Lecturing 5-Scheming

10/05/10
Lecturer: John McMorrough

My reflection on this lecture will be posted soon.

Diagram in Progress

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10/14/2010

We've developed the idea of the two linear volumes weaving, and tried to simplify what we did last time to make the system clear. It has ended up being the two smooth curves which weave and extend into the lake. We pulled one curve up(5') and the other down(5') for the first weaving part and the opposite way for the second weaving part such that the volume behind can have a view to the lake.

Accessibility as Design Parameters

1. One landing(minimum 60” wide) for every 30inches of ramp rise
2. The maximum slope of a ramp is 1:12


One of our design ambition is to make the entire hotel room accessible to disabled people. The minimum length of ramps (12.5' difference in height, we need 175' long ramp) defines the size of the each courtyard space as well as the building design.

Schematic Design(Phase ll) - Desk Crit on Oct 12th

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10/13/10

The third desk crit on Tuesday. We have developed an idea of small courtyards and the two linear volumes weaving and growing toward the quarry lake. Even though our thought seemed clear, how it relates to the rest part of the peninsula, and the geometry (angle of corner, width, depth of space and mass) remained unresolved. Karl suggested the way to deal with the issues raised and how units can repeat and grow in a way that they all have distinct views, but do not create a strange shape like we had in the corners. Particularly, an individual unit consists of a solid box and the semi-private space which wraps the private room such that when the mass make a corner, the shape of the room don't change while the void spaces overlaps and changes(which ends up creating a smooth curve.) Plus his sectional approach, what was lack in our earlier design progress, led us to think about how to engage with the water and bring it into the courtyard space.

Schematic Design(Phase ll) - Desk Crit on Oct 8th

soon posted

Schematic Design(Phase ll) - Desk Crit on Oct 5th

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10/05/10

The first six models at 1/32"=1' scale. We brainstormed and discussed any possibilities on the site. It varies from transforming the idea of courtyard space (the typical typology for monastery) and the aggregate of many growing and expanding on the site, to that of manipulating the edge condition of the peninsula. In terms of the view (as the building will be situated on the bedrock projected out into the lake) , each proposal suggests distinct strategies to maximize the opportunity to have diverse view angles by bending, shifting and rotating the mass.

Regulation Research

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Regulation Research / Pair work with Chaowei Su
10/1/10

The main focus of the research was to sort out relavant information from the International Building Codes and rediagrammatize it to refer to later in the schematic design phase. The parts that I and my partner covered were maximum height and floor areas according to different occupancy types and construction types / egress system / fire separation / mixed-occupancy / accessibility. In the last sheet(p.12) we suggest a possible scenario in the site based on the code research.

Precedent Research - VM Houses

10/01/10

VM Houses / PLOT = BIG + JDS

The objective of the case research is to achieve comprehensive understandings of the precedent by investigating and reproducing the published drawings. The VM House designed by the Danish architect, BIG, is characterized by the diverse housing units all different from each other. A series of diagrams, plans and sections describes how unique individual units form a bigger aggregate of units and the skip-stop system borrowed from Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation comes into a play to enable double story units and cross ventilation. My research also covers circulation, egress, structural and mechanical system for the basic understanding of residential projects.

Lecture1-Exeter Library

09/10/10
Lecturer: Karl Daubmann

By investigating the case of Exeter Library by Louis Kahn, we could see the whole comprehensive aspects of the architecture which came into play from the beginning of project to the completion. The project evolved through multiple cycles of revisions, adjustments, negotiations and compromise and finally became what we now see in the site. The examples of how those constraints was dealt with by the architect were suggested as below in the lecture:

1. Cost issue raised
: almost 1 million dollars over budget at the first construction estimate
- reduce the size of the building
- change the material for the central hall from brick to concrete
> led to the concrete atrium space wrapped by the brick masonry enclosure outside as it is now.

2. Code issue raised
- mezzanine (1/3 of floor it serves : 9164 for main floor, 3024 for mezzanine level)

Lecture2-On Domestic Space

09/14/10
Lecturer: Caroline Constant

The familiarity of dwelling obscures our ability to discern the origins and purposes inherent in the forms of domestics space and their hidden power relations.

The lecture mainly focused on reinterpreting housing plans to unpack and disclose the relation between architecture and different social, cultural and political contexts where it was designed.
Plan as the primary document type in architecture is a good record which allows us to track how domestic space was developed and designed by looking at spatial relation between rooms, access and etc. The social status of different occupants and power relationships (relation to the owner), gender distinction and changing life styles are explicitly or implicitly reflected in architectural plans.

Lecture3-Typology

09/17/10
Lecturer: Lars Graebner



The theory of typology is the study of the beginning of architecture, It is not device to justify the mechanical repetition the frame work of dialectic discourse which generates the new by transforming the old. - in the lecture by Lars

My precedent research on VM House by the Danish Architect, BIG, shows how the typology can act as a generative tool throughout the design development. The basic massing diagram is the new variation of the old reinterpreted and transformed by the architect. The idea of the skip-stop section in M building(2) was borrowed from Le Corbusier's Unite d'habitation(1) which has enabled the diverse two-stories housing units with cross-ventilation.

Lecture4-Eurogreen

09/21/10
Lecturer : Douglas Kelbaugh


A city is not a large building, it is a large living, lively vibrating organism, ever-changing,
that cannot be composed or designed in the same way that a building can.

The lecture started with criticism on the modern urbanism led by Le Corbusier and CIAM(International Congresses of Modern Architecture), which once was dominant urban planning agenda and has shaped a modern city as what a city looks like today. The insertions of super highway system and high-rise apartment blocks have produced disconnections and unresolved edge conditions within a city and between a city and a rural area.

Housing is about putting your love and affection into the details, windows, doors, entries and lobbies. It is not about creating amazing shapes.

He argued that we should look at the model of European cities as an alternative of urban design: grid system in smaller scale rather than cul-de-sac along one single linear paths, low-rise buildings with more diversity and integrated sustainability technologies(passive solar heating, solar or wind energy production.)
New mobility is not so much about providing new transportation systems. What makes a city more walkable is establishing infrastructure connecting disconnected nodes of different transportation modes such as bus, bike and train.