Week 06 // Individual Project One Statement

Handcrafted / Intimate / Colourful / Heart
image: Helen Ma

 

 

Setting the Scene

Leading in to 2040, population growth in the inner Brisbane city suburbs has lead to intense pressure on urban infrastructure, housing, and fuel supply. Continual expansion of suburbia in a sprawling, shapeless pattern is no longer a viable option to address housing shortage.  Fuel shortage also means cars are no longer an efficient mode of transport.  The city plan has been reinvented to encourage the flourishing of concentrated intense town centres connected via transport corridors intermingled with land conservation and agricultural fingers. Dense urban nodes with strategic location of varying economic and community activity within the node have become the model for sustainable growth.

An aging population coupled with longer life expectancy has lead to an older workforce.  Active and healthier lifestyles due to medical breakthroughs and an enlightened understanding of the importance of maintaining optimum health has led to the decrease in lifestyle diseases and the increase in therapeutic procedures for enhancing health. An older workforce remaining in employment for longer requires continual professional development and upskilling to maintain knowledge in rapidly changing technology and systems.

Technology is integral to every part of the daily lives of the population. Virtual reality has become firmly enmeshed with physical reality as an overlay of interconnected data systems and networks allowing smart technology to automate, predict and coordinate many of our daily actions.

Paddington Central

Paddington transformed into a dense suburban town centre is connected to a number of similarly dense civic nodes strategically located throughout the Brisbane area. Paddington Central has been adapted and reinvented as a vital place of transition, coordination, communication and open knowledge sharing vital to maintaining the area's link with the greater network of intense civic nodes. It is a place where the community can gather, where individuals can collaborate with others, a place for discovering and sharing ways to enhance and enrich life in the community, a place that embodies heart, humility, conversation, discovery and detail. Community facilitators assist in the process of knowledge sharing and information dissemination using advanced data networks to coordinate customised and individually tailored information.

 

The adaptation of existing built form coupled with new interventions, strategic subtractions and additions aim to add loosely integrated layers to the built environment in order for ease of manipulation of rapidly changing elements. Paddington Central is an open, permeable, yet intimate and experiential space consisting of layers of meaning and giving additional colour to the lives of the community.

 

Facetted dome folded to represent activity intensive civic nodes

Week 05 // Architectural Possibilities

Week 05 examined the architectual propositions that might be possible from having discussed in the previous weeks the various scenarios around the future, sustainability and lifestyles.  Based on research regarding projected average age of population, population growth, predicted growth in various employment sectors (including health, education, and construction), a number of possibilities emerged including -

 

1. Collaborative community education centre coordinating area wide education facilitation strategies utilising existing infrastructure. Facilities otherwise idle and underutilised yet suitable for education purposes can be part of a network of existing infrastructure given additional use for education at all levels.  There will no longer be a need to develop individual facilities at each educational institution as an overarching framework coordinates a local network of adaptable spaces overseen by one overarching education centre.
 
2. Health and wellness centre concentrating on maintaining health, youthfulness and vitality rather than illness and disease. Health giving therapies, physiotherpay, meditation and nutrition and dietetics are the key health services provided with a focus on holistic health and maintaining youth and vitality.
    
3. Experiential event-based retail centre where community events, activities and classes are held where retail products are used to produce an outcome or experienced for entertainment and/ or learning purposes.  Activities can include cooking classes, film nights, arts and craft classes, functions and events, all activities within which potential customers can experience a product in context.
 
4. Automated Kit-of-Parts storage, service and replacement facility that would serve the main employment sectors of the community providing fast turnaround of employment tool kits for construction workers, healthcare workers, teachers etc. Kits are tailored to a person's employment needs, broken tools are repaired or selected for replacement and stored efficiently in a time-share manner limiting the amount of material goods needed overall.

 

Outcome is to embody heart, humility, detail and conversation

 



The coordinating heart of Paddington can be found at Paddington "Homeroom"

Week 05 // Reading Reflection : Architecture Dissidence

“When you stop moving, space flattens.” Ric Scofidio

 

 

All original photos of the ICA by Helen Ma

 

I found the article regarding Diller Scofidio + Renfro's approach to practice very intriguing. Diller suggests to think of space in temporal terms: in the dimension of time and movement and to accept that there is more to architecture than spacemaking but to consider architecture as event-making where perception / space / use / choreography / setting / relationships are all interwoven.

The article suggests that the anomaly of DS+R within contemporary architectural practice is the way the firm has maintained its experimental character despite the growing scale of its interventions and commissions.

The studio has a strong basis in research rigeur with a consistently high level of inquiry maintained and which is then able to feed into their larger projects that have a client and a budget.  Their research takes on different forms including crossing into the realms of feature film, art installation, theatre and writing. There is a strong desire in their studio to keep this part of the practice alive despite it being a financial cost to the studio overall as the added value derived and able to be filtered into their daily work which pays the bills is considered invaluable.

