Individual Project One Submission

The collaboration between the members of my group in this assignment was amazing. Ideas flowed freely from one person to the next, and there was no misunderstandings or miscommunication that slowed down the process. The outcome that resulted from this is something that we could not have come up with as individuals. The development of this project was truly collaborative. The poster that was developed through this process can be seen below (low quality).

The Project can best be summed up through the project statement written on the on first of the four panels. That was..
"Along with the introduction of a congestion charge for vehicles in the city centre of Brisbane came an extensive transition from a conventional concentric CBD acting as a bustling yet detached thoroughfare, to an established community of mixed activities defying the traditional city layout. The eventual ban of cars produced a pedestrian-dominant CBD, resulting in a radical lifestyle and infrastructural shift towards an innovative metropolitan approach, incorporating a reversal in the residential and commercial precincts. Social and environmental sustainability radiates throughout the new vibrant centre, providing various opportunities for unprecedented architectural interventions."  

I feel that the scenario that we developed was plausible yet unconventional. The integration of purely residential space into the city centre is something completely different from current city models across the world. It also provides a huge range of opportunities for project 2, as the timeline allows for architectural proposals to be placed at multiple points in time in Brisbane's future.

Although I feel that this project was collaborative and should not be analysed individually, for the purpose of this post I will identify which parts of the project i completed. Firstly, all of the diagrams that I have posted in earlier entries regarding contributions were done by me. These include Maglev development diagrams, vertical farm diagrams, roof garden diagrams, as well as my architectural opportunities diagrams. Other diagrams that I did include the car reduction diagrams. Also I came up with the original drafts for the timeline, as seen in my post Future Development. I feel that separating the poster into work done by each member in some way detracts from the outcome that we achieved. The scenario that we developed and the work that was achieved through collaboration, and breaking that apart somehow detracts from this. 

Future Opportunities - Contribution

For the architectural opportunities section of this assignment, four separated opportunities needed to be developed, or identified. As there were four members in our group, we decided to each do one, discussing what we would do before hand so that our ideas did not overlap. 

The opportunity that I presented was one of reactive, adaptable architecture. I explained this on the panels with this diagram (below)

My vision is that architecture can learn from nature, and adapt new technologies to better suit the city. What I am trying to present in this diagram is the idea of buildings having high platforms, that act as public space. Throughout the day these platforms would rotate around the building, to capture maximum sunlight, but also to cast minimum shadows on the ground plane below. This is really just one way of many in which biomimicry could be used in future cities to solve problems faced today. 

The other aspect of this that i looked at was that of adaptable architecture, buildings that could change their stuff, their space plan, their services, maybe even their skin or their structure (see Shearing Layers). In sort of a Cedric Price type design on steroids, buildings could change radically to suit the needs of occupants at varying times. This sort of architecture is what I hope will be the basis for my final design project

People and Lifestyles - Contribution

The scenario that we have proposed is a shift from a tradition commercial orientated city to a residential orientated mega-community city. This would be a huge change from the way that we live today, and it would have effects on all people. Initially we looked at how this scenario would be through the eyes of a young family, and how they would use the city. We developed parks for them, alternative residential options in the inner-city, and much more. We gave then a clean way to get around, and created a sense of community to help them feel secure. 

Other then this story we conjured to help develop our story, which was overally a group effort, my contributions to people and lifestyle ties in with one part of my architectural opportunities. The idea of Cedric Price inspired adaptable architecture is something that I feel would be perfectly suited to this style of future city, not to mention that future advances in technology is something that will make this style of design more and more plausible. It could even progress to the point that the architecture could change with the push of a button, allowing individual people to change one room into several rooms throughout the course of a day. The diagram I did for this can be seen below (it was left off the panels, due to crowding, and it not being in dropbox).

The image that I created for sustainability (rooftop green spaces) also relates to people and lifestyle. This space creates a sense of community by providing an area for gathering, as well as the potential for being a competitive sports area. This is something that I really like the idea of, sports grounds on the top of buildings. Kind like the Burj Al Arab Helipad, except you know, safe.

Future Sustainability - contribution

Sustainability was not really directly address at any point throughout the design and development of our future scenario, and yet looking at our future scenario sustainability is heavily integrated into almost all aspects of it, both in terms of social and environmental sustainability. I fell that this is due to sustainability playing such an important part of architectural education in today's world that we no integrate it into our design process, rather then considering it a separate act. 

