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.