EXP 3 - SUBMISSION

School for Design & Architecture


SKETCHUP




LUMION

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5e0gGhCWQWNOWl6TDJXMW1fWWc 

The entrance from the Square House draws comparison to traditional Japanese architecture which largely sparked contemporary movements in design toward sustainability and modular construction. 

The SE corner extrudes out past the column supports. The angularity of the plan produces a stark contrast to the curvy bridging. This is to make the architecture visually diverse and add an element of playfulness to nurture occupants experiences. In future, this may extend the building's life as there is reduced chance for replacement.

The bridge joins the upper level of the Square House where learning spaces (study rooms, common area) are located. This encourages co-mingling between design disciplines in the hope of future collaboration. 

The geomteries of the plan coincide directly to the surrounding features - built and natural - to create enclosing planes. Within this angular plan, there is a careful placement of fixed elements such as walls to make the structure easily re-arranged, renovated or deconstructed.

  

The formal teaching spaces are visually separated on the interior to the studio space but physically, they are only partially separated. This is to re-imagine the 'cafe' spaces that helped to glorify the Beuax-Arts pedagogy in Architecture and allow students quiet, seclusion to discuss whilst also symbolically removing division between creative and 'correct' student experiences. 

The north wall is clad entirely in adjustable louvres which work on the principles of passive solar shading and heating. The material is chosen as with exposure to the elements, it will improve with age. Modular construction will allow for ease of inevitable replacement. 

Individual work-space modules that make up the wall allow openness to the remaining space which is then more versatile and flexible to use.

The modules on the roof allow for natural lighting all day and are openable for ventilation. The contained spatial volume becomes very 'free', with openings on all sides.

The adaptive facade on the learning centre envelop uses simple, modular construction to facilitate passive solar shading whilst supplying a natural, fractal aesthetic, typical of sustainable design. The north facade is made up of glazed walls to supply natural light to office spaces, gallery, lecture theatre and student commons minimising need for artificial lighting. 

Office spaces are highly sustainable in design. They embody the notions of integrating spaces with through repetition in design in order to negate overuse of available space and are adaptive to change, with bolted together, lightweight walls. 

TEXTURES IN MODEL

This texture is placed on the underside of the pedestrian bridging between the teaching and learning centre. It highlights the contrasting rectilinear and curvilinear geomtetries converging to insinuate smooth motion between the functionally and physically separate spaces. 

This texture was used to represent grass on the green roof above the bridging and learning centre to draw attention to the materiality of the complex. All the structures and finishes are made from low embodied-carbon materials with limited use of concrete in particular. 

This texture was imposed onto the flooring of high-use circulation areas. It has multi-directional vector lines that suggest motion as well as a regular pattern that appears durable and does not draw focus from the rich, natural texture of the timber used extensively 

EXP 3 - TEXTURES

CUSTOM TEXTURES

Record of attendance to final tutorial

EXP 3 - MOVING ELEMENTS

ADAPTIVE FACADE

The chosen moving elements are placed on the exterior envelope of the structure so that the internal plasticity from open-plan design can be maintained. They are made of modular components designed to increase sustainable, passive design through regulating natural light and ventilation. Their shift allows the envelope to be opened at an adjustable level and function automatically off of information from sensors in the building. 

1. LOUVRES / AWNING

The row of vertical louvres is set on an actuator / pulley system which allows it to move upwards as shown, enabling it dual functionality as both louvres and an awning. This is especially important for passive shading because as the angle and direction of the sun changes (especially for the north facade) it will shield occupants from glare, or allow an abundance of natural light depending on conditions. 

2. 'BASKET-WEAVE' SKIN

The skin is made up of wooden panels aligned in stacked rows along the separated envelope on the learning centre. Once again, the function of this element is to control light entering the building however also serves to help regulate ventilation through breeze filtering. The skin is set on rotational actuators at the edges of panel joints and as the motor arm twists, the angle between panels adjusts. The pattern of movement is also adjustable. In the above graphic, 2-panel planes are alternated in and out from the envelope datum; they then retract to the flattened layout. 

