Having now more or less finalised my roof designs. I've needed to go back to thinking about the construction of my building. This involved looking back at the tech case studies and my understanding of the Ritblat Building. Essentially, my building can stand up without the aid of the existing facade. I really wanted to continue to use timber, mainly for the creche, and I think I came to the conclusion that I could use timber for the structure of my previous design so I am going to carry on with this idea. I have then been able to use a similar construction as the Ritblat Building. Having worked through this, I should be able to finally start CADding them up!
I need to finish working out how to join the existing facade to the new structure but I took a couple of books out of the library a dew weeks ago so these will hopefully help me to resolve this problem.
I have a lot to do over Easter. One of the main things is my visuals. I've been told to find a style I love and essentially copy that style. There are a couple of styles that I really like and hopefully I can incorporate both of them. The first is Frank Lloyd Wright's drawings. Obviously, they were done by hand but I'm better at sketching than at photoshop anyway so this will be better for me. The other one isn't architecture related but not too unlike Wright's style. Being a hiker, I love looking at Wainwright's sketches of the Lake District and have tried to imitate them in my own sketches. While he very rarely, if ever, even includes a building in his sketches, the pen and ink style is definitely something I'd like to do.
Another thing that I'm going to have a go at is Revit. Now that I know the construction and form of my design, I think I can have another go at Revit. I did basic tutorials over the summer to get an idea of the program but not used it since, so if nothing else, I need to re-familiarise myself with it.
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.
