Design: Check!

 Today I have finally finalised (?) my design. Using the foam board model really helped me to get my head around the site and come up with my design.
I started designing by using card to represent the buildings and placing them on site in various places. I then built it up and the model allowed me to see how the buildings would sit in the landscape and the views available from their positioning. 
Space was still tight so I had to add extra floors to accommodate the office and race office.


The site is spilt by purpose with three buildings. Starting upstream, the first building on site are the meeting rooms. These are separate from the rest of the site to allow privacy for business meetings etc. As well as being out of the way, the rest of the site is hidden from them by the landscape and the main building. The views would be upstream and across the river, meaning that any activity happening downstream doesn't cause distraction.

The next building is the main club building. This consists of the main space, kitchen/bar and its storage, toilets and the office and reception. I began with the building below the level of the car park and having this for the main area but I still needed somewhere for the office. I came to the conclusion that it would have to go on the second storey, level with the car park but I wasn't happy with having a private space to be the first view of the building so I added a reception space to the building and would then have a staircase, mirroring the steps outside, down to the main space. The office would the site behind the reception. Due to it being on the first floor of the building, it would have views across the site, allowing staff to be able to see what is going on at the centre. I aligned the main building to have views down the river and toward the launch site for the kayaks. This focuses all the attention on that part of the site and would also add to the privacy of the business part of the site. 
My third building is the kayak storage and race centre. I positioned this to be in line with the boundary of the car park so as not to obstruct the view from the club building. This building is split into three parts: the storage, changing rooms/toilets and the race office. The storage sits on the lowest part of the site, This is so that the kayaks don't have to be carried down hill to the river. The changing rooms and toilets are located on the next level up on the site with the race office over looking that area of the site on the first floor, level with the car park.

Now that I have the design for my site, I am going to expand on it by carefully planning the interior and the vertical circulation within the main building. I am also going to start looking into materials. As the site has flooded severely in the past, and is therefore likely to do so again, I want to think about this carefully: concrete seems the best option but I don't feel like it would fit into its surroundings very well.