Here come the floor plans!

I have been going for crits and listening to how other people and my lecturers perceive my building. It is really interesting to see the space through the eyes of other people. I had a design layout that 'worked' but i knew it wasnt IT! Mary critted the space, and desribed that the spaces seemed 'forced' into the building - mainly because I had my theatre in a diaginal posistion and thus causing strange and uncorftable angles.

Crits with Philip showed that I needed to address the entrance and circulation onto a main axis point and therefore open up the space. I changed the floorplans, working with the structural grid system (now - no longer have to remove columns) have have managed to achieve a multi-volume sapce through 6 floors where natrual light and ventilation can penetrate all the floors and areas. This meets a design requirement of my brief that all students in the studios and around the building space will be on display. So no matter where you are in the building, you will always have a visual link of the other students around, under and above you.

Epic EMPAC!

I have found an amazing Media and Arts Center to use as my main precedent study. It is the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Centre (EMPAC) in Troy, New York. It took nearly a decade to design and build this masterpiece! Grimsaw Architects (New York) designed a building that is "loud on the outside, quiet on the inside".




Although this university campas bulling is much larger in scale,2220 000sq foot, with a 1200 seater concert hall, and 3 x 400 seater theaters - the aspects that I will be taking from this building is the attention to detail. The building as the description says - is "quiet" and has amazing acoustics and the latest design technology in sound engineering. here are some pictures of the building. i love the "shoe-box" effect of the concert hall and how the large span of glazing envelopes it.

looking back on the first half of the semester i have realised that the industry and varsity are two different worlds. May I even be bold enough to say that industry, being the real deal is in some way - easier? where a designer works with a specialist team.... mmm... thinking about my proposal - perhaps so, as designing a space as specialized as mine - ALONE - is hard and daunting.
BUT
this is what i want to achieve form this year! I want to push myself out of my cardboard box and learn to design magnificent spaces with restrictions and technicalities. and yes its been a hard first 3 months.

the other night i saw my space in my head for the first time. the happiness i felt was that of a pregnant woman feeling her baby kick for the first time. I am now able to gather all my thoughts and group them. I still have so much work to do.... my layouts for one - bothers me endlessly - but hopefully now i can start shining my proposal's identity through the presentation layouts, which will aid me in all the other design areas...