EXP 3 - THEORY

PRINCIPLE THEORY

MASH-UP

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235218510_Adaptive_Architecture_-_A_Conceptual_Framework

2. http://www.archdaily.com/785820/how-to-improve-architectural-education-learning-and-unlearning-from-the-beaux-arts-method

3. http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/18/five-reasons-to-adopt-environmental-design

The idea of collaboration within architectural schooling coincides perfectly with the reality that all architectural firms function due to design collaboration. This pedagogical field, like its practice, is open for innovation and experimentation. A reintroduction of the informal Parisian café style of design discussion and collaboration would allow architecture schools to foster architectural innovation. 

The Beaux Arts period in Paris had four primary elements: the Ecole, private ateliers, the Salon, and café life. Contemporary architecture schools maintain many of the core ideas of the Beaux Arts method, yet schools today have lost informal café aspect and with it the spirit of discussing design in a more informal setting. If we dismantle the rigid hierarchy and need for competition and recreate the informal café style of architectural discussion and innovation in contemporary architecture schools, then they would become better environments for learning design and environmental sustainability.

The concerns of the current avant-garde and those of environmental architects meet in nature. After the rigors of the Modern Movement, during which nature-as-model was regarded with great ambivalence, we have returned, on the basis of deeper understanding, to new kinds of nature worship. 

It is the particularity and the dynamism of nature—its capacities to repeat without repeating and to evolve, capacities that have evaded mechanical mass production—which are now within our ability to imitate in material culture. Adaptive architecture is concerned with buildings that are designed to adapt to their environment, their inhabitants and occupants, [it resolves] more of the contradictions between High Tech and environmental practice by leaving the High Tech’s visibility behind. [Adaptive structures] have a number of elements that re-occur across the design space. The re-use of modules...has a long history in architectural design...they are designed to be removed and re-located. The governing ideas for both the site and the [building is] in large part derived from climate and topography. Adaptations have impact on the environment that architecture encloses. The form of a building, however, is crucial to its environmental performance, as are its orientation and materials.

“Semiotic structures are binary, hierarchical, closed… . Matter is literally riddled with properties, dissymmetries, inhomogeneities, singularities… Matter is, in short, active, dynamic and creative." Individuals might then be empowered to change architectural layout manually, to combine the re-configurability of different units to establish different architectural topologies, or the building might respond to them in a particular way automatically. Designed specifically for inhabitant intervention... inhabitants will be able to move, rotate and re-position architectural elements

SUMMARY 

If the mash-up is to be distilled into a grouping of the issues and principles raised, we might obtain an Adaptive Design Theory that manifests in modular construction, design for sustainability and design planning in close response to situation. In terms of developing spaces that will adapt to the changing architectural curricula, the building's assembly will enable a heightened degree of flexibility in that objects within an open plan will be adjustable to fit the desired function. A greater porosity can then be achieved within plastic spatial topologies of the new structure, which target changing programmatic needs moving into the future. Form, therefore, flows from adhering to the site fabric; a spatial order is not fixed due to the delineation of spatial division via configurable, internal elements. 



PERSPECTIVE DRAWING


1-POINT 

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS 

PLAN DRAWN FROM SITE CONSTRAINTS

OBJECTS ARE MADE TO MOVE

FORM COMPOSED OF MODULES

PROGRAM RESPONDS TO SITE

OCCUPANTS ARE CLOSE TO NATURAL SURROUNDS

DYNAMISM IN ARCHITECTURAL FORM

OPENNESS IN PLAN

SOLID ELEMENTS ARE NOT FIXED

VARIETY IN FORM

PLASTIC TOPOLOGY

ADAPTATIONS HAVE IMPACT ON THE ENCLOSING ENVIRONMENT

SITE IS GENERATOR OF FORMS

RECURRING ELEMENTS ALONG STRUCTURE

ORIENTATION IS VITAL FOR SUSTAINABLE DESIGN

PRIVATE, SECLUDED SPACE BRINGS 'CAFE' ASPECT 

DESIGN FOR FUTURE DECONSTRUCTION

ASYMMETRICAL STRUCTURES PROVOKE CREATIVITY

TWO-POINT 

EXP 3 - BRAINSTORM

RESEARCH AND IDEA EXPLORATION

SOURCES OF INSPIRATION

http://www.designboom.com/architecture/steven-holl-speaks-about-the-completed-porosity-block-chengdu/

http://www.archdaily.com/787229/woha-unveils-fragments-of-an-urban-future-for-the-2016-venice-biennale

http://www.archdaily.com/785820/how-to-improve-architectural-education-learning-and-unlearning-from-the-beaux-arts-method

http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/18/five-reasons-to-adopt-environmental-design

http://www.archdaily.com/tag/unified-architectural-theory/

http://www.archdaily.com/tag/radical-pedagogies

INITIAL BRAINSTORM


POLYMER

ˈpɒlɪmə/

noun

a substance which has a molecular structure built up chiefly or completely from a large number of similar units bonded together

