029: Mid-review and the few days after...

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Overall: all the comments were positive. The critic Dallas (works in HOK) made many comparisons in ideas, not in what is made.

I presented (sloppily) my design as having two main focuses. The first being circulation, and the second opacity, (while, of course, safely and practically functioning as a movie theatre, without letting the design interrupt its function.)

Circulation has two distinct and independent systems: The exterior is a "filtering device," filtering those arriving at the parking lot and the pedestrians walking down Dallas St into the courtyard--- or, the filtering of those entering through the plaza, all which meet in the nexus-- the cafe, administration, ticket sales, social interactions, some good coffee. Inside, one travels through large escalators, taking one to the theatres starting on the first floor.

This circulation is shown with glass/material opacity. The escalators will be very clear glass- maybe waterwhite glass, known for its clarity-- while the circulation loops around the theaters will be opaque-- in which light shines through. The threaters will be exposed and will be solid-- heavy. The escalators will be a sort of connection to the city (they face the downtown lights) while the opaque glass circulation loop is a separation-- look for your movie showing! Don't stare at the lights!



The first thing they mentioned was: This is an excellent diagram.

They mentioned many architects after this...

First, massing. He said the spaces created are made out of "Loosian plastic solids and voids" while subtle, powerful moments are made in how these plastic spaces come together. Ever heard of Siza? he asks me, in which I shake my head. Look him up.

I slur, that the minimalism comes from my penchant for Japanese architecture.

He continues this slur; mentions Tadao Ando. There are similar moments in my design, only that mine is not an object, as Tadao makes his buildings.

Continuity is desired, don't break these moves!

They applaud- keep working at it, refine it. Keep thinking in terms of connection to city/separation from city. Think as the parking lot as a texture, reset the horizon to those entering.

028: Oh, late nght, some progress.

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I need to write some sentences to ease my mind.

Ground floor:Administration/break room next to stimulant Cafe/ possibly gameroom? Lobby (first floor): Those going up one escalator must easily locate ticket stand, then concession, not necessarly next to each other? This portion will always be busy, whereas ground floor administration will not-- thus, place gameroom next to cafe, along with main bathrooms, but here, run into spacing problems. Gameroom may be pushed upstairs.

Orthogonal-- I feel boring.

The desk, presented to you:

On my desk:


Above my desk:


Underneath my desk:


Next to my desk:


And, my company:


Yes, graveyard shift-- deadtime hours. No one here. I should start to go...

027: Process means cold hands, coffee, endless cp, tr, ex, and erase.

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I am in the computer lab.

After a good weekend working on this scheme, a few suggestions from Doug:

1. Medium theatres should be narrower instead of 42 x 39.5'. I've edited them to 32'x 48' instead, and rearranged method of entry/arrangement of seats inside.


2. Escalators: I used some strange template that made them 21.9 degrees rather than 30. Like Jessy said, his Ching mantra, "1.732 times rise!" Instead, I used trigonometry and well, got the same. This changes a lot in my scheme, doubling the work.


3. Less elevators, one more emergency stair.

Main worries:

1. Cohesiveness of the scheme: will it stay intact after these changes? The escalators will change a lot of the plan, since initially, floors were planned according to the 21.9 degree template....


2. Materials: what exactly, and how? What size panels? What do I want to show?


3. And, combining the previous two: Will the experience I planned-- experiencing the city as one floats up the escalators-- be present in the product? Can there be a harmony between harmony and aesthetic intent?


4. Emergency stairs-- I might need more.

Least of my worries/Minor worries:

1. Parking spaces, need at least 5-10 more.


2. Open spaces that serve no particular function-- I should embrace this, no?

Materials:

Transparency: Escalators--> circulation completely clear, connection to city. Hallways--> opaque, separation from city, city lights blur, separation from vertical circulation. Restaurant--> moments of clarity (views), moments of walls (private). Lobby--> daylighting, facing north, no need for shading.

Links:

CAD BLOCK EXCHANGE

BLOCK CREATOR

CAD CORNER



I shall post pictures tomorrow, diagrams, depending on how much I have done.

026: Quick section...

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This is a maybe. Really, I'm thinking along the lines of just entering...instead of making mayhem of aisles, why not enter on flat ground, as it uniformly slopes downward? It'll just mean a much higher ceiling on ground level, but, I wouldn't be too worried about seats right?

