ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN V
The module is a design studio that emphasizes the idea of ‘place-making for the urban communities. Students will undertake a studio-based exercise that deals with urban blocks within a dense urban environment. The emphasis in this module will be on exploring the notion of ‘place-making’ and architecture that respond to this notion. Developing your design thinking as an architectural narrative, forming proposals that are poetic expressions of ideas. Projects will not promote complex programmatic and organizational problems but will rather allow in-depth exploration and interpretations. The two major parts of the studio are a) urban contextual study and b) architectural design development. The final outcome is an architectural design that is responsive to its urban character. In their preliminary design work, students engage with urban studies and strategy/concept development to develop an appropriate program and massing studies responding to the urban conditions. Subsequently, the major project involves the development of a design scheme that engages with the spirit of urban places and the everyday life of the urban community. The design work explores the plan-section-elevation relationship to achieve an architecture that acts as a vibrant block exploring the maximum potential of the urban space.
MY PROJECTS
01
Project 1a: Preliminary studies – Townscape Appraisal
The first project, Preliminary Studies, is a preparatory task that investigates the character of a place (town or city) and architecture for place-making through the ‘Townscape Assessment’ (see Appendix 1) exercise. The purpose of this project is to evaluate the character, identity, and uniqueness of a town and urban region in order to identify opportunities for producing responsive architecture design within urban context and place-making led urban space in the given site. Thus, the project introduces students to the fundamentals of urban design by assessing the ‘content’ of the urban context within the proposed site.
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Project 1b: Architectural Design Strategy
Aim: to deduct a position for finding architecture and producing architectural design strategy. By this time of the semester, the students should be able to find their positions to develop the Community Centre for the Cultural and Creative City. The students are to individually interpret the idea of ‘Community Centre for the Cultural and Creative City’ and come up with an architectural design strategy for the same. This will be in-reflection to the issues and inspirations they found in Project 1a in order to offer to character, continuity and enclose, quality of public realm, ease of movement, legibility, adaptability, and diversity in the city. Architecture is about geometry. Exploration with 1:100 models on form-typologies such as linear, perimeter and diffused in terms of layering, subtraction, over-lapping etc is compulsory at this stage.
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Project 1c: Architecture for place-making
Architectural design strategy should be further resolved a) by design through form, activity and circulation and b) for technical and services integration through concepts and components. The proposed building should be of an area of minimum 1200 m2 and a maximum of 1300 m2 and 3-5 storeys high in the given block boundaries. Apart from developing a narrative on architectural strategy in response to the relevant questions pertaining to community and its context, the design should take into consideration a holistic application of structural, spatial, technical, environmental, services, and legislative requirements to address the user needs for an urban Community Centre. This will include a focus on tropical design, lighting as well as the design of the façade and building envelope that is of a coherent language to the overall design scheme. The design outcome has to exhibit strong integration in construction and theory, within the Studio, whilst concurrently integrating with the Module on Building Services through concepts and components.