EXP 3: Submission Links

Lumion Environment:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wwnqh912ieb9a3q/AAAH7O6xPC0002-z8tttrttYa

Sketchup Model:
Bridge - https://www.dropbox.com/s/93dovzb1rhpxemn/EXP3_z3464365_Ebony_Catalano.skp
Folly - https://www.dropbox.com/s/pwpt0bjlc7t6x53/EXP3_z3464365_Ebony_Folly.skp

EXP 3: Final Lumion Environment

Final Lumion Environment:

The image captures below depict my final Lumion environment, highlighting specific areas that relate to my theory. The concept behind the bridge was to create a physical space that pushes architectural and engineering theories to both teach and inspire students. 

View of both the folly and bridge from the valley floor: This image highlights the placement of both components causing the observer to question their structural stability. This is contradicted by the strong geometrical design, which architecturally depicts durability and strength. These challenging concepts cause one to develop their own ideas on how it is structurally supported, both educating students on engineering principles and inspiring their own thought.  

Placement of Bridge within Valley: The structure of the bridge appears to be wedged into the valley, highlighting the floor plan of the space. The bridge is focused around the circular centre that provides navigation paths throughout the school and meeting places for students. It uses a unique architectural design to create incidental spaces that students must navigate through to access different areas of the building. This facilitates their interaction, developing their ideas of architecture within their studies.  

View of the Underside of Bridge from Valley Floor: This image highlights how the bridge links all three sides of the valley and emphasises the floor plan inspired by Mies Van der Rohe. The development of the traditional architectural understanding of bridges and structural forms creates a unique building that inspires students to develop unconventional ideas. 

View of bridge from perpendicular valley, highlighting the outdoor recreational area

Open Meeting Room for Students, observed from the spiralling ramp: The architectural design of the school causes all staff and students to pass through the central spaces as they navigate throughout the school. This, in combination with placing the student meeting rooms in the central spaces, facilitates the interaction of students and staff. With the increased discussion students become open to more ideas, providing inspiration for the development of unique and groundbreaking ideas.

View of the Landscape from Centre Balcony: When exploring the structure one may notice the lack of windows throughout the workspaces and rooms. The conventional use of glassed windows has been developed to challenge architectural principles, instead creating open windows on each balcony. These windows are created by the corners of the triangular elements and the roof above to frame views of the landscape. They highlight to students that breaking the conventional uses of architectural objects can create unique experiences for the user.

Interior View of Library: This large open library provides a quiet place for students to study.

Folly and Moving Elements:

The final folly has a unique structural design, as it is cantilevered from the side of the valley by a beam that is small in relation to the size of the entire structure. Both the folly, and view of the bridge from it, are intended to cause students to question their structural stability and facilitate discussion during the monthly 'Dean's Lunches'.

The folly, moving elements and bridge are interconnected to provide a navigation path that highlights my theory to the observer. Firstly one must access the folly via the moving glass platform. Once on the structure the two panels on the folly open up to frame a view of the bridge, allowing one to observe its architecture and structural nature. Subsequently the three textured, triangular elements of the bridge open up to reveal the underside of the main structure. This highlights the floor plan of the school, where students can learn of its inspiration from Mies Van der Rohe's groundbreaking designs. Their observations throughout the navigation path allow them to learn principles of architecture and engineering, encouraging them to challenge everything they learn within the school to push boundaries within their studies.

Cantilevered folly located on valley floor

This short clip of the moving elements of the folly and bridge, shows the navigation path described above.

EXP 3: Final Sketch-Up Model

EXP 3: 36 Textures

Final Use of Textures in Model:

My chosen textures above were used within the final design to highlight the type and direction of movement of the bridge itself and people within it. 

1. Linear Texture
The texture used on the folly indicates the direction of linear movement of the moving panels, emphasising the effect they have when opening to reveal the bridge. It heights the experience of the movement and frames the view of the bridge from the base of the valley.

2. Rotational Texture
A rotational texture was used on the ramp that runs through the centre of the bridge. It highlights the spiralling nature of movement through the space, indicating navigation paths to the user. Furthermore the strong contrast with the geometrical and triangular shape of the building emphasises the circular centre of the structure.

3. Scalar Texture
A scalar texture was used on the bridge's exterior to create a distinction between the rigid structure and the moving elements. The texture itself exaggerates the sliding motion of these elements, drawing the observers eye to the underside of the bridge to explore its structure and shape.

EXP 3: 18 Perspectives

EXP 3: Mash-Up

EXP 3: Week 5 (Marking Schedules)

Marking Schedules:

The feedback and comments I received through peer marking during class are summarised and attached in the marking schedules below.

EXP 3: Week 3/4 (Draft 2)

Chosen Plan:

Mies van der Rohe's plan for the Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper provided the basis for my bridge design. In addition to the shape of the building suiting my valley, Mies van der Rohe's design coincides and contributes to my theory. His design pushed known engineering theories of the time, eliminating the need for the exterior walls to be load bearing and having each level supported by the central steel skeleton. 

