“No need to look
for an entrance- just walks in anywhere. No doors, foyers, queues or commissionaires:
it’s up to you how you use it … CHOOSE what you want to do – or watch someone
else doing it. Learn how to handle tools, paint, babies, machinery … WHAT TIME
IS IT? Any time of day or night, winter or summer – it really doesn’t matter.” P
30
It is a very
deep expression of Price's 'Fun Palace' which reminds me the diagram of mixed
use building that we proposed for the architectural possibilities of our first
project. A multi- function building with minimum service requirement which
provide a platform for people to interact. It is the designing with generous
Identity which encourages a giving personality and freedom. This building is a symbol
of liberal utopia
to take the architecture into purity.
What is really considered
was time frame in order to be responsive in future, however I think it was completely
successful building in this trend. The illustration, sketches and all diagrams
base on people’s need were brilliant. It gave me an idea of how I can analyse my
studies to response the project needs and then how I can illustrate them to
depict my concept and ideas clearly.
Based on my observation on Site, people life style, research on sustainability and technology I made the below diagram.
It proposed an interesting concept for a VERTICAL VILLAGE.
The intentions were to design a new mixed use complex with extended open places
for public to be involved. High tech and sustainable design are the basis for
the design, relying on cultural and artistic faces of the Paddington Area.
The complex is designed for a middle class society which is
consisting of 5 major components: 1. Commercial 2.Residential 3.Community Hub
4.Learn Area 5.Interactive outdoor public facilities.
Courtyard is the heart of the activation of this vertical
village which has strong relationship with Paddington. Shopping is connected
and supported by the offices and residences in a hierarchy, towards upper
levels. The design intention is to create a 24 hour living centre. The village
would also design according to the climate and has vertical gardens to serve
human scale. It also proposed a large atrium space which also serves as a
multi-function area for other associated activities.
Then projected each area to show the architectural possibilities in future scenarios :
In this tutorial we were suppose to find architectural opportunities.
The diagram below illustrates the relative average building height distribution we expect to observe over the next 15 years in suburbs surrounding the city, showing Brisbane CBD at the centre and Paddington at the circles' edge. This progressive increase in height is a direct result of the rising population of Brisbane, the desire for citizens to reside/work at Brisbane's centre, and declining usable land area to place these developments.
Diagram illustrating the increasing average relative building heights from Paddington to the CBD
By looking at diagram below, will see that living in Paddington is hardly affordable. It seems that in the next several years, gentrification would force people to move out from this area....
STATISTICAL AVERAGES
In the 2006 Australian Census, 7,625 people considered Paddington the place they most likely call home. The average person was a youthful 31 years of age, and they had a very average weekly gross income of around $729 per week. Paddington folk that are on their way to owning their own home, found they had an average weekly mortgage of around$450 with the average house price in Paddington being around $725,000. For renters, the average rent in Paddington was around $280 a week. In terms of employment,66.24% of people in Paddington were considered a part of the workforce. Taking into account the wages and expenses of the people in Paddington in 2006, we would consider them to be feeling quite ecstatic.
What is the solution? How we can make housing and retail affordable in the future for suburban Paddington?
Answer:
Designing and implementing mixed use building developments
But:
Designing multi-purpose buildings require more space
So:
We could have 'GREEN'VERTICAL VILLAGES (as seen below) to respond the various community needs.A multi-functional high-rise building with a deep floor plan which could be more sustainable in terms of their design, their operation and their impact on the community.
Population: 7625 (2006) Area: 2.4 km² (0.9 sq mi) Main road: Caxton Street, Given, Latrobe and Enoggera Terraces
It is located on a number of steep ridges and hills
Nearby: Red Hill, Milton, Bardon, Ashgrove
Paddington is an inner city suburb of Brisbane just 2 Km west from CBD.
It has nightclubs, cafes, bars, restaurants, antiques shops, independent stores, fab views and is a magnet for the more arty, left leaning books and cafe set.
Architecture: Renovated worker cottages and Queenslander houses
Business:grocery stores, a great deli, vintage clothing stores, antiques, boutiques, cafes, bars, shoe shops and appealing architecture
History:Irish Catholics and then migrants from southern Europe gravitated to up until the 1970'.
