Final Presentation and Poster

The Presentation

The Poster

Presentation Preparation

This week I have been working on my final presentation for Project 3. I worked on the model in Corel Draw and did it on the laser cutter, as a thought that the clean lines and ability to use acrylic would best represent my design.

I have also been working on my perspectives in google sketch up, which I am learning for the first time in this project. They are all working well except for the perspective of the user looking up from the bottom of the building through the open levels to the top. For some reason, the perspectives just don't seem to be working from that position, so I thought I would show the attempt on here.

Jesse suggested last week that I have curtains around the edge of the contemplation space, as in the Curtain house.

I thought that it would be a really lovely experience, but I wanted the contemplation space to be completely about the river, so I have left it open so that the first thing that users see when then get to the top is the surrounding site and river.

There was also a picture published by archdaily this week that showed exactly what I want the underside of my stairs to look like in the building. As they are such an integral part of the building, I didn't want users to be walking up a set of stairs with a flat ceiling above them. Rather, I want the ceiling above them to show what is happening above, with the ceiling sloping and curving with the shape of the underside of the stairs.

The rest of the process is going well, and I am looking forward to presenting on Wednesday.

Week 13 Design Process

This week I have continued to work on the design that I took into tutorials last week, as Jesse was happy with it in the last tutorial. He had said, however, that he thought that the top half of the building would be much lighter than I had designed it, so I particularly worked on that section.

Redone section of the top half of the library

I also did up my floor plans this week so that they are ready for the final presentation.

Although Jesse asked that I try and make the building go deeper into the river, I have researched the depth of the Brisbane River, and concluded that the depth at the point at which I am building could only be about 15 metres. The river is deepest at its narrowest parts, reaching a maximum depth of 30 metres, and gets shallower the wider the river gets, reaching its shallowest at 4 metres at the mouth of the river (http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/eserv.php?pid=UQ:10885&dsID=sargent-dgp-8-2.pdf). I did a rough section of the river and my building sitting in it to see how the scale worked, and I believe it is narrow and tall enough for the scale of the site.

Rough site section

I think that making it this scale has really tied back into my original idea of drawing attention to the importance of the river and the power it has. The library acts like a light house, drawing peoples attention to the river from all around the site.

This week I also took in a draft of my diagram that represents the project.

Jesse thought that the diagram only represented one of the ideas in my project, the idea of moving from dark to light, and that my diagram could express the whole concept much better. I will work on this for the final presentation.

Week 12 Design Process

This week I have continued working on the idea I had last week of a circular building that the user spirals around, moving through different experiences. Last week I mainly had ideas for the section of the library where books are stored, and thought that the contemplation, study and group sharing spaces could be located around the edges of the central library space. I discussed this with Jesse, and while he liked that idea, he suggested it might be interesting to look at the idea of moving from the darkness underwater up into the light. This idea would fit much more with my diagram of the spaces of human occupation and the space of the river's ecology. The area where the books are kept and the spiral of experiences with the water occurs is located below the river, and the areas where the entrance, administration and storage, as well as the three study zones are is above the water level.

Diagram of the library moving from dark to light

Section of the library (the bottom half is not shaded as it would be lit artificially, and the lighting has not been decided on yet)

I have positioned the three study spaces at the very top of the building to take advantage of the light. The individual study space is reached first, and the desks face inwards towards the centre of the building. In this level, the central hole through the building is not visible, as there is a full length wall. A staircase leads up to the group study level, where there is light coming in from all sides as in the level below, but the central space is open, and the desks are placed around the edge. The user then progresses up another staircase to the top level of contemplation, which is open and light, and is just made for people to walk around and view the river below, looking at it with the new perspective that the knowledge of the books has given them.

I also started working on some draft floor plans.

Draft floor plans

Week 11 Design Process

During the tutorial last week I showed Jesse my ideas about the different experiences possible with the water, and thought that it would be interesting if I could combine them all into one building. I started looking at placing one experience above another, as a lot of the experiences require the user to be at different levels in the water. I thought that it would work best if people spiraled around a circular building, progressing through different experiences. This way of moving would allow people to access different levels of water and experience in a way that flows and allows access to books on each level.

This layout would result in a series of circular floor plans, and when it comes to levels that are used for administration and storage, these floor plans could be divided up into sections rather than having uses split completely over different levels.

Layering of experiences and idea of spiraling down through building

Spiraling down through building and floor plan concept

Section showing different water experiences (Bottom level reflection, 2nd level water above, 3rd level large window  on wall, 4th level narrow window on wall, 5th level walking on grate above water)

Conceptual floor plan

The library space with the bookshelves is arranged around a central open space, so that when the user stands on the very bottom level and looks up, they can see through the holes on each level to the very top of the building. I found this image, and the central space is what I am trying to achieve, just slightly smaller and on multiple levels.

(unfortunately, this image was found on pinterest, and there was no reference to what building it is or who designed it)

As the user spirals around the building, they are also able to see the books on the book shelves from the page end rather than the spine, offering the user another interaction with the objects of the library.

Week 10 Design Process

The Assignment 2 presentations were last week, and were not as successful as I had hoped. I had started to look at how my concepts for the library would work, and allowed the technical side of circulation and staircases to dictate my design, and rather than managing to find a solution that could keep the integral relationship with the water and allow proper circulation, I had just created nothing spaces that had lost their main ideas. I decided to go back to the beginnings of my ideas for the library and work from there. The spaces that I submitted in Project 2 had lost their close relationship to the water and allowing people to experience that, so I focused on the different experiences that could be had with water and how they could be used in the building.

Vision experiences

Sound experience

Reflection experience

Jesse had said during the week 9 presentations that he thought that I was going to separate the library out into different pods of experience connected by walkways, and that he had thought that idea was a good one, so I attempted to combine that concept and the different experiences.

I also went back to my original diagram of the section of the river that Jesse had been particularly interested in, and which a relationship to had been missing in my week 9 presentation, so I looked again at how this diagram could be applied to the arrangement of spaces.

I also looked at the Blur Building by Diller & Scofidio, which Jesse had suggested I look at.

Although the building is not directly applicable to the library that I am attempting to design, I think it was really important because it allowed me to see just how provocative a building could be, and the sort of experiences that are possible. Manipulating the space so that one sense is affected above all of the others is an interesting idea that I am exploring in the above images, and I think I would like to carry that through the project.

During the tutorial I'll discuss these images with Jesse and work out if they are back on the right track, so that hopefully I can produce a more evocative building than I designed for Assignment 2.

Week 9 Presentation