Tuesday, February 18, 2014
DESIGN EXPERIMENT 1.0 - SYSTEMATIZING THE COMPLEX
The goal of this exercise is to gain an intimate and active understanding of three of the existing site proposals in order to select and develop one for the remainder of the semester. This does not mean that the existing proposals are “stable.” To the contrary, the exercise is a first pass at understanding what types of organizations and techniques are available for developing the site at large.
Working in three teams of four (one per project), students will analyze and develop, one of the three available strategies for the Office Complex (from Spring 2013) and apply that to the entire site. The focus of this exercise is to distill massing techniques as well as techniques for visualizing and representing ideas. While the existing proposals may seem developed, they have not been abstracted and developed along the following two lines:
Materialization: Each group will need to enrich, speculate on and develop a clear geometrical massing system for the existing design. In order to experiment with it, we will examine how that system manifests structurally and materially on top of, within, or around the existing historical buildings on the site. Two students from each team will focus on this aspect of the existing project.
Visualization: While some data exists for each project in relationship to program, structure, circulation or mood, the techniques for visualizing these aspects of the projects are not well developed. Each group will begin by understanding these primary components of their case study and then test or experiment with representational techniques that can capture the complex relationships of its design. The goal is to explore three-dimensional, model-based techniques for mapping these components and then to combine them with advanced rendering and/or graphic techniques to elicit the hybrid and contradictory nature of each component. Groups will need to further explore the potential of each primary component, by speculating on how they can intersect with, penetrate and/or frame the existing historical buildings. Two students from each team will focus on this aspect of the existing project.
Deliverables:
• Materialization
• Visualization
Aerial diagram/renderings of primary components:
The goal of this exercise is to gain an intimate and active understanding of three of the existing site proposals in order to select and develop one for the remainder of the semester. This does not mean that the existing proposals are “stable.” To the contrary, the exercise is a first pass at understanding what types of organizations and techniques are available for developing the site at large.
Working in three teams of four (one per project), students will analyze and develop, one of the three available strategies for the Office Complex (from Spring 2013) and apply that to the entire site. The focus of this exercise is to distill massing techniques as well as techniques for visualizing and representing ideas. While the existing proposals may seem developed, they have not been abstracted and developed along the following two lines:
Materialization: Each group will need to enrich, speculate on and develop a clear geometrical massing system for the existing design. In order to experiment with it, we will examine how that system manifests structurally and materially on top of, within, or around the existing historical buildings on the site. Two students from each team will focus on this aspect of the existing project.
Visualization: While some data exists for each project in relationship to program, structure, circulation or mood, the techniques for visualizing these aspects of the projects are not well developed. Each group will begin by understanding these primary components of their case study and then test or experiment with representational techniques that can capture the complex relationships of its design. The goal is to explore three-dimensional, model-based techniques for mapping these components and then to combine them with advanced rendering and/or graphic techniques to elicit the hybrid and contradictory nature of each component. Groups will need to further explore the potential of each primary component, by speculating on how they can intersect with, penetrate and/or frame the existing historical buildings. Two students from each team will focus on this aspect of the existing project.
Deliverables:
• Materialization
- 1:1000 model showcasing a geometrical approach for the whole site
- Aerial diagrams showing:
- Geometry
- Material systems
• Visualization
Aerial diagram/renderings of primary components:
- Circulation
- Program
- Structure
- Mood
THE MASSING COMPLEX V2.0
OBJECTIVES
Master planning is a much contested and debated issue in architectural discourse. Asia has seen its fair share of criticism about 2D planning, about the revival of homogeneous tabula rasa-like proposals and about the potential of computational tools for “The Master Plan.” While many new cities in Asia continue to develop large-scale master plans that are fairly customary in scale and scope, there are a number of middle-sized planning projects emerging in more mature cities like Taipei and the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore. These are the contemporary “Complex” and are awkward both in scope and makeup. Larger than a conventional super block and smaller than a conventional master plan, they fall into a disciplinary blind spot between Architecture, Urban Design and Planning.
