Building Form! (subject to change)

We have a building form! or so we think. It's almost 800' long and 75' wide (don't think we'll be getting the LEED SSc5.2-Open Space credit). But we will be getting SSc4.2 for the bike lanes incorporated into our building. Since it is so long, we needed a way for students to get back and forth between two ends of the building. I have some diagrams for potential programming of spaces. I think it goes along with what we discussed as a group, but can be changed if need be. Since this building is so massive, I think for the interiors part, we are going to focus on a few key parts of the building rather than trying to detail every part of it. The spaces we plan to detail are the core, auditorium, event space, lounge areas, bike lane, and part of the community space, a section of the studios, and maybe more if need be.

Retail design sketches

Since I am developing the retail spaces of the building including the bookstore, art supply store, and maybe part of the fresh market (overlapping with the food service design), I made a few sketches, keeping in mind materials and big gestures to make the space interesting. I don't see either of these being used necessarily for these projects, as I was thinking about thesis when I drew the first one, but still can incorporate some of these big gestures, like the curving shapes stretching from the wall to the ceiling, and the curving shape on the ceiling in the lower one. The lower one is modified from a picture in a magazine, before I get some kind of copyright infrigment, so I am not taking credit for the design but am using it as more of a precedent study. I am working on some more sketches and will continue to develop these spaces as we start to divide up square footage of the building.

Further Building Development

We made some progress today in our building form design. We also are breaking up to work on the three sections we need to have detailed for the project. I am working on the interior of the building, and also for my individual research, I am working on retail design. I found some images of retail spaces that were inspiring and might give me some ideas as I start developing the space.






















Apple Store in Soho







Did I mention how much I hate Blogger and how it groups all the images together and how it is nearly impossible to write corresponding text below or beside the image? And you go to preview mode to try to get it right, but then when you publish it, it looks totally different from the way it did before you published it.














I like the brick wall contrasting with the modern signage on the right image, and the solid and void spaces in the ceiling on the left.

Second Idea for Thesis

I touched on it in the first idea, about how small, local stores are better for the local economy and cut down on transportation impacts of items. I started reading about Walmart and how they destroy small-town business and economy and appeal with their massive 200,000 square feet buildings. They support sweatshop labor and very harsh working conditions for extremely underpaid employees mostly in China. I'm not going to go into all the details because there is a lot of information on the web about it, including this site, www.walmartwatch.com, and this article, a little outdated, but gets the basic idea out and includes a lot of statistics, http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A17618 . I don't want to seem like I'm solely discriminating against Walmart, because many big companies outsource their products to low-income nations and underpay their employees and have big impacts on local economys.

That is why I want to design a retail store that sells only products made in the US. With our economy being in the state that it is, we need to keep money in the country and support our nation instead of sending everything to China and elsewhere. Also I think people get more satisfaction from buying products made in the US. It is rare to find products now that don't say "Made in China" and that's part of the reason our economy is so bad right now because we've been outsourcing everything to other countries for so many years.

Both of these issues, the sustainable lifestyle, and revitalization of small businesses are huge and very real issues. I know this is the first day I've started working on thesis ideas, but it is helping me to get all my thoughts out right now and try to narrow it down the more I work on it. Though I still don't know what kind store I want to design for I do want to incorporate the sustainable aspect and the local business aspect into it. I'm not sure if this would be too much to tackle both of these issues, or if I should just stick with one. I think having a small store that sold sustainable products, whether it be clothes made from organically grown cotton, or compostable trash bags would still address the issue of the sustainable lifestyle and also the economic issue of supporting local businesses.

I'm pretty excited to start working on this project. It's something I'm passionate about and it's something I'm doing entirely on my own. I guess I should be spending more time doing sketches for an educational facility that I could care less about designing. We all designed a school in second year. I'm just having a hard time designing something I'm not passionate about. Maybe as we get farther into this project in the second half of the semester and I can find something to work on that I'm actually interested in.

Thesis idea

I don't know if anyone even reads this, but if you do and want to give me some feedback, I would appreciate it! This was my initial thought and may change.

After the meeting with Anna today, I started thinking about what I want to do for my thesis project. I've known for a while I wanted to design a retail space, since that is more what I'm leaning towards outside of school, and haven't had the chance to design a retail space yet. I am also becoming increasingly more passionate about environmental issues and trying to act locally to reduce my impact on the environment. As designers, we are all aware of the push towards sustainability and LEED and USGBC and all the other organizations geared towards green design. However, in our everyday lives, there are many things we do that have a negative impact on the environment.