This inspired my own plan and section to become the basis of my bridge design. Adapting the plan above, I created a floor plan with communal spaces at the centre of the bridge and the main workspaces branching from this centre. This creates a unique navigation path for students of the school, where they all must move towards the centre to move throughout the structure. 

Plan:



Section:

Draft Lumion Environment:

The draft Lumion environment provides the basic design and skeletal structure of the bridge. It allowed me to explore the relationship between the bridge and the valley, highlighting areas that needed to be altered to suit the conditions. There are no moving elements within my draft as I took this as an opportunity to explore all options. However after completing the draft I decided the best moving elements, highlighting my theory, would be the movement of the folly and base elements of the bridge.

View of bridge from valley

Top view of bridge, highlighting placement within the valley

View of bridge from opposite side

Relationship between bridge and developed folly

EXP 3: Week 2 (Draft 1)

Moving Elements Experimentation:
This basic sketch-up model of one of my perspectives was put into Lumion, allowing me to experiment with creating moving elements in my design. This model could be the basis of my folly where the moving elements have specific functions. The lower moving element creates a platform that moves between the valley floor and the folly, allowing the user to interact with the architecture. The upper moving element is placed to block any view of the joining valley, when observed from the folly. This moves to create different views and highlight aspects of the valley (and later the bridge) to inspire thought of both architecture and engineering principles and facilitate discussion during the monthly 'Deans Lunch'.

EXP 3: Week 1

Mashup:

Engineering can be seen as delivering knowledge by a direct route, however architecture has a special role in representing relationships of space and time. Engineers must to strive to do new original and creative work and not be content with the rote and unimaginative work which, while necessary, should be done as efficiently and effectively as possible. The considerations that inform an engineers mind are experience, the use of design standards as a way of passing on knowledge and know-how. This kind of know-how represents knowledge relating to some of the most fundamental features of nature. An engineer through their own experience, or by reading about the experiences of others, develop an intuitive insight and feel for a problem and the way solutions can be developed. The physical products of engineering can help us to access knowledge about the world, whereby contemplating space with the whole body and all senses, not just with the eyes and intellect, allows more awareness of conflicts. Engineering knowledge is genuinely cumulative, improved all the time by building on, and not re-writing, what went before. In this sense engineers starts to deal with the metaphysical (beyond the known), particularly once the human subject and its body have been introduced, we see immediately that this is at once a physical and conceptual entity, being and becoming, acting and thinking.

http://www.ingenia.org.uk/ingenia/issues/issue26/mccarthy.pdf (RED)

http://theoriesaboutengineering.org/howard_rase.html (BLUE)

http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=RAIEiMDLZAYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=architecture+and+social+inquiry&ots=7iK8vGuApK&sig=7Fxw1fm5dMuJc0W8JtTJoIMWgmE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false (GREEN)

Initial Lumion Valley:

My Lumion valley was inspired by the Wombeyan Caves and surrounding mountains in regional NSW. This landscape is characterised by a forested highlands with limestone caves and deep rock valleys hidden within. 

Deep rock valley with river below 

View of surrounding highlands region

Rock formations in the area

Resulting Lumion Valley:

Deep Rocky Valley in  Lumion

Thin rock channel with river below

EXP 2: Final Lumion Concept

Lebbeus Woods Concept - Disregard for Ground Plane: The disregard for the ground plane and defiance of gravity are architectural concepts prevalent within much of Wood's work. By interrupting or completely eliminating the ground plane his work questions the static and stable nature of architecture. The interaction of his designs and the ground create new spaces and impact the way people interact with his landscape and architecture.

SANAA Concept - Weightlessness: SANAA is known for their clean, pure geometric forms and the apparent weightlessness of their buildings is an architectural concept that stems from this. Through the arrangement of simplistic geometric shapes they create balanced and harmonious structures that appear weightless.

Finalized Electroliquid Aggregation: The interaction of weightless forms upon an undefined ground plane encourages physical exploration of both structures and landscape, generating thought and discussion between the students of architecture.

Images of Final Lumion Concept:

Image 1: Overview of both monuments and the meeting place between them

Image 2: Upstairs level of the SANAA monument
The darkened underside of the overhanging elements contrasts the weightless concept of the structures. The fall of dark shadow on the ground plane create somewhat private spaces for students to work alone and develop their individual thought.

Image 3: View of the Wood's monument from one of the smaller meeting platforms
The unusual ground plane of the raised river bed becomes the meeting place for architecture students, where this abstract setting encourages physical exploration of the three platforms. The physicality of bringing students together on the platforms facilitates discussion and inspires thought. 

Image 4: View of the Wood's monument, with the medium texture highlighting the floating element

Image 5: SANAA monument with darkened faces to emphasise shadow
Each monument interacts with multiple ground planes, prompting individuals to explore the relationship between each structure and its surrounding landscape. The use of the monument is unrestricted, allowing each user to interact with the structures in a unique way.

Link to Lumion Models in Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7r7z0qc44yi7bpo/gk510KVYx2

Link to Model in 3D Warehouse: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=uff02b4f2-9e3d-4034-b94f-4450bb98eede