In the 1980's students (QUT is nearby in Kelvin Grove) and young professionals began calling Paddington home, giving it an injection of activity and life.This change in demographics also brought development: old buildings were knocked down to make way for new architecture, some good, some not so good. culture:Coffee Culture,Food culture, Music culture, Art culture
This reading
addressed designing into pattern of human life which affected by political and
moral aspect of architectures and society. However, there is extremely
significant question along that which is there anything more than form and
function of the Building?
“Man … is born
free: and he can exercise that freedom in choosing the life he shall lead.”
p
94
This sentence
takes me to the deep pounder of how we can imply this freedom in designing the
future which will not steer to the revolt. From this article, I come up with an
idea of improvement my anthological knowledge since architecture is something
more than form and function.
As architects,
we should know how much we are impacting on designing the buildings and future
of human life. Our built environment and architecture experience should be
considered as tools to create our inspiration space which is properly
accommodate people physically and spiritually.
I feel, this
reading is completely relevant to this stage of my life and this assignment
hence I got this opportunity to design with freedom and make an experience on
my studies in order to be innovative, something would hardly achieve in office.
We come up with an
idea which Paddington Central could be a community hub besides a retail to
respond the various culture and community needs such as artists and student who live in the
share house and have a limited budget.
“Largely due to Paddington’s proximity to the
Brisbane CBD, tertiary institutions as the UQ( in St
Lucia ), Kelvin Grove campus of the QUT ( in
Kelvin Grove ), the Red Hill TAFE , as well as housing suitable for
“share-housing” and the general
culture of the area (former working class and multicultural) many young people,
especially students, live in the area.”
This new multi-
function and multi-culture area can make a beautiful experience of green space,
coffee, music, art, dinning and shopping for the people. Furthermore, it could
support the local artist (who converted their houses to the shops) and the
local economy.
“Many houses along Latrobe Terrace were converted into small shops in the 1980s and accordingly
Paddington has a vibrant shopping scene for speciality shops of all types
including fashion (clothes, shoes, male and female), food (chocolate, cheese,
alcohol and organic), home wares (bathroom supplies and hardware) and
entertainment ( new and secondhand book stores, picture framing, video stores)
and is largely devoid of the larger “chain” shop.”
We were thinking with
setting some green coffee pods, can preserve the coffee culture of Paddington
which could be a strongly connected to their community. However, we thought
about some individually activities since we have seen lots of young people are
not really interest on churches and mosques anymore, therefore having some areas to support
them spiritually such as meditation, yoga, sculpturing would be emotionally
supportive.
“Paddington being one of the first, if not the
first, suburbs to be gentrified developed a coffee culture in the 1980s which
is still significant and vibrant today.”
“Gift Wall” was an
idea to give a generous identity to the Paddington Central. This wall give an
oppurtuinty to the students and artists to illustrate their new ideas for
free.
Paddington is located on a number of steep ridges and hills
Coffee and music Culture
Fashion, Art Gallery, Antique
Houses converted to shops
wrong usage of green space
Dinning Areas
Convenient Transportation to the Paddington Central
How can change these disorganized faces and activities in Paddington???
This suburb has a strong culture which is a potential to be a successful community in future.
Is the vertical mixed use building can accommodate all these artistic activities and make them organized in a right hierarchic?
What people think in future about us..... we were generous designers because of dedicating them the high qulity of lifestyle or they would say they were mean to take our old and free lifestyle?
In this tutorial, we
were considering on people actives and their lifestyle in the Paddigton area.
We enlisted the below activities to find a framework on people's life style for future Scenario.
Providing entertainment/nightlife destination in Paddington Central ------> Allows avoiding busy Caxton St area (specially after game)
Respond economically to the socio-economic profile of Paddington area ----> Provide affordable retail, accommodation and reduce travel time and costs by merging different functions.
Have alternate mode of transport (monorail- Environmentally preferable) to reduce dependence on private vehicles, reduce traffic on roads (mainly to CBD), encourage those locals wanting to walk/ride to work within the Paddington area who were previously discouraged by hilly train.
Have some element of interactive learning/workshop within the complex -----> Dance Class, Art Workshop, Technology Exhibition Studios. To counteract the lack of learning facilitates in the immediate vicinity of Paddington Central.
Future ingrain, the coffee culture of paddington through inclusion of green "pod" coffee spots which provide excitement. Do not want to lose this part of the culture.