Located within the existing urban fabric, complexes are integrated into the city but are also autonomous. They are prototypes for the future of the city while also serving as fixes for its obsolete infrastructures. The Complex is both a disciplinary challenge and a promise for 21st Century architects, planners, conservationists, preservationists, landscape architects and urban designers alike. A Complex in the architectural type, the site is often also complex in socio-political nature. By financial necessity a complex is mixed use. By physical necessity they are often a combination of new construction, adaptive re-use and historic conservation/preservation. There are different stakeholders and desires competing for the site’s usage and this requires a plurality of design disciplines and design approaches. The twenty first century Complex is increasingly a more common species of project, but one that both city governments and architects/planners are unclear (if not entirely naïve) about how to tackle. There are no models for how to get something of this nature to “cohere” architecturally, as a plan, as an infrastructure or as a landscape.
Building upon research developed in Spring 2013 at HKU, jointly with the University of Kentucky, National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) and the Taipei City Government, The Massing Complex Version 2.0 will propose prototypes for a 16.5 hectare cultural complex in the heart of Taipei at the historical Taipei Train Depot. Central to our study will be the production of an urban-scale effervescence. Projects will seek out strategies for integrating “bubbles” of unlike program (similar to pockets of air) into the fluid landscape of the site. Our goal will be to perforate the complex and maximize heterogeneity. Implicitly this upends our conventional understanding of typologies at the two book ends of the complex’s scale; the master plan and the superblock. We will perforate the superblock, densify and make more contiguous the master plan. To this extent, we will effervesce the master plan by developing.
SITE
The Taiwan Train Depot (TTD or Tai Rail Workshop) is a prime site in Taipei. It is part of a network of obsolete or soon to be obsolete rail sites (of a total of roughly 12) along the east-west axis of the city and will be decommissioned in 2015. The site has a strong presence in the collective and physical memory of the city. It is opened only once a year and its development is much anticipated by the public, by Tai Rail and by numerous other stakeholders including the Taipei City Government.
The site is well situated in relation to infrastructure. There are MTR Stations to the north and south (each about a 10 minute walk) and the site is reasonably close to, and could be connected with, a greenway bike loop. There are a mix of residential, commercial and educational programs surrounding the site. These include the Tobacco Factory, the Egg Sports Stadium and a high school to the south, overpasses to the west and a big block shopping mall to the North, which cuts it off from the surrounding neighborhood.
One of the biggest assets of the site is the Japanese prefabricated, concrete buildings within it. Four of these must be preserved, three others may be adapted and the rest are up for grabs. Located in the center of the site, these buildings are both assets and obstructions. Their scale, while vast, is also challenging to reconcile in relation to the new construction which will inevitably have to surround them. The landscape between them is linear and fragmented, formed largely by existing rail lines. This combination of attributes will require innovative conceptual and physical strategies for thinking about landscape and structure in a manner that foregrounds and conserves the presence of the historic buildings.
Taiwan Rail is interested in maximizing the GFA and financial value of the site while the Taipei City Government would like see its cultural capital maximized. Broader ambitions include developing TTD as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, tying it into Taipei’s appointment as the 2016 World Design Capital, and using it to buttress Taipei’s bid to be one of the 100 Resilient Cities network; a Rockefeller Foundation initiative. There are also local groups who simply want to use TTD as a park, a train museum or an infrastructural history museum. These struggles between the stakeholders have resulted in a live debate about whether the property should be divided into three parcels or maintain its current footprint as a single site, about whether the site is important enough to be a civic and national prototype for 21st century urbanity or merely a public space to facilitate the surrounding areas and local interest groups. Moving forward, the challenge for the studio is how to maximize GFA while simultaneously conserving or preserving the original buildings on the site.
