Anyway, why am I crazy you might ask? Thesis. But honestly, who isn't? Regardless, I'd been having trouble visualizing just how the four distinct buildings connected and interacted with one another. Since it is a semester long project, and since I desperately need a refresher course in Revit 101, I've been working on modeling my space in the program. I'd really like to give up on that notion and just use good ol' familiar SketchUp, but honestly I'd like to milk my thesis for everything it's worth. Unfortunately, my progress in virtual modeling has been much slower than I'd hoped, and I was getting pretty impatient without a visual, 3D representation of my space.
Enter two days of chipboard, exacto blades, and some serious sobo glue. This is where the crazy comes in. There's this magical thing in the Warehouse shop called a laser cutter...Woah. Fancy. I could have easily plopped each wall of my space into CAD, submitted a file, and emerged victorious with a perfectly cut, speedily produced model of my building. Where's the fun in that? Instead I measure, cut, and glue the entire thing by hand - certainly not a quick process by any means, but it's definitely one I enjoy. The physical act of making a model is extremely satisfying and somewhat therapeutic.
1/8" = 1' - 0" of the CabFab Building in all its glory
On top of its stress-relieving benefits, manually cutting and forming each space really helped me to understand the ins and outs of the building and gave me some formal ideas moving forward.
After discussion over the model with one of my professors, I got an interesting spin on what space planning I had done prior. One of the biggest issues I was having with my space was deciding on where to put the main entrance. I knew that for my programmatic requirements, it would have to move from its original location, but the area I thought about moving it to seemed to be in competition with the existing entry. Enter Professor Zeke flipping my project in the best way possible:
Why not move the entrance to the shipping & receiving dock?
It never would have occurred to me, but it's brilliant actually. This new entrance would be away from the existing one, allow for more traffic to access the building, and open up the existing parking lot to be used for outdoor green space. Needless to say, I was thrilled with this idea. What's most interesting to me at this point is the potential for the aesthetic and conceptual design of this entrance and the immediately adjacent reception/lobby/public space inside. My biggest concerns are keeping and emphasizing the existing industrial nature of the three larger buildings while also creating a visual and formal concept of those two familiar words - empowered pursuit.
Space Planning Reloaded: The Sequel
So far, a lot of my thoughts on this involve a series of dualities - trade versus art, light versus dark, interior versus exterior. By opening up space between floors, my intent is to expose key structural elements while allowing for an interesting play of light filtering through the building - an idea that really drove some of my conceptual form work last semester. (The visual idea of empowered pursuit kept leading back to something with a strong direction and a movement from dark to light). Similarly, I'd love to introduce some element that ties the interior and exterior visually. In this way, the activities occurring within the walls of the center are literally and figuratively a starting point for a successful launch into the rest of the community and world.
At this point, I'm thinking of using some sort of strong, angular forms referencing both my concept work from last semester and the structural beams seen in the current showroom space of the building. With steel or wood beams or columns being used in almost every space of the building, it'll be an exciting challenge to emphasize these elements in a thoughtful, designed way.
Talk to you soon!
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