Provide a link between site and Suncorp Stadium. Make sure it is engaging and appealing to broad range of cultures (international games) ----> Further establishes site as community center.
Provide green space or vegetated facade in design to appeal to those seeking leisure and community interaction. Would also have environmental health benefits to users are local residents.
Meditation/ worship area to respond spiritually to youthful education ----> Alternative to church which may be seen as unappealing.
Provide Art/Music spaces/ Pop-up galleries/ Art crafts markets/ Public digital community boards ----> socially and economically beneficial
Reclaim houses that have been converted to shops and group these shops together in order to turn back to residential
Going green and being close to nature seems to be everyone’s mantra these days, so why not incorporate sustainable ecological environments wherever possible? That’s exactly what the Replay Store in Florence vouches for with their latest boutique having an ecologically sustainable environment that is for all to appreciate.
In an effort to portray deep respect for nature the green store design takes retail shopping to an altogether different level by placing the apparel clothing right next to the plant growth and giving it the feel of being right in the middle of a fores. Now this is an altogether nice concept for retail marketing and to lure in more customers as they are going to experience shopping for their clothes in earlier never seen environment. Moreover the whole theme of Relay Store portrays love for nature and how soothing the shopping spree for the customers can be.
The human factors are important because we had a hypothesis that if you make people feel comfortable in an environment then they will relax and be willing to spend more time within the building. This creates the opportunity for the retailer to be able to make more sales per visit and these additional sales have a dramatic effect on the financial performance of the store, significantly outweighing the additional costs incurred in delivering the performance upgrades.
What factors would influence customer’s perception of comfort?
Natural lighting
Provision of views out from the interior to the external environment
Ventilation system
Internal Environment Flooded With Natural Daylight
This is particularly surprising since the sector has identified for some time that shopping in stores rather than on line is moving closer and closer to a leisure activity, where pleasure, comfort and authenticity are key aspects which increasingly determine where we choose to shop.
“Our basic
argument is that there isn’t such a thing as a building...A building properly
conceived is several layers of longevity of built components.”
Frank Duffy
, p 12
Duffy took
the design process into the four below layers:
Shell; the
structure
Services; cabling, plumbing, air conditioning,
lifts, etc,
Scenery; layouts of partitions, ceilings, etc,
Set; shifting
of furniture by occupants
He broke them down into 6 categories: site, structure, skin, service, space plan and stuff as shown in the below diagram based on their longevity, since he believed
some of these elements will be variable in the future so as to be adaptable,
congenial, and conservative. For example, in next several years, the building’s interior design or facade
could change according to peoples' desires or the building's services could be upgraded based on technological improvements.
"The
unit of analysis for us isn't the building, it's the use of the
building through time. Time is the essence of the real design problem."
Frank Duffy
, p 13
“While all
the buildings change with time, only some buildings improve. What makes the difference
between a building that gets steadily better and one that gets steadily worse?
Growth, apparently, is independent of adaption, and spasmodic occupant-turnover
can defeat adaption.” P, 23
Adaption
The one word in this article which stood out to me was “adaption”. It means the longevity of a
building is dependant on how it accepts technological develpoment and revelation. Therefore, when developing the concept of a building for a furture scenario, I should take this critical element into consideration in order to maintain a flexible framework for my design.
We were supposed to consider and measure the
sustainability regards to future Scenario in our group. Social, cultural,
technological, economic and financial sustainability were some of the trends which
had to analyse instead of green-washed trend which is common argument nowadays.
In this theme group exploration, we made a list of people Needs, Wants and Wishes which steer our procedure into some principals for future.
Basic Needs
Time scale
Space- Scale
The future of Retail The future of Retail The Future of Retail
The Co-operative Future Vision - Store of the Future
The Venus Project proposes a Research City that would use the most sophisticated available resources and construction techniques. Its geometrically elegant and efficient circular arrangement will be surrounded by, and incorporated into the city design, parks and lovely gardens. This city will be designed to operate with the minimum expenditure of energy using the cleanest technology available, which will be in harmony with nature to obtain the highest possible standard of living for everyone. This system facilitates efficient transportation for city residents, eliminating the need for automobiles. The Venus Project's Circular City arrangement is comprised of the following:
All the facilities are available to everyone without cost in a resource based economy. The sole purpose of this sophisticated technology is to free people from boring monotonous tasks, make available a much higher standard of living, and provide more leisure time.
