Drawn plan of my bridge, depicting green spaces, placement of buildings and smaller bridging elements.
Royal blue blocks are multi-usage spaces which can be used as a studio, workshop or a meeting room.
Pink is the central part of the bridge, it acts as an outdoor promenade connecting spaces together. It rests between NIDA, the Squarehouse and the Law building. Smaller bridging elements will connect the Blockhouse.
I think I would like the move the gallery space (the purple block) off of the Squarehouse and make it suspended in air by a bridging element.
The roof of the Roundhouse has been turned into a small park for patrons to use, as well as to give the hanging studio spaces a nice outlook. The studio spaces will open onto the park.
36 Custom Textures 36 Custom Textures developed from week 12's tutorial. They reflect different types of movement such as linear, scalar, or ascension.
Week Four Idea Development Ideas and notes developed from feedback from Chris in week four's tutorial.
Notes written on image:
"Exp 3.
- Buildings' rooms jutting out like in final sketch [from last week's task]
- Straddling road (anchor points)
- Lots of planes (maybe go with the oriental look)
- Part connecting two bridge parts
- Some f**king mesh that sh*t sits in
- Bridge bigger mate"
Other notes about sketch (above): - Dark colour scheme - Lots of split levels - Like a ship thats moving through the buildings - Parallel to Uniwalk, like a uniwalk of the sky - Buildings and smaller bridges coming off main promenade
Farnsworth House Explored in Plan and Plan as Section The following images were developed from the plan of the Farnsworth House, designed originally by Mies van der Rohe in 1945. They were draw the the ideas of floating, grid, exposed material and asymmetry in mind, as those concepts were what I deemed to be most important about the Farnsworth House plan.
The original Farnsworth House Plan
//Plan//
The inner shape was brought outwards and part of the grid was removed, the 'I' beams were enlarged.
The 'I' beams were moved to one side, the scale of the grid was changed and the inner shape was again made the focus.
The original for and grid was maintained, another room was added and the staircase was changed. The inner shape was removed.
The original form was maintained, the larger part being transformed into a green space, the 'I' beams now carry over the top of the form. A room was added.
Part of the grid was removed, the original form has been separated and aligned, the inner shape has been made the focus.
//Section//
The inner form was used, the grid was used and the outer form has been turned into rooms that float in the grid.
The inner form was used and the outer form was placed inside it. The grid marks out seating forms. A rooftop garden was added.
All three forms were used, the grid has become a balustrade.
Two original forms on top of one another, made to be more square, the 'I' beam is used as support.
The original form supported by 'I' beams. The inner shape has a grid-mesh overlay.
Some plans and sections have been made in SketchUp, I am not particularly happy with any of them and will need to develop them more. When trying to transfer them into Lumion the software would not accept .skp or .dae files. Need to talk to Chris about this and see if he knows how to fix it.
Two Point Perspectives Two point perspectives developed from the one point perspectives from last week. Aspects of them were slightly altered to create spaces that could be developed into aspects of the Built Environment building.
'The ambiguous shape approaching'
'Floating above a changed mass'
'A morphing monolith migrating'
'A diverse soaring group'
'The varying mass just there'
'A resting multi-functional object'
The five word sentences that are attached to these two point perspectives reflect the placement of the object (above, below, at eye level), as well as my theory that is directing this project - the idea that spaces that are adaptable and small can still be comfortable and effective.
Moving Element
The moving element in the video and images below is intended to become one of the computer labs for the Built Environment building. It it an entire room that moves outwards from the building, so whilst from below it appears to still be part of the architecture, when inside the individual feels like the box is floating. The object that the box is sitting in will either altered or swapped with another perspective object entirely.
