Wrap up: Semester Fall 07

The October 20th post covers the component design from this semester from origin through its development, but what I havnt' shown, is how that translated into an architectural proposal. Since this is a building system based on the logic of a semi-self-contained unit the question of how those units aggregate to form a larger shape is one of the weaknesses of this design process.



I was attempting to make a sunshade with a portion of duct work behind it so that when they were arranged in rows you would have a window-integrated ventilation system. It is all to easy however, without any pre-existing building or building shape, to make a generic and meaningless shape out of this. The images of the final sectional model and renderings shows an attempt at giving the overall shape of the building meaning through an analysis of program and circulation. The result is that the component and the shape it is put on do not meet very well because the overall shape is not based on the component's logic. You will notice that things don't quite make sense in the end.



All this has been extremely educational and a beneficial undertaking. The rigorous use of case studies and environmental testing will become part of every project I do from now on. I do however consider it a major failure of the semester that my ideas about site strategy were overridden by my professor, and in the end, I realize that the reason that the snake like tubes appear in the project as the overall shape on which the components are put is due to this.

I'd wanted to address one of sao paulo's major environmental concerns, inadequate water run off and treatment facilities. The site strategy that I should have been proposing at my final review is one based on diverting water run off from the hill adjacent to the site into a series of filtration pools, the cleaner of which would provide evaporative cooling to the beginning of the component based system which would move air passively with an overall configuration to maximize and channel a steady convection. After all that was the whole point of investigating the combination of sun shade and air system.


So basically, in an attempt to push my project towards a site context not related to the component logic, the system I was designing lost all context and turned into a bunch of flowery snakes. In any case, the final model still looks really cool even if it isn't the most meaningful organization.

:)

Adrien and I have finally finished the semester, well Adrien finished up last week, and I only today. The last couple of weeks have been exhausting and I will certainly enjoy a couple of weeks off. As part of the presentation of the curriculum on architecture I created for one of my classes I made this gingerbread house. I wanted it to look more like a brownstone than your traditional ginger bread house, which turned out to be a bit challenging. It was my first attempt at making gingerbread houses and it turned out fairly well.




Some other fun end of the semester activities included going ice skating at night at the rink in prospect park. We also went to an amazing Korean Spa in Flushing Queens that we loved so much we went back again later in the week with some of our friend. Unfortunately there are no pictures of either outing.