FA14 Studio: Area 51 Site Visit

Last Friday my studio group made our way out to Area 51 to see the site for our project this semester. I am calling our site Area 51 because our project is "confidential", in the sense that it is going to be the real site for a healthcare facility in the near future. So from now on I will be calling the project Area 51 for fun, and so that I may continue to share it on here without breaking that confidentiality. 

Above is an edited site plan of Area 51, and below you will find photos from our site visit to Area 51. The site is situated on a hill with an approximate 40' grade change from top to bottom. To the left of the site is a capped landfill, and to its right is hole 9 of a golf course. The area where the building will most likely go is densely populated with trees.  

Later tonight I will start working on the 8 pages of notes I have from the client meeting and come up with a comprehensive program list. Enjoy the site photos!

FA14 STUDIO: Precedent Research

My studio project this semester is to design a behavioral health care facility in Devon's MA. Before we start exploring program needs, as a entire studio we conducted precedent research of behavioral health care facilities from early 1800's to present day. As a studio we divided the years among us and presented our finding to each other. My group was responsible for researching Behavioral Health Care Facilities from 1890-1940. Below are the slides we prepared and presented to the studio!

This research helped us as a studio truly understand the historical stigma that being mentally ill brought upon people and their families. Our aim is to use this research to make informed decisions when designing our Behavioral Health Care Centers.

-A

FA14 Morphology : Paper Folding

Today I had my first graduate level architecture course! It is taught by Professor Lefteris Pavlides, PhD, AIA. The class is called Morphology, and the study of form. 

The origins of a form as an inorganic are either solids (crystals), liquid (or things carved by liquid), or gaseous (wind or things carved by wind).

After he lecture he gave the class an assignment to work on. Take a piece of paper and fold it into any 3D structure. Make the paper stand, let your fingers do the thinking, no peeking at others.... Below are my few attempts at making paper stand.....

After a few minutes, someone caught on to the form he wanted us to create. It was from an 1974 assignment he had in architecture school at Yale.

I asked the paper what it wanted to be, The paper told me I like an octahedron!

So then I created six octahedrons.

Then we had to form them together into a 3D shape that would stay together without tape, glue etc... So we had to weave them together, which was kind of hard with only two hands but I managed to figure it out. 

For next Mondays class we need to create and weave mini octahedron's and create a presentation explaining the Origins of Form. 

-A

FA14 Studio: Maggie's Centre Pin Up Review

After meeting with my professor in studio on Tuesday, he had us take a different approach towards understanding program. As a group, most of us, including myself had jumped from program straight to form and tried to actually design a building. Gary asked us to step back, and try and create a piece of art with our diagrams and use those to fully understand the program and its needs instead of trying to squish it into a form. 

I went back to the program list and reevaluated it. I diagrammed each space to rough square footage's, got my net and gross sq ft and then did sketchy "art like" diagrams of how those spaces could lay out. 

From these diagrams I then loosely transformed the bubble spaces in scaled spaces of the sizes I had come up with. Then I drew it again with furniture to give it a bit more scale.

Professor Grahm was happy with this process work. Now over the weekend I will be doing a precedent study of behavorial health care centers from 1890-1940. Have a great weekend!!

-A

FA14 Studio Maggie's Centre Design

I'm about one week into my second advance studio course/final undergraduate studio!! My professor this semester is Gary Grahm of GMI Architects . Our project this semester is called "Where Design Makes a Difference: Behavioral Healthcare Architecture". 

The focus of this project will be to use design to establish a new standard for the care abd treatment of people with behavioral health problems. 

As an introduction to this project we were asked by professor Grahm to look at a series of cancer centers located across Europe called Maggie's. The following excerpt about Maggie is taken from the Maggie's website..

"In May 1993, Maggie Keswick Jencks was told that her breast cancer had returned and was given two to three months to live.

She joined an advanced chemotherapy trial and lived for another 18 months. During that time, she and her husband Charles Jencks worked closely with her medical team, which included oncology nurse, Laura Lee, now Maggie’s Chief Executive, to develop a new approach to cancer care.

In order to live more positively with cancer, Maggie and Charles believed you needed information that would allow you to be an informed participant in your medical treatment, stress-reducing strategies, psychological support and the opportunity to meet other people in similar circumstances in a relaxed domestic atmosphere.

Maggie was determined that people should not “lose the joy of living in the fear of dying” and the day before she died in June 1995, she sat in her garden, face to the sun and said: “Aren’t we lucky?”

In November 1996, the first Maggie’s Centre opened in Edinburgh and what Maggie had planned became real."

He asked us to take Maggie's brief she left to the architects she worked with as to what a Maggie's Centre should be, and asked us to interpt it and create our own Maggie's Center. 

A Maggies Centre is a place that is supposed to feel more like a home than a hospital. Importance was given to the kitchen, group and private spaces, natural light and access to nature. My floor plan centers around the heart of the home, the kitchen. Surrounding it are two large group rooms that can be open to the rest of the space or closed off depending on the activity. The remaining spaces are either semi private or private rooms, where someone can go lie down and have a rest, or sit with a cup of tea from the kitchen and read a book. 

To render this quick sketch I used a Percise V5 RT 0.5mm Pilot Pen, and Faber Castle PITT Artist Pens in Landscape and Shades of Grey. This is actually the first type of sketch I've done like this and I'm very please as to how it came out. 

Let me know what you think!

-A

Masonic Gazebo Update

Hello everyone! Sorry for being MIA, these last few weeks have been SUPER busy with the semester starting. But as promised here are the pictures from the construction of the Masonic "Gazebo" shelter I designed. The entire shelter is completed out of rough cut lumber, with red cedar shingles covering both gable ends and architectural shingle roof. 

Construction was completed by Robert and Stephen Rapson, their friend Glen and myself. The MYF is also going to be adding a paved patio in front of the gazebo up to the road and a wishing well for park patrons to donate money as they enter. Once that is completed I will update the post with photos of the final product! 

Balancing on the 8:12 pitch roof was rough...

Completing the shingles...

Final product! And done in just one weekend!

I'd love to hear your feedback! Leave comments below!