Article One: Material Focus: OE House by Fake Industries Architectural Agonism + Aixopluc
The big economic crisis in Spain was paradoxically an opportunity to expand material options, as you must always have at least two "A plans" for each construction solution, in order to accept accidents and unforeseen events. If material A1 is not available, we use material A2. If the company that was going to build system A3 has shut down, we will use system A4. This has allowed the house not only to survive the slow and sometimes hard construction process, but actually to improve during these uncertain times. At the early stages, each concept has an associated material system. At some point we were thinking about building the winter and summer houses with two independent structure systems, exploring an impossible continuity between them. As the project moved on, some of them were discarded, and we developed thin steel frames that contained both opposing environments. Taken from Arch Daily
Article Two: Micro-Apartments: Are Expanding Tables and Folding Furniture a Solution to Inequality?
In his recent article, Nick Axel puts forward a compelling argument for the (re)distribution of city-space according to use value: kickball trophies and absentee owners out, efficient use of space in. Distributing urban space according to use certainly makes sense. Along with unoccupied luxury condos that are nothing more than assets to the 1% and mostly empty vacation apartments, expelling (rarely accessed) back-closets to the suburbs frees more of the limited space in cities for people to actually live in. When, however, this is stretched into a rationale for micro-apartments, the argument begins to thin. There is a big difference between arguing against large apartments, holding nothing but wealth, and arguing that 400sqft apartments (the current legal minimum) are under-used and inefficient. Axel is arguing that micro-apartments offer a design solution to urban inequality by seeing them “as a legal mechanism to distribute, through architecture and urbanism, standards of living.” While he is perhaps right to acknowledge that for many people the current minimum floor area is “nothing more than an ideal,” lowering the standards we aspire toward will not make living conditions better and will, in reality, only legitimize more substandard-sized homes. Allotting residents apartments that are smaller than the current legal minimum may indeed allow for more of them to squeeze in, but can it really be argued that living standards are reducible to nothing more than their proximity to downtown? Reviews of the Carmel Place apartments report that they seem remarkably spacious. According to Amy Plitt at Curbed, “The first thing you notice when you enter [...] is how big it feels.” Carefully designed and compactly organized, the promotional material suggests that the minimum standard of living is facilitated by nothing more than a certain range of furniture – what the apartments lack in size, they make up for in retractable beds and expanding tables. With a couch that folds into the bed, a table that folds into the wall and expands and contracts, and a range of hidden storage units, the extra 100sqft becomes superfluous. The spaces use clever design to glamorize a sort of luxury substandard that can all too easily become a justification—or, more worryingly, a normalization—of substandard conditions for people who don’t have access to the same palliatives. The Clei-designed furniture that makes the apartment so versatile and so spacious is far beyond the price range of the vast majority of New Yorkers. Taken from Arch Daily Article Three: Fremantle's 'Tiny House' Planning Amendment
A City of Fremantle councillor has put forward an amendment to the Western Australian planning scheme that could see more “tiny houses” built in the city.
Councillor Rachel Pemberton said the idea for the amendment came from the personal experience of herself and her peers – young professionals interested in living modestly within a communal environment without being part of a co-op.
But the current planning scheme does not accommodate this scenario. “We were discussing these kinds of ideas and in one instance, found a perfect block […] but the council said all we could do was one big house and a granny flat and that was pretty much it,” Pemberton said.
Pemberton also said the existing planning scheme is ineffective at delivering good design outcomes. “The current R-codes here in Western Australia are a very blunt instrument. There are all these compromises that end up getting made [and result in] a poor outcome for everyone, both the person inside the house and the neighbourhood.”
The Fremantle House by Simon Pendal and Rebecca Angus is one-third the size of a typical Australian house. Image: Robert Frith
The amendment proposes to allow for the subdivision of larger residential blocks to create smaller independently owned houses. It proposes a maximum size of 120 square metres for each dwelling (by way of comparison, this is well above the minimum of 90 square metres for a three-bedroom apartment under New South Wales’ new Apartment Design Guide).
The amendment also encourages the creative adaptation of existing buildings. “One of the things that I think is particularly exciting is that this actually enables the conversion of one single dwelling into multiple dwellings within the existing built form,” Pemberton said.
Fremantle City Council has supported the amendment and has carried out a series of investigations to see how it could apply in the city.
