Final review is approaching, fast. Time to get the rendering machine going. I’m still working out some details, but for the most part I’m settled on a design for the building. Hopefully there will be no need for major changes after tomorrow’s pinup.

The reading space is turning out pretty good, and I like the direction it’s taken. Instead of creating small living rooms (that would probably accommodate 10 people), the space has been changed to include “pods” that in total, will accommodate 30 people between 2 floors. One of the challenges with creating individualized spaces that are closed off, is how to tell if they are occupied. My studio instructor led me on that this could be done with light. Well, kind of the obvious answer, and a simple flick of the switch would indicate a light is on and that it is being used. Better yet, what if they glowed? By adding illumination to the pods this shows they are being used, and creates an interesting effect from the exterior in darker hours.

I’ve attached some quick test renders. I’m still experimenting with materials a bit too.

Project mid review came and went, and overall I felt it went well and got some good feedback that will push me forward.

I thought there were two big points from my crit which I will have to look at further for the rest of the term.

1. Creating a reading place that is meant to be isolated, how does this tie into the public urban fabric. I still feel like my concept is clear, and I want to stick to creating this type of environment.

2. The interaction between the reading area and the rest of the building, mainly the classrooms. How does this work with wanting to be isolated?

Other notes (thanks Jess!)
- a monastery for reading? How do you recreate this environment in an urban setting?
- engage the public with green space -> but just visual.
- isolation > only by hallways > which is where people come together > so maybe more isolation is necessary.
- space between building and university building, what exactly happens here? would be good if there was a link to the interior green space and that space.
- focus and void of green “canyon” could be explored more. Can be built upon.

The time has come to delve into the program and design a building. Now that a somewhat clear diagram and idea has been developed, the next step is to evolve that into a building. The building has been dubbed an Academy of Literary Exploration. It will be ~15,000 SF (minus circulation) and will contain a main program space that will be unique across every student’s project. In my case, it will be a reading room. More on this later.

There are some site photos and information in the gallery below. The images show a green building which in all my schemes the building abuts directly. There is also the University Club to the East. When visiting the site, there is a clear change in elevation from the front corner to the back corner. I estimate this change to be ~9 feet.

Some of the early concepts were just quick sketches showing the relationship of main program space with the rest of the site. This eventually led to a clear understanding of what the main space should be. The simplest diagram posted represents the idea taken from the EX1 diagram and inserted it into the site. In this instance, the city becomes the chaos/distraction, the layer of control becomes the building program, and the individual is the main space. A large outdoor space was created to be the focus of the individual reader (besides the book of course).

This idea lead to a more refined concept, in which the reading spaces border a large open space. I feel confident in this part going forward, finding the right arrangement and setup may take some time though.

I’m not entirely sure what the reading spaces are like. I’ve had this idea that there are smaller rooms within the space. maybe holding 2-3 people each (see sectional diagrams). It was important for me to keep the concept of my idea even at this scale. There is a layer of control here (the separation of rooms), the outside distractions (rest of building), and a focus besides reading (other readers).

Mid Review is next Wednesday, yikes!

Friday the 9th we got our site for our studio project. Yay! It’s located between Broadway/6th and Jefferson/Madison. And we got to see YGH’s offices, nice views for sure.

Surely there are lots of issues and ideas that could be diagramed in regards to the site. This exercise is intended to be short, and to be about something that relates to our first exercise. Well, while this relationship might be a stretch it’s what I found most relevant and personally intriguing.

Within the city grid there is composed another grid. I like to think of this grid as interstitial space, the space leftover from buildings. It is in within this fabric a more personal relationship and/or experiences are formed with the surrounding area. I call them rooms in a city. How they are used doesn’t matter right now, or whether they are public or private. However most of them are private, since that’s all I really have access too. What becomes important is that they are isolated spaces. Not necessarily hard to find, but not well known. I think this last point becomes important because that is the idea behind my place for reading. At least in a contextual sense. My diagrams from exercise one were more about an individual experience and being able to filter out distraction. So in a sense, they kind of relate.

I got some feedback and ideas moving forward. Overall, my main diagram went over well. I clearly showed what is going on, and how one might interact with the interstitial fabric.

