Easter Holidays Part I

It's amazing what a week away from uni can do. I've been doing long days of work every day but it's been more relaxed and I've managed to get so much done. My final plans have been updates. All that's left to do on the technical drawings front is the 1:5 sections and updating my site section. Once these are done, I can get them printed and work on their aesthetics. 
I decided to put Revit on hold as I started to see it as a time waster - I was spending hours working it out but I still don't have a model that I can use. It's much more worth my time to get my sections done through AutoCAD.

As well as finishing the first daft of my essay, I have also finished Part A of the IDR and made a good start on Part B. This section consists mainly on images and diagrams so I have had to work on them before anything else. From reading the brief, I can see many similarities between this part and the tech case study so I'm going to approach it the same way - similar diagrams and images. I plan on having this section finished, at least in draft form, by tomorrow.

Next week I am going away so I won't be able to do any work at all. Except for maybe a little bit of reading (although I tried that last year and it even that didn't happen). With this being the case, I want to make sure I get enough done this week while I am still in Manchester with very few distractions.

At this stage, I think the visuals and IDR are the most important things for me to be concentrating on but I also need to start thinking about what to exhibit. This is something for the week after next though.

I have a tutorial this afternoon but for now, I'm going to get my section details done.

Revit Funtimes

Started playing around on Revit last night and re-familiarising myself with the programme by trying to build my design. I'm really please with what I have so far but it's made me realise that I need to know exactly what is going on with my building in order to build it. It's the kind of programme that I'm going to be obsessive about - making sure I know every measurement and wall construction so that I can translate it onto the programme. Which can't be a bad thing. So first thing first is knowing exactly what is used and how it is used to construct it.

Back to the Tech Stuff

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. 

Tech/Studio Cross Over

So hand in number two has been and gone and this last couple of weeks has seen me trying to get on with my case studies and my IDR. After looking through the part B brief, I realised that I didn't actually have the work to talk about so in order to do that, I needed to work out exactly how my building is constructed. This is where my case study work came in.

The Ritblat building is my case study as well as a precedent. The timber construction is exactly what I want to achieve with mine. Therefore in order to help me construct my own building, I started to deconstruct that one. I'll admit the plans weren't easy to read at the beginning but I think I've picked it up now and have been able to work out the construction techniques involved. This in turn has really helped me with my project as I have used a similar work method.

The drawings produced by Hawkins\Brown are awesome and I am hoping to achieve something in a similar style with my own drawings. There is so much detail on them though and I'm not entirely sure I have all the time that would be required! Worth a shot though.

The biggest issue with my construction at the moment is the existing brick work of the library. While I don't want to interfere too much with it, I know very little of the actual make up of the wall, especially whether there is insulation in there already. This potentially could change the entire construction of the vertical elements of my building - and the interior finish - and this is something that I am hoping to discuss with my tutors on Thursday. Once that problem is solved, I can then resolve the roof and work on getting the formal drawings done. I am also hoping to start work on Revit at the end of the week: I think I have more or less resolved my house construction so I figured it would be a good place to start. 

While all of my tech is in sketches at the moment, they have really helped me to develop this and on Thursday, I'm hoping that I can get some help with the last details like DPMs etc and make sure everything is in it's place before I start to draw them up for real - and put it in Revit.

Currently feeling confident although this could all change on Thursday! Here's hoping

Resolutions

This week has been spent on developing and refining the last details of my building ready for the crit. 

My housing was the main thing to be resolved but once I got onto Sketch Up, sorted out my house design and just started playing around with the orientation on site, it all fell into place fairly quickly. I resigned myself to the fact that I couldn't achieve a scheme that both had vehicular access and was pedestrian only so I just had to work around this, creating pedestrian only spaces and designated vehicle spaces. The views and the access across and around the site were important things to consider as the scheme is very family and children orientated.

I also spent time resolving the final details of my building, the creche and community space in particular. After exploring the spatial possibilities in each of these spaces, I started remodelling just the creche on Sketch Up and as per ususal, I got completely carried away with the model and ended up also modelling the community space on the first floor. 
I went almost completely against my original approximation for the floor area of the space. Rather than having one large hall, I inserted an atrium-like space that then created a connection between the circulation downstairs and the space itself. Despite loosing a large amount of the floor space to this atrium, I feel that this actually works better as it breaks the space into smaller community areas and also fits into my programme in terms of connectivity.

Once I had resolved these issues, it was simply a case of getting back on to CAD to update my drawings. Over Easter, I plan on getting reacquainted with Revit and producing models and all my drawings in one programme - the plan is to make my life easier!