Supplement: EXP3 - Architectural Details

Here I provide an additional series of images from within my school building, intended to demonstrate areas of significance.

The Gallery for Student Work

The Staff Meeting Space

Stairwell through Lower Tower 

The Dean's Office (Lift) from Reception Level

The Dean's Office (Lift) from the entrance stair

Stairwell to base of Upper Tower

Looking Down from above the upper level of the Library, down through the light well.

Looking Up from the upper level of the Library, out through the light well

Looking down to the Student Meeting Space from Lecture Theatre Foyer.

The Lecture Theatre, from the rear bleachers, looking out over the desolation.

Supplement: EXP3 - School Building Directory

Left: Lower Tower
Right: Upper Tower

EXP3 Submission Component Seven - Completed Environment

The school building rises from the side of the mountain, amongst a long dead glade of trees, its pylons ablaze with a bleached green emulating the acid atmosphere. The building nihilistically embraces the death of this landscape. It is a memorial, a monument to a land in necrotic stasis. Its geometry is that of a the black stone of the mountain range - hard, angular, skeletal.

To reach the building, or to make the crossing to the other side, you must brave one of two spans. Minimally sheltered, you will experience nature's behemoth before you reach your goal. To cross the bridge is to come to know the elements that will inevitably destroy it. The orange tone of the steel bridge spans is a challenge to the bitter surrounds to degrade it through erosion, and a dare to the student or traveller to step trustingly on a platform that might not hold.

The lecture theatre crowns the building - the pinnacle. It looks out to the barren peaks; a reminder to the students within that they work under forces greater than anything they will ever achieve. A constant reminder is intended to encourage those within to embrace the futility -in the face of the entropic forces of time - of the many projects they will produce, and therefore to foster the conviction that there need be no limits to the creative imagination.

In approached the requirement of a folly separate to the main building, and the extravagance of two separate elevators to provide access to the folly, through a skeptical lens. Where Lowe might approach this requirement as emblematic of a smarter architecture, I would suggest that this requirement is fundamentally problematic. In response to this requirement then, I chose to provide two elevators that traverse one kilometre of cold, wind, and snow unsheltered, and unprotected.

Similarly, the folly on the valley floor rises out of the icy water. The platform of the folly is likewise exposed and unprotected. Thus to make use of this folly or the elevators that have been designed solely to serve it are an exercise in nihilistic submission to a deadly environment. Indeed, this architecture is one of desolation. It awaits the day when its occupants flee the oppression that embraces, and when it can crown its mountain in malevolent solitude.

EXP3 Submission Component Six - Draft Environment

As written previously, my chosen valley is not so much a valley as it is a network of fjords. Milford Sound is a vast, grand, isolated, and also surprisingly lush environment. 

In modelling my valley in CryEngine after Milford Sound, I chose to emulate the sheer scale of the geography, and in doing so create a series of channels that would look at home in the fjordlands of the South Island. Where I consciously differed from Milford Sound was in maintaining a sparse, barren landscape of bleak, snow-driven peaks and bare rocky cliffs amongst a still, clear river. 

When the time came to export my model from SketchUp to CryEngine, I began to manipulate the global lighting and atmospheric density settings to enhance the sense of isolation and emptiness I was aiming to achieve. 

I positioned my bridge with its central pylon housing the school building anchored to the middle head of the fork in my river. On either end, the bridge span reached to the bare peaks of either side.

Having positioned all of my elements, and coordinated all moving parts, I moved on to begin to enhance the level of detail in the landscape, creating a patchwork of snow and rock in place of the initial snowy blankets that I had layered over my mountaintops.

EXP3 Submission Component Five - CryEngine Environment

The finished environment including all draft stages. Download the Levels folder from Dropbox.

EXP3 Submission Component Four - SketchUp Model

The finished model. View the completed School Building in SketchUp. Images and completed Environment to come.

The final model. Welcome to school.

