cross laminated travelling folly
October 16th, 2011http://www.strombro.se/?portfolio=995
http://agnieszkasawosko.com/all/strombro/120_WS_Valv.html
new update on the pavilion we made in Sweden…
Met 2011 SHOW
July 11th, 2011
Soho Pleasure Garden
June 21st, 2011The Workhouse & Pleasure Garden is a proposition for an alternative work environment and entertainment center, designed to facilitate various programmatic and spatial reconfigurations of an existing 1930’s carpark to mixed use office spaces.
Initiated by its users over time stimulating activity and communication between individuals, through a hybridization of typologies- live work and play, the workhouse promotes commercial and marginal operations to coexist without sterilising Soho, envisioning a progressive environment for the juxtoposition of the non profitable and the commercial to create sustainable & profitable communities.
Free dialogue between these two polar uses is encouraged in order to create new patterns of communication throughout the proposal, initiated by cutting voids through the exisitng slabs and amalgamating the Shunt collectives rehearsal spaces with large format offices and small imtimate work spaces.
The design aims to refit and recycle the existing carpark infrastructure into an instrument of leisure by changing the rules of engagement between plant life, pedestrians, office workers and the Shunt collective.
The strategy combines organic materials in the insertion of the pleasure garden and strong and inexpensive building materials relevant to the original 1930’s design into a blend of changing proportions that accommodates the wild, the cultivated, the intimate, and the social.
The pleasure garden adds a textural effect of immersion to the proposal, strolling “within” and “amongst” the inner city urban landscape for recreation and relaxation.
The existing concrete structure defines the selection and arrangement of grasses and plants replacing the once vehivular ramp to define a wild, dynamic character, distinct from the typical manicured landscape of Golden and Soho Squares and representative of the extreme conditions and shallow rooting depth of Carpark to Workhouse.
Soho Model
June 20th, 2011
Soho @ Banana Republic
May 17th, 2011
With the possibility that current development will alter the uniquely contradictory character of Soho, DSDHA and the students of Unit 11 have declared a state of emergency. Together they propose a new Urban Constitution for an imagined Free State of Soho.
In 1854 a lethal outbreak of cholera took hold in the centre of London. At the time, Soho housed 432 people per acre- making it at least 10 times denser than today. In revealing a hidden menace through mapping contagion, Soho proved to be the site of a revolution in urban development.
Studio propositions engage with the contemporary notion of ‘Exchange’ within the scale of a city block, and are presented for the first time in the windows of Banana Republic on Soho’s western boundary.
“Architect and student collaboration
For the window of Banana Republic, architect DSDHA and the students of London Metropolitan University have re-imagined Soho with a mix of existing and proposed buildings. Am I the only one who thinks their ideas for a distillery and pleasure garden would be welcome additions to Soho?”
RIBA blog
Inhaletorium
April 28th, 2011After a tutorial last week I have discovered the other Victorian way of treating respiratory complaints. Many contraptions were invented to enable medicine to be vaporized and inhaled.
The meditative environment of Inhalatorium provides a soothing respite from daily stress. The basement site illuminated in orange simultaneously references a shelter and spa.
Below:
2004
Sculpture Center,
Long Island City, NY
Along with the pleasure garden as public space, environmentally Light/air and olfactory play a clear role in the design of the proposal.
The pleasure garden and smells produced will corrupt the building concurrently. Temporary structures use by the shunt collective for rehearsal and performance share space with commercial offices. The workhouse becomes the place to be for entertainment and work 24 house a day.
test cameras [un-rendered]
April 28th, 2011next version with designed walkways connecting through/over and into buildings.
Walkway test
Sin palace and InterAction Centre precedents
April 21st, 2011
I have just uncovered this precedent by Michael Webb [scarily similar to my own 5th year thesis!] where visitors arrive by car and accommodate office space located in a tower, the building can be entirely driven into and around – at “high speeds” although I am removing most of the car spaces the current ramp will remain in order to produce this processional route for clients up to the tower.
Cedric Price’ extension to the fun palace realised itself in the InterAction Centre demolished in 2003 which incorporated many of the ideas, features and innovations of the fun palace on a smaller scale.
The main attempt by Price was to create an interactive and improvisational architecture mad up of temporary pre-fab elements.
Mies and the totalising grid
April 19th, 2011Mies van der Rohe rejected locality, programme and typological individuation these ideas coupled with his invention of the mies grid, reiterative frame and prefabrication enabled architecture to conquer a different type of formalism.
Mies’s work had an essence of formlessness, amorphousness, nothingness, perversion and anxiety behind a stealth shield of serenity
Rem Koolhaas
“The site [Mies van der Rohe] selected [for the German Pavilion in Barcelona] allowed for the transverse passage of visitors from a terrace-like avenue bordering the exhibition palaces to the other attractions. In addition, it afforded fine views of the exposition grounds and of the city of Barcelona. The building had no real program, as that term is understood and used by architects today. It was to be whatever Mies chose to make of it.”
David Spaeth. Mies van der Rohe. p63 cited on greatbuildings.com
“it was an architecture of almost mothing which achieved monumental grandeur by reducing the building to its essential components.”
Bannister Fletcher P 1512
The Lex garage will be stripped back to basics with a few datum changes. The idea of flexible use comes with a flexible essential space.
getting into all things art deco
April 18th, 2011To understand the era of my Lex garage and add to my references I will tonight be watching vintage film extravaganza – Fritz Lang’s masterpiece METROPOLIS for inspiration….Brilliant film now in bluray :)
AIM: to create a metropolis within a building. An original approach to city workspaces which incorporate the idea of pedestrian nomadisms – how to get lost in the office, but instead of creating a separated dystopia – flipping this to incorporate profit making and marginal use.
The carpark undergoes a complete transformation of solid state materialistic architecture [non flexible] into an energised ever changing building [flexible programme] where different events can occur over time.