Delineation and deconstruction of spatial boundaries between public and private areas.

A greater porosity in the arrangement of buildings - concerning their connection to other structures, the surrounding environment and the internal spatial order - creates an ease of accessibility that promotes more fluidity between spaces. This encourages an increased level of activity in users that boosts a sense of community by directing circulation through spaces that give a sense of openness and unity.

In the focus on increasing the ratio of public to private, the individual's response to less personal space can be discomforting. In order to counteract this change, users stress can be reduced by making internal spatial volumes enlarged and adding aesthetic value in two primary additions. Firstly, giving formal qualities that mimic natural geometries to produce a kind of bio-architecture. Secondly, to complement the first quality, facilitating open-air spaces and integrating green structures, which add significant psychological benefits and increases productivity. It also helps to integrate any vertical structures with the horizontal ground plane and surrounding structures via textural and chromatic continuity across the suburban fabric.

Park Royal, Singapore (WOHA Architects)

The built result of combining the strategies for making this inflection on architecturally porous structures is an organic, flowing form whose internal volumes blur spatial divisions. To encompass the amalgamation of functional requirements, the overarching principle demands a polymerization of architectural elements in order to create a singular urban fabric. The theory behind this requires repeating elements along the frame of a structure to meld it with the surrounding material. 

A blurring of spatial divisions, internally and externally.

Existing examples of this idea occur in nature in coral reefs, bee hives and lung tissue. A circulation diagram would read as arterial, weaving between the 'organs' of the building that are the core, connecting spaces both in plan and section.

To apply this theory to a school of architecture requires an acknowledgement that the space designated per member of the school would be split into communal area and individual, private area. Inspiration for the breakdown of curricula and spatial requirements to meet the learning, teaching and social needs of those involved was drawn from the 'Beaux Arts' method. This method was implemented in the successful Parisian schools of architecture.

"The Beaux Arts period in Paris had four primary elements: the Ecole, private ateliers, the Salon, and café life. The Ecole was the stiff, traditional study of classical painting and architecture ... In the small independent ateliers students learned directly under a “master” with all the success of the students reflected directly back on the master; success breeding success, creating a strict hierarchy. The annual Paris Salon was the show in which the best works as chosen by a jury were displayed to the public. Lastly, the Parisian life of cafes was the informal extension of the ateliers and the Ecole, in which people came together to discuss design."

Many contemporary design schools base their education strategies upon the Beaux Arts method but seem to neglect the latter aspect - the 'cafe' aspect. I think that here at UNSW, there is a huge potential to further develop this kind of culture within the architecture program. It would provide a platform for clarification, consolidation and exploration within architectural ideas and design that would serve an extraordinary purpose in nurturing each member's own creativity and originality. Students gain the opportunity to truly experiment with new concepts within a collective sphere of peer-driven critique.

Now, whilst there cannot be a direct translation of café life into the Kensington campus, the design can facilitate an 'appropriation' of the concept. In practical terms, this would result in the deconstruction of a spatial hierarchy to provide more area to forum space. Formally, structural elements would be limited to give an overall sense of openness. 

Therefore, through increased emphasis on this 'new' school, UNSW will be breeding a culture that aims to evolve into the future directions of architectural practice. It will do so by raising a unique breed of confident, forward thinking architects as well as pioneering and exhibiting construction methods (specifically utilising green architectural systems and design for porosity). Sustainability will inevitably be a major element of the building's planning. 

