Portfolio Design Studio 4

All praise to Allah who guides whomever He wills. If it was not for Him, studying architecture in RMIT would be an architorturing journey. Thank you Ya Rabb.

Design Studio 4, semester 2 2008

Studio : Inter-facing Change
Project : Seawall defense (group) & seawater greenhouse (individual)
Tutor : Jenny Lowe

Interfacing change. By far, the most time consuming studio I've had besides the one in the first semester during my first year. There were a few nights of staying up late in the computer labs, sometimes until 3am, sometimes 5am. However, no sleepless night, as I can't go through one day without at least a few hours of sleep.

Anyways, about the studio. It starts with a group work of 3. I was grouped together with two Level 2 students. The tasks were to research on climate change issues and do a thorough site analysis in Williamstown area. So basically, just to make it short, we were working with a scenario where the sea water level will increase up to 3m in a 100 years or so. This brings a lot of problem to our site, because our site is prone to land lost due to the eradication of land. Part of the existing land in Williamstown will be submerged in water in the next 10 years.

2008

2100

So, our group decided to propose a seawall defense along the coast, and it goes out a bit from the land, so that we can retain the existing beach. The reason was because the beach is one of the last remaining beach in this area (although it was actually man made. The sands were actually being piled up there long time ago.) and it was also one of the main attractions of Williamstown.

Group master plan, mine is the long bit

The other thing about the wall defense is we also wanted to bring in movement along it, therefore along the seawall that goes out to the water, there would be a series of programs, each designed by each of us. I designed the seawater greenhouse.

In my design, I deal with a lot of different issues ie, seawater desalination technology, roofing structure, materials, landscape design, etc. However the most important thing was the design of the interface. Since there is difference between high ground (4 metre level - seawall) and low ground (0 metre - existing land level), and also a unique relationship between land and water the design needs to be delicately addressed so that it would not be just a big box sitting on a piece of land. Therefore I introduced a contour landscape inside the wall itself and carefully fit in the seawater greenhouse on it.

Interface section

Maybe a lot of things that I write here doesn't really makes sense to you, but if u r an architecture student, u should be able to understand, even if it is only a little bit. Some people say abstract is a reason to be absurd. Well, its up to your judgement. The following images are the ones that I produced for the final. Have a look! Leave a critique as well. This is ur chance to critique someone else work.

West Elevation




Cross section showing air flow from seawater desalination facility on the right end

Exploded Diagram, different component of the roof



Extension and preservation of existing parkland


Visualisation of tree columns, supporting the lattice structure


Aerial view of the roof, the ribs are actually there to distribute the water runoff evenly to a channel, integrated in the column at the edge of the roof. Tribute to penapistola for giving me this idea.


Visualisation of water channels (columns). Yes, I know. Very Calatravic. I was just playing around with 3D-modelling skills. Making these are quite fun.


Another view of the water channels.


Internal garden @ greenhouse area. The greenhouse would be planted with crops. The design of the greenhouse landscape was derived from the botanical garden layout up north.


Another view inside the greenhouse, from an upper walkway.


Another view inside the greenhouse.

There are more images but I think these are enough. Today was the final submission for folio. Alhamdulillah, I managed to submit my folio, even though a little bit late.
Unofficially, today is the last day me being a 2nd year student. Few more days to go, and I'll be flying back to Malaysia with Akhi Ariff Diah. Hoping for more input and experience this summer.

Until next post, wassalam.