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Train Concept

Week 11 Review

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Town hall final concept

Massing concept of Town Hall in Tsunami affected regional Japan

3D conceptualisation

[Preface]

A year on from the tsunami disaster in Japan and although most of the debris has been cleared, there are still fragments of what used to be; a dislocated, disjointed landscape of cracked roads, childrens toys, planes, cars and fishing vessels scattered along the coast...

These objects that seem like they have fallen out of the sky and landed themselves in random places in devastated towns are haunting reminders of what happened only a year ago.

Town halls are only useful to the towns they serve, and perhaps the towns that have been through so much need a place to take refuge, a place to come together, a place where they can start re-building with what fragments of the past that they have left.

This is not just about recycling, this is more than that, this is a tribute to those who lost their lives and those who lost everything but their lives, and this is a symbol of the triumph of human spirit.

Ishinomaki: Then and Now

Ishinomaki: Then and Now: News.com.au goes to tsunami-affected area Ishinomaki, to see how the city is faring one year on. Video by: Kate Midena.

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Assessment 1 Link

http://www.mediafire.com/?31vcagtqqsdo4al

Assessment Weighting

1. Clarity - 20% - I think the driving idea behind the scheme is what sets the different entries apart. The way that the idea is represented and portrayed is an important factor in the understanding of the final scheme

2. Rigor - 20% - The factors regarding social, cultural, environmental, political, economic and philosophical are defining factors in the final design of this project entry and should be a major factor in it

3. Imagination - 30% - The fact that this is not a "real" project for a client means that imagination and the ideas created should be pushed to the boundaries

4. Inhabitation and Program - 10% - The use of the building in this competition should be not ignored just because it is a conceptualisation

5. Artifice and formal configuration - 10%

6. Construction and Structural System - 10%

Assessment 1

Precedent Conceptualisation

Conformity > Appropriation > Imagination

2007 - Environmental Zoo

This year’s competition sought an environmental zoo that expanded or rather broke down the boundaries between humanity and nature. The entries this year were very environmentally and socially oriented and tried to connect the human world to the wild.

The clarity of ideas in the top entries is very easily understood and it is through the use of graphics that we can understand the range of ideas that the designers are trying to communicate. The winning entry’s presentation is very minimal yet it still explains the ideas of boundaries, co-existence, human construction and nature.

The entries in this year’s competition are very imaginative and very conceptual. Some of the entries are so focussed on breaking down the barriers between environment and human society that they simply aren’t viable in practice. However, the judges praise the over-the-top conceptualisation of spaces where animals and humans live in harmony without having artificial habitats.

The presentation of the winning entry stands out due to its simplicity and its soft colours, the subtleness of the scheme ties in with the idea of humans being unobtrusive and breaking down the barriers between nature and people.

The structural and construction side of the designs are nearly non-existent as the designers are mainly concerned with spatiality and breaking away from the traditions of the typical “zoo”.

1993 - Museum of the 20th Century

The main ideas that arose from this year’s competition saw a lot of socio-political and contemporary values being expressed in the entries. What made this different to a lot of other competitions was that they had to design a museum for a non-physical thing, that is, a period of time. The entries that did well conveyed the concept of “moving through time” and a lot of the entries were very elaborate in the programmatic aspect as can be seen in the winning entry where the museum resembles a maze which allows the viewer to journey through the different periods of the 20^th century. It symbolised the aspect of the increasingly dynamic cosmopolitan world that we live in.

Since the museum is to depict a period of 100 years, there are a lot of issues that had risen during that time. The entries that did well spoke of the political issues, the social changes, the technological feats, the cultural shifts and even the destruction of civilizations during the 20^th century. The themes they addressed were very explicitly expressed, such as the second place entry which revolved around the production and consumption of the 20^th century and was a museum that walked one through the detriment and waste of the 20^th century.

The winning entry is imaginative in that it encompasses the idea of time and that the maze is a metaphor for the different paths that opened up during the century. The old solution was to create something that is specific to the centrepieces in the museum but in this case it was the items that connected themselves to the museum.

The program and configuration for this entry is very elegant in its simplicity. The other entries that deal with the “space-time” idea seem to be a lot more chaotic and unstructured whereas this design is so easily understood. It is ingenious in the way it incorporates just 3 architectural concepts of walls, stairs and volumes to create such a dynamic space.

1979 - Club for retired senior citizens

The main idea that underlies a lot of the entries in this year’s competition is the cultural and social aspects of having to design for the elderly and those “in a state of emotional starvation brought on by the destruction of the traditional aspects of Japanese cities.

There is a clarity to the entries that received mentions in the way that they are presented; a very classical layout, with perspectives, plans, sections and site analyses.

The winning entry by Kem Hinton is said to “[preserve] the memory-filled environment of the old, nearly ruined courthouse and its tree…idea of inside-outside is reversed, and the tree becomes a center of an interior.” One of the judges felt that the designers have “too little knowledge of old people…[a club] should have something that only the elderly can understand and experience”.
There is a call for the designers to relate to the clients of the building in a deeper level, not just in a functional way.

There seems to be a trend that Judge Fumihiko Maki points out, and that is there are two main categories, where one is practical and suitable to their environments and another one that transcends practicality and attempts to use architecture to express the historic qualities inherent in the themes.

Palimpsest - Something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.

The idea of keeping the essence of the old and creating a new dynamic space is what stood out in the winning entry for this year. It speaks to the viewer in both a social and philosophical way. The notion that the central courtyard houses a tree with an air of memory about it. The philosophical values speak of the visible traces of an earlier time but in the context of a new, changing world.

The inhabitation and programmatic aspect of this design is accommodating to the way that the social areas are not simply axially placed but centred around the symbol of memory which speaks to those who utilize the space. The materiality and exterior facades are inherent with classical form which is befitting to the scheme since it is trying to create a new space without imparting from the clients’ lifelong values, it does not try to create a totally new building but instead add on to an existing building.