My proposal to solve this problem is to design a retail store that sells only green products. There are many products currently available that have a lesser impact on the environment. I found a website that specializes in green products ranging from compostable trash bags, natural household cleaners, to recycled tissues (www.letsgogreen.biz). Also I'm not sure that this would be enough for an entire store, so I also had the thought of making it a grocery store, selling local and organic food. This might be too similar to Deep Roots Market on Spring Garden, though. Another option is having a coffee shop, or snack bar attached and have an area where community events can happen, and have presentations about sustainability and literature regarding the green movement.

Some concerns I have are that it's been done before, and that the issue of sustainable living is too broad. I know these types of stores exist, but my hope it that stores like these will start popping up in more convenient areas and be accessible to more and more people. Another concern I didn't touch on is my distain for massive superstores, Walmart in particular. I don't want to go on a rant about how much I hate Walmart, as there are many issues related to that (transportation to store, importing of products, massive building footprint, terrible building design). I would like to see less superstores being built, and more smaller, local stores that sell a variety of products. I feel that local stores are much more impressionable that superstores, provide the same type, but higher quality products, less stressful and crowded, provide a sense of familiarity, and overall more pleasant than superstores, and would like to see an increase in customers supporting local stores.

Any ideas, thoughts, comments, suggestions?

Materials study

For the materials study, I focused on materials that are either recycled or reclaimed. Three of the six materials I looked at do not require any manufacturing. The first material is reclaimed seat belts. Plenty of these can be found in any junk car, or backyard in my case, and used for a number of things. When woven together, seatbelts can make a seat for a chair or bench. I have also seen them used to make pillows. They could also be used for wall coverings or acoustical panels. I'm not gonna go into that much detail about any more materials, since apparently content of the blogs isn't as important as frequency of posts. Other materials I looked at were reclaimed asphalt and bricks from the site, that could be re-used for landscaping, exterior and interior finishes, paving for parking. I looked at a countertop material made of post-consumer paper bonded with non-toxic resin, called Paperstone. Recycled aluminum tiles can be used for walls and flooring. The only material that isn't recycled is bamboo, but is a rapidly renewable material and used for floor, ceiling, wall covering, landscaping, decorative elements.

More Preliminary Design

Well the spacing and placement of text and images are a disaster on this post and pretty much all my other posts, because I still can't figure out how to line things up on here, and that's probably why I don't post things as much as I should cause Blogger makes everything so hard and nearly impossible, and God-forbid you type something after you upload an image, cause then you have to go back and re-upload the image so that you can get your text in between the images, and then you accidentally click something, and boom, your images are gone again. I think I had an easier time learning to use Illustrator than am with using blogger.

Anyway, here are some more images related to the preliminary design that we presented before spring break.












Programmatic diagrams showing areas and activity and adjacencies and designing from the inside out, allowing the interior spaces to shape the exterior of the building rather than trying to cram everything into a pre-determined shell

















We built several sketch models to try to help us determine what happens in the space between our two gestural curves, and what form our building will take beyond the conceptual gesture.



















We are still in a very conceptual stage and I believe this model-building session helped us a lot, but we still have a ways to go!

NYC!

Over the break, I took a trip to New York City. Although it was vacation time, I used the opportunity to look at the architecture of the city and be inspired by all the different styles. I really got inspired for my thesis project, for which I want to design a small-scale retail store or restaurant. I saw a lot of unique styles and materials being used, as well as lot of old building being renovated and reused, which is another aspect I want to include in my thesis project. I also made sure to see the apartment building at 40 Bond St that Paula Carr showed us in her presentation.

Atlanta Trip

Despite the weather, and getting lost due to detours, the trip to Atlanta was helpful in seeing the design field outside of a school setting. It was interesting to see all the different things that the firms were working on. It also helped me get a better understanding of the way design firms work. In school we work on every aspect of a project from start to finish, and though it is a good way for us to become well-rounded, it doesn't necessarily work that way. It is encouraging to see that, as we can work in the areas that we are strongest in. If we aren't the best at rendering, then we probably wouldn't be working on that part of the project. It was also nice to see that the offices look a lot like our studios and aren't nice and tidy, and shows that people are really involved in their work. Although there is a lot of learn outside of school, I believe that we are well-prepared for what we will be introduced to in the working field (minus not being exposed to Revit EVER!).