Final Crit 2

Today was the second of the cross atelier reviews. 

I felt that I was actually relaxed and really prepared for it although - as per - the nerves and quaky voice still set in when presenting.

Overall, I think it went well but I think the major thing - picked up by everybody - was that the colours need to be toned down. It was something that I also noticed as soon as I had finished publishing the presentation. I tried to emphasise the colourful environment in the creche but I think I tried to hard. As a whole I need to work on my illustrations but this is something I have been very aware of since last year. 

Apart from this, it's just a case of making sure it all reads well and I can explain my scheme in a way that doesn't require me to be there. My little sketches/diagrams went down well and over the weekend, I plan on just diagramming and sketching my scheme to death! The images themselves were useful for me and my design process and additionally are useful for communicating it. 

One last key point that was made was the lack of connectivity between my two sites which seems crazy especially as part of my argument for using the sites was the connectivity. Therefore I am, as was suggested, going to produce a (hopefully awesome) section throughout the whole scheme, showing the connection and interaction between the sites as well as the journey taken by different characters around the sites.  

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!

Catch up and CAD

I feel like my journal (along with everything else) has been slightly abandoned recently due to the sheer volume of work. This week was spent mainly on AutoCAD and Sketch up, getting my building finalised and drawn up ready for today. I'm all CADed out!

Having printed out my plans etc for studio today, I was ready for them to be scribbled over. And that definitely happened! Which was good. When I was drawing them out, I didn't actually see them but during my tutorial things were pointed out that will definitely improve my design along with other things that I need to look at over the next couple of days. While many of these are in order to refine my centre, there are a couple of things to work on with my housing as well. Especially the site layout. I'm closer than I was but it's still not there yet.

After talking with my tutor, I had the chance to talk with a practising architect to get some help with my technical drawings and structural details. Unfortunately I ran out of time this week so I couldn't develop my detailed drawings but this is something that is going to happen this week. My precedent actually comes from my tech case study so this kills two birds with one stone. I am also going to look at the arrangement for the building (the Ritblat Building) as it is part of a primary school, therefore designed for children. I am hoping to develop my creche and create an environment suitable for children. I am also going to look at other precedents to help me with this. 

I also seem to have actually forgotten how to draw plans. Like marking the door openings and hatching the walls and dotting upstairs floors and stairs and adding furniture (although I think the time constraint had some play in that one). This are all things that need to be (and will be) sorted out for the reviews . . . . next week.

Design Development

I feel like I am really close to a design now. I began to model my designs in a more permanent form. Using greyboard allowed me to see past the boxes and where the space could be manipulated and changed to create more interesting arrangements. I was also able to look at how the spaces would (or wouldn't) work. I immediately saw where the flaws in my arrangements were and used the next models to correct them. Playing around with light was also quite insightful and I have been able to start considering how this works and the experiences involved with the designs.
In Matrix's book, I found a reference to the Introduction to Housing Layout and after acquiring it from the library, I have managed to put it to good use. One chapter talks about public movement and although my building isn't housing, I want it to become an extension of the street so the ideas were insightful.

I also began to really work on the housing aspect of my project. I decided that it would make most sense to develop a design before I arranged the site as I needed to take the orientation into account when designing. The idea is to create housing that has some sort of shared space in which the residents can interact with one another and form a community. This feeds back into my original idea of blurred boundaries: blurring the line between what is private and what is shared. 

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.