As part of the design studio, we were asked to come up with our own design briefs dealing with the concept of "walls" as was discussed extensively. These briefs were completed with Daven!
Brief: Within the Mansion
“We used to build civilisations. Now we build shopping malls”
Bill Bryson
It is important to consider the needs of our current surroundings. Before the requirements were to build civilisations, now the requirements are to build shopping malls. It’s all relative.
Keeping this in mind, what are some spaces needed by our current students? How can we integrate these spaces into their daily life?
With most of the university shutting down at 11pm, many students are forced to go home and leave all their work for the next day. This leaves some of us in stressful situations when deadlines and due dates are quickly arriving.
This studio requires students to design a multi-storey complex which integrates the daily life of a student into the built university environment, inspired by Sendai Mediatheque in terms of one floor per function.
The floor per function goes like this:
- First Floor - Leisure centre and food court (accommodate Vegan lunch)
- Second Floor - Recreation area
- Third Floor - Resting and sleeping area
- Fourth Floor - Study area
- Fifth Floor - Roof garden / meditation area
The aim of this structure would be to invite students from many different faculties providing them with a space where they are able to work after hours without compromising the comfort of home. This structure should be able to provide students with the ultimate package during their stay at the Mansion, paying close consideration to the phases they go through before, during and after they submit their papers.
Some aspects to consider would be:
(Before: guides and tutorials? Areas to work out a plan of attack? During: Robots to deliver food to their pods? Mobile toilets? A seat that contain a toilet? Councillors to provide mental support? After: Netflix, movie area? Life is awesome area? Yoga area? Urban farm area - closer to nature?)
Close consideration must also be given to the surrounding buildings, encouraging students to engage with the surrounding buildings like The Clock Tower and Old Government House.
Key words: All nighters | Homely | Comfort | Daily life | Multi-functional | Sendai Mediatheque | Floor per function
By Iman and Daven!
Brief: Inter-faculty Gangs
“Today teamwork, cooperation between different disciplines, and concerted large-scale research are necessary. We are lacking installations where inventors can work and grow with their ideas” Frei Otto
As Frei Otto says, the collaboration between different faculties is crucial when it comes to realising design projects. In our case, the architects and engineers should work together to learn and grow as much as possible from each other. The possible collaboration between these two neighbouring faculties would provide aid and be of great help during the design. Additionally, this would increase social interaction between the two neighbouring departments and encourage shared sausage sizzles instead of ‘department specific’ ones. Deriving from the symbolic language as seen in “ganglands”, this studio aims to recreate and retrofit this language in an architectural sense while applying it to the architects and engineers on campus.
In ganglands, graffiti is used as a form of “walls” to separate opposing gangs. It is most commonly seen on borders to mark a certain territory. This ‘symbolic’ or ‘invisible’ wall has heavy implications for gang members despite not being physical and therefore, forms a clear division between opposing gangs.
Without specifying the architects and engineers as opposing gangs, we can apply a similar concept of “symbolic walls” in the form of opposing styles. The architecture department is a relatively old building as compared to the new engineering building. Therefore there is a clear difference when walking through the door that connects the two departments. This is an example where symbolism is used to separate the two departments. However, how can we turn this over and use symbolism to connect the two departments instead of dividing them? Could we possibly create safe zones between the two faculties allowing for both to work in harmony with each other similar to the safe zones in gangs where no crime or murder takes place?
This brief involves designing a studio and exhibition space shared between the architecture and engineering departments. An open plan shared studio is encouraged to increase contact between the two faculties, encouraging students to learn from each other. An additional exhibition space must be designed to showcase the collaboration and to give other faculties an understanding and appreciation of the complex design process. A flexible design is required to alter the space between a studio and exhibition space similar to OMA’s Exhibition Space for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Keywords:
Ganglands | symbolism | Interfaculty | collaboration | learning | flexibility | open-plan| pedagogy
Brief: Physically uniting the UoA Campus!
Providing visible signs of inclusion are important indicators of equitable access and respectful provision of programs and services. This may be important to individuals historically being excluded.
As a university balancing large, global, multicultural populations, the school should commit to making its physical spaces as inclusive as possible. In Learning From Las Vegas by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, the peer do not advocate a specific formal language like modernism, they call in high rhetorical fashion for the widespread adoption of their own given approach to solving the problems of space, structure program and symbolic expression. Where “Total design conceives a messianic role for the architect as a corrector of the mess of urban sprawl.”
An example under their practice was the Guide House: Veturi attempts to fit Guide House within its context, but rather than build the facade out of regular bricks, which would eventually weather as it had on the neighboring buildings, Venturi used a specially colored brick, so that the building would instantly fit in.
With the above in mind and the quote “Las Vegas was A city that was American culture on steroids.” How do we make inclusion (university’s multiculturalism) on steroids and spread them within the campus?
The brief will require students to engage with the vernacular (eg: Albert Barrack), lighting, styles, symbolism in the surrounding architecture from site, to design a ‘symbolic architecture’ where ultimately the multicultural vibes it emits will transform the site into a germinator of symbol/s to spread onto the surrounding grounds within the decentralized campus, physically tightening the university ground. This will also require students to design installation/s or even long term structures based on the multicultural architecture that will physically stitch both sides of the streets that pass through various parts of the university, unifying the campus ground providing a greater sense of inclusion. With our site sitting comfortably near the top of campus, the ground will act as a charger emitting and attracting, forms of cultural inclusiveness leading the students into the area.
Questions to consider: Can a physical architectural symbol tighten our experience here at the University of Auckland? Can we explore the opportunities underground? An installation or perhaps a series of extended tunnels linking on with the underpasses — not just above the ground, but also underground? Perhaps connect the tunnels to the air bombing shelters at Albert park?
Essential spaces within the multicultural architecture:
Open spaces for cultural events — stage and seating areas.
Areas in relation to the outdoor, integrating with the international lawn.
An area dedicated to vegan lunch, possibly connected to a large food prep area.
Incorporate the already existing dance studio on site — integrate their studio within the architecture.
Phase 1:
Survey and research — what type of space will be most attractive on a cultural basis? (food, music?)
Which are the main cultures?
Phase 2:
Surrounding architecture study and engage with other university designs. (walls like other universities?)
Phase 3:
Design architecture
Phase 4:
Design installation
Keyword: creative process, symbol, university, unification, multiculturalism
“The main architect's concern should belong not with what ought to be but with what is — and how to help improve it now. This is a humbler role for architects than the modern movement had wanted to accept; however it us artistically a more promising one.”
-Learning From Las Vegas
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