Urban
It's been sometime since I've done any serious posting. That's down to the hectic nature of my final term. I won't bore you with the details of everything that's going on but it's a lot. Enough even for many tutors to question the timetabling of this year.
THE BIG ONE
View of Rochester Castle from the main High Street access to the site.
I'm currently working on my final design project, for my undergraduate degree. This one module will be worth 30% of my entire degree. So it's safe to say that I'm pulling out all the stops and giving it my all.
The project is based around creating a new campus or series of buildings in the Historical heart of Rochester. The purpose of this "campus" is for the Kent School of Music and Arts to be housed in the heart of the town and become a far more prominent aspect of the City.
The area we are working within, is very restricted. On one side we've got the Castle, and then on the other side is Rochester Cathedral will all its outlyng buildings and grounds. Its safe to say that the site is a restricted one. 60's planning has destroyed any sense of the traditional Cathedral close you'd expect to find in a historic area such as Rochester. The worse aspect of this is the main road which currently runs within meters of main west facade of the cathedral. Luckily a unanimous decision by design tutors and students has allowed us to include a strategy for replanning the road system around the site.
I could bore you with an extensive look at all the site analysis I've undertaken, however you don't want to read about It, i don't want to talk about it, so lets move on.
The design for this project has been influenced by 3 main factors:
Concept Model: Part way through designing the latest Master plan Proposal I became fixated on a point of design. The making of this model allowed me to sum up the "language" of my scheme, and was a way to regenerate the way I thought about the scheme. The point of this model is that central circular block represent your desired destination. Its not until you arrive there that you fully experience it, despite getting glimpse during the approach. Then at the same time oblique entrances or other elements will try to lead you away again..
- The accommodation schedule. When looking at the variety of different types of spaces laid out in the brief, I began to order groups spaces/rooms around ones that needed to be near each other and others that needed to be kept away. This led me to see a need to spit up various spaces into groupings of related activities. This has produced 4 buildings each with its own individual environmental and design features that needed to be placed onto the site.
- The Site Topography. The site is a long and narrow stretch of land that runs diagonally from South West to North East. With the highest point being at the SW end and then slopping down to various points of access directly off the high street at the NE end. This alongside the magnitude of the planning task required to fit all of the schedule of accommodation onto the site led me to sink various components into the slope, and then building on top of them to create raised landscaped plazas.
- Creating a Modern Close. During the initial stages of the module we were introduced into variety a traditional planning strategies from cathedral Close's to the Cambridge quads. What all these spaces had in common, was a variety of open to small spaces. Trying to create a "modern" close within the site grounds I decided to approach the planning with the aim of creating a series of discoverable spaces throughout the site. The aim was to make progress through the "campus" a journey of Discovery.
Without any further explanation I feel its time to introduce my current scheme properly. Below you'll find my Inter-Crit presentation. It should give you a pretty good overview of the work I've undertaken so far. It begins with the concepts and small amounts of site analysis which directly affected my design. Then moves into Townscape studies for the master plan and finally some individual building development.
Inter-Crit Presentation - Click on the content for an enlarged viewing frame
I hoped you've enjoyed this update of my work so far. The 'New Content" I talked about in a previous post is still under way, but is taking a little longer than I expected. I want to share with you what it entails though. Currently this website is solely a means of putting myself out there as an Architecture Student. I do however have many other "artistic and creative" passions that drive me through laborious University moments from Photography to Art Work to the current re-restoration of my 1973 VW Beetle. This 'New Content" will be an amalgamation of the Non-Architectural components which make me tick, although some points of cross over will naturally occur due to my interest in the built environment.
Anyway I should probably stop this exceedingly long post around now. I hope anyone who's read all the way to bottom has enjoyed themselves. Feel free to send me any queries or questions.
That's All For Now…...