Environmental sustainability can be seen thoughout our scenario though the Maglev trains, the vertical farm, the public gardens, the vertical public space and the conversion of the existing Brisbane Streets. There are probably more that i cant think of off hand. My contributions to this include the ideas regarding rotating vertical farms in the streets of Brisbane, diagrams for the development of Maglev tracks (a brilliant sustainable find by Jess), and some diagrams relating to sky gardens. All of these diagrams can be seen below

Sustainability in a social sense was much more of a forethought in our vision. The way that we created community, bringing people together in the inner-city instead of labelling it as a place for work. We took a place that people are reluctant to live in, especially with families, and made it into something that people want to live in. A space that builds community and provides for families. We looked at what people look for in typical suburban homes and improved on that in an inner-city setting. 

Future Scenario - Contribution

The final scenario that we have arrived as has not come from a sinlge idea, nor has it come from a single person. The group that I have been lucky enough to be a part of has worked together amazingly, all contribution and developing ideas to arrive at the scenario we have produce. 

On a week by week basis, we came together and picked up right from where we had left off the week before. Tehre was no wasted time rethinking what we had. Similarily, each week we went away and looked at our own ideas, bringing them to the group and allowing for other members to take them and develop them further. Because of this the scenario that we developed does not have 4 distinctly separate categories. Yes the categories the were required for the assignment are there, but they have become so intertwined throughout the process that we actually had to sit down at the end of this and forcibly separate them, in order to present the assignment. In a way I wish that we were not restricted by these categories, and the we could have continued to create and imagine our scenario without the boundaries imposed by categories. 

The way that we organised and developed our scenario, and the way that it has been translated across onto our panels, is through the use of a timeline. This timeline allowed us to see (imagine) how things developed, to implement things at one time and the envision how they would change and evolve 20 years later. The time line roughly started out as this.. 

and then moved onto this...

and then was fully realised across our four panels, a combination of text and images that I feel completely represents our future scenario. 

Future Development

Over the last few weeks we had developed a strong future vision, accompanied by a timeline highlighting when changes in brisbane would happen. As a group, we now need to start to diagram and draw our ideas, to allow us to convey our message visually. This is needed to allow all people to understand our vision, without us needing explain it to them. The assignment dictates that 4 main areas need to be addressed directly. These areas are:

• Future Scenario
• Sustainability
• People & Lifestyle
• Architectural Oppurtunities

As a group we decided that it would not make sense to separate these aspects onto 4 different panels, but instead to keep them combined as they naturally are, and use that to tell a richer story. We decided that the use of a timeline would be best to tell our story, branching off at certain times to show important events changing the fabric of Brisbane. The timeline I mocked up (below) is what we are going to use for our final presentation, but it will need to be modified slightly to include extra events. 

We decoded it was best to keep the separation between 'cause and effect' evident in the timeline, as it helped to clarify our vision. It was also decided that it would be best if as many of the descriptions be replaced with images, supported by some text where needed. 

Future Families

The studio this week was focused on creating depth and realism in our future scenario, through the creation of a set of characters in our future vision. These characters would be walked through our future, and we would develop our city vision around them, adding detail to our concept, creating a real city, rather then an undefined conceptual idea. The characters we created were a family, comprised of a husband (William, 32), a wife (Kate, 29) and their young child (Brenda, 3). We felt that this group could allow us to understand more the issues relating to surge in inner city residential developments, cause by a absense of vehicular traffic and the repositioning of commercial and retail businesses to the outside 'wall' of the city. To start with we looked at what this family would need if they were living in the inner city. 
They would need

• workplace access
• general access
• established sense of community
• residential options for various levels of income 
• recreational space
• educational facilities 
• safety'

The first two could be provided through the use of public transport, and Jessica Higson sugested the use of a maglev train. Popular throughout the world for high speed transport, there is currently one low speed maglev train in the world, located in Japan. These trains create minimal noise, little pollution and require little maintenance. More importantly they are also create less noise then traditional trains. The full article on Maglev trains can be found HERE Our group decided that the Maglev would run on a raised track circling the inner city residential areas, running in both directions. The track would between the inner city and the commercial ring surrounding it. This would allow for users to quickly travel between areas in either the residential or commercial areas of the city. We also developed 4 nodes within the inner city to be used as transportation hubs, allowing some access further into the city and creating areas of retail activity. Below is a diagram showing the transportation network developed.

