Thursday, February 26, 2009

Birthday Review with Paula

On feb. 19th our studio had a review for the design work completed thus far on our current project. We had been given a week to individually produce ten initial schemes for our Lee St. studio project. Our critique went well, and we were fortunate enough to have a special guest, Paula Carr, to sit in and give everyone some great feedback. Paula, an alum. of Iarc, was in town to give a talk at UNCG about design and the excitement and passion that drives us all. It is always refreshing to see someone that was in our shoes not all that long ago doing so well and enthusiastic about the design world. So many of us become bogged down by the pressures of school and lose the spark and passion that brought us here. For me, Paula's visit to our review was encouraging and informative.

For the initial context and layout of my work on this project I began by taking into account what I felt to be the strongest connection to the community that the site has to offer, the surrounding views of the city. Since the entire site rests on somewhat of a ridge, there is the opportunity for multiple vistas.

The diagrams below show how the building orientation was inspired by the line of site to several local icons, Downtown, Koury Convention Center, UNCG's campus as well as several of the surrounding neighbourhoods.

These site lines began to define the shape of the building forms. Footprint, volume/building height, and orientation were all influenced.

These images are from the pin-up and aim heavily towards the process of the forms and spacial considerations of the ten schemes. Some of the forms are variations of each other exploring different avenues.