Developments and Precedents

Since I last wrote, my design has changed yet again. 

My current design, the one I'm going to roll with, involves not putting a staircase inside the building but by putting buildings within a stepped landscape. I got my inspiration from somewhere I visited on holiday in Cornwall years and years ago. 

The Minack Theatre, Cornwall

The Minack Theatre was build by Rowena Cade as a place to perform plays that she organised. Set on the cliff top, it makes the most of the topography. Its use of the landscape in which it sits is the reason I chose it as a precedent. 

Our site is steep and I want to make use of that to create an outdoor space that looks out onto the River Severn and the activities on it. 

I began developing my design by working in plan and looking at where my building would be placed and how the whole site would be arranged. 

The Minack Theatre has steps that provide the seating for the theatre as well as access through the site. I want to incorporate this idea into my site but I also want to create flat spaces which provide extensions to the main club space and spaces for activities.

To help me to design the layout of my site, I looked at precedents of visitor centres. Searching on ArchDaily provided me with Orokonui Ecosanctuary Visitor Centre in New Zealand. 

I colour-coded the different types of spaces and marked them on the plan: blue for public, red for semi-public, yellow for private and green for facilities. From this, I was able to see how buildings of a similar purpose were arranged. I noticed that the public spaces were the most central within the building and everything that needed to be reached by the visitors came off this central space. The facilities were more hidden but were still easily accessible while the private spaces were completely set back from the main space, with access hidden on a kind of need to know basis.

I am going to use these precedent to help develop my idea into a cohesive design over the next week and I plan on having my design sorted before Christmas - want to actually have something akin to a holiday this year!

Thinking Outside The Site

Apologies for the crude photo - on a bit of a roll at
the moment

After having to take a step back from my initial design and talking myself though ideas, I finally came up with a design that I think I can work with.
My biggest problem with the site is how narrow the site is. There is also quiet a steep terrain to it which makes it even more difficult. 
So, in order to maximise what little width I had, I had to think outside of the site. 
One of the key ideas for this project is vertical circulation. I haven't quite got a design for the staircase (Thinks back to A level project) and whether I want it as a prominent feature of the building or not, but I have an idea of how my building is to be laid out, taking into account the changing levels of the site.
Rather than having an entrance car park level and trying to get down to footpath (main site) level like my previous design, I have instead made the most of this second storey to create a central atrium space as my multi-purpose area. I have connected all of this first floor space with a walk way around the double height space which will be home to the race office, office and meeting spaces. Downstairs will be the main area and the facilities including toilets, kitchen and storage.

Obviously my design needs more than a little bit of refinement but felt I should update the blog/journal. Back to work and time to do some actual sequential drawings now!

New Project

I should probably begin at the beginning for this project; I'm already doing design work but if I backdate this post no-one will know! Shhh.
The project began at the end of October. The brief was given and this time there was a choice of two sites: Ironbridge in Shropshire or Graz in Austria. I chose Ironbridge and as a group of 3, we decided we would need more than one day one site so we headed down on the Monday before we had to meet tutors on the site on Tuesday. 

We headed down there on an early morning train to Shrewsbury and after just missing the two-hourly bus to Ironbridge we explored the town centre to kill some time.
Finally on the bus, the weather started to turn nastier and the rain, fog and crazy bus driver made for an interesting journey. After arriving at Ironbridge, the first destination was the site which was around the back of the Museum of the Gorge carpark.

The site is long an narrow and offers views across the river, upstream to the powerstation and downstream to the iron bridge. After exploring the site and it’s immediate surrounds, we felt it was only right that we went and saw the iron bridge so we headed up there and to the toll house. 

We then decided to try and get views of the site from the other side of the river and went for a walk along the river bank towards the powerstation, actually reaching the fenced boundary. The cooling towers looked so ominous in the mist.
Turning to walk up the hill, we found some stairs leading up the side of the gorge. Thinking that they didn't go up very far, we went up them. We ended up climbing until we would have been able to see the town, if it wasn't for the fog. 
After coming to the conclusion that the fog was getting worse, we made our way back down the hill. Quickly. Visiting the museums was next on the list so we got our Museum Passport from the Museum of the Gorge and once we had visited, we headed up the road to Coalbrookdale, Enginuity and the Museum of Iron.

Day 2

The day began by catching another early train to Shrewsbury although delays meant that I nearly missed the bus out to Iron Bridge but Arriva buses can always be trusted to be late!
Once there, I visited the site and took more photos. It was even foggier than on Monday which made for some more eerie photos towards the power station. Having some time to kill before meeting on site, I headed into town and up the hill. I found a path just off the town square that lead up to the church. From here, I followed the road until I found a small garden/park on the hillside. Making my way through this park, I headed back down the hill and to the site. I was hoping to be able to get some views of the bridge from the top of the hill but there were too many buildings in the way.
On reaching our site, we began making sketches and taking photos as well as drawing out sections through the site at different places to get an idea of what the land form looks like.

As we had done a majority of the museums the day before, after we had gathered everything we felt we could from the site, we went up to a steel sculpture park where we thought of a good idea for a video. The park was full of some really interesting sculptures which could provide inspiration for my building.