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.