#final crit

Questions and points I had responses to:

Sections looked a bit flat, they needed context behind them of trees and the surrounding buildings. Fair enough, if I had had more time it would have happened but they needed to be sent to printing and the perspectives needed to be fixed up.

It doesn’t feel like it needs to be fully enclosed, perhaps a superstructure more like SANAA’s Grace Farm would make more sense, or the central circulation path being simply canopies so it would be more open and hence aid with ventilation. Not really something we had considered, but an interesting idea. I suppose the reason we chose to fully enclose it is because we were focused on trying to make it habitable year-round, particularly in winter. If it was half-open all the time it would be too cold in the garden areas to want to hang around. If there were some way of using the canopy idea in summer to really allow air through and fully closing it off in winter I think that could be an interesting way to take the design.

Further consideration into an irrigation system (since it’s all indoors) would have been a next step if there had been time. We’d actually briefly thought about that, thinking that slow jet sprinklers on the ground and on timers would be a good way to maintain the plants, but absolutely more consideration could have been taken into that aspect with more time.

Plants need not only light to survive but wind as well, so will there be enough ventilation throughout the entirety of the building for that? We’ve certainly tried to make it so. Not only do our three large entrances fully open up but our skylights and the windows in the bottle wall at each window seat are operable. We’ve also scattered these around the whole building so hopefully there would be good ventilation reaching every corner of the design.

Have you considered the idea of giving the design the potential to expand? We hadn’t really, primarily because of our choice of external wall structural. The bottle walls are so solid, there’s no way that the design could expand from the footprint that they created. I suppose little outlying pods could be built using the same language of this design, but they wouldn’t truly feel part of the original design since it’s intended to be quite inwards facing in terms of this outer wall protecting what’s inside. I’ve certainly thought about the fact that the roof over the rock climbing area would likely need to be raised due to the larger trees growing at that end, but we hadn’t developed a 50 year plan for the building or anything like that.

How do you see people using the design? With the amount of flexibility that we’ve fed into the design, we want people to use it in any way they see fit. We’ve specifically designed to cater for a set group of activities, but really those spaces can be used for just about anything. People aren’t required to stay for a long period of time, nor are they required to visit at all. It’s flexible to everybody’s individual schedule, especially in that we want it to be open 24/7 (for which we believe we’ve taken appropriate safety measures with railings around the roof gardens and nets under the rock climbing). Whether you want to take a quick stroll around or settle in to make something, both are equally possible. Our hope would be that the design would make students want to come inside and take part in maintaining the building as part of their daily or weekly routine.

Is your design intended to be connected to anything else in the university (presumably physically or metaphorically) or is an island in itself? No the design is intended to be disconnected from the university in almost every way. The singular connection between the two is the people. Other than that, style, physical connection and ideas are all intentionally distinctly different. We titled our brief “A Place to Escape” because it is, in many ways, the antithesis of the university. It’s meant to be an island haven in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the university, a place to rest, relax, do something that isn’t study and maybe learn a few things at the same time. Our only extensions beyond the limit of the building’s footprint are to draw people inside with the sculptures, the hills and the overhanging roof over the main entrance.

Are you perhaps designing this for a younger audience than will actually be using the space? No, I don’t think so. The activities we chose are ones that we would happily do, as would our peers and people we’ve met from the wider university. There are already plenty of well used oversized chess and jenga sets scattered around the university, so is it really much of a stretch to think that people would be quite happy to use a chess or twister room? None of the activities that we’ve chosen are age specific - grannies enjoy knitting perhaps even more than children, and meditation is something that everyone should and can do (though it is certainly popular amongst our generation). And hey, if the people using the space think that one of the activities is too young for them, they don’t have to do it. There are plenty of other options that might be more suited to them.

Praise and interesting ideas (things I didn’t have responses to):

The model does a good job of showing the design as a whole, much easier to read and understand than just trying to understand the plan.

Sections look nice.

The video of the 1:1 model does a good job of showing of the models purpose and how it as well as the overall space might be used.

The university has a lot of parents with kids on campus and there aren’t really appropriate facilities to accomodate for them at the moment, so this seems like a really good idea for their use in particular.

By getting just four willing reps, a “Montessori club” could be started which would mean the university would actually give money towards the maintenance of the building, so in that regard it’s very much a feasible idea.

You’ve really reinvented the idea of a wall with the bottle walls, it’s an interesting way to do it.