Moving forward, it will be important to combine the idea of the isolated place for reading, in another wise not so isolated site. Thus, what might prove effective is the layers of separation, and creating “pods” within the building itself. We shall see in a week, when our initial sketches are due. Until then, I will be refining my ideas and trying to create a stronger relationship/overlay between the two exercises.

After my review for ex1 I went ahead and did a first draft revision over the weekend. I got to the core of my ideas, and what it was I truly wanted to diagram. I simplified it a bit, and concentrated on one idea:

A place for Reading can be found off the normal trail, maybe it’s that corner in the park, maybe it’s against a tree, or in that sunny nook in your home. It is a place of isolation, and filtration of sensory stimuli. It is a place that does this without being too confined and there is free movement within the space. There might be an open end of the enclosure that focuses on a space. This focused space has qualities that aren’t distracting and allow for a connection to an external environment.

Ultimatly it’s about being able focus on a denser reading material, and let the mind materialize a visual representation without outside distraction. Hence in the collage this represents the tree as a focused single construct, while the external influences are filtered enough where they don’t interfere.

I’m sure I’ll be coming back and refining this further (and a more simple diagram perhaps) but this is as it stands for now.

This post is late coming up, but our final review on the topics in exercise one were Wednesday 4/7. In short, my review could have gone better. Where I was getting caught up was trying to diagram two different types of isolation, when I should have just concentrated on one. I also did a last diagram I should not have pinned up, which I won’t even post here. Lesson learned. The main issue was in diagramming these two spaces, if two different people occupy each space their essentially distracted by one another.

What good came out of the review? My idea on there being two separate layers (or possibly more) of the enclosure was insightful. There can exist a harder outer shell that could be about light diffusion, but there also should be an inner shell that is more about comfort and texture.

Look for a changes made to the diagrams post shortly.

After my review Friday, I came away with a clearer sense of what my main idea is. A place for reading should be solitary, and there should be a barrier that diffuses enough distractions where an individual can focus more clearly on what they’re reading. Two conditions exist, one in which there is an enclosure that acts as the barrier, and the other is space which acts as separation. At this point, a means to represent enclosure is more clear. What exactly happens in an open space isn’t as clear, is it simply distance that separates the two? Or is there something more?

The next step is to take these ideas and being to represent them architecturally. Our final pinup for that is on Wednesday.

The goal of this ~10 day exercise was to explore architectural idea and concept. I was assigned the archetype “A Place for Reading” which could really be a lot of things. I began by narrowing down the subject matter I wanted to focus on. I reflected upon my own experiences and biases for the most part. This generalization and abstract of what I feel A Place for Reading should be is best summarized in this narrative:

When I think of a place for reading I reflect upon my own experiences and desires. There are three basic criteria involved: the place, the person and the material being read. The object in my situation is a piece of literature that involves contemplation, deep thought, and being able to recreate the environment that is written into imagery.

To further my exploration and narrow matters down, it will be important in my case to unearth what the boundary is that is able to create a controlled level of chaos.

My Spring term studio started, and is done by an area firm YGH. Below is the overall goals of the studio, which is more abstract in nature than my previous studio projects.

IDEA:
The studio will begin by examining three program activities in detail (mine=a place for reading). The goal for each student will be to understand as clearly as possible the spatial structure suggested by one of three interactions: reading/media, viewing/display, viewing/performance. Students will attempt to discover a fundamental structure to these interactions through a process of research and analysis. They will then use that analysis to develop the abstract concept into a spatial construct that is focused, and grounded with the physical, empirical realities of scale, sensory focus, light, shadow, texture and space.

CONTEXT:
The project will occupy an urban site in downtown Portland. Students will analyze the site context in terms of scale, light, shadow, texture, boundary, orientation, access, circulation, culture, microclimate, history and ecology.

APPLICATION:
Th construct developed in the IDEA phase will be examined relative to the site/context analysis, and a narrative written to describe some of the myriad ways in which the two could interact. This should result in a clear understanding of what conflicts occur, how the program/site are complementary, and finally, a set of hypotheses about how architecture can emphasize the positive interactions, and mitigate the negative. Programs will be provided that are focused on one of the three typologies set in the same site and program, with similar support spaces. As architecture exists as mediator between the realms of site and program, empiricism and narrative, history and mythology, it simultaneously binds and contains the pragmatic and the poetic, the technical and the profound. This studio will explore the degree to which a clear initial concept or archetype successfully informs and binds function and form.