UJ_Unit2_P5_Part 2 // Design Resolution

Street View showing framework to enable "informal" trader stalls

Trade pavement edge: Relationship between urban principles and the architecture. 

The Base Building at first floor level, without any infill.
Includes shared vertical circulation,
Adaptable facade elements
Punch-through opportunities for internal vertical circulation.  

View from of support from park & children s play space

UJ_Unit2_P5_Part 2 // Design Development

Design approach

The question I asked myself for this project and which drove the design process was: "How can the design of the base building enable its occupants to design and define their own spaces...?"

- This was drawn from looking at how that is the current practice, with shack-dwellers making and defining their own personal residential spaces, within the restrictions and opportunities of the informal settlement. 

The base building/support as a mediator...

With the context being made up of the 2 extremes of the fixed/rigid hostel development, and temporary/flexible shacks, I also considered the base-building as a possible mediator between these 2 typologies. There are positive principles one draws from both. (listed above)

Design principles 

- Reinforcing positive social realities and the agency of occupants

- Occupants flexibly design individual spaces within the fixed framework of the base-building

- The urban environment to form a part of the overall "support"

- Base building as a mediator, between permanent and temporary physical elements, territorial boundaries, and residents. 

Site location 

Site situated immediately adjacent to Hostels

Tissue model principles for assigned walk up typology

Functions from urban framework

Possible scenarios of occupants within mixed use development

Flexibility within a fixed framework

The base building, as a system, is designed in such a way as to offer occupants with the ability to define their individual spaces in terms of layout, size and function. 

Base building | Infill

Questions of which pat of the building is fixed and which parts are flexible. 

Ownership | Control

Exploring who  (between the developer and the occupant) owns the various elements of the building, compared with who controls them. 

Open Building Intensive with Prof. Stephen Kendall (Part 2)

The Base Building transformations exercise was a task to take an existing Hostel and transform it into an Open Building, a building with the capacity for change and adaptation by its occupants, and transformation over time.

The exercise was a purely technical task. I enjoyed it mostly because the architectural nature of it was my first real encounter with the more technical aspect of time based design, beyond the abstract concepts. 

Not finding a plan for a hostel online, I used a "single-loaded corridor" typology, similar to the Denver Hostel. The above is me testing the capacity of the building, + what can be permanent/temporary elements.
What is shared and what is occupant owned?

Transforming the existing layout, taking away and adding to the overall layout. Keeping circulation, structural elements and shafts, also adding a new layout of service shafts. 

Possible variations and change of layouts with the new framework of the Base building. 

With the increased capacity of the hostel, the various subsystems set the bounds/restrictions for the smaller systems. (Where the shafts are determines what spaces can/cannot become.)
Questions raised throughout the process...

From the above exercise, questions in ones mind were that within the context of Denver, should such a transformation happen within the hostel, who would control which elements of the base building? 

-Between the occupant and the owner, who would control where the pipes go?

- Would economic factors affect whether occupants can define the infill walls? 

- Who would provide/own the infill walls/ service pipes and fixed elements ie. ablutions.?

I look forward to exploring these ideas in my own individual base Building design. 

Open Building intensive with Prof. Sephen Kendall (Part 1)

Professor Stephen Kendall is a registered architect whose academic and research career spans more than 35 years. He has a professional degree from the University of Cincinnati, a Masters of Architecture and Urban Design from Washington University in St. Louis, and a PhD in Design Theory and Methods from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Kendall has taught architectural design and urban design studios, and courses in building technology and design theory at all levels of professional curricula in several universities in the US, as well as in Taiwan, Italy, Indonesia, South Africa, Japan and China. He has experience in guiding professional, post professional and PhD studies at US and several foreign universities.

For 2 Weeks we were privileged to have prof. Kendall with us for a 2 week intensive workshop on "Warm up exercises in Open Building." 

Really learnt a lot during prof. Kendall's visit, some of the highlights include:
- Applying the abstract concepts of open building through very practical, technical exercises.
- Open building is not an entirely new/foreign concept. The idea of change within a stable environment, allowing for different users and functions over time is somewhat already in practice through common retail and commercial projects.  
- Developing a growing understanding of open building terminology (in practice). Ie. Tissue model, Base Building and Infill. 

During Prof. Kendalls Visit we also engaged in a short exercise of transforming an existing hostel/row house using open building principles.