Project 5 : Conference center

student collage - Person looking through a glass window

Project 5 : Conference center

ARC605 | Spring 2008

In the previous project, students explored the potential of their original perceptual constructions to be developed into a three-dimensional, habitable space. Although the program was for an actual building, a pavilion, the programmatic requirements were rather limited. While the design of the space for viewing could be easily interpolated from the previous projects, other programmatic elements, such as restrooms and kitchenettes, required students to further develop your perceptual construction to accommodate these program elements or to devise spatial planning strategies which would minimize the impact of these elements upon the viewers experience.

A conference center was chosen since it involves a complex set of program requirements. The complexity of the design is based on the varied sizes of the program elements in both plan and section. Students were informed that the success of the design of their conference center would be judged on how well they were able to interpolate the ideas generated from the previous projects into the design of a complex building. Based on this, students were to view the detailed program requirements in the brief as only a general outline and were allowed to expand on these programmatic requirements when it made sense in the context of their individual designs.

Project 4 : Pavilion of Vision

Student renderings - building elevations

Project 4 : Pavilion of Vision

ARC605 | Spring 2008

Project 4 involved the design of a publicly accessible ‘Pavilion of Vision’ to be located at the edge of a man-made lake on the University’s North Campus. This pavilion would either replace or be immediately adjacent to an existing ‘folly.’ This ‘folly,’ which includes a concrete platform and the re-use of marble columns from an early twentieth century neo-classical bank, was chosen because its ‘picturesque’ composition prescribes a way of viewing the world, a topic central to discussions in the studio throughout the semester. The primary space of this pavilion was to present, through the experience of a physically constructed space, the visual/ spatial experience which each student had developed in the first two projects.

The pavilion was intended to be a permanent construction with an interior climate-controlled space which would meet all of the requirements of life safety, energy, and accessibility codes. The brief was based on the limited program elements which might be found in a non-denominational chapel, an intentionally simple program to organize, since pedagogical intent of this project was to extend the students ability to explore the potential of their visual/spatial constructions. The primary goal of the design of the ‘Pavilion of Vision’ was to explore how the perceptual experience developed in their first projects could be made manifest in a three-dimensional habitable space, albeit one with a rather limited program.

Project 3 : Light & perception

Project 3 : Light & perception

ARC605 | Spring 2008

Project 3 required students to work in groups of three and select one of the following four sets of buildings and writings. Each set had a title which evoked a certain relationship between light and perception (darkness, translucency, projection, and optics) and included two buildings and a related reading. Each group was to analyze both buildings in relationship to both the article and the topic title. The task of each group was to provide a thorough graphic analysis of both projects for the rest of the class. The presentation was to include a detailed analysis of the specific construction techniques used by the architect and how decisions made by the architect reinforced certain ‘spatial perceptions’ in the completed project. Presentations were to include an in-depth analysis of the mechanical, structural, and enclosure systems of each building. Groups were encouraged to critique each building regarding the effectiveness of the entire building design in relationship to what they believed was the ‘spatial perception’ intended by the architect. An important element of this research was to include construction drawings in the presentation.

Project 2 : Youtube video

Project 2 : Youtube video

ARC605 | Spring 2008

Websites such as YouTube allow us to view (through the limitations of the two-dimensional monitor), a spatial experience of a building on another continent. On closer inspection, one often finds that the constructed spaces are not exactly as depicted in the video. One might interpolate from this a new way to represent a project. The production of a video which splices images together of partial construction could provide the viewer with a spatial experience of a proposed space.

For Project 2, students were required to produce a video which would attempt to re-present the unique spatial conditions which they had developed in the construction from Project 1. These videos were to explore the re-presentation how the construction they had developed in Project 1 might be interpolated into fullscale building spatial arrangement. In other words, the videos were to present a spatial experience based on a future construction which had no pre-described planar or sectional ordering. The pedagogical intent of this exercise was to free the students from preconceived ideas of how a building might be organized. It was believed that this would encourage each student to develop work unencumbered by preconceptions of form, structure, enclosure, etc.

Project 1 : Constructing vision

View from a tinted window

Project 1 : Constructing vision

ARC605 | Spring 2008

For the first project, students were asked to explore a specific ‘constructed intervention in space’ and the potential for this construction to mediate our perception of space. As background preparation for this project, students were presented a series of lectures on 20th century art, specifically those which attempted to undermine our perception of light and space. It was pointed out that these art works were not to be seen as ‘precedents’ in the architectural sense of the word. Since these art works rarely, if ever, had a specific use or function. And most of these works, whether installations or independently constructed spaces, operated through variations of disorientation, these works could be said to be against or counter to use.

The final site for the installation of this construction was the graduate studio space. The final solution was not to be a scale model, but a full scale construction which allowed a viewer to actually experience a particular spatial condition. The final construction would be judged by how successfully it presented a specific spatial perception for the viewer/participant @ 1:1 scale.