Tuesday, November 30, 2010

FIRST YEAR BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE - SECOND SEMESTER. DESIGN STUDIO

Design Studio is the core design subject for the Bachelor of Architecture Degree.

This post is a record of my work during first year/second semester for the three design briefs required within the Design Studio course for 2010. The three design brief requirements were;
  • Map Makers Studio
  • Bath House
  • Bakery
An actual site in the Sydney City suburb of Woolloomooloo was chosen by the course convenor and used for all three briefs. Each brief had a four week period to initiate a concept utilising very detailed and specific brief requirements, prepare two design options and then work through these with your tutor choosing one to then take through to final design drawings using AutoCad for architecture. At the end of four weeks your design is presented to your tutor group and marked accordingly by your tutor.

The Woolloomooloo site is approximately 70 square meters with a 4 meter change over two levels. For each brief you could chose to either design over the two levels or excavate and use one level. The site is on a corner with two boundaries of vacant land. The high side was assumed to be a future community garden while the lower vacant parcel was to become a small public garden/park.

The three briefs were very specific and detailed in their requirements around size and inclusions.

The third and final brief for a bakery required consideration of the surrounding sites with a view of your design integrating the small park and community garden.

Each of the three designs had to be primarily constructed of brick and or masonry, this coincided with our Construction & Structures subject where we focused on this material to a large degree throughout the semester.

Each brief and ensuing period of design development ran simultaneously with our ARCH1102 Design Studio lectures on a chosen and notable architect and one of their designs, which we studied and utilised as a precedent for our own designs.

The three architects and their projects studied during the semester were as follows;

Map Makers Studio - Concrete Country House Project 1923 by Mies van der Rohe

Bath House - Trenton Bathhouse, New Jersey, 1954-59, Louis Kahn

Bakery - Leca swimming pools changing facilities Portugal, Alvaro Siza

After the first brief, the map makers studio, we were required in addition to our design drawings in AutoCad, to construct a site model to scale from balsa wood. The scaled model had to accommodate future independent models of proposed designs so as to visually simulate the integration of your building within the context of the site and surrounding development.

For the bath house I have photographs of the model and for the bakery I have a short movie.

The last submission follows here first, the bakery, then the bath house and finally the map makers studio.


Bakery - precedent architect, Alvaro Siza








Bath House - Double click the image to enlarge (precedent architect, Louis Kahn)







Bakery - Double click the image to enlarge (precedent architect, Alvaro Siza)