The amendment includes a set of open space requirements designed to maintain local neighbourhood characteristics and achieve density through infill housing at the same time. Taken from ArchitectureAU
Combined Article Key: Article One Article Two Article Three
The big economic crisis in Spain was paradoxically an opportunity for the (re)distribution of city-space according to use value: kickball trophies and absentee owners out, efficient use of space in. The existing planning scheme is ineffective at delivering good design outcomes, 400sqft apartments (the current legal minimum) are under-used and inefficient. Two independent systems, carefully designed and compactly organised furniture and the creative adaptation of existing buildings is nothing more than an ideal design solution to urban inequality by seeing them as a legal mechanism to distribute, through architecture and urbanism, standards of living.
Thinking about building the houses with two independent structure systems, exploring an impossible continuity between them, could lead to homes designed to maintain local neighbourhood characteristics and achieve density through infill housing at the same time. The minimum standard of living is facilitated by nothing more than clever design, you must always have at least two "A plans" for each construction solution, in order to accept accidents and unforeseen events. This has allowed houses not only to survive the slow and sometimes hard construction process, but actually to improve during uncertain times. With a couch that folds into the bed, a table that folds into the wall and expands and contracts, and a range of hidden storage units, an extra 100sqft becomes superfluous; the spaces use clever design to glamorize a sort of luxury standard. One Point Perspectives Developed from the 'cross' as part of Week One's activity.
Final Submission for Experiment 2: //Communia// Welcomes to Communia, the tram stop designed for bring people together in a simple, functional and beautiful way. Communia was developed with the concept of being a 'mechanism for marrying community, form and function' in mind. This is an electroliquid aggregate sentence that was created by combining 'marriage of form and function' (a concept developed in response to Jorn Utzon) and 'mechanism for gathering community' (a concept developed in response to Richard Leplastrier).
//Development// We began by developing 10 simple axonometric drawings that abstractly reflected some of the concepts that were generated in response to Jorn Utzon and Richard Leplastrier, both as designers and people.
These 10 axonometrics were drawn with the particular concept of 'marriage of form and function' in mind. // One of the axonometrics was then developed in sketchup
And then in Lumion
//
Following that exercise, we started to combine two different types of axonometrics. One of the featured axonometrics would be altered with the subdivide + smooth tool, this is when we can begin to see the inception of the idea for Communia's 'arms'
//
The axonometric in the top right-hand corner was developed into the Lumion model you see bellow, can you see the arms yet?
//
Now that we had finished with much of the macro development of the tramp stop, it was time to focus of the micro details. To commence this process we created 6 sets of 6 textures that were gradiented from DARK to LIGHT.
Three of the textures were then chosen for be placed into the final product of the tram stop proposal
Dark
Developed from my electroliquid aggregation sentence, this texture depicts the macro purpose for my tram stop: to show that form and function can harmonise and create a space that is perfect for gathering the community, even if it is in a small way.
Light
The simplicity of this texture is what made me want to use it on my tram stop, partly because of the brief proposing that architecture can be developed from simple forms and partly because it clearly shows the 'rope' shape.
Medium
Because this texture was developed as an abstraction of something that is designed to protect, I thought this texture would be befitting on a structure that is designed to shelter.
//
// Final Product //
The upright ‘arms’ of Communia enclose patrons, shelter them and provide seating one side of the stop. The ‘rope’ texture applied to them means that at certain angle the arms appear to form a single arch or tunnel.
Communia’s bold but comfortable lighting increases the safety of patrons at night by ensuing all aspects of the tram stop are lit. They are a clear example of our electroliquid aggregation concept - their function is to illuminate at night but be discrete during the day, their form is sunken into the many surfaces of the stop and they bring community together by creating a safe place to gather.
A mechanism for gathering community should encompass all members of the community, that is why this simple concrete ramp was added to the structure. Dominating the left portion of the image you can also see stacks of wooden crates suspended by metal supports - these were to replace some of the walls in of one of the block structures from the initial axonometrics. The thought behind them was that they could be easily recycled if they we mechanically put together and our client Richard Leplastrier would appreciate this.
