It's time to move on to the next step of design for my project, and while I'm nervous that I haven't been following the inverted design process, I have made a number of decisions based on information I currently have about the site. I sent an e-mail to UBC Properties Trust Friday afternoon to ask them to release the most current version of the plans that they have for the site (although I'll have to get the real plans from the architect), but until then I'll be working with a mixture of what I got last time I visited and what I pulled off the U-Boul website. It isn't perfect, but as long as I use the site to produce decision making rationale, any variations between what I have for the site and the actual site shouldn't be hard to fix.
I produced a rough Sketchup model of the site to look at lighting conditions throughout the year, and took examples of shaded areas at specific times throughout the year, layered them on each other in illustrator, and created the following jpegs:
In these images the blue rectangle is the opening to the underground bus loop and the lines show anticpated traffic patterns accross the square. The architect chose to use traffic patterns to carve away from adjacent buildings: this is neccessarily repeated by the ambiguous spatial conditions, but I'm not sure if I'm happy about it or not. The ASC's
have to be in low-traffic areas because they impede walking, but I wish it wasn't so similar to the guiding principles of the square.
The traffic patterns delineate certain areas where it would be interesting to apply ASC's:
This is based on a combination of paths and building shapes, with a little bit of the solar studies thrown in. Basically, the daytime use (on sunny days) will break down like this:
I realize that it isn't always sunny in Vancouver in the winter (and in fact is not even the prevailing condition), but I think designing to maximize sun exposure is a good idea if I am trying to include some of the programmatic uses of the grassy knoll. I also want to add some big chunks of concrete on the right side (it's north-east-ish) of the diagram (the solid black line) to take advantage of the solar gain along that wall.
Some other thoughts:
- I want to design the whole thing out of wood and concrete: wood to sit on, concrete for durability and to capture heat. The wood slats would be spaced so that the gaps are not perceptible when you are sitting but would serve to drain water off the surfaces. The slats should probably run parallel to the ASC sections to highlight their importance.
- There needs to be roofs of some kind over a significant portion of the site. I think they should be used extensively on the left (south-west-ish) portion of the site since this portion of the site gets the least direct sunlight in the high traffic portions of the day (3-5). The plaza is equal under overcast conditions (as the sky vault transmits light equally throughout the plaza) and it would be preferable to minimize cover of the sunlit areas (the right, or north-east-ish portion of the site)
- Materials of the roof are important. I'm toying with the idea of frosted glass for portions that have sunlight and clear glass in the shady areas. The frosted glass should diffuse direct sunlight.
- Currently the stairs run from the top to the bottom of the site, but I'd like to tweak them to the left to create a stage-ish area to the right. I'd also like to preserve as many of the paths accross the stair as possible and am thinking about slopes and movement accross the inevitable bridges.
- The shaded areas are keyed to time, and possibly should be keyed to programs of retail spaces adjacent. It makes a lot of sense to have a 'fast' coffee shop in the left building for morning commuters, and a 'slow' coffee shop in the right building for sitting around and waiting for your bus in the sun. It also makes sense to privilege the plaza re: sunlight, as retailers will probably be happy to exclude sunlight from their stores as long as patrons have direct access.
