Roofs

Now that my tech case studies are out of the way, I've been able to resume project work. After scribbling ideas for the a last couple of weeks, I began by finally arranging the community space of my building. This has changed size since I created my programme and now has a number of spaces that can change - making larger areas or smaller ones as required. 

Resolving these spaces have let me start to resolve the roof. As I am using the site axes to design my building, I want to continue this to the roof. Tuesday saw me modelling my new design which then allowed me to start playing around with the roof yesterday. By starting with a straight forward single pitch in the roof, I could then move on and develop to get my designs modelled in paper. This was going well until I realised that my roof was South facing - meaning that there would be direct sunlight at different times of the day which I really didn't want. This meant back to the drawing board this morning and I've now taken this into consideration and as a deciding factor in the design. 

Despite being told to try and move away from a pitched roof, I have kept coming back to it. But I think I like the way it still reflects the original building and my design is beginning to do what I want it to - especially in terms of letting light into the building. I think it could still be developed further though but the paper models are definitely helping to resolve it. I need to get on with taking photos!

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!

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.

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.
 

Final Crit 1

Yesterday was the final crit for this first part of the project. As it was cross atelier, we were split up and grouped with one of the other ateliers, Altering Architecture for Climate Change. It was interesting to see what the other groups were doing (if only to remember that there were other projects outside of ours!)

Overall, (despite technology messing around as per usual) I think it went as I expected. I felt that I had done a lot in the past week and actually sorted my ideas out into some form of programme ready to take to the next level. I did feel that I had one gap in my argument which was about my target audience and who exactly I was designing for and what exactly they needed and why. This was pointed out and is something that I am going to be addressing in the next couple of weeks. I need to start talking to the community and the actual people that would be using my building. At the moment this sounds like a lot of work to do and really quite daunting but I know there are a couple of other people in my atelier focusing on women so maybe we can organise something together and help each other out. 

Once I know who and what and why, I can then begin to start designing and arranging my design spatially. I feel like it my project is beginning to come together but once I work on those three questions, it really will come together. Looking forward to it.

I also need to start to look at housing. I keep forgetting about it!

Tying Everything Together . . .

Buckling down to work this evening, one of the things I really needed to work out was how to tie Lynch's 5 elements theory into my work. I have already made the connection between his 5 elements making up the city and our 5 elements making up the community but I felt that I needed to go deeper than then to enable me to use it in my project.

While Lynch uses them to critique the city and its imageability, as I am in the process of doing with Newcastle, I've realised that I can reverse engineer his method and use it to create a space that allows a community to either begin or grow.

I can turn the theory into a formula:

Paths + Landmarks + Nodes + Edges + Districts = City

People + Employment + Markets + Street + Housing = Community

With the quality of each of these elements making up the quality of the total (City or Community). In Lynch's text, he works out the quality of each of them to find the quality of the city. In my project, I know what I want the end result to be and can work backwards by looking at what the current state of each of the elements is to then create what is lacking or improve what is in poor condition in my project.

In order to do this, another trip up north (that is, to Cheetham Hill, not Newcastle) may be needed and a closer look at the other groups' findings is definitely needed. However, just from looking at the area and listening to presentations etc, I can already make a start piecing together what is required:

People: Cheetham Hill has such a diverse population that I would be willing to say that the richness of the community in this sense doesn't need to be altered.

Employment: As with much of the country in the current climate, the state of employment in Cheetham Hill is not good, although I think it was suggested that this area is one of the worst. Something that needs looking into.

Markets: I've looked at markets in Cheetham Hill enough to know that this isn't an issue within the community and doesn't need faffing with by architecture students.

Street: This varies throughout the area but while the sites are in the centre, there is a good sense of street life although the street is something that is the main focus of my work anyway.

Housing: I already know there is a lot of housing around Cheetham Hill, much of it off the main high street through the sites though. Housing does however form part of our brief.

After quickly listing what the state of each of the elements is, I can see that my project will mainly be focusing on Employment, Street and Housing although I will still keep People and Markets in mind throughout the project.

Now to choose my site!

Studio 2: Site Analysis

In studio today, listening to the other groups' site analyses reinforced the idea that our site was separated from the rest of Cheetham Hill. 

Many of the groups realised the sense of community in their respective areas and were able to act on it to develop their research whereas we weren't able to do the same.

A lot of interesting points were made and there were some really interesting observations but I felt that none of it was relatable to our area. 

We finished the day with a better idea of Cheetham Hill in general and some ideas of where to take our project next.

We also had some readings to make our way though to help with our manifesto development. My group's plan is to read our reading tonight ready for discussion tomorrow.

Studio 1: MSAP Intoduction

First studio day of year 3. Not sure I'm ready to get thrown in at the deep end but not sure I've got much say in the matter!

We started the day with discussing what the atelier, MSA Praxis was about and we split into small groups to discuss 'participative techniques' that are used in architectural practise to engage with the clients. We were given a list and we talked about which ones we knew about, what we thought others were and whether we thought they were actually used in practise. They were all things that we can use in our own projects as well.

Over lunch, we were tasked with making a cognitive map of a familiar route. These were then compared when we restarted. Most people did their route to university although not all were the half hour or so commute; some were from home to Manchester. It was also interesting to see the differences in the maps. Some were really literal (like mine) and easy to read while others were more abstract and only clear if you knew the route.

Then the REAL map came out. Of Cheetham Hill.

As I hadn't had the chance to visit the site before studio, the area was completely unknown to me and reading an unfamilar street map upside down doesn't really reveal much. As it is such a large area, we split it up into 6 areas, one for each of the groups. The task was to survey our area and to make a panoramic street view of a section of Cheetham Hill Road. The following week, we would then present our findings and collectively, we would all have a better understanding of Cheetham Hill