025: Recycle, destroy, revamp, redo, edit, edit...

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That's what it has been. A stream of editing, frustration, wanting to destoy papers, then finding somewhat a solution, then fixing, fixing.

What happened was....dimensions were clogging up the entrance. It became a tight spot, lossing its defination as rectangular-prism foyer.

So, I inverted the circulation. Instead of making an inner-loop pattern to get to the theaters, I converted it to an outer-loop, creating an even larger couryard space, larger plaza, openning up the first-floor lobby to overloop three total sides: Austin St., Dallas St., and directly over the parking lot.





The front side, you can see how the front parking lot filters into the plaza, whch filters people through the foyer where the mouth of the escalators are......



The parking lot....circulation overlooks this, plus the outdoor theatre. One major change was height, which increased to +22'. I hope height isn't a fear, nor a problem. It only competes with what's around it?

The restaurant would be over on the left mass, which I left out at the moment because I refining what I already have.

024: Excerpt, a look at FOA's Yokohama Port Terminal....

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"Our proposal for the project start by declaring the site as an open public space and proposes to have the roof of the building as an open plaza, continuous with the surface of Yamashita Park as well as Akaranega Park.
The project is then generated from a circulation diagram that aspires to eliminate the linear structure characteristic of piers, and the directionality of the circulation."

"We wanted to make a pier where you can walk in on a certain path and walk out on a different path. We developed this looped diagram, in which we were chaining all the parts of the program. Then we assigned to every line of the diagram a surface. We were interested in playing with the ground."

"We started with certain principles and later combined and changed them. The changes are never visual or aesthetic; they are always technical or practical. We do not believe in the origin or in the end of a project. We believe in the medium of the process. We are totally opportunistic. The end is determined only by external forces, like deadlines of the contractors or the client."
FOA

So, outside...




Inside..

The program.

I'm amazed by this building as I read about it....the quoted paragraphs, I think, relates to the project we are doing now...pedestrians and the urban environment are essential driving forces here. The art of picking up people from the street, sending them through another path, returning them through another, presenting the city differently, then spiting them out through the front door to mingle with the city lights....

One of the focuses of FOA's Yokohama Port Terminal is allowing the locals to walk out onto the extremities of the pier and to "look back at their city." (I read this in Architectural Review, while doing homework.)

...It's one thing I want to achieve with my movie theatre...as movie-goers ride the escalators to their destinations, I want them to look outside and see the city lights passing them by...

"A poor man's New York..." as Doug says, our professor, when commenting on Houston's night-time skyline...

023: Somethings in the way...

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That which is: how do I encase this with glass?

I want to make a sort of glass cave, a rectangular instead of triangular federation square:



Or maybe, just bring in the triangles from my previous project?

Who knows at this stage...

022: Edit, Edit!

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Of course, this is among the million edits a project must go through.

Last Wednesday, I talked to Blair for five minutes, and refocused my lobby on the second floor, where both rectangular prisms of theatres meet.

Today, I talked to Doug, whom agrees with this shift.

Then I realized I completely misinterpreted his interpretation of my original conceptual rendering. He said "open," not exterior, not "open to the sky!"

I proposed a shading device. A translucent, triangular shade which blocks the sun by day, and "becomes the sun" at night...becoming this glowing light above the giant space my building creates.



Although it is probably highly unlikely I will use this idea, I still like it. Not only does it have a resemblance to my earlier project (Project 2, the concession stand), but it has two (or three-- if decoration counts) functions: shade, artificial light.

Either way, the next step is to understand further the circulation of the theatre, and enclose it in glass.

Doug also suggested it could be a sorts of Guggenheim museum narrative: starting from the top to circulate back down. I don't like the idea at all, nor am I going to purpue it. I feel a movie theatre should be easy to read and not a nuissance. For godsakes, people just want to go to the movies, not manuever through an entire building! That's not the feature!

...even though the idea sounds romantic, flowing through a large, 70' space radiating, glowing with light. Romantic, but not entirely practical.

021: Excerpts & images from Colours...

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Progress has been slow, somewhat thoughtful. And now, I am getting ahead of myself, needing to research many things:

1. Open spaces, public spaces. How does an architect handle a roofless, open space yet still have proper shading + a overall "closed" look from the outside?


