Number 144

Project diagram inspired by Ching's Organisational Principles.

Number 89

Back to college tomorrow!
Hope all of you had a lovely Christmas and a good start of 2012!

Working on the next stage for my studio project. the concept chosen for my school of interior landscaping is terrace agriculture; in an attempt to see it as a metaphore I would say that: the sloping mountain represents nature/ the terraces represents the school/ the harvest represents the learning. I have built three concept models so far, and I want to try to incorporate more of the first model into my next one because there was where the concept was at its strongest. I am pretty happy with my block plans, only need to re-arrange the ground floor to try and attract as much external visitors as possible. We have been filmed during our last crit so we will be able to see ourselves while presenting, which is a great way to understand what to improve.

Objects of desire

Design: indulge in the individual desire and sell us MORE STUFF!
We live in the ultimate designer age, can we have too much of a good thing? Where do we get materials?

Marc Newson - address mass production, designer's goal. Dilemma: how can mass production feel a desirable one-off?
Peter Saville( Joy Division) Interest in producing things that he wanted.

Milano- design is an industrial philosophical affair. Ettore Sottsass at the end of the 1070's: Offer consumers' choice, variety and abundance - Memphis Blues. Bring some personality to the production. rational, functional, long-lasting, in the new fashion the customer was KEY. Memphis meant end of the modernism: collective good make way for individual desire,  rise to a new kind of design object.
 Michael Graves commissioned by Alessi to make an "american pot", associated colours to functions and his kettle was immediately a design classic, a "mass icon".
Redefining function: things we want but that we dont really need.
Philippe Starck - there are more parameters than the materialistic ones, pleasure seeking brands.
1987 big british recession >>> they opened to the swedish IKEA, giant automated warehouse.
Sweden IKEA most successful furniture company in the world, began in 1955.
Make furniture fit in a FLAT package. Ikea proposed opposite to luxurious products: flatpacked and cheap.
Low price, sustainable, flatpack, long lasting.
Computers ; 1984 the computer went personal. December 1946 -research programme on computers: demo showed computers can be useful everyday to ordinary people.
The first mouse that was ever built was in 1963, it was a wooden box with two wheels inside: it changed everything. Democratisation of computers. Larry Tesler - computer designer, make a computer friendly and efficient.
iPOD 2001. cradle in cradle design - glen oliver "think chair" its components are designed to be infinitely re-used.

Assignment one pt 2

DEFINE PROBLEM:

BRIEF

Who? the Client is Dublin City Council and the target are 3rd level education students, who are going to study interior landscape design,and the local community who

are going to enjoy the comunity garden on the roof top and use their own allotment. Results of survey and charts explained in the next paragraph.

What? the brief has 3 functions: A) School of interior landscape design B) community roof top garden C) administration and exhibition spaces

When? Works to commence in May

Where? 31-36 Upper Ormond Quay, Dublin 7

Why?The building occupies a space which used to belong to Dublin City Council and was used as a market place.

it was an important sapce for the local community: there a re a lor of residential buildings in the area and the market represented a focal meeting point for the

locals. Later in 2008 DMOD architects won the bid for the redevelopment of that site: construction works finished early in 2009 and the use of the building was going

to be offices. Despite being a commercial project, I don't think an office block is a good space for the community because most of the people living in the area won't

have access to the premises anyway. A place which used to belong to the locals has now closed its doors to the people of the area and only serves solicitors companies.

Another problem is that the entire third floor is still empty and it's currently a building site: this means that there is no need for more offcie space in the area

because no one is renting it, despite being a very central and attractive location.

How: use of sustainable ad durable materials, retention of existing structure approach.

RESEARCH:

 in order to better understand the target for my brief I sent out a survey to students of various institutions including Griffith College, UCD, KLC London and the Technical Institute for indoor gardening of San Francisco. It gave me information about the demographic group, their needs and wishes and their opinion and thoughts about the importance of indoor gardens. I have also conducted a primary research on three different typology buildings: the university of Salford Centenary Building - the building is divided in two separate wings with a central circulation space and glazing at both sides - , the school of architecture of Nantes - a system of external ramps leads all the way to the top floor/ the ground level is very well thought through as it cares for the students of the colege but also invites the community to join the premises with a hip cafeteria and an exhibition gallery - and at last the Zollverein school of design - very similar to the building im working on, both in size and shape/ there is a missed opportunity here fo a striking roof space: it could be a garden, a restaurant, a bar or simply an event/show space, but at the moment it's simply a lid to the building box.

I’m including the charts of the results of the survey to illustrate how I got to my target and my users’ needs.

IDEATE:

The initial concept for the design would be something related to nature. My initial ideas are  about scale and proportions. The idea is that:  an indoor garden brings the big trees from the big outside world into a small enclosed building > therefore nature becomes OUT OF SCALE. The initial visual concept would be that of recreating the feeling that the human eye gets whenever we look up to big tall trees. There is a big difference in scale and proportion and I think that this difference could be recreated using interior architectural features, like walls, floors and ceilings, but also through the use of materials, colours, light and textures.

Assignment one pt 1

Number 55

Studio Project.

The building I've chosen for my final studio project is located on 31- 36 Ormond Quay upper. It was completed in 2009 by DMOD architects. It is currently in use as offices and there's a shop on the ground floor. It is a four storey over basement building with two terraces and possibility for a roof garden on top. The south and  east facades have a limestone cladding, the north and part of the west ones show red bricks.The brief I've chosen is for a School of Interior Landscaping and Horticultural studies: it will also have a community roof garden and administration facilities. The brief relates entirely to my thesis so that helps me alot, especially when it comes to design the indoor garden in its technical details. The submission for the second chapter of the thesis was due last week and it was about technical requirements and details on how to build an interior garden.
The building is very user fiendly: it is a very new construction so it complies to all the newest Building Regs in terms of universal access design.The structure is rather irregular: bearing walls, stairs/lift core and a columns layout which varies every two floors.The research submission is due on the 30th. I have collected a good amount of responses through a survey I sent out to my friends, acquaintances and lecturers and students of UCD school of landscape architecture here in Dublin, KLC school of interior and garden design in London and The Technical Institute for Indoor Gardening in San Francisco.