P3 - Final Model and Images.

Here is y final design for Project 3.

I designed the Wing at the SW of the site, which is a cafe/library/auditorium for the school, with gallery space along a central hall.

Model

View from the North across the main entrance.

From inside the hallway

Another inside the hall way, looking out from the level 1platform.

View of the auditorium

Drawings

Ground Floor Plan

1st FLoor Plan

Sub Ground level plan (auditorium)

Elevations.

Top - East Elevation

Bottom - North Elelvation

Section

A detail of the arch framing, and the connection to the roof of the Media room.

P2 - Refinement of the Master Plan

As mentioned in the previous post, we needed to change a few things on the master plan. So here's the new scheme. (Again, we started with markers and refined it into a CAD drawing)

To deal with the problems with the master plan, the arts wing/library at the SW of the site was rotated slightly, and the area to the East of that was enclosed, creating an entrance at the SE corner where we intend students to enter the school.

P2 - Final Master Plan

Here are our final posters for the Master Plan. We have a few things to re-consider after our review. The main issue was how the site dealt with the wind, almost funnelling the Southerly wind into the site in the Winter, so we need to change it all a bit to respond to that. Anyway, here they are...
(the quality may not be very good, I had to reduce the quality heaps to get it to go on the blog)

P2 - Developmental Drawings

We spent a night down at Jacinta's awesome holiday house in Torquay to work on it. First of all we began talking about our schools, and what we like/disliked about them, and what worked/didn't work. We then laid out our scaled print of the site and spent a night drawing and re-drawing on trace paper, over previous sketches, until we were happy with the design. Most of them were pretty messy as we just had markers and drew anything that came to mind. This is the outcome:

P2 - Senior School Master Plan

Today we visited the Torquay school to do some research on our next assignment, a Master Plan for a new Senior School wing (Years 10-12) there. My group member Jacinta will put up photos from our site visit on her blog:

http://srd364jrsome.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-10-23T22%3A23%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=7

We're looking forward to getting underway with the design for the master plan, posts will be up soon showing our development...

P1 - Final design.

We were quite happy with our final design for RARE. Unfortunately our submitted video did not work completely. The animations just came out blank. We have re-made the video in windows we seems to have worked but it has not yet been posted on You Tube to view. Here's the first version which explains it to the most part.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=GcQRfB4OPDQ

We managed to incorporate most of the ideas we had earlier on. Those Being stack cooling, evaporative cooling and cross ventilation that could easily be controlled. It's a small classroom but that's what we were after, only made out of 1 shipping container, and it includes and shaded outdoor learning spaces with a blackboard up one end.
The roof is made of curved steel frames which fit inside the container, and they are covered by the sprung roofing, which is also to be stored in the container for delivery. The roofing members are curved to allow for stack cooling, with the idea that the hot air will rise and escape through the louvres below them. A gradient to the back of the building allows collection in the water tank there.

P1 - Schooling for an Indigenous community?

Today we decided to focus our classroom on an aboriginal community. There are a few reasons for this, one following up from my previous post where I finished by saying it would be pretty cool to be able to design for a remote community where materials and labour aren't as easy to come by. We feel RARE is a great solution to providing cheap and ready made schooling/classrooms to local communities.
We hear so much in the media about problems in the indigenous community, and many experts say schooling is they key to aboriginal welfare.

Here's a quote on education from an article I read on the need for better schooling for indigenous communities.
"Higher levels of education are associated with lower rates of incarceration and increased engagement in civic life. In short, education is the key to better life opportunities and choices."

This angle also gives us an opportunity to design for a hot arid climate. Some Environmental things we have decided will be needed for such a climate are natural cooling; operable louvred windows for natural lighting and cross flow, with big eaves over. Solar energy and water collection and storage to cater for the classroom. If possibly, we would like to provide evaporative cooling in collaboration with the cross flow ventilation system. Another idea is to try to use stack cooling to further cool the classroom.
For our brief for the classroom itself we have decided to focus on only the 1 classroom in belief that if we can design on classroom for one class, more could and would be used throughout a school depending on the size of it. We feel it is important to provide plenty of shaded outdoor space for the students, with the belief that this may help keep kids enthusiastic about learning, and not keeping them within 4 walls all the time that they're learning.