We also looked at the idea of having several small roads allowing vehicular access on the outskirts of the city, to both allow some retail activity in the residential areas and the create a connection between the different areas of the city. This can be seen below. 

To establish a sense of community Ruwan discussed with us the need to provide functions for people to interact, social clubs, community halls, the sort of thing that people come together and interact, rather then just having open parks in which people can ignore each other. This is something that will be very interesting to explore on this city wide scale, and over then next week I will try to explore this. 

The aspects of residential options, recreational space and educational facilities are fairly easy to implement, and all exist to some degree in Brisbane already. The would just need to be upgraded, and more of them implemented. recreational spaces can be from by architecture like Libeskind's condomonium (see other blog entries). Safety can also be introduced to the inner city by providing this sense of community, and by design techniques such as CEPTED, amongst other things.

Shearing Layers

The concept of buildings being comprised of separate layers is in no way revolutionary, but the way that Brand discusses these layers in "Shearing Layers" is something that does provoke a lot of thought. Brand separates the building into 'six S's',which are layers of; site, structure, skin, services, space plan and stuff. He then talks about how these layers become less and less permanent, and inversely how they can become harder and harder to change. 

                                                    Brands Layers of a Building

Brand identifies that there is a seventh S, souls, people inhabiting the building and changing the arrangement. He talks about how they constantly rearrange the easiest spaces, getting new stuff all the time, and only changing the space plan and the services as often as is necessary. I envision that in the future architecture could cater to the souls, allowing them to change more then the basic layer, providing buildings that allow the space plan, the services, the skin and maybe even the structure with ease. This is also not something that is that outlandish, OMA and REX designed the Wyly Theater to have a space plan that can constantly be rearranged (see image below), letting the souls use it how they wish. 50 years ago this may not have been possible, yet today it is. Is it to much of a leap to say that in another 50 years technology may allow for this sort of thing to be done with the services, the skin, the structure even?

I feel that this concept that I like to call "adaptable architecture" is something that could be very interesting to pursue as this semester continues. Looking back at the architecture of the metabolist movement, and designs from Cedric Price among others, and learning the from these, trying to adapt these concepts into a new era, full of new technologies and new challenges, is something that I look forward to. 

Back to the reading, one thing that Brand talks about that i disagree with in some way is his discussion on enernity of site. I feel that site can and does change, it might not happen immediately but tghe context of a space changes dramatically, especially due to urban expansion and population growth. Some areas of the world  are today completely different then they were in the past. Even parts of brisbane today are flat when once they possessed a vastly changing topography.

reference:
Brand, S., 1997. Shearing Layers, in How buildings learn : what happens after they’re built, London: Phoenix Illustrated. pp12-23 

Vertical Public Space

http://www.departure.at/en/funded_projects/vertical_public_space

An Article I found about vertical public space and the challenges in poses. Its encouraging to know that I am not the only person with this vision for the future of our cities. 

future cities

The concept of the studio this week was sustainable futures, and we were asked to look at our future scenario and explore what sustainable issues would be faced. Looking at the idea of taxes on vehicles in the city reducing traffic, as a group we first looked at how this would happen, and how it would be implemented. We identified that cars would not instantly be removed from the city, and that to ensure lesser public backlash, the government would need to do this in stages. The first stage would naturally be taxes on larger vehicles entering the city, which would encourage smaller cars only in the city. The a tax on cars in general would encourage the use of scooters and motorbikes in the city. We thought that over time, this would change the public opinion to the point where people no longer even thought of taking cars into the city. so then the next step would be to tax scooters and motorbikes as well, ultimately removing them from the city. So then the city would be used by buses, service vehicles and taxis. Well what if the bus system was so good taxis were not needed? There certainty wouldn't be any traffic in the city to slow down buses. We then though what would happen if buses only used the underground tunnel systems (if they were expanded of course), and service vehicles also were confined to these tunnels. This was were we took our 'timeline' (or our funnel slowly removing cars from the city, see below) to, and we really looked at what the effects of this would be on the city of Brisbane.