Based on the joint studio’s research last year and our continued involvement with the various stakeholders, conceiving of the site as a singular complex seems the most promising way forward. At stake, is largely an issue of identity; breaking down the site into smaller parts diminishes its identity at a municipal, regional and international level. The potential of using the site to represent Taiwan’s investment in creative culture and Taiwan’s attitude about how to develop 21st century cities are both too great to limit the vision of the site to circumstantial necessity. In order to both draw in a robust mixture of investors and to activate the site culturally it must be conceived as a unique zone, with its own cohesive identity. The work of the studio will be to explore how to generate prototypes for the site that imbue it with a degree of semi-autonomy such that it is neither an autonomous super block within the city nor a diluted two dimensional master plan. Our goal will be to generate a resilient, three dimensional set of strategies that encapsulate the needs and desires of the local community, while giving the site an identity and character that makes it relevant to Taiwan’s international interests. The technique toward pursuing this will lie in our ability to activate voids and produce an effervescent urbanism.
DESIGN METHODOLOGY
A combination of formal, graphic and fabrication strategies will be explored in each team project. Students will use physical model-prototypes at three different scales combined with renderings, montages and animations to study and develop design strategies. In contrast to studios where these media are used toward the end of the design process, students will begin working within each of these media at the beginning of the semester. A series of rapid “design experiments” comparing massing models, structural models, façade models and renderings will allow students to understand the cultural and architectural potential of their designs in relation to the complex. Students will sketch out, repeat experiments and refine design strategies using each medium, a combination of high tech and low tech practices and manual and mechanic processes. Brainstorming and post rationalization – drawing upon the results of these early design experiments – will be crucial in forming the conceptual, technical and cultural underpinnings of each design proposal.
The semester is broken into two halves, the first is focused on the development of prototypes and the second on applying and testing those prototypes on the site. The studio will culminate in a single proposal for the site.
The first half of the semester will be intensively skill-building as well as serving to enhance each student’s understanding of the site. Students will begin with analyzing existing proposals for the site through modeling and visualization techniques at one scale. They will then focus on one of four prototypes for development and work together to study and test select regions of the site. This phase will involve working with physical models at two scales. See below for details.
In the second half of the semester the prototypes will be tested at the scale of the site. Other select regions will be explored, culminating in a final proposition. All research in this half of the semester will be one part model-based and one part based on visualization. Techniques for making a one minute “trailer” of the key assets of the proposal will also be developed throughout this half of the semester allowing students to test and experiment with a variety of mixed media techniques including rendering, montaging and modeling.
OBJECTIVES
Master planning is a much contested and debated issue in architectural discourse. Asia has seen its fair share of criticism about 2D planning, about the revival of homogeneous tabula rasa-like proposals and about the potential of computational tools for “The Master Plan.” While many new cities in Asia continue to develop large-scale master plans that are fairly customary in scale and scope, there are a number of middle-sized planning projects emerging in more mature cities like Taipei and the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore. These are the contemporary “Complex” and are awkward both in scope and makeup. Larger than a conventional super block and smaller than a conventional master plan, they fall into a disciplinary blind spot between Architecture, Urban Design and Planning.
Located within the existing urban fabric, complexes are integrated into the city but are also autonomous. They are prototypes for the future of the city while also serving as fixes for its obsolete infrastructures. The Complex is both a disciplinary challenge and a promise for 21st Century architects, planners, conservationists, preservationists, landscape architects and urban designers alike. A Complex in the architectural type, the site is often also complex in socio-political nature. By financial necessity a complex is mixed use. By physical necessity they are often a combination of new construction, adaptive re-use and historic conservation/preservation. There are different stakeholders and desires competing for the site’s usage and this requires a plurality of design disciplines and design approaches. The twenty first century Complex is increasingly a more common species of project, but one that both city governments and architects/planners are unclear (if not entirely naïve) about how to tackle. There are no models for how to get something of this nature to “cohere” architecturally, as a plan, as an infrastructure or as a landscape.
