Xcrit with Xuan

EARLIER PROCESS WORK - MOVING THROUGH SCHEMES 1&2

See Week 7 for details on planar exploration.

See Week 8 for details about dividing to connect as well as the details for the proceeding scheme.

While we did well to produce the work for the crit, organisation wise, the group was a mess, everything was stylistically different from each other and our presentation got a bit jumbled up. We will learn from this experience and prepare in advance for the final crit.

Our explanation for the previous two schemes was quite messy, apart from messing up a few keywords,(my fault, listening to Daniel talking about polyvalence, I started using the word too when our planar exploration dealt more with flexibility and open spaces.) our keyword for the new design wasn't properly discussed and the idea to divide to connect (which was the previous scheme) didn't quite fit in. When we started to introduced multi-programmatic spaces, our spaces no longer looks to divide but to offer a multifaceted learning experience.

Moving forward from here, we noted to discuss and write a transcript for the final crit, so neither of us will say the wrong keywords and detract from the main design. We will explain the necessary ideas explored in the earlier concepts without going into details and we will need to look for a new keyword for the new design concept.

SITE PLAN

Roof plan shows relationship to the surrounding topography as it situates on site. The top right side includes a few follies spread on the graduation lawn as well as one near the Maclaurin Chapel. I think the shading was quite successful at presenting the depth and relationship to the ground for our library. The hardest part about the plan was definitely modeling the landscape and carving a dip for the entrance.

LONG SECTION

I took Ethan's old section and updated the ground cut as well as populating the plan with a few more people to make the section for lively and interesting. We didnt have much time to work with, so the current section only presents the individual study pods.

The feedback that we received from crit was adding more depth to the roof in order to support planting trees at the current size.

SHORT SECTION

Ethan took my earlier line work for the plan and populated it with some furnitures and people. The two micro cinema on the left that we have utilises the idea from Maya Lin's wave fields. In an informal setting, students would come in and sit down on an artificial landscape with seating grooves within it. The cinema screens are curved for a more immersive experience.

After the crit, Xuan pointed out the concerns for wind-tunnels that would go through our building from its linear circulation. To address that, we looked at the micro-climate and wind-rose of our site to figure out how we could design against it. From there, we noted that the prevailing wind directions does not affect our library, however, we thought that the linear circulation wasn't too interesting and only reinforced the site condition as a transitory space.

I proposed the idea of shifting and doing a few push and pulls to our programmatic spaces. Ethan and Noah were both happy with the idea, but Daniel was concerned that the interior might turn into a maze if we do so. Daniel was advocating the idea for people to walk along a main circulation which is both visible from entry to exit, and from there people would break off into the programmatic space as they explored the digital library. After a long day of debate, we settled on shifting the rooms to create opportunities for people to explore in our library.

MOMENT DRAWING BY NOAH.F

Noah worked on a bunch of realistic moment drawings from lumion as an alternative to present our library. I thought that the realism was unnecessary at this stage, but it was good of him to churn out the work and gave Xuan and the other critiques a visual variety to our digital library.

MOMENT ILLUSTRATIONS BY DANIEL. H

The water colour drawings was definitely more appropriate at our current stage of design, the dreamy-ness captures the ideas that we are striving for in our library. Daniel did a great job at presenting the perspectives of confronting the library from the barrack walls, taking in Bell-Lloc winery as his inspiration for portraying the entrance. The watercolour strokes was also really effective at capturing the genius loci of the place, surrounded by heritage buildings and nature.

Other moments presenting the study pods and the inhabited green roof. The critiques were quite concerned about the relationship of the green roof and the ground; would we place parapets for safety?

The original idea that we had for that relationship was a slope that is directed towards the ground like Maya Lin's wave fields. We wanted the people to be able to climb onto the roof from the ground, creating opportunities for interaction at the ground level.

Earlier moment illustration showing relationship of follies to our digital library. The top water colour drawing shows earlier design iteration of the roofscape.