Are the four kinds
of spatial form and locality which were studied and critic to discover the best
strategy of the urban form to develop the social infrastructure and get into
the modern city.
"Much of
the academic discourse is driven by concern for global warming and the desire
to reduce transport emissions. To that
is added, in the political sphere, the issues of housing forecasts and
greenfield protection. The discussion both academic and political is
predominantly on the strategic plane. Small-area policy issues are side-line. So
the purpose of the chapter is first to reorientate the strategic questions
towards locality, and second, give due weight to non-transport issues."page 105
I can see the
author cite the imperfection of each urban form and then come up with remarkable
composition of “compact city” model and “dispersed contraction” model which
would be the greatest planning strategy because of the high quality of fluid
urban function development.
In this
spatial form all nodes should collaborate with together to respond the various
function of the city, as result people need to travel less into the city. The concentration
along the connection between nodes would serve the entertainment zones and the
area between central and nodes could use for farming in order to achieve self-sufficiency.
To me, this
plan is very careful about time consumption, quality of living, reliability of
transportation to decrease the energy consumption and traffic to attain their
inspire sustainability and economic growth. However all of them are some beautiful
theories which should go beyond the idea and get practical to find their
failure precisely.
We formed a group of four to discuss and find new ideas for
the future in each of the abovescenarios.
Urban Car-Free Environment "What if Brisbane City Council decided to
introduce London style Congestion Charge to CBD in 2020 to heavily reduce
traffic congestion in the area?"
What should planned and implement to improve the urban
environment in future?
Improve infrastructure
More green space
More facility
Traffic congestion control
Avoid city traffic on inner
suburban
Autonomous concept
Suburban
Sustainable Retail Experiences "What
if all retail stores in Paddington Central stopped selling goods in favour
of online stores, but decided to keep physical presence for customer
experiences?"
“We see a combination of retail
and e-tail as being the future of our business. You need the physical presence
so people can sample and experience your product. But you also need online
because people see that as convenient.” – Scott Coulter, Chief Operating
Officer, Comvita
“Online shopping is definitely
worthwhile investigating if you are prepared to take the time to research the
market, be patient and remain focused over the longer term.” Andrea Wouters,
Export Product Manager, Good Health Products
Retail -- Future Vision
The Future of Retail
The Future of Shopping
Regional
Self-Sufficient Community "what if Woodford Festival site were to become a self-sufficient community that was to be managed and operated self-sufficiently?"
The Venus Project: Working Toward Sustainable Global Civilization
In order to survive global warming, the growing human population and other challenges in the upcoming centuries, some believe that we must start from scratch with a new model of human civilization that directs our technology and resources toward the positive, for the maximum benefit of the people and the planet. The Venus Project is a vision for a brand new world civilization and redesign of our entire culture. Circular cities with built-in farms and public transit, along with sea cities that can accommodate millions, are just part of this complex and visionary idea to take us “beyond politics, poverty and war”.
Virtual Strategies for All Regions "What
if Queensland Government’s key strategy were to resolve Urban, Suburban
and Regional issues virtually?"
After each theme group presentation, I was thinking about
the potential scenarios which I could take. After thought over all the options carefully,
I decided my top three choices:
Suburban, Urban & Regional
The justification for applying the suburban as my first choice
is achieving some parameters which would collaborate to research and design a
sustainable retail resolution in Paddington area within the semester.
Architect Kisho Kurokawa was very innovative in his creation of the Nakagin Capsule Tower in 1972, which was the first capsule architecture design. The module was created with the intention of housing traveling businessmen that worked in central Tokyo during the week. It is a prototype for architecture of sustainability and recycleability, as each module can be plugged in to the central core and replaced or exchanged when necessary.
The Walking City is constituted by intelligent buildings or robots that are in the form of giant, self contained living pods that could roam the cities. The form derived from a combination of insect and machine and was a literal interpretation of Corbusier's aphorism of a house as a machine for living in. The pods were independent, yet parasitic as they could 'plug in' to way stations to exchange occupants or replenish resources. The citizen is therefore a serviced nomad not totally dissimilar from today's executive cars. The context was perceived as a future ruined world in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
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