Sep '06 - Jan '11
(Kent State University)
All in a night's work.
8pm: Pre-lim model #3 underway. Volumes broken apart from last iteration, all assembled and arranged ready to commence staircase construction.
10pm: Time out for quick pre-rave rave. Test of lights and fog machine successful.
12am: Staircase constructed, all volumes suspended. Model almost done.
1am: Rave moved into the bathroom. Fog machine fills up room, lights go out, strobe light turns on.
9 Comments
awesome stuff. those photos are really quite elegant.
beautiful work, danny, and fun extracurriculars, too. that's what the studio culture is all about!
i will say, though, that the metal frame, which i know has been part of the project since the beginning, is starting to look like it can go away now. the model was much more elegant and made more sense before the frame was added. is it still critical to the project or can something else do the same job?
Steven,
Thanks for the comments. I understand what you're saying. The "connective tissue" frame is there because i need a system to seperate the inside from the outside, otherwise the entire staircase is exposed to the weather. As much as I would like to do that, this is Northeast Ohio, we do get a lot of snow. I'm open to any possibilities on the frame.. I just like it a lot better than the last stage it was at. What do you see happening?
and Arjun, thanks!
I had the same thought about the frame--as I was scrolling down through the model pics, I thought, "ooh, cool, the volume idea reads really strongly...ooh...ooh...OH, OUCH". Lose the metal frame. It muddies both your concept and your execution.
For now you could simply take the quick cop-out approach and say that you'll create a glass screen btwn the volumes to weatherproof them. Or, how about this--only wrap the stairs themselves in glass, then leave the rest of those cubes exposed. anyway, do you really need the weatherscreen to come all the way out that far? do you have to protect the ground itself under these volumes?
say you don't want to protect the ground beneath the volumes: then just wrap the stairs, so that instead of open stairs, they become tubes. leave the volumes as is.
if you DO want to protect the ground beneath the volumes, why not make another cubic volume just at the ground floor, and make it out of glass, so it's the same material as the glass stair tubes and reads as circulation space instead of living space?
just tossing quick ideas out.
hey, look at this:
The escalators in the center of the round terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
models...RAVE!!!!...models...models...models...RAVE! RAVE!!! RAVE!!RAVE!!!...and finally back to models...
I thought the rhythm of the pictures were funny...
wait, I just examined the model again. Your metal frame doesn't even reach all the way down to the ground. Perfect. LOSE IT. Just lose it entirely. Wrap the stairs themselves in glass, so they read as connecting circulation pipes. Your building will be much stronger without the metal frame. Think of it programmatically even--will anyone actually inhabit the interior spaces created by some of the limits of that metal frame? I don't even see how they get to some of those areas. If they do inhabit those spaces, your concept is kind of shot, isn't it?
myriam,
thanks for the crit, it helps a lot. I should probably clear up some things in response to your comments. First, the metal frame actually does touch the ground-- on the site the front of the building is buried in a level, while the back is dropped down. In the picture 3 from the bottom, imagine the floor from the lower left volume going all the way to the ground. A walkway is coming from the sidewalk to the top of the lower right volume, creating a platform on top of that volume and a space outside of the volumes to look down or up in. (I hope any of that made sense).
If you're familiar with Morphosis' Cooper Union building at all, the stairs all circulate through a central lobby that works its way up through the entire building. http://www.cooper.edu/cubuilds/gallery_int4.html I was shooting for that.
However, I do agree with you that it muddles the concept. I wouldn't mind getting rid of it, although I do want some parts of the stairs to be more open to the rest of the building.. almost in the sense that you enter a glass building, and there is a circulation web that connects you to these suspended volumes. Maybe if I just made my two entrances (one also in the back) a little more open but as you progress in the building they get tighter like you suggested.
You can find the files shared on uploading sites that the other crawlers miss here megaupload files
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.