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - R. Buckminster Fuller

EXP 2 – SUBMISSION

WEEK THREE

ELECTROLIQUID AGGREGATION – FINAL CONCEPT

1. INTERSECTING SPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS 

+ 

2. FORM GENERATED TO FIT SITUATION

=

SEAMLESS INTEGRATION BETWEEN STRUCTURE AND SURROUNDS

Through combining the two initial concepts, the principle of having uninterrupted transitions between spaces surrounding the stop was produced. This includes the connection of platform to street, the university and the greater urban fabric but also the connection between the light rail vehicle and the platform. The predominant intention is focused on providing users a commuting experience that is smooth and pacifying. The fluidity in moving around the platform serves to illustrate the incorporated theme of technology as it draws attention to the sleekness and efficiency of the public transport system.

The aggregation was developed through the idea of tension between adjoining spaces, which is common in both initial concepts. In the first concept, the word 'intersecting' evokes a sense of a junction between spaces and this relates to the light rail stop in that the platform is the intersection for multiple circulation pathways. Spaces are merged into one larger space by having them intersect. As a result, tension is eased as circulation between spaces becomes unbroken and flowing. This is a vital part of the design's functional value.

In the second, the form is generated in response to the site and so the form reflects the space around it. By extension, the adjacent space must reflect qualities of the form as well. This leads to an interdependent relationship between form and fabric which blend to create a homogenous volume of both structure and space. 

Therefore the final design has to blur spatial boundaries by fitting seamlessly into its setting both visually & physically – in form – and functionally – allowing ease of accessibility through clearly defined circulation routes. The resulting station is a transparent medium through which staff, students and visitors move in and around, that reflects the overarching technological themes of efficiency, modernity and compatibility.

CUSTOM TEXTURES – LIGHT TO DARK

36 textural experiments to represent the gradient from light to dark










































TEXTURES USED


LIGHT 

THIS WAS USED TO REPRESENT A GRATE SEPARATING THE EDGE OF THE PLATFORM AND MAIN WAITING AREA. I BESIDES THE GEOMETRIC SIMILARITY TO MESH, THE TEXTURE SHOWS INTERSECTING AREAS AND I WANTED TO CARRY THIS CONNOTATION ACROSS TO THE DESIGN

MEDIUM

THIS WAS PUT ON THE FLESH-LIKE ROOF, MADE FROM METALLIC MESH. I FOUND THAT WITH THE SKETCHUP SURFACE AND THE WAY THE 2D GRAPHIC BEHAVED ON THE CURVILINEAR FORM GAVE AN EFFECT THAT ACCENTUATED THE FLOWING FORM AND HELPED TO CREATE TENSION IN THE CONTRAST MADE WITH OTHER ELEMENTS LIKE THE FLOOR PLANE, VERTICAL COLUMNS AND RECESSED PLATFORM EDGE.

DARK 

I USED THIS TEXTURE ON THE EDGE OF THE PLATFORM. THE TEXTURE HAS A FUNCTIONAL AESTHETIC AND THIS WAS DESIRABLE TO HAVE ON THE AREA THAT CONNECTS PASSENGERS AND TRANSPORT, THE PRIMARY FUNCTION OF THE STATION. ITS TONE ALSO HIGHLIGHTED THE EDGE OF THE PLATFORM AND CAUTION LINE TO ASSIST THE SEAMLESS EXPERIENCE OF USERS.


LUMION FINAL RENDERING


https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5e0gGhCWQWNVEx3aXQ2R25DWXM 

BLENDING FORM WITH FABRIC

INTERACTION WITH SURROUNDING ENVIRONMENT – SHADOWS FROM TREES PLAYS ON WALKWAY AND CEILING. EXHIBITION OF CUSTOM TEXTURES TOGETHER

NIGHT-TIME RENDERING – LIGHTING ILLUMINATES ABOVE AND BELOW PLANES OF PLATFORM TO GIVE THE ILLUSION OF A FLOATING SPACE BETWEEN THE RAIL CARRIAGE AND STREET LEVEL

GEOMETRY IN PLAN AND RELATION TO NEARBY STRUCTURES

ASPECT SHOWING CIRCULATION ROUTE FROM UNIVERSITY MAIN PATH – LIGHT RAIL VEHICLE IS BROUGHT UNDER ROOF, COMBINING CARRIAGE AND PLATFORM SPACES AND INTEGRATING THEM INTO THE WIDER AREA