2. Lighting & colour-- What is appropriate for a movie theatre? What type of lighting is available to use and exploit? What surfaces reflect the most light?


3. Circulation and convenience-- in other words, does the circulation effect the placement of objects, or does the placement affect the circulation? How do people want to move in a movie theatre?


4. Lastly, what's in the code? What can't I design, what are the measured limits embedded in a theatre?

I will partially address #2 with images:

The first, addressed colour and light directly-- how do you attract the attention from the outside to the inside?



^ Kunsthal (museum), Rotterdam/Netherlands, 1992 >> OMA

Then, the idea of threshold, through colour-- colour-coding the differences of spaces:



^ Second Stage Theatre, NY, 1999 >> OMA



^ Centre for the Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK >> Norman Foster

Lastly, there is art in covering the sun:



^ Third London Airport, Stansted, UK >> Norman Foster

Norman Foster describes this airport as through he is looking through a shoji screen!:

"...a radical reinvention of the terminal as a building type, which has since become the model for future airports world-wide. One consequence is the opportunity to harness the benefits of natural light- both spiritually and technically. There are an infinite number of greys to choose from- and infinite variations on each one according to changes of light- both natural and artificial."

These pictures are mainly for inspiration, for vague direction, for thinking in matter of lighting, colour for threshold, greys for shading.

020: Quick link....

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Generating to correct-rise escalators into .dwg files: this

Good.

019: ...maybe not so ruin?

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The progress after so many hours?



This is the outdoor screen.



The right side of the overall theatre, you can see the elevators, the restaurant, the walkways/skywalks and the escalators.



A little more complete. Everything is fitting.

More to come...

018: "does that spell ruin?"

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So was what our professor, Doug, said, when I laughed nervously as they picked the second vague scheme, the one I did not like as much as the first.



They always tell us, "don't ruin it", don't kill the idea before it reaches its potential.

But the more and more I work with this scheme, the more I realize that is it the more sound one....

Nobody is sleeping tonight.

017: two vague schemes

This is what I call, the "highway scheme," connecting Austin and Dallas St....



Then, the "transparent circulation," showing to Austin and Dallas, how people move inside as they use the escalators/walk to their theatre showing.



I am not thinking in terms of form.... function, I think, goes before form. I have to make sure it vaguely works...

016: Completion of the Site Model

I'm behind in blogging. Quick 15 seconds yes?
Site model in a week.
The GRB!:





Our laser cut to perfection truss:


And the site model, as a whole:


A job well done.

015: Final Project, thinking, thinking....

The professors stressed, "section, section, section.... the section is important."

But I don't know where to start. A movie theatre sounds difficult, so complex, in such a small site.

Disfigure this cube!

It feels difficult, tastes difficult, with little sleep, little experience with the big, the bigger, rather than a smaller task; pieces one can directly relate to.... Maybe it's just hard for me to relate to something 30' high, or, 70' wide.

I have one thing clear: focus on circulation. How will people walk around (outside & inside) this space? Is the parking garage situated somewhere accessible?

I'm focusing on a nexus, the lobby. The lobby is where, after you park, you go to it. The lobby is where you buy tickets, where you will find direction for the rest of the night.... Which wing is your movie in?

thinking, thinking, thinking...

014: Site Model

My partner (Michael) and I are in charge of reproducing the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston. We are CADing everything.... in which the model will be in 1"= 30'.

The last project of the semester was issued out yesterday, two pages of terse information handed out to our "deer in the headlights"faces. It is a movie theatre on a small lot; a theatre that will have many floors, in other words.

The program looks "fun," but tedious. Our professors laugh mirthfully, but we know the hard work that is on the way...

013: [Intermission]

It is the calm before the storm.

It's all about diagraming, understanding, and seeing the site with our eyes closed before the project is disclosed.

012: Night time studies

^ View of Site 4, notice, how unlighted the convention center is....the Hilton (right) rests there luxuriously



^ View of downtown, from Site 4



^ Oh, the lights! Site 2 lies behind this fence.

Downtown lights shine emptiness, as the businessmen are 40 minutes away, in their suburban homes. The homeless wander around like ghosts, in concrete paradise, the sea of parking lots silent as the street lights blinking.

click!

011: (pending) New sites diagrams/studies

It starts.

