Design 'Waking Up': Design: Topic 3: Gathering

After I have written my brief for my floor, I have decided on my other 4 floors.

I gathered all the briefs and requirements of each building.

After summarizing these I realize that I need to change some parts of the brief to fit my building.

For the mid semester crit…

We had to do a collage showing the overall idea of the design and how 5 floors link together.

Also I have chosen the site…

I have chosen this site because it has a park in front that helps to portray my theme of peacefulness. Especially for the observatory (5^th floor)

And the buildings on the right wasn’t high (as my designed building gets bigger at the top which means I need bigger space at the top)

I have labeled…

Food – orange

Hotels/ accommodation – red

Business - blue

10minutes walk around the building that I designed. I only labeled these 3 catagories because I thought it was most important relating to the building.

My building only contains a small café with a baking studio so it doesn’t provide a full meal so I need a place where its close to other restaurants and café that the custormers/vistors could go easily after or before doing the activities in the building.

Also rockclimbing and watercolour studio and also the baking studio could interest tourists. Plus observatory and bookshop/reading room can provide a quiet peaceful time for the people who live near the area escaping from the industrial world. There are many accommodation around so it would be easier to gather people.

Also I have drawn some quick sketches… concepts of the exterior

In the holidays:

I need to finish most of the work except the laser cutting part which I need to hand it in before Wednesday –so Tuesday will be the best idea.

Before laser cutting I should talk to my tutors about the building first.

I started doing more concepts.

I played with different shapes first inspired by Tetris but I extended more into more complex shapes.

First I was looking at different exterior shapes. To see which looks more balanced..

But the flow the interior spaces were more important so I started looking at the interior in more detail. I arrange the floors to meet the brief the most.

After that I tried putting the stairs. How people are going to travel around the building. One floor to another. I couldn’t see much with this small drawing so I started drawing more detail view of the interior.

I sketched how the interior will look like. (in section view) I could see the relation between floors better. I have combined 3 different floors (observatory, café,bookshop/reading room) into 1 theme because they all shared a similar theme. 3 different floors but they link together well.

I have made a quick mock up of this…

before doing the mock up I have tried drawing the overlay of the floors. shown above.

First day back…

After talking to the tutors I have changed my design a bit.

I got rid of the huge rockclimbing space inside. And started arranging the shapes in different ways.

Looked at Daniel Libeskind’s buildings.

I started developing more…

Also done the small model to see the 3D shape.

After doing the small model I could figure out the scale 1:50.

Laser cutting plan

Produced laser cut final...

I didn't like the burn look so I tried using marker (darker brown) to change the colour of the wood so the burn look is not shown more clearly. shown below.

Final model process...

I haven’t laser cut all the parts of the model because I wanted to show different atmosphere and mood of each area. Also I have used 3 different materials for the model.

Transparent paper for glass

Cardboard for concrete

MDF for wood

I used more glass as the building went up because I wanted to the building to be separated from the industrial busy world. So at the top, the park (greenery) and the peaceful sky can be seen. Also by having the glass for the roof, it allows the maximum sunlight to the floor especially for the observatory area. I have designed the observatory floor as a small park. Trees and lots of plants. Place where people can relax. Therefore there aren’t many objects on the floor, there are lots of negative space to portray the idea of calm and relaxing.

For the baking studio and café, I have used wood. I haven’t done the full glass wall because I thought I would ruin the cakes. Temperature in this area is quite important. However some natural sunlight was needed so I have made a pattern shown below to allow some sunlight through. This pattern came out better than I thought. This part is my favourite part of this model. I like the way how the pattern shows up on the floor.

Watercolour studio is divided into 2 parts. Quieter place for working and exhibition area. I have placed more walls for the exhibition area so they can exhibit more work. Rectangular shape so people can be more focused.

Bookshop/ reading room. Natural light is good for reading area but not good for the books so placed the windows where it won't effect the books. It doesn't face the book directly.

Large big space to allow people to move around freely.