13 : Lecture

Today's lecture was pretty much a summary of the semester, but if there is one thing I have learned from this lecture series it would be this:


Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

09 : Lecture

I was sick yesterday and missed the lecture in person, but I have gone over the recording and found the lecture very insightful.  Yasu made the point that if we haven't started actually designing now, then we never will....

Here are my notes:

08 : Lecture

This lecture described a 'new' way to understand sustainability.  Cradle-to-cradle design is something I researched in Collaborative Design last semester, and I particularly the examples shown in todays lecture.

I quite like this Quadror idea and I think having a simple element which is assembled by the user.  A video by Quadror is shown below:

07 : Lecture

The lecture was really great yesterday at breaking down the required elements for the individual project.


Here are my notes in the lecture:

05 : Lecture

Due to there being no lecture today, I decided to research some ways of presenting our ideas.  I have attached some images below for inspiration.

04 : Lecture

This on again / off again lecture was eventually taken by Phillip Crowther, and I'm really glad that it was.  Even though it was evident that it was quickly put together, it was still the most rewarding and relevant lecture so far this semester.

We were introduced to a competition called 2040 Glimpses of New York Exhibition.  What I found most interesting is the way the exhibition was split into 5 categories (Breathing / Eating / Making / Moving / Dwelling).  Just this simple categorisation, things seemed to click with our project this semester.

As I am in the 'mobile' tutorial I was particularly interested with the 'moving' category which proposed the Hybrid Urban Base by 'Dland Studio. "The team notes that the water edge at Hunters Point, Queens will be inundated in 40 years. This creates the opportunity to utilize an intertidal canal to create inland ferry access. That makes it possible to propose a new intermodal civic and transport center that synthetically integrates ferry, bus, train, automobile, bicycle and pedestrian circulation. The glimpse image shows the new transportation hub. All of the transportation ‘loose ends’ of Hunters point will be integrated into one transportation hub – the HUB, or Hybrid Urban Base."

I plan on researching some other examples of the future predictions of cities.  I think by seeing what other designers are envisioning it helps bring some perspective on how relevant this project might actually turn out to be.

03 : Lecture

This weeks lecture clarified a few key components of this project such as:

• The project may make the current parliament house redundant, but the intention is not to redesign and rebuild.
• Architectural solution to replace / enhance one or more of the specific functions the parliament house currently provides.
• Strategy that is presented in Week 6, is to become the brief which supports the proposed architectural entity at the end of semester.

As this weeks tutorial focused on Infrastructure / Strategy / Presence, the main question raised was what makes your project viable?

1. Support Structure.  This can be displayed through the visual representation of how people interact with the design.  Inspiration can also be found in the display of buildings under construction.

2. Transport.  Whether it be shipping / train / road network - will changes be made to existing network?

3. Digital Network.  How can the digital world interact with physical space.  Can architects provide more than just 'wi-fi' zones?

4. Presence. How can you provide identity to fragmented pieces? (example, red telephone box in London).

Each of these four areas were explored in someway in each of the Virtual / Mobile / Flexible / Distributed themes.

02 : Lecture

A few very interesting points were discussed in this weeks lecture, which I hope to research further before the interim presentation.

1) How do you motivate users to interact with flexible partitions / objects?
This is something I find will be very important for this assignment, as understanding how users interact with something they may be unfamiliar with, will allow designers to ultimately enhance the overall user experience.  Although this was on a different scale, I did a little bit of research in this area in DEB701 Design and Research last semester.  One thing that remains with me is that there is strong relationship between peoples perceptions of how something should work and their overall interactivity with it.  For example, if someone perceives that a partition is easy to use, but it isn't, then it often won't be used.  I think the best way to overcome this is to provide clues in aesthetics in a way which also improves the overall functionality of these flexible systems.

2) Design for demolition/disassembly.
To be honest, I haven't given this too much thought in previous design studios, but the more I read about the more interested I am.  An example I found was the Macarthur Gardens Education & Display Centre by Supple Design in Campbelltown, NSW.  The building has the ability to be packed up and re-assembled at the next development.  It is a repeated structural system made from precast concrete and supported with recycled timber (Saieh, 2009). Implementing design for disassembly allows the product and its components to be better suited for re-use or recycling when it has reached its end of life, thus reducing the scale of resources required to create new products (Active Disassembly, 2005). 

3) Something not in use, but with an extra layer, could be 're-invented' for the 21st Century?  Something currently existing, but with new layers (physically & virtually), can respond to new functions.

4) How can you connect the physical & virtual environment in the city?

References
Active Disassembly (2005). Design for Disassembly Guidelines.  Retrieved 8 August 2011, from http://www.activedisassembly.com/guidelines/ADR_050202_DFD-guidelines.pdf
Saieh, N. (2009, October 30). Macarthur Gardens Education & Display Centre.  Retrieved 8 August 2011 from, http://www.archdaily.com/39083.