Site Workshop photos

Documentation of the Site Workshop on the 8th & 9th of December.

DAY 1:

DAY 2: (Rained out)

What we did:

• The 1:50 card model was used to orient the project in reference to the site context.
• The location and height of the perimeter wall was traced out at 1:1 on the site using garden stakes, pine dowels and orange string.
• The rooms were then also drawn out at 1:1 using orange spray paint.

How it informed the design:

• Tracing out the height of the wall at 1:1, I was mildly shocked by the height of the wall, but also given more confidence and conviction in the appropriateness of this maneuver on this site.
• The scale of the plans has since been revised after spraying out the rooms, resulting shift in the overall radius of the hexagon from 13m to 14m.
• The orientation and location of the house has been revised in response to the views from the site, particularly out toward the fields to the East.
  

Thanks heaps to everyone for pitching in - especially Bianca and Scott!

See the original post of aims here.

Model Photos

Thanks to Cec for making the model.

Meet your new selves!

These are some little scale people I got to drop into the model. They have great personalities and I've given them names.

Martin: "I'll fix that now"
Rose: "And I'll help"
Lily: "A little to the left"
Adelle: "I'm only here for the weekend, so don't make me do anything."
The Architect: "I'd help, but I don't want to get these shoes muddy"

The model is done and ready for you to have once I've photographed it.

Sun Studies

Equinox - 22nd March


Summer Solstice - 22nd December


Winter Solstice - 22nd June


These are animated gifs, you need to click on them to make them work. The time of day is in the bottom corner.

Cec's first day!

Cec is making a big awesome model of the house. Starting today. She has to call me 'C.E.O' and I get to call her 'temporary intern on probation'. She doesn't get business cards.

Courtyard Flip

I was thinking about some of the issues with the glass walls facing the courtyard. Firstly the house would be environmentally poor, secondly you would have nowhere to hang your art, and thirdly there would be no privacy for the bedrooms. I had this idea that these walls facing the courtyard could be 'flipped' copies of the exterior walls facing them, as in the windows start at the bottom and progressively erode away the entire wall toward the centre.
This will no doubt make more sense when I've actually drawn it, but in the mean time, this photo by Doug Aitken kinda sums up the image I have in my head.

Image: Doug Aitken, The Movement, 2000

***SITE WORKSHOP***

I am proposing a one night, 2 day 'site workshop' as a way to develop the finer spatial and material aspects of the design. Lily and Martin you have to come, because this is about your spatial perception of scale and proximity. I have also invited my smart, talented, and fun friends Bianca and Scott to collaborate with us on this 'exploration'.

The idea for this grew out of my realisation that I've never quite grasped the alternative spatial possibilities of interiors. When planning out a house for BKK for example, I'm pretty much on auto-pilot, doing what fits the requirements, but rarely anything more - like exploring an 'idea'. This combined with the blunt instruments architects use to design space - namely the 2D drawing board - meant that even if I sat here and 'really thought hard' about it, I'm unlikely to get anywhere without being there and 'feeling it'.

It's going to be a lot like a trust-building retreat for a building, as opposed to an organisation...

For the material exploration I propose to bring samples of the proposed materials: bricks, plywood, concrete, plaster & mirror, to see how they might sit on the site and to test ways of fitting them together.

For the spatial exploration, I propose to bring more sheets of ply for constructing mock up sections of the spaces & furniture etc, string lines and props for marking out the scale of the building & courtyard and whatever else i can't think of right now...

All of it will be documented in models, photos and video as a reference for the next stage of zooming in on the design.

Please add suggestions for other stuff to bring or do in the comments.

Where: The Site
When: Saturday & Sunday the 8th & 9th of December

Super Excitement!

Concrete ideas

Sorry to be thinking about interiors at this stage but we are. Decided that concrete would be the way to go for benchtops, hearth etc. only to find that Simon from BKK is already in bed with Melbourne's foremost concrete benchtop artist at 'Concrete Blonde'. Martin thinks he can do it himself but Lily wants a quality job, not dodgy.

Model: Roof options

For Lily: me working old-fashioned like. Also note the 'wireless' playing in the background.

Roof Type 1: Flat, falling back to courtyard.

Roof Type 2: Low folds, falling to box gutters.

Roof Type 3: High folds, falling to box gutters at perimeter.

Roof Type 4: PREFERRED. One fold up, one fold down, opens out to view and compresses over kitchen, falls to box gutters at perimeter and fold line.