Building upon research developed in Spring 2013 at HKU, jointly with the University of Kentucky, National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) and the Taipei City Government, The Massing Complex Version 2.0 will propose prototypes for a 16.5 hectare cultural complex in the heart of Taipei at the historical Taipei Train Depot. Central to our study will be the production of an urban-scale effervescence. Projects will seek out strategies for integrating “bubbles” of unlike program (similar to pockets of air) into the fluid landscape of the site. Our goal will be to perforate the complex and maximize heterogeneity. Implicitly this upends our conventional understanding of typologies at the two book ends of the complex’s scale; the master plan and the superblock. We will perforate the superblock, densify and make more contiguous the master plan. To this extent, we will effervesce the master plan by developing.
SITE
The Taiwan Train Depot (TTD or Tai Rail Workshop) is a prime site in Taipei. It is part of a network of obsolete or soon to be obsolete rail sites (of a total of roughly 12) along the east-west axis of the city and will be decommissioned in 2015. The site has a strong presence in the collective and physical memory of the city. It is opened only once a year and its development is much anticipated by the public, by Tai Rail and by numerous other stakeholders including the Taipei City Government.
The site is well situated in relation to infrastructure. There are MTR Stations to the north and south (each about a 10 minute walk) and the site is reasonably close to, and could be connected with, a greenway bike loop. There are a mix of residential, commercial and educational programs surrounding the site. These include the Tobacco Factory, the Egg Sports Stadium and a high school to the south, overpasses to the west and a big block shopping mall to the North, which cuts it off from the surrounding neighborhood.
One of the biggest assets of the site is the Japanese prefabricated, concrete buildings within it. Four of these must be preserved, three others may be adapted and the rest are up for grabs. Located in the center of the site, these buildings are both assets and obstructions. Their scale, while vast, is also challenging to reconcile in relation to the new construction which will inevitably have to surround them. The landscape between them is linear and fragmented, formed largely by existing rail lines. This combination of attributes will require innovative conceptual and physical strategies for thinking about landscape and structure in a manner that foregrounds and conserves the presence of the historic buildings.
Taiwan Rail is interested in maximizing the GFA and financial value of the site while the Taipei City Government would like see its cultural capital maximized. Broader ambitions include developing TTD as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, tying it into Taipei’s appointment as the 2016 World Design Capital, and using it to buttress Taipei’s bid to be one of the 100 Resilient Cities network; a Rockefeller Foundation initiative. There are also local groups who simply want to use TTD as a park, a train museum or an infrastructural history museum. These struggles between the stakeholders have resulted in a live debate about whether the property should be divided into three parcels or maintain its current footprint as a single site, about whether the site is important enough to be a civic and national prototype for 21st century urbanity or merely a public space to facilitate the surrounding areas and local interest groups. Moving forward, the challenge for the studio is how to maximize GFA while simultaneously conserving or preserving the original buildings on the site.
Based on the joint studio’s research last year and our continued involvement with the various stakeholders, conceiving of the site as a singular complex seems the most promising way forward. At stake, is largely an issue of identity; breaking down the site into smaller parts diminishes its identity at a municipal, regional and international level. The potential of using the site to represent Taiwan’s investment in creative culture and Taiwan’s attitude about how to develop 21st century cities are both too great to limit the vision of the site to circumstantial necessity. In order to both draw in a robust mixture of investors and to activate the site culturally it must be conceived as a unique zone, with its own cohesive identity. The work of the studio will be to explore how to generate prototypes for the site that imbue it with a degree of semi-autonomy such that it is neither an autonomous super block within the city nor a diluted two dimensional master plan. Our goal will be to generate a resilient, three dimensional set of strategies that encapsulate the needs and desires of the local community, while giving the site an identity and character that makes it relevant to Taiwan’s international interests. The technique toward pursuing this will lie in our ability to activate voids and produce an effervescent urbanism.
DESIGN METHODOLOGY
A combination of formal, graphic and fabrication strategies will be explored in each team project. Students will use physical model-prototypes at three different scales combined with renderings, montages and animations to study and develop design strategies. In contrast to studios where these media are used toward the end of the design process, students will begin working within each of these media at the beginning of the semester. A series of rapid “design experiments” comparing massing models, structural models, façade models and renderings will allow students to understand the cultural and architectural potential of their designs in relation to the complex. Students will sketch out, repeat experiments and refine design strategies using each medium, a combination of high tech and low tech practices and manual and mechanic processes. Brainstorming and post rationalization – drawing upon the results of these early design experiments – will be crucial in forming the conceptual, technical and cultural underpinnings of each design proposal.
