EXP3 - Week 5 Update - Circulation

After having my critique with my tutor last week we decided on scrapping all of my revisions in the design and sticking to my first design based on the brick country house and keeping the essence of Mies Van der Rohe's work intact. The idea is to have this structure cutting into the valley with the long, protruding walls coming out of each side, which also give it support.. This allows me to be flexible in the size and length of the bridge as I can extend these parts and still maintain the structural integrity of the bridge as a whole.

I developed the section in sketchup into a 3 dimensional model and began to work on the distribution of spaces and the circulations between them.

I imagine the layout of my school of architecture to be clusters of spaces, namely public spaces, spaces for staff and spaces for students, and there to be overlap when these types of spaces intersect. I thus constructed a Venn diagram to visualise this layout. From here I detailed where each space was going to go and moved on to circulation and refining the level of detail in my  model.

My school or architecture has a great number of different levels in it so it is really important to have proper, efficient circulation between spaces. Focusing on the staff wing, I brainstormed ideas of how to connect these spaces. It became immediately apparent that the only way to connect these spaces was through a network of stairs and elevators.

In the above image you can see how the academic staff and the Dean converge on the meeting space, allowing them to have discussions and interact fairly easily. The Dean also has a generously large office with a panoramic view. 

(Currently I'm working  with the side walls removed for easy editing.)

The Dean's Office (top) and the current circulation between spaces.

For the design of the offices of the Head Staff I drew inspiration from the modular, cubic office designs found in the Macquarie Bank Building in Sydney.

Interior of the Macquarie Bank Building.

Offices for the head staff.

This dynamic, modular design where the office spaces are cantilevered off the supporting wall give the head staff unique and interesting perspectives while remaining as smaller spaces compared to the Dean's office.