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!
