Growing on One Another.

Digital Environment.

Site Context.

Here is the a rather basic modeling of the site context on 3ds Max, as demonstrated in this model, the precinct is rather tight knit and has tried to maximize the connections between each individual building.

Clay rendering.

After my dodgy effort with materials rendering i decided to move back to clay rendering, with a few materials namely the books at this point. here are the white render results. The result is a more volumetric feeling design.

Shell of floors.

These are the floors and the planned bookshelf throughout the library design, the hole in the centre is for the central core and the rectangular hole further back is for the open stairwell.

modelling like magic.

Well just this weekend past AA had a workshop day, where you could go to learn the tools and technology available in our workshop. I looked upon this opportunity with great enthusiasm having to build a 1:100 model of my final design. But to my surprise the opportunity was missed by so many, which meant that i had almost free access to the Rapid Prototyper, and i took advantage of the situation to model my core which has a finalized form. Incredibly easy to use and here are the results.

levels and access.

After finding out the my design was to be flipped on its end, a major restructuring in floors and access was needed. The solutions to which became easy and i worked on my design. And here are the results.

Louise's kindergarten is proposed to intercept my design at either the 1st or 2nd floor levels, as this will allow floor space to remain, and to allow maneuverability of my stairs. the parasitic access will likely end up more horizontal then seen here to access others designs.

Then in this view you can see that the central core is hollow, i did not want to put services in here as it would take away from its atrium ideas to get sunlight into the lower levels. Also the stairs shaft/atrium is visible here cutting through the entire building and will allow visibility of the books on floors above and below.

From here: more internal spacial arrangements.

looking like a building.

Over the past few weeks i have been developing a model on 3ds max, on which i have been achieving some pretty good results, these renders were taken shortly before 3ds decided to crash on me, the aim after this is to build it back to this stage hopefully. then the external structure will be complete with only the interior needing completion, of which i have made a stair case for access throughout the library. These renders are relatively low quality but i feel have an amazing effect.

The hero perspective shot.
However this glass facade will overlook the bridge it still has this amazing feel, with the bottom 2 floors extending under the bridge, and the central core attaching itself to a vertical strut in the bridges truss.

Western Elevation.
This is the facade that is visible if observing from the city, resembling both a wasps/bees nest and the original idea of the casemoth cocoon. functions of spaces will be discussed in a later blog spot.

Eastern Elevation.
This is what will be seen from New Farm, and some of what will be visible whilst crossing the bridge.

Roof view.
Once again imagine the bridge running over the bottom half of this view, the large arm extending out is not scaled to fit with other designs yet. You may also acknowledge the open almost atrium stairwell in the top half of this view.

From Here: I will continue to push this model towards being a realistic representation of what the design might be, and model it using rapid prototypes and laser cutting technology.

(Note: how i got to this point will be covered in further posts as i do not have access to 3DS max at home and cannot get screen captures of the process at this current time.)

layout planning.

The layout planning here still stems from where myself and louise had planned to just intersect our designs through 2-D drawings. Questions for myself explored through these drawings were with atriums, floor layouts, and how they were to relate to the core. these drawings were never taken to the level of technical drawings as earlier stated they were replaced by a 3D model.

This first sketch was for the 2nd floor which acts as the main floor with the parasitic access entering here and was the proposed point of intersection between Louise's and my designs.

this second set of drawings was trying to wrestle with the idea of alternative floors, such as the 1st floor on the east side of the building then the 2nd floor on the west side of the building. this was discarded soon after.

extracurricular sketching.

from my design, many have referred to my style as very Lebbeus Woods, i don't personally see the great parallels of similarity but decided to sketch a couple hypothetical designs in his style anyway... here are some of the results.

elevation of the new orientation.

louise and i decided that to get a good grip on how ours were to intersect we would draw elevations and plans, and then overlay, cut and paste them to get our desired effect. This would soon be superseded by just drawing up our designs in 3D modeling programs then intersecting them later, but here were my rough and refined elevations.

the initial sketch.
with some notes on how i might achieve similar on a drawing board.

the final drawing.
unfinished as we interrupted it by converting to 3-d modeling programs.

From here: work on modeling my design in a 3D modeling program, im thinking 3ds max from my past experience with Viz.

Ark and tek.

Architecture and Technology. Incorporation of a form of technology into the casemoth library has been a concern since the start of the project, and has been wrestled with through these sketches which outline a simple-untested wind turbine design done by myself... and movement of spaces.

From here: well the technology has changed to incorporate weather sensors, and the sails wrapping around the facade will respond and flap in or out according to the weather readings.

educated lives.

As the library in the community, i was quickly placed into the education precinct along with the kindergarten, honbu dojo, museum of the moving image, war memorial, temple and reptile park. This week we attempted to put together our precinct with models and the resultant layout looked a little like this.this precinct is planned to hang from the side of the story bridge in brisbane. Also proposed was a greater connection between the kindergarten and my library, so to resolve it we decided to intersect the two buildings to create interesting forms and spaces as well as a strong bond. shown here.

sketching a library's coral heart.

okay so from the feedback i got through louise, it all seemed pretty positive.. the form was good and the exemplar of the wall of knowledge was also good.. the main problem i could see with my design was a lack of interior interest.. which i attempted to draw an idea for interior this morning, the results were a main study on the coral-like formation that held the books:

the first attempt i felt had a brilliant feel but failed from the size of the drawing. was entirely too fiddly and small to get great amounts of detail in.

the second sketch conveyed the message much more clearly, and shows two shafts that act as access to the book from the ground and two shafts that act as supports to the roof, the form of these things would take on the previously mention coral form in an earlier post.

lebbeus woods, the exemplar of parasitic design.

Lebbeus Woods has been referred to by this class(through it's wiki page) as the exemplar for parasitic design, this along with the fact that my work has been referred to as a similar style to Woods has ignited an interest with his work. Woods' designs have very little connection to reality and no interest in becoming built forms.

http://www.monoscope.com/quickimagepost/2007/10/farm2.static.flickr.com_1145_1473903405_54bc8f18c6_o.jpg

The above picture is a design of woods' that i feel particular correlates into my original sail designs, from the exposed structures to the sail canopies. and another here through the cocoon-like shape of this design.

http://architecture.myninjaplease.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/lebbeus-woods_2.jpg

These designs are the inspiration behind the parasitic nature of the cocoon of knowledge.