Monday 20 August 2012

The Honeycomb Stairs: development

This page shows not only the honeycomb stairs juxtaposed with their dystopian city context, but also the complex geometries needed to create the stair, the way a foot would meet the surface of the steps, the texture applied to the stair and the initial inspiration, a honeycomb.

Rush Hour Stairs

Wednesday 15 August 2012

The Honeycomb Stairs

Done in ArchiCAD (both as a model and on a layout sheet) with touchups in Photoshop.
The layout sheets on ArchiCAD seem really useful as we initially had the problem of Photoshop rasterising all our work- ArchiCAD keeps everything as a vector. We've all definitely improved with ArchiCAD, over the past two weeks!

Monday 6 August 2012

Group 14 Peer Review

Dystopian: A mechanical, moving stair. Clicking gears. A sense of rawness.
Utopian: A fractal, calming stair. Incremental growth. Organic.
Focusing on these dualities, KripZ architects (Theja, Qiukang and Umer) explained their project, Between 2 floors, incredibly well, making it very easy for our group to understand what they have been up to for the last 2 weeks. Their presentation focused on two very delicate and beautiful sets of stairs, and their accompanying portfolio really demonstrated their ability to use ArchiCAD.

The city is dystopian. The city stairs were mechanical, focused on scale and rotation, and really expressed the rawness of the materials. Gears and chains made the stairs elaborately wind up and up, similar to the gears of a watch, which KripZ examined for inspiration. Raw materials such as iron were integrated with the structure, which fits with the idea of what we would define a dystopian city to be. We can imagine a world where production is the key and the humble citizen is of lesser importance than the continual movement of the manufacturing line. Their sketch page showed a number of thoughts that have been used in the detailing of the stairs, and how each component is assembled together to ensure that the stairs work well. KripZ grasp of ArchiCAD was really apparent in the detailing. They designed each individual piece themselves: learning how to use the mesh and extrusion tools to a high level, and thus producing a stunning 3D model. We were quite in awe by this attention to detail, skill and the delicate nature of their dystopian structure.

The island is utopian. Inspired by fractal architecture, the island stairs used two similar shapes and repeated them, focusing on incremental growth. This use of repeated self-similar patterns created an interesting organic form, which was supposed to give a sense of calmness and peace as one ascended the stairs. We also saw how much KripZ had learnt when it came to ArchiCAD. The paua shell texture on these stairs not only related to their overall island setting, but also showed us that they were aware of how to import and edit materials in ArchiCAD. The concept and execution of this utopian stair case were both very successful.

The idea KriptZ used for utopia and dystopia was very respectable, with a clearly contrast between the geometrical shape of dystopia and the organic style of utopia. Both stairs have taken account of the human scale which gave us the dimensions of each stair. There is not much we can fault them on, as the group did exceedingly well with their stairs. Perhaps they could have shown us a bit more research on hotels, and fixed up the few spelling errors on their presentation sheets! Overall, we were really impressed by KriptZ work and look forward to seeing their progress in the future.





GIF Animation

Sunday 5 August 2012

Le destin fabuleux d'une plante

Since one of the main themes of our overall hotel idea is escape, I thought about a particular storyline in the French film Le destin fabuleux d'Amélie Poulain, in which she steals her father's beloved garden gnome and has photos taken of it in destinations all over the world to send back to him. She does this in order so that he will feel motivated to go travel.
With this in mind I took my plant for a walk, thinking about how creating motivation to travel is really a motivation to escape.

Plantroom sections



Sectional view of the plantroom made in 3D

Sectional view of the plantroom made in Photoshop


Sectional view of the second plant room done with ink pen and water colour pencil on water colour paper. The bamboo complements the linear elements of the overall structure, and in conjunction with the bonsai tree create a peaceful atmosphere. The dark back ground represent the dystopian site of the city on the outside.

Animation


Hotel Brief


All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

Why do we go on holiday? It is to escape. To a place we can leave behind our everyday lives and live in a dream for just a moment. Somewhere we can feel different to our norm: a place where we can create a temporary new reality.

With this in mind, Studio L.I.M. aims to create two hotels in both the Auckland CBD and on Waiheke Island, which contrast with their respective sites and instead take elements of the other. We want to create an atmosphere of difference: looking at getting the feeling of one site and incorporating it into the ambience of the hotel on the other, and vice versa. We want to play with illusion, and things not being quite as they seem. We want to explore light and shadow. We want to examine what it is to live communally and in isolation. We want to contrast utopias with dystopias, and look at our day-to-day realities as dystopian, and our hotels as utopian. We want to create space that people will enjoy.

We want to create an escape.

The island site


The island site: a geometric, technological hotel which is not quite as it seems.


The island is quiet and monotonous. An expensive ferry trip away from the excitement of the city, the island has a sense of isolation. Silence.
In a place where wildlife rules, one may wonder what we are doing here, when we could be among more of our own in the city. 