Well firstly, because there would be no cars, the streets of the city would be opened to pedestrians, in much the same way Queen street currently is. This is a very obvious conclusion, however it would effect the city, and the city would need to change to deal with this.
The second result we thought of relates to the public, retail business related parts of the city. These business rely on stock coming in, but due to the absence of traffic in the city, and limited underground service areas, they would ultimately move to the edges of the city. However they would not be viable if the were spread out on a horizontal plain as the currently are, and would need to move vertically, creating vertical public space (see below)

How this would work is in issue that would need to be addressed. Would vertical sky walkways between buildings become common place? Or would something else happen? Also what would happen to the centre of the city. Without retail space it would come to consist of largely residential and commercial space. Because of the ring of retail space surrounding the city, perhaps the city would then grow denser and taller, rather then wider.  As more and more people came to reside in the inner city, building design would need to change. People wanting   a backyard might be able to get that, but on the 30th floor of a building. Vertical farms, sky gardens and mixed housing type buildings could all find a place within the inner city. Buildings like Daniel Libeskinds Condominium (below) could find a home in the inner city.

More interesting perhaps, is what would happen on the edges between the car free residential 'inner-city' and the vertical public space of the 'outer-city'. This is where, as a group, we will be working towards developing an 'architectural fiction'. This edge just so happened to be right on the site that we have been given for our assignments this semester, and this provides very interesting opportunities for both assignments.

Groups of the Future

So I was lucky enough to be put into the urban theme, meaning that everything the I do from here on will be relating solely to this theme. The scenario has been given for our 'future vision' to be based upon is idea of the Brisbane City Council implementing taxes restricting traffic into the city. To successfully complete the first assignment, we were asked to from groups of 4, and collaborate together to ultimately arrive at a plausible, however unlikely scenario. My group consists of Jessica Higson (http://jhigsdab810.blogspot.com.au/), Jack Battle (http://jackbattledab810.blogspot.com.au/) and Hannah Waring (http://design8futurescenarios.blogspot.com.au/)

Spatial Strategies

As the Urban areas around the world expand, there is of course a need to derive some sort of ideal urban spatial strategies. This is becoming even more important with rapidly growing global populations. Hugh Barton writes extensively on the subject in Urban Form and Locality. This provides a more grounded approach to the concept of architectural fiction, identifying different ways in which the modern society can grow the built environment. 

Barton begins talking about the issues of future planing needs causing the integration of Academic and Planning Policy Interests, something that has not been done for some time. Surely if all parties had the same interests, then together change for the better could be implemented much faster, not to mention cheaper?

Urban Form and Locality identifies "four interlocking dimensions of form" that are central to the urban form debate. Those are; the degree of dispersal or concentration, the degree of segregation or intermixture of urban activities, the degree of settlement density, and the shape of urban areas. The overall trend of the article is a focus on the 'urban intensification' and the continued development of metropolitan areas. While there are many positives to this approach, including reduced energy costs for transport, it does present an entirely new set of problems regarding the way in which society will function in such a built up area. Public space, for example, will not be able to exist in the capacity it currently does. Something will need to change in the way cities are developed. One idea is to take public space and turn it from a horizontal space to a vertical space, as seen below. However how this would work is not entirely certain.

Article Reference: Barton, H., 2000. Urban form and locality. In H. Barton, ed. Sustainable communities: the potential for eco-neighbourhoods. London: Earthscan, pp. 105-122. 

  

greenwashing whitewashing

In the article by Jim Motavalli about the term 'green' in today's society, he talks about Jay Westerveld, an important figure in founding today's green movement who termed the phrase greenwashing, which essentially describes corporation's tendencies to use the term green as a front to save money in other ways (Westerveld identifies hotels asking you to not leave your towels to be washed in order to save water, which is simply saving on cleaning costs). As an architect it is important to see 'green' for what it is, and not to fall victim to the greenwashing of big business. As sustainability becomes more and more important, due to population issues and depleting resources, a small improvement in energy efficiency and a profit for corporations will no longer cut it. 

Article:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/02/12/the-history-of-greenwashing-how-dirty-towels-impacted-the-green/

future scenarios

Architectural fiction has been broken up into four different themes, being Urban, Suburban, Regional and Virtual. Each of these themes presents a different challenge and a different future scenario. In the studio we were given a design charrette, four different scenarios were presented, four for each theme. With two hours to respond to each of the four future scenarios, we split into groups of four and began work. 
The first theme was urban, and the scenario presented was "What if the Brisbane City Council introduced London style congestion charges to the CBD in 2020 to heavily reduce traffic?" 
Firstly we looked at how this would effect the existing streets in Brisbane. Would they become open malls? Would smaller buildings be built in them? Or would they be returned to the pedestrians of the city, as has happened in Las Rambalas Barcelona (below)