We have come a long way today with design and hope to meet up tomorrow to finalise it. I will hopefully post some early sketches of the final design tomorrow night before we start final drawings and renders etc.

P1 - The need for Portable Classrooms

I found this link to Portable Classrooms in Victoria.

http://www.architectus.com.au/index.php?page=164

It is about the State Government budgeting for permanent classrooms to be put into school, and goes on to say how relieved schools are for this donation. So many schools have portable classrooms, which are note considered part of the school, yet have been there for many years now.

Here's a quote out of it.
Portables are rarely regarded as part of the school. They are accepted as necessary to cope with medium term numbers in excess of the core enrollment or as temporary emergency measures but not as a significant long term component of the school infrastructure. Due to funding limitations, portables often stay around longer than intended and “wear out their welcome.”

Anyway I just thought it was interesting to read how negative the feedback is on the current portables, and it makes the project that we're doing more exciting knowing there is a huge need for portables to be improved so that people want them in their schools.
Because even though there is funding in Victoria for permanent structures, there will always be the need for portable classrooms, as numbers will always increase, or something could happen to an existing school in which case they need quick structures to insure education proceeds as soon as possible. I also see the potential for portables be use in remote areas where it may be more difficult to get building materials and available labour.
In the end though, RARE needs to be the way of the future, not just for schooling. We need to find better ways to re-use materials that have already been used, rather than using new materials everywhere. The earths sources for us to use are rapidly depleting and the waste we create from how readily we demolition an exisiting building is horrendous.
I'm finding this assignment very relative to the direction I know architecture needs to go...

P1 - Early Design Ideas

Here are some sketches of early design ideas that we have had to this point, trying to incorporate sprung architecture and exploring ideas of folding out shipping containers:




Two sections to the classroom with a central courtyard for outdoor learning/extra lighting.


A classroom + covered courtyard area.


Different ideas for folding out a shipping container to expand the space.


This was exploring allowing louvered lighting and cross ventilation, as well as a cladding system to hide the steel container.

Ideally we were looking at a classroom at least to containers wide, we have decided to only go with 1 classroom. Also, we would like an outdoor learning space to be included and potentially maximise water catchment and storage, so that needs to be figured out in a devised roofing system, whether it be using sprung or not.

P1 - RARE research

SHIPPING CONTAINERS

We believe shipping containers are one of the best solutions to 'recycled' architecture, and have been researching different ways it has been done for inspirations. Here are a view images we have found:





I like the idea of folding a shipping container out to expand the space that it can provide, maximising the benefits of its reuse.


Another idea is to pile them on top of one another. Providing natural light is an issue to be dealt with, as you can see in this image above.

An idea for improving the look of the design would be to clad it with a different material. This may allow insulation to be laid in behind it.

Project 1-RARE architecture

For Project 1-RARE we are to design a Relocatable, Adaptive, Renewable and Environmental classroom as a new solution for the mod-5 classrooms currently available, and to the regret of the design world, overused.
We are very excited to pursue such a project, it will be good to apply what we have learnt previously in environmental studies. In the modern age we need to begin to focus on environmental architecture, whilst not letting it hinder our design work in order to compensate for them. Ideally they w

Our research thus far has been into different materials that can be used, and the best ways for 'relocating' a structure, whilst being able to have operate environmentally.
My previous post shows the discovery of 'sprung roofing' which could be a good way have relocatable roofing. Although we are still concerned on how to use this environmentally, for example, the used of solar panels on it? Ways of operating passive heating/cooling with it? These are questions we need to explore before we decide to use it in the final design.

I will upload a separate blog going into some of the research explored to this point...

Sprung Instant Structures

Esquisse 1

For the first day on Thursday we kick started the semester with a creative thinking excercise, coming up with ideas and concepts for adaptability, which is to lead into project 1.

We focussed on 'foldability' of 2d shapes to create forms. Our final model grew progressively from card folded into a series of triangles. Many different shapes were discovered until this final one, a star shape, which we felt had interesting form and features:



We imagine it being of a very large scale, and entrances are created out of every 2nd indentation into the star.