Supplement: EXP3 Submission Component Three - Texture

Whilst this image requires neither serious contemplation nor comprehension from anyone viewing this project, and is not necessary under the requirements of EXP3, I do consider it an important step in my own process of moving from textures on the notebook page to application on the surfaces of my architecture.

What you see below is a study of tone and texture. I have altered the hardness and colour of my entire texture range to 'blend' with my architecture. In this case, I have no use for a white tile, as I do not consider the resulting contrast to be a constructive addition to my concept, preferring a stark singularity set against more carefully considered variation to the visual chaos favoured by some. 

What this study allows me is an insight to how each of my texture tiles will act as a stitched canvas, and an opportunity to make informed decisions in my final selection process. 

From top to bottom: Linear, Rotational, Scalar, Erratic, Exploding, Staggering.

EXP3 Submission Component Three - Texture

An essential element of all experiment stages for ARCH1101, a series of 36 textures was required. For experiment 3, those textures were an exploration of movement. Directed by Russell, I sketched 18 textures exploring linear, rotational and scalar movement. In consideration of my developing theory of an architecture of nihilism, I chose to explore erratic, exploding, and staggering movement for the remaining 18 textures.

From Left to Right: Linear, Rotational, Scalar, Erratic, Exploding, Staggering.

EXP3 Submission Component Two - 18 Sketch Perspectives

Although I did enjoy my introduction to perspective sketching in the form of one-point sketches at the very early stages of Experiment Three, I do believe that my work in the following weeks whilst learning to sketch in two-point became far more significant in architectural terms.

My sketches for one-point learning centred on the dissolution of the formal F into abstract geometries that made little reference to architectural application. In my approach to two-point, I eschewed this insistence on rendering the F unrecognisable in order to place greater emphasis on the dimensionality of the spaces I was drafting through the exercise.

It is for this reason that I will exclude my one-point work from this submission and present once again my set of 18 two-point sketch perspectives. My folly is based on column three, a simple amalgamation of three F shapes that share a common stem. In the environment of my valley, the folly is highly exposed to the elements, in the middle of the fjord, subject to wind, rain, and snow, and constructed completely without comfort. In designing this folly and situating it, I was directed by my theory to embrace an intense depravity that suggested to me that the students, and indeed the dean of the architecture school should be made to feel the intense weight of the vast land into which the architecture of the new school building has been placed, outweighing by far, at least for now, the inescapable gratuitousness of the project itself.

EXP3 Submission Component One - The Mashup and the Theory

The mashup below is an amalgamation of three articles: A Crash Course on Modern Architecture (Part 2) by Ahnfeldt-Mollerup, Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing, by Graves, and How 3D Printing Will Change Our World (Part II), by Quirk. (For full references, see image below.) The mashup itself is not easily synthesised, however, with some patience, you will begin to see the foundation of the theoretic approach with which I approached this new school for architecture.

The opening is a nod to the approach of Russell Lowe, who has, throughout ARCH1101, promoted an understanding that dissolves the false dualities that exist between the analogue and the digital. At the same time, it suggests a cautious skepticism should be brought to bear against the view that a 'smarter' architecture of the future needs to be electrified, fuelled, mechanised, and therefore inherently destructive when viewed through the prism of contemporary technologies.

In the vein of that skepticism, in the following paragraph I consider the value of examining established conceptions of architecture not through the lens of critical analysis, but through that of the imaginative mind, as a means of transcending the limits of contemporary realities. The imaginative mind, however, must always concede - when preparing to withdraw from introspection to engage with the tangible - that a stark universe will bring its own unyielding demands to every imagined reality.

The realisation of the inevitable desecration of imagined possibility by nature's behemoth leads me to embrace a depraved nihilism where others might shelter in the stronghold of stoicism. Returning always to the ability to remove the self from reality, I propose an architecture that seeks to create a world that is inherently impossible; the nexus of artistry and intellectual obsession that rejects the irrefutable fetters of truth as surely as Quixote.