010: Rhino homework = Concrete fascination

Rhino homework due tomorrow: This is a concrete shell structure designed by Felix Candela, the Manatiales Restaurant, 1957. This is by far, my favorite so far.......

009: New project, visiting the site:

It is a movie theatre.

On the dead side of downtown.

Let's start with, what I call, Site 3.



It is surrounded by: Parking lot, Parking lot, Four Seasons Hotel, Houston Center (mall), Apartments (under construction) and Parking lot.





The Four Seasons Hotel, Houston Center, busines towers block all view of downtown lights, but, the theatre would catch attention of four streets.....four streets that are not highly transitted. Damn.



Next, Site 2, Site 3, and Site 4.

Site 2



It gets a clearer view of downtown city lights, is visibly between the George R. Brown Convention Center, Toyota Center, right in front of the Center Point Energy plant (which has interesting vertical strips of lighting at night). A parking lot faces it. It is not next to any other building at all.

Site 1 is right in front of it:



This gives a good view of what these sites are surrounded by.

And finally, Site 4 is right next to the power plant, and diagonal to the Hilton, visible from the George R. Brown:



(You can see the convention center in the background.)

I'm not too sure about this one, especially with that curved shape: would it determine the shape of the actual plan? Either way, the theatre would be disconnected from downtown as well....it would be targetted more for those staying at the Hilton, rather than try to fill up that Sea of Parking Lots.

But it all depends on what the project specifies. After reading that, I will come to a conclusion on what site I feel is better....

008: Completion of Project 2 with the closure of review....

All eyes open after review.

I brushed my teeth, sort-of dressed up, and smiled like a nervous student, in the face of a jury. See, the Jury Room is white white, and our projects adorn it with the smell of judgement and twitching minds.

I explained what It was.

Uniform triangles, welded steel frames, all white attach to each other with bolts and customized angles to form the "tent structure." This creates two different spaces: One space, which is closed off to all outsiders and just forms a narrow openning for a ticket booth. The other, is open and almost transparent, which allows employees to walk through, and costumers to buy their food (it is a concession stand.) They can see them on the display shelves.



My Rhino renderings because this long scroll of vague directions. Vague because of time constrictions and my little experience with the program. Still, I produced, in my opinion, a beautiful wall display:



A pause, and they say very helpful things.

(1) The ramp, could be extended. There is a problem in scale. One would have to see the produces on display under the counter, then have to walk around to the ramp. Luckily, this is simple to fix, and just make the ramp accessable from two opposite sides. This doesn't kill the design at all.

(2) They appreciate my drawings, and the detail put into them, but thought that additional diagrams were needed in how exactly, more by steps, in how it all comes together. It does explain a lot about the structure, but not how to put it together.

(3) "Triangular-themed shelves" are out. I nodded with agreement. Blair said that an extention of the structure down to the base would add a good shelving-display area.

(4) They appreciated my detailing.

(5) Most importantly, I focused too much on detailing. They suggested I take a step back, after designing and reinforcing my structure, I should draw a few sketches, diagrams of the circulation, of the overall program, and try to fit everything else around it. Of course, they understood that we only had a week to design, build, and diagram these portable, modular concession stands, thus, it isn't a failure at all. Just a shortage of time (and sleep!)

I focused so much on making the structure work that I didn't put enough effort in combining the two systems: The structure-skin, and the ticket/concession counters-display. The outside and the in. They are not refined for unity.

They were also interested in how the frosted material connected to the frame. They said it would be interesting to see how the frosted panels would overlap or connect when assembled.


Overall, I'm content.



There I am, at my desk.
My archidesk.
It will increase in messiness exponentially.

007: Completion, prior before revew

Not knowing at all, whether this design is good or not, I like it thus so far. Possibly because I haven't seen all its flaws yet....



^ A view from the ramp side, seeing straight "through." The counter (with shelving underneath it) is on the right, while the rest of the display shelving is underneath the structure at the left.



^ The counter + display shelving



^ The opposite side of the counter. This is the ticket booth.



^ Detail of the connections (custom angles + bolts)



^ Top view

The project spanned for 10 days. About half of it was spent in the conceptual idea: of origami and the hidges of screens. At the end, it is a structure inspired by origami, that took a liking to rigidty rather than folds & creases, and that found itself having a semblence to a spider web crossed with a shoji screen.

Let's just see what the critics will say/hate/rebuke/praise/laugh about later today....