What ever the use it was clear that the streets of the city would drastically change, even if it is only through the activation of them by heavy, regular pedestrian traffic. One idea that was entertained within the group was the implementation of vertical farming within the inner city streets, constantly rotating on a Ferris wheel of sorts to maintain exposure to the sun

Next theme was suburban, and the scenario presented was "what if all the retail stores in Paddington central stopped selling good in favour of online shopping, but decided to keep stores to maintain a physical presence and provide a customer experience?" This sort of transition into an experiential shopping environment seems to be something that would only work for certain products/stores (i.e. convenience stores could never convert to online shopping). However for the stores that this could work for, it could mean smaller, less cluttered stores resulting in a more positive shopping experience. However it was brought up that a lot of people go shopping to buy something, to walk away with something in their hands. Ultimately, as a group, it was decided that in a majority of cases this type of shopping would not work. However it does pose interesting questions about the future of large shopping establishments, when prices of space will potentially drastically rise. 

The Regional theme proposed the question "What if Woodford Folk Festival site became a self-sufficient  community that was owned and operated self-sufficiently?" As a heavily music orientated site, we focused on a way to create self-sufficiency out of music. Essentially what we thought of was a music school, where people came and refined their art. As they move out into the world of music, they school would act as their record label/manager, thus deriving income from its students, to pay for tours and future students. Basically the school would pay for students and the students would pay for the school.

The idea hinges on ideals of sharing and giving, with students of the school focusing more on creating a music community then making individual fame or money.
Finally the virtual theme and the scenario "What if the QLD Government Key strategy was to solve urban, suburban and regional issues virtually?" presented the most challenge. After working on this for half an hour and getting no where good, it was clear that it needed to be looked at from a more conceptual point of view. 
Out of all the themes the one that I feel i am most suited to (the one that i actually have ideas for) is the urban theme. The future of the inner city is a topic that i feel will be of great importance in the near future, and the opportunity to examine this in a final year design project is too good to pass

architectural fiction

The concept of architectural fiction seems to be an unorthodox yet interesting concept for a design assignment, especially for the final design assignment in a Bachelor of Architecture. As a cohort of students who will ultimately form a large part of the design society in the future, envisioning how this future might be will be highly beneficial and educational. The concept of architectural fiction both aims to expand on what is considered architecture as well as encouraging debate as to what aspects within society will influence the world of tomorrow. 
The first exposure that i have had with this concept of architectural fiction was through reading “Beyond Architecture. Archigram: Architecture without Architecture” by S. Sadler. Beyond Architecture is essentially a summation of the magazines published by the Archigram group in the 1960's, from Archigram 1 through to Archigram 8.

One of the first aspects of the reading that stood out to me was the idea of Indeterminacy in Architecture, and the way the Archigram used the word to mean "of varying evaluation, not one answer, open-endedness." This concept is something that is very important for architecture students to consider, and it relates to all design, not just fictional architecture. I feel that this concept also aligns with other concepts  popular with the Archigram group, in particular the concept of adaptive, changing architecture. This concept was popular among metabolist architecture in Japan, in particular Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower (below).

This idea of changing architecture was often unsuccessful due to occupant of the leaving the architecture in one arrangement, as was the case with the Nakagin Capsule Tower, which once complete never changed arrangement. However i do not feel that this is a reason to abandon the concept of adaptive, changing architecture, rather an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past and to use new methods and technologies to create functioning responsive architecture. Personally i feel that as we move into the future, new technologies will play a major role in the success of this changing architecture. As Archigram put it, "buildings with no capacity for change can only become slums or ancient monuments". As sustainability continues to become more prevalent in architecture, surely it makes more sense to have 1 building with 3 possible functions rather the 3 buildings each with 1 function. 

As more issues of Archigram come along, they began to put forth many concepts and designs that implied not just a change in architectural style, but a change in meaning of what it is to design. It was this extreme out-of-the-box thinking that has captured the minds of so many people over the last 50 years. However as more issues were released, the ideas put forth became more and more severed from mainstream thinking, culminating in concepts of cyborg designs eclipsing the need for human function, and other similarly bleak concepts.
Indeterminacy however remained one of the core values across the Archigram releases, highlighting the open-endedness of potential architectural solutions and the need for evaluation from varying perspectives. 

Article Reference:

Sadler, S., 2005. Beyond Architecture. In. Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. pp 90-138.