I find this interdisciplinary outlook and approach to be something very worthwhile to aspire to. It's important to consider design in a holistic manner as being capable of influence, collaboration and exchange with other creative and artistic endeavours.

Furthermore, the article was of additional special interest as I visited one of the buildings by DS+R on a recent trip to Boston.

The Boston Institute of Centemporary Art was one of my favourite locations I visited during my trip. The art museum designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro opened in late 2006. Located at Fan Pier on the waterfront the museum is such a wonderful art space full of light and transparency. Furthermore, I love a good stair and you can probably tell from my photos that I was a fan of all the stairs at the ICA! I loved the public space extending out over the water with beautiful views back towards Boston city. 



All original photos of the ICA by Helen Ma

 

Week 04 // People & Lifestyles

Week 04 explores the possibilities of what future lifestyles might be for our citizens in our future scenario.  Having the Suburban theme we start with our location - Paddington Central.  How might our future citizens interact with this site? We attempt to identify the key characteristics of the site and its relation to the greater Paddington area and the City.  Based on our individual exploration of the site it was agreed that Paddington Central is at a junction between the sporting and nightlife portion of Paddington and the daytime retail and cafe portion. We identified the site as a point of transition between night and daytime activities.

 

Our future vision starts to be formed on the basis that future population growth in the inner city suburb would place undue pressure on urban infrastructure, housing and services. The sub-theme of urban sprawl was identified as a driving factor in how we would address the site within Paddington. Our desire to explore densification in a linear concentration model as proposed by Hugh Barton and to redefine suburbia provided thought direction. How would we propose a solution with the possibility of no additional built form, or zero architecture??

 

We identify based on research into future employment trends that the growth sectors are health, construction and education. This became a basis from which a series of possible characters and what their occupations might be emerged. We explored how these different characters would live their daily lives with the integration of technology part of every task they perform and the possibility that the site may become the vital coordinating link between everyone in the Paddington community.

 

  

Identifying Paddington Central as a transition between night and day activities 

 

 

 

Identifying what a typical day might be for our citizens in a technology driven future.

 

Week 04 // Reading Reflection : Politics & Situationist International

Situationist International exhibition flyer [1989] by Jamie Reid

http://www.jamiereid.org

Concepts that emerged as relevant to our thought direction from this reading and being particularly striking -

* Architects whose concerns are not with the buildings that might be constructed from their designs.

* 'Paper architecture' consists in works which are put forward as works of architecture but which are never intended to be built; and indeed in most cases they could not be built.

* The view is that architecture can accommodate works where the thought contained in the work is of an architectural nature.

* How far from the built form of an edifice can architectural thought stray, whilst, arguably, still being considered architecture?

* Architectural work that does not consist in building.

* In opposition to modernism, seek to rid the world of a static notion of what constitutes architecture; replacing that notion or extending it to include systems of communication and methods of production.

Week 03 // Lecture Reflection : Sustainability

Design Reasoning : Principles & Context

Reproduced from Murray Lane's Lecture Diagrams

 

 

The lecture outlined how well informed design reasoning can provide clarity in the design process and produce outcomes that are responsive to key humanitarian, environmental and sustainability issues.  Identifying and forming guiding principles, sub-principles and patterns can provide well-reasoned and generous design outcomes with universal benefits that are sustainable in a holistic manner.

 

The idea that a sense of spirit encompasses all the elements that make up the realm of sustainability is an enlightened concept.  That architects and designers must consider any architectural proposition with how the human spirit might be nurtured is something to aspire to.

 



Week 03 // Reading Reflection : Shearing Layers

Diagram of the Six 'S's 

 

 



A building conceived as several layers of longevity of built components -

1. SITE -  the geographical setting, the urban location: site is eternal
2. STRUCTURE - the foundation and load-bearing elements : change is perilous and expensive so rarely attempted
3. SKIN - exterior surfaces and external cladding: change often due to improved material / systems technology
4. SERVICES - the working parts of the building : when change is needed outdated systems need to be accessible
5. SPACE PLAN - the interior layout of walls / ceilings / floors / apertures : can be changed with relative ease
6. STUFF - furniture and decor : can be easily and often changed

* Legitimises the existence of different design skills : architects / service engineers / space planners / interior designers all with different agendas.

* Longevity of buildings is often determined by how well they can absorb new Services technology.

* Design imperative: An adaptive building has to allow for the differently paced systems of Site, Structure, Skin, Services, Space Plan, and Stuff or the slow systems will block the flow of the fast ones, and the fast ones tear up the slow ones with their constant change.

An interior by iconic interior designer Tony Duquette : I interpret his "more is more" approach as an embracing of "Stuff" http://tonyduquette.com   Having completed studies in interior design and working as an interior designer and space planner over the past 7 years, I very much related to this reading identifying how the various layers that make up our built environment is important and relates with each other. The proposition that one should not go too far in embedding the six identified systems together as this leads to rigidity and inability to adapt to changing technology, climate and cultural expectations is an important lesson to consider.