week ten - design communication

In this week's Co-Design Lab, students were given an opportunity to present and discuss our in-progress design proposals to designers from the industry and receive constructive feedback.

This was what I presented:

Co-Design Feedback:

• Make more use of the facade - use all 3 floors

• Connect to site more, connect beads to site and to context

• Don’t take away light chimneys, perhaps add a dramatic one to centre spiral staircase

• Keep descending ramp down to Jefferson's and original stair cases

• Get rid of safe room and make a lounge upstairs

• Maybe use all of the second floor but cut off first floor so that you just focus on going up the stairs

• Work around the basis of the beads because they are a very strong aspect of the design

• Experiment with how to light the beads

• Figure out how to draw people into the design with the facade

• Keep stair cases

• Make people feel safe throughout the whole journey

• Decide views and make an individual model for each one to keep the GB low

• Facade with flexible strings of beads so that they can collide and create sound to attract visitors.

• Look into sound sculptures by artist Zimoun

Reflection:

I have been struggling a lot with modelling my design as incorporating the mass columns of beads makes my 3D model file too big and very slow, with it crashing regularly. I talked to the designer that I was paired with and also a few other AUT design staff about how I would include the beads in the render and they provided very helpful suggestions. I could split my overall model into smaller ones just focussing on specific views, or I could scale the whole model down. I think I will experiment with this and if this still doesn't work I will render the model without the beads and photoshop them in afterwards.

One of the main constructive points that I got in my feedback was that my design was not connected to the Imperial Lane site enough and that I had changed too much by taking out the descending ramp to Jeffersons but most of all, by removing the light chimneys. The guest designer thought that the light chimneys would work well with the beads and my design idea of a women's fitness centre. He said that giving myself constraints with leaving large aspects of the original site alone and working around them is a useful thing to do. My thoughts on why I removed all of these original aspects of the site is because I wanted to transform the space as much as I could to cater to my vision and proposal, and I didn't like how the light chimneys, stair cases, and descending ramp created an imbalance in the entrance space. I tried to redraw lots of new floor plans to accommodate the existing structures but I wasn't happy with how the design looked when I designed around the ramp or stairs in the back. However, bringing back the sky lights did enhance my design and connected the multiple floors that my design spans. The natural light that these sky lights bring down into the space reacts beautifully with the reflective surface of the beads.

I also really like the idea of incorporating sound into my design. I was a little hesitant at first cause I thought that distracts from the overall theme of the project as I thought the sound of the beads hitting each other would make a creepy noise, especially at night. I see how it would catch the attention of people outside and draw them into the building, so I think designing the facade in a way that allows the beads to move and make noise will be an effective addition to the design. Looking into Zimoun's work with sound sculptures revealed to me that sound can be another facet that can very evocative and create relaxing atmospheres in a visually intriguing way.

Museum of Contemporary Art MAC Santiago de Chile, 2019

https://vimeo.com/389294379

Another notable point is the recommendation to expand my design to use the front of all three floors to take full advantage of the lighting of the facade into the interior through the windows.