The semester is broken into two halves, the first is focused on the development of prototypes and the second on applying and testing those prototypes on the site. The studio will culminate in a single proposal for the site.
The first half of the semester will be intensively skill-building as well as serving to enhance each student’s understanding of the site. Students will begin with analyzing existing proposals for the site through modeling and visualization techniques at one scale. They will then focus on one of four prototypes for development and work together to study and test select regions of the site. This phase will involve working with physical models at two scales. See below for details.
In the second half of the semester the prototypes will be tested at the scale of the site. Other select regions will be explored, culminating in a final proposition. All research in this half of the semester will be one part model-based and one part based on visualization. Techniques for making a one minute “trailer” of the key assets of the proposal will also be developed throughout this half of the semester allowing students to test and experiment with a variety of mixed media techniques including rendering, montaging and modeling.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
DESIGN EXPERIMENT 3.0
// PROGRAMMING POP
The purpose of this exercise is to
begin programming clusters and the overall site approach for each team. In
contrast to the exercise of inserting or assigning program to various
buildings, programming seeks
out the latent potentials of a scheme and uses ideas of speed, duration,
homogeneity and heterogeneity to begin partnering the physics of architecture
with programmatic potentials. The focus of this exercise is to begin
programming clusters and the site. This will require that each team mine and interrogate physics of existing proposals for programmatic
opportunities. Each team should analyze
and consider the physics of their schemes first accounting for prevailing wind
orientations, solar orientations, lighting and other ways in which the current
design alters and enhances the physics of the existing site.
POP is meant to contain a central Media
Arts Museum. This will be housed in the “Main Hall” of the site and use
existing train cars and tracks to allow for a variety of possible media
installations. The additional Historical and Cultural buildings may be used in
a number of different ways. They could be ancillary gallery spaces for the
Media Arts Museum, or different museums altogether. The configuration of
museums offers two possible scenarios for the site; one that is more
homogeneous and one that is more heterogeneous. The lower density schemes will
be asked to work with the more heterogeneous “mixed” museum concept while the
denser schemes will be asked to work with the more homogeneous large media arts
museum concept. Teams will need consider the following categories of program:
green space, retail space, office space. Each team will need to identify the salient
programmatic features embedded within their projects. For example, teams may
develop alternative models of “green space” making it more “media based” by considering
how large atria or outdoor spaces can be curated or used as urban “gallery”
spaces. Each category of space needs to consider various distributions of more
established international brands, artists, tourist activites or companies in
relation to their more local Taipei and Taiwan based counterparts. Think about how
to get these to interact in some locations or be more isolated in others.
// OBJECTIVES
// OBJECTIVES
To develop possible programmatic
scenarios for clusters and the site by testing and experimenting with the
physics of each project at a detail scale: 1:500 clusters.
// METHODS
Each group will work with models of
clusters at 1:500 in order to refine the work at the scale of the site and
update and refine the work initially done on prototypes. Using study models
that include the arcade areas and a portion of the site each team will develop
material and programmatic scenarios for the cluster, then test them through
visualizations (diagrams and renderings) at the scale of the site at large. While
the focus for the coming week and a half is on the 1:500 scale this is meant to
be a multi-scalar exercise. Meaning work at 1:1000 should be visualized and
tested as should work at 1:50 (or 25).
// DELIVERABLES
DUE TUESDAY APRIL 23
- Cluster-Site models at 1:500
- Revised 1:1000 site models
- 6 A2 renderings suggesting narrative and material quality of buildings
- Associated model shots and small renderings (less developed) of other key areas of project
- 1:500 plans sections and related cluster diagrams
- Revised site diagrams
- Revised site plan/sections at 1:1000
- Revised board layouts
- Rough cut video of projects
Sunday, March 24, 2013
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