Week NINE - learning my group member has Tinnitus

Moving forward from the cross crit and suggestions from Dr. Brand and Dr. Ferdinand, I did a sketch reorganising the library (too messy to read now) that the group was happy with. From there, I translated the sketch into a digital plan.

After a long discussion, we concluded that our new keyword for the library would be Exploration. Under the theme of exploration, the fragmented corridor looks to draw user through the space and encourage visual and spatial exploration. Through the spatial exploration, they would find and acquire knowledge through passive or active learning.

The park space would function the same way through the roles of the follies as a device to encourage discovery and interaction between people.

PLAN ITERATIONS

After moving on from divide to connect, the roles of individual study space wasn't as important now and so we introduced both group and individual study spaces. This allowed for more individuals to have access to study spaces as well as giving people the option to choose their study environment under a group or individual setting.

The plan iteration above plays with organising the group and individual study pods, pushing and pulling them to create variations in the circulation.

At the same time, we discussed the language of the folly and how we would design it. Previously, we made a 1:50 scaled model for the cross crit with Xuan, but the model collapsed before it was able to make it to crit. (I spent a long time cutting up sticks for the scaffolding construction, the idea was that it combined the previous planar model explorations with a scaffolding element for people to climb and interact with it.)

This but with scaffolds poking through it

After the model had collapsed, I wasn't too happy with the design. So we sat down as a group to discuss the design possibilities again. At this point, I had a vague idea in my head that the library would very likely be constructed in concrete rather than CLT. So we discussed ideas about stereotomy and carving spaces to create our follies.

The follies would be similar to a boolean difference of Rachel Whiteread's works, creating quite sculptural forms but keeping the design language quite simple.

On friday, we visited both the reverberation chamber and anaechoic chamber at level 1. I learned that acoustical design was very important in a building, and it's effect would heavily impact the quality of a space. The noise of a space creates an atmosphere; certain spaces require a certain level of background noise for it to be comfortable whilst some would prefer to have most removed. This tutorial was particularly useful for informing our micro-cinema and lecture hall design. Whilst both are designed to serve an audience, the cinema looks to absorb whilst lecture halls looks to reflect sound.

The anaechoic chamber was quite the experience as it heightened our awareness for sound. This was extremified through a sensory deprivation when the acoustician turned the lights off. Here, the lack of sound heightened our awareness for sound, introducing a world which blind people would live in. If sight makes up 80% of our day to day awareness, the removal of such places emphasis on the next sense which would be sound. This made me think how architecture can be created to guide the blind. The role of a wall can signify its presence through the sound which it reflects.