This approach allows me not only to reject the alluring ranks of convention before they are ever allowed the opportunity to whisper their homogenising calls, but also to question my own assumptions about my work.

In applying this theory the project at hand to create a building to house a new school of architecture, I relied heavily on a nihilistic resistance to the impositions of the brief, and to the enthusiasm with which joint client Russell Lowe promotes his peculiar vision for smart architecture. A more complete explanation of this approach can be reviewed in my presentation of the architectural elements of the school building itself.

Proof of attendance

In case there was any doubt that I attended the final studio... 

The Bridge Begins

Tonight I began work on a concept model for my bridge. The framework for this idea extends from the wing that I extracted from Zaha Hadid's Riverside in my last post. My initial judgement is that a school of architecture can be a bridge without being literal. This conviction is tied directly to the theory developing from my initial mash-up that an architecture should seek always to invert accepted typologies and explore the facts that are before us without wedding them strictly to reality.

Keeping this in mind, my bridge is a conceptual one rather than a literal one. It branches from one side of the valley, but it does not literally touch the other side. This bridge will, however, transport students from a position of minimal skill and relative ignorance to a point from which they can establish an architectural practice of their own.

The form that I will begin to explore as I develop my architecture school will be one of a wing. Just as the bridge will take my students forth, so will a wing allow them to soar. It is also a reminder to go lightly, softly.

I began by patching in a chunk of Google Earth topography from Milford Sound.

I began to explore potential sites, and the initial shape is responding to a spur down one of the many valleys of Milford Sound.

The Plan

As a starting point for my bridge, I took Zaha Hadid's Riverside Museum. The flowing form at first seemed sympathetic to the shape I had decided to pursue. My initial idea, prior to looking at Riverside, looked like this:

Next came Russell's frenetic lecture on The Plan, during which, Riverside was shown briefly. The plan that Russell showed looked like this:

But I preferred this:

Here I arrived at my starting point for my plan to section exercise, and here is where I got a bit stuck, mostly because I'm not interested in building Zaha Hadid's Riverside, simply because it isn't my own idea. Looking over this plan, however, I did draw some inspiration for a section drawing of a different kind. This is what I saw when I looked at the plan of Riverside, standing on end. This idea is oddly appropriate, because any school should be a place where ideas can spread their wings:

Even whilst firmly entrenched within the institution...

They should be able to take flight.

Two Point Perspectives

My series of Two Point Perspectives took considerable time and effort to complete. When I showed these in class, I was told they look a bit like they have been drawn using computer tools. My solution to that - to emphasise my line work - was to invert the colour marks of my pen, and then invert the gridded page to create a contrasting linear environment that highlights measurement and angle work done with pencil and a ruler.

One Point Perspectives

This upload comes slightly late as I catch up with my blog admin in the wake of competing claims to my time from other subjects...

My first formal attempt at one-point perspective drawing. The guys in my studio class tell me that my interpretation of 'f' may be slightly skewed. I have been trying to explore the dynamics of the shape of the letter in order to establish a sense of physicality to what usually exists in two dimensional abstraction, and to attach a sense of place and humanity to an element most usually experienced as minute in relation to the human body.

Experiment Three: Mes in Architectura

Experiment Three: The Country of Origin

New Zealand

Though I have lived in Australia my entire life, my parents and extended family hail from NZ. Visiting New Zealand, most especially the South Island, I have experienced a connection to land and place that has been missing from my experience of Australia. Where Australia offers a subtlety that I can appreciate, the worn down geography and dulled out palette have always left me uninspired. Perhaps that says more about a lack of ability to read significance in the microcosmic elements of the landscape, be they flora, fauna, or geological  than with any shortcomings with the country of my citizenship, Regardless, there is a drama in the excessive grandeur of the fjord lands, the Southern Alps and lakes of New Zealand that resonates with my experience of the world.

And so here is my first draft, capturing the feel of Milford Sound. It is very rough, and I hope to develop it further over the next couple of weeks, but not a terrible start...