. The gallery, in Nottingham, has a similar programme to mine in that it is a building for the community and aims to create a stronger sense of community through the arts. I started to look at how this was achieved through the use of light and space.

From here, and after reading MATRIX, I began to redevelop my programme. While it was still quite vague and I hadn't even started to think about the housing, now it seems to all be coming together.

My next step it to look at the spatial values of my programme and give dimensions to this. Once this is done, I am going to start making marks on site. I want to make a site model and smaller models to represent the different spaces. This will let me play around with my programme on the sites and help me to start generating a design for my buildings.