Week Eight: Exemplars for my Project

Teruel-zilla / Mi5 Arquitectos + PKMAN in Teruel, Spain.

I find this a very interesting building in the way the structure buries itself into the ground to create a new urban topography. The landscaped roof allows the building to exist within the street without disrupting the existing urban fabric and allows for passers by to simply walk over it. The subterranean levels below consist of various multipurpose spaces including an auditorium that can also be used as a cinema or lecture hall, a large exhibition space that can also host events, a sports hall, a tourist information centre and a restaurant and bar.

I find the use of space interesting in the way that these large spaces have been designed to exist harmoniously within this urban setting. The building is successful in its integration with its surroundings.

These diagrams are very good at demonstrating the form and function of the building and how the different components come together.

Images: http://www.archdaily.com/246016/teruel-zilla-mi5-arquitectos/

Surry Hills Library and Community Centre by FJMT Architects in NSW, Australia.

This building involved close community consultation during the sketch design phase. 

"The key approach that emerged from these discussions was that the community wanted a facility that everyone could share. Rather than only a library or a community centre or childcare centre, it became clear that it was important to have all of these facilities together in one building, in one place." 

The building is a reflection of the community's values and represents a shared place where the community can meet and use in different ways.

 

This image is successful at demonstrating how the various passive technologies and building structure works.

Images: http://www.archdaily.com/57339/surry-hills-library-and-community-centre-fjmt/

Poetry Foundation - John Ronan Architects in Chicago, USA.

The buildings public functions—the performance space, gallery and library—are located on the building’s ground floor, while offices space are located on the second level. The aspects of this building that I am interested in are it's tectonics, materiality and form.

The courtyard garden entrance creates an urban sanctuary that mediates between the street and enclosed building through its use of transparent materials. Tectonically, the building is conceived as a series of layers that visitors move through and between. These layers, of zinc, glass, and wood, peel apart to define the various spaces of the building. 

Images: http://www.archdaily.com/189339/poetry-foundation-john-ronan-architects/

Week Eight: Summary of ideas for the "New Community Hub".

• Large generic space for a variety of activities - sports and recreation, dance and fitness, community gathering, conventions, markets, exhibitions, expos etc. This will form a connection to King George Square and City Hall.
• Retail in the form of community markets - connection to the current retail function of the myer centre site
• Cafe - for relaxation and social meetings in a quiet setting
• Greenspace for recreation and community garden - run by community
• Homeless Kitchen by night - run by community
• Child care - due to more people living in city and parents working during day - new childcare would be local and convenient for permanent/casual users
• Informal community learning facilities/study areas - card access for after hours

Week Eight: Site Identification

I have decided that the best place for a community centre within the Myer Centre site is Burnett Lane which runs parallel to Queen Street.

Burnett Lane serves as a suitable location for a community centre as it is close to Queen St - which means it is a populated site, but also provides a "calmer" scene than the rest of the site - which is beneficial to a community centre. With its laneway vibe, Burnett Lane creates a place for social gathering and meeting - creating a destination, rather than something that is passed by. 

At the moment I am considering this site in Burnett Lane: 

Burnett Lane Site = 44 x 20 m

Currently this site is quite run down on the Burnett Lane side, and is a JB HI-FI store on the Adelaide St side. This site presents opportunity for a new development and some retrofitting of the current building.

I am interested in the idea of designing a building that goes from Burnett Lane right through to Adelaide St, possibly with some sort of walkway through the building. By spanning the building right through the block, this allows for a new connection to be made between the streets, as well as creating two public access points / interfaces for the building.

 This transparency of the site also creates a new axis within the site, connecting on the lane behind the City Hall which leads onto Ann St. Through connections on both the ground and "mezzanine" levels, this axis could be continued into Queen St Mall. The community centre also functionally connects to City Hall, as both can be public gathering spaces, as well as King George Square, which can also transform into an area of social activity. 

As proposed in Project One, the new social hub will be just one of many new social activity centres popping up around the CBD. These areas are important in retaining the aspect of social inclusion in society, in a world where increasing technology hinders physical interaction and activity. Another proposed hub can be seen at the intersection of Albert and Queen Streets.