Small towns means no new faces and gossip spreads like wildfire. Secrets don't exist. Nosy neighbours peer over their fences. One must fit the social constructs. Do things the island way.
In a lonely, controlled world like this, all we want to do is escape. Somewhere with the hum of life, the noise and the smell of people all around. Where there are bright lights and quick rewards to our senses. Amusement. Fun. Friends. The deep cacophony of loud base. The high pitched hum in ones ear afterwards. Deception. Narrow streets and broken lights, not all is as it seems in the city. Adrenaline.

Where the world is quiet, all we want to escape. To a place where we can live on the fast lane.

Our concept for the island site hotel is to have a very rigid design which is not quite as it seems. High tech and bold, this hotel should be a little different from the norm. We want to capture the atmosphere of the city in the island site hotel, the grid, the shadows, the excitement. We want to create a space where people can feel as if they are part of something greater. We want to create a utopia for the lonely island dweller.

The city site


The city site: a culturally inspired, organic hotel within a high-tech, modern setting.

The city is grey and bleak. Its fumes rise slowly into the air polluting everything around it. Permeating the landscape. Asphyxiating it.
The throngs of people push through each other to get to their respective destinations. Everyone is going somewhere. Everyone is rushing. Everyone looks only at their feet and their destination and not at the beauty of the world around them.
The noise is suffocating. The loud hum of traffic. The honks of agitated drivers. The high-pitched chatter and squealing giggles of shoppers. The rustle of coins. The drunken man's loud protests. The beggars demands. The silence of the crowds that ignore him; it speaks a thousand words.

In a cramped world like this, all we want to do is escape. Somewhere open and airy, with plenty of light. Somewhere free, where we can feel isolated, just for once. Somewhere which takes us back to our roots and reminds us of the land as it once was, or could have been if we hadn't come and placed stone, brick and steel on it. Somewhere we can escape from the failure that is the city.

Our concept for the city site hotel is to have a hotel in the inner city which has the atmosphere of an island. We are trying to capture the ambiance of Waiheke island and place it in the heart of Auckland's CBD. To do this we are looking at incorporating less refined materials and organic shapes. We want an open plan building with lots of lighting, a space where people don't feel crowded. A hotel where the visitor can have isolation, instead of constant interaction. An escape from the rush and crowded conditions of the city. A utopia for the city dweller.

EDIT: We have since decided that we will not swap the hotels, i.e. the Waiheke site will hold the Waiheke inspired hotel, not the city inspired hotel. In this way the traveler will have to undertake the journey, which we see as a fundamental part of our design, instead of just walking a few blocks to reach the hotel.
Please note therefore that some of the reviews of our earlier work do not have this change in place.

Saturday 4 August 2012

Final Plant Rooms

Here are images of our final plant rooms, from various angles and elevations.
























Here are our concepts:

Plant room 1, Waiheke site: This plant room is inspired by the city. From the exterior, it appears like a solid rectangular prism, a simple shape with a very linear aesthetic to it. However, on the interior, there are moveable curved shelves and partitions with a dizzying, almost spiralling pattern engraved on each. Slots in the exterior façade and holes in floor allow the curved partitions to be moved- whether the space is to be divided differently simply due to taste or because some of the plants have grown into them. When the holes aren't being used by the partitions, they act as a drainage system for overflowing water. The linear pattern on the façades of the plant room make it appear as a solid, as one wall is the inverse of its opposite. This gives the plant room a sense of illusion and mystery, something that can be felt in a city. The linear aesthetic also gives us a grid like notion which reminds us of the planning of an urban space, and these linear façades will create grid like shadows on the interior, making it darker and more exciting, once more trying to gain the ambience of a city.

Plant room 2, city site: This plant room is an example of organic appearing exoskeleton architecture. The abstractness of the façades contrasts with the overall cuboid form of the building. We can imagine this plant room being constructed out of organic materials such as bamboo. The floor and ceiling of the plant rooms have irregular shaped pieces stuck into them, complementing the irregularity of the façade. This plant room has a very open and light feeling to it, something that we were aiming for as this is the atmosphere we experienced when on Waiheke Island. This also gives a lot of space and light for plants to grow to their full potential. The rods of the façade are slotted into holes, which can also be used as drainage for any over-run water from the plants. The texture on the floor is made up of light, straight lines, which mimics the lines of the façade but in a more subtle, open way.

Outcomes from this workshop
Over all, we were quite happy with our progress with this workshop. It was commented that we should have shown human figures in our section drawings and thought more about the scale of our plant rooms. These are points that we will remember and employ in our work from now on. We got quite good results over all, particularly in the theory, architectonics, and form and space of our designs. We feel that we learnt quite a lot in this workshop, particularly in relation to laser cutting, the program Adobe Illustrator and in making spaces that will create particular atmospheres. We thoroughly enjoyed this work shop and hope we only keep improving.

Wednesday 1 August 2012

Lu-Man-Riches review of our work

Here is a link to Lu-Man-Riches review of our dystopian and utopian photo manipulations and sections: Lu-Man-Riches Peer Review