In Pursuit of Thesis: Week Six

There are officially two short weeks until spring break, which means there are just two short weeks until the mid-point of the semester. The entire concept of this clearly hasn't hit me yet, because I'm feeling just fine - but check back on that in a week or so. Anyway, while the idea of flying across the country to Seattle (!!!) is a wonderful thing to daydream about, I'm really hoping to make some serious progress on my thesis. I've set a lot of goals for myself in the next few weeks - with my midterm review and a solidified draft of the written portion of my Capstone on the horizon, I'm starting to feel some pressure.

Right now, I still feel like I'm at a pretty good point. The expectation for my midterm review is that I'm 75% done with my floor plan - that's a lot of percent - but I really feel like it's totally do-able. Just in the last few days I've made quite a few decisions that are really helping me to progress.

Before I can get to the nitty-gritty of laying out individual rooms and spaces, I need to solidify my major design concepts. In the images below, the green colored form show where I've intervened so far. Again, these forms are based off of my original concept model work from last semester. These forms, in some places, will extend up the wall in a very angular manner, some will double as hang out places or seating - such as in the main entrance.

A very basic model of what these forms will look like. This seating element gives the entrance a 

function other than prolonged entry.

A section of the entry. The lighter green portion on the right will be a 

sculptural piece mimicking the form of the seating area at the bottom with less visual weight.

The area on the top left will allow for students to view the entry from multiple perspectives 

rather than from below only. 

First floor overall design concept plan.

Second and third floor general plan for warehouse space. The

section enclosed by the green will be open to the floors below and above.

This week, I got so excited about where I was going with these forms that I was on the edge of going overboard. After a brief discussion during class, I decided to include these forms (in three dimensions) only where I've intervened with the structure of the building. In other words, I've place them only where I've added partitions, cut through the floor, and so on. As I move forward and actually draw out perspectives and sections, I intend to add two dimensional elements mimicking these forms throughout the rest of the space - a development you should start to see next week. 

Right now, my biggest roadblock is figuring out how to divide the classroom spaces from the student lounges. Specifically, this becomes an issue on the third floor of the warehouse space, which will be open to the floor above. In a few, select spaces, I'm considering using the angular form itself to create a room within a room. That being said, this idea would need to be applied very specifically in order to avoid the form seeming completely arbitrary.

A lot of the solutions to this, I think, will come from working with my physical model I made a few weeks back. With my particular designs, a computer model will only confuse me at this iterative point. I'm really looking forward to learning how to put that into Revit...gulp. We'll talk about that next week though. 

Until then!