Week Seven: Functional Refinement

Coinciding with our ideas from project one, I am looking to do a mixed-use building that provides the community with facilities within the CBD (to avoid transportation) and to enrich the site. Our future vision saw that there would be many more people living within the CBD area in 2050 including more tourists, so throughout the 2020's (when this project will be based) would be a stage of starting to transform the CBD into an area that is more livable and visitable. This means the development of such community buildings and services to faciliate future residents and visitors.
I have got a few ideas about what this community building could provide, here is a mind map showing these ideas:

Week Seven: Possible Entities

In the redesign of the Myer Centre site my main ideas (carried on from the previous project) were:

• creating a mixed-use building, integrated with transport, retail, community areas and residential

• creating community hubs for social interaction/inclusion and social activities - including food production, sport, gathering spaces, markets, community stores and other recreational activities

• educational facility for all ages - based on shared learning about technology, social and cultural diversity, lifestyle skills, languages etc.

My vision for the site will be that it will encapsulate a colourful, diverse and local community.

Week Seven: Lecture Reflection

Yasu showed us a short video on the Greenland Migration project by Henning Larsen Architects. Although this project was in a different climate and remote location, it was very inspirational for my project. The architects' propose "a series of programs that functionally and politically inspire migration to Greenland". The series of programs have been masterplanned to create “interconnectedness” within the community. These projects were planned successfully to integrate multiple functions, and work to bring the community together in a cohesive way. Multi-functional buildings are sustainable socially, by bringing an assortment of people to the one area to interact in a variety of ways. They are also physically sustainable as their multi-purposeful spaces and flexible nature allows them to stay relevant in society over time.

A multi-functional development would activate the myer centre site by attracting a variety of people to the site. This development would have to be flexible and able to be transformed over time, as well as serve a variety of purposes in its current state.

Week Seven: Project Two Understanding

We are to create an architectural entity and place it within our imagined scenario in 2020. This is to be communicated like a story, showing the evolution of spaces through the eyes of a character/s, as well as showing how the building works within its context.

The 3 main aspects that the project includes are:

SCRIPT

• Reality - needs to be believable, based on the realities of today (future scenario is an extension of these)
• Creativity - imagination, logical senses

STAGE

• Purpose - justification and relevance of building in site
• Navigation - access, circulation, entrance (communication of these through story)
• Integrity - structural integrity, sustainable building, combination of elements to create a successful building

SCRIPT

• Presence and Identity - how building is perceived in its context
• First person experience - how realistic this is (how it works) in it's context

Week Six: Reflection on Exhibition and Crit

Exhibition:

Walking around the exhibition it was great to see each group's imagined scenario of what the future Brisbane CBD would look like. At a glance, and without reading the other group's posters in depth, it appeared as though some of the groups had similarly adopted a very sustainable vision for the future CBD, combined with a very strong technological presence. This involved the introduction of sustainable resources, sustainable sources of power and increased public transport. However, there were a few really different concepts presented, such as static nodes, increased connectivity and an urban utopia. Overall the quality of the presentations were good, and there were a range of presentation techniques. The most visually effective panels were ones which featured some sort of connecting graphic that linked all of the ideas together.

Crit:

The critique from the tutors was very short as we only had 2 minutes. Overall the 3 tutors seemed please with our ideas and were impressed that we had gone into so much detail with the new rapid transit pod system - by designing a network with routes and stations it showed that we really thought about how this would exist within the CBD and what sort of meaningful connections could be made. I believe this was a very strong point in our concept. 
It wasn't said by the tutors, but personally I believe we could have highlighted the community and social sustainability more in the second panel (maybe with a map of possible community hub areas). It was, however, alluded to in the fourth panel - in the 3D perspective of Queen St displaying the social interaction taking place within the greenspace in Brisbane square (community zone), as well as in the diagrams showing produce areas in the street and on buildings (community activity zones). This may or may not have been clear in the presentation.