Still here...

I'm still at school. I'm doing a presentation downtown tomorrow and will miss more than half the day of work, so I need to get something finished tonight.

I've been thinking about the ways I've been culling the ambiguous sectional moments, and decided that it was worth another look. I want to produce another matrix that deals with environment (like envelope, shelter from rain, shelter from sun and accessibility), so I've removed all of the 'envelope' category from the previous group. This means that I don't have as many options, but at this point that is a good thing.

I've re-culled the remaining sections by picking a representative from each kind of combination. If I take them into Maya and loft them, I can then look at how they can address environmental conditions.

The architect of my own destruction?

I spent a little while last night thinking about what my next step should be for my midterm and I realized that I haven't fully made the transition out of the ambiguous sectional conditions into three-dimensions. I'm still looking for how and why the sections should be assembled.

Since I don't want to apply programs yet and it's also too early for environmental conditions, I thought I would go ahead and do another matrix. I went ahead and culled them, getting a total of 17 conditions, so I'm going to go ahead and cross each of them together and look at what that produces. I can then maybe look at combining them in the x and y direction, adding weather protection, and think about normalizing the slope. There are certain ramifications of altering the product of two conditions to get a 1:12 slope for accessibility, or a steeper slope for seating and I don't want to make those decisions lightly.

On a side note, it's been strange working this week because since it is reading week there are very few people in the studio. Even the keeners seem to be working from home, so it's chilly and a little lonely here.

Environmental stats

So, following the Flame's comments about environment and my project, I do think that it's important to include some environmental factors in this scale jump. I also want to include program stuff in scale. I might need to have two scale shifts: one for environment and one for program. See, I don't think that I can assemble multiple ambiguous spatial conditions for program yet because I don't want to limit the program by specifying stuff. I realize I'll have to do it eventually, but I think that if I leave it later I'll be able to retain more possible programs. Another reason is that it is too much of a jump between the sectional conditions and program. So introducing environmental factors could be a way to bridge that gap.

Environmental factors (all stats from Environment Canada):

Sun.
In winter, we want sun, in summer we don't. The most popular way to get both is to make an overhang that is deep enough to exclude summer sun but not so deep it keeps out low angle winter sun. In Vancouver, the sun is at around 67.5 degrees on June 21. To keep it off the floor of a 8' room, you need an overhang of 3'-4" at 8 feet. The higher you get, the larger the overhang needs to be, at a rate of about 5" per foot. This keeps out sun only June 21st, the summer solstice. Vancouver is hottest about August, so its a good idea to keep the sun out until then.

Rain.
We have more rain in the winter than in the summer, and frankly it's much less pleasant to be wet in the winter than it is in the summer. And while you might expect the overhang to keep off the rain, most of the time in Vancouver rain comes with wind. Which means it rains at an angle so roof cover doesn't always help.

Environment Canada says that in winter, the wind usually comes from the east and blows around 7-7.4 km/hr from the east (or 2 m/s). Small drops of rain fall around 6.5 m/s (or 23.4 km/hr) and large ones about 9 m/s (or 32.4 km/hr). So for our mythical 8' room, we would need an overhang of 1'-10" for small raindrops and 2'-5" for large ones, or between 2.5" and 3.6" for each foot of room on the east side of the building.

The problem is that while that is the average, the maximum hourly is 32 km/hr (which is around 9 m/s) from the north. This means that our 8' room will need an overhang of 8' on the north to keep off all potential rain.

Wind
It sucks when it's cold and windy, but sometimes when it is sunny if you can find a space out of the wind it can be lovely. The fortunate thing about wind is that if you are protected on a couple of sides, you are usually fine. These two sides would likely be those of prevailing breezes: the north and east. Micropatterns exist around buildings, but it doesn't take a lot of shelter to get you out of the wind.

The problem with environmental stuff is it is so directional. I don't want to decide what direction a seat will be facing if I don't know where it is going to go. Stupid catch 22.

ETA: some other stuff: any grassy area need to be extremely well drained. If it gets sun during the day it will be extremely popular with students. IF there is a roof on whatever thing gets produced, it should be accessible.

Using and abusing the chosen few

I've culled my ambiguous spatial conditions: I'm down to 15 from 115, so I think that's useful. I started by getting rid of the conditions that only matched one surface (about a quarter of them) and then I sorted the rest into types and picked the most interesting of each type -- there are a couple with two, but in most cases each type has a single example. I'm going to leave the rest of them for now, with the idea that I chose what I found to be interesting, but there is always the possibility of going back to the well, so to speak.

I spent some time today putting together a use diagram for the bus loop area. This is the diagram from FOA's Yokohama Port Terminal:

This is mine:
Not as interesting, not as dynamic. I'm also not entirely clear how this informs my scale move. I know there are lots of possibilities for things to add: graduation, meeting friends and studying, suntanning and people watching, political meetings. I have a list of all the possible uses, so maybe what I need to do is imagine how many people will want to do each of them at each part of the day. This one starts with the bus loop stuff, which I think is important, but my other use ideas don't really fit with it.

I also need to start looking at what additional factors should be considered in putting together the spatial hubs. Should I make examples that deal with rain/wind/sunlight? There must be a way to integrate shelter without just adding something.

I've been reading some of FOA's stuff today, and my favorite part is the way they use grass to cover slopes over 12%. I think this is awesome, and a great idea to indicate other kinds of uses. I think material fits in here somewhere as well. It's almost environmental: it's more pleasant to sit on a concrete bench in the sun, but a wood bench when it is damp or cold, even if neither of them are wet. So not only should I be arranging ambiguous spatial conditions to protect from/take advantage of sun, rain, wind, cold and hot, but I should maybe also look at what materials can do this.

So maybe I need to start making rules about these things. I have some climate information for Vancouver that shows the percentage of possible daylight hours for months of the year. If there's a 21% chance of sunshine in January, then there is a 79% chance of rain, so almost 80% of the area should be covered or otherwise protected. Maybe I should look at my chosen few to see what parts can also serve as shelter. Yeah, I think I'll do that and get back to you.

The first one's a doozy...

So, next steps:

Look at sorted ambiguous spatial conditions. Cull: determine which should be kept and which need to go. 15-20 is probably the max to start with, although others could be gradually reintroduced as required.

Produce Maya combinations for all ambiguous spatial conditions: remember, project is most creative when not taken too seriously. Have fun!

Move up scale: look at mechanism for combining conditions. Begin to consider general site: rain, sun, ground plane, envelope, doors, etc. Possibility of a matrix to consider options?

Produced 24 hr. use diagram for site. Look at FOA for precedent.

Assemble midterm presentation. Identify key points. Remember to begin meeting with the intent and idea of project. Clarity is key.

Project intent

In my thesis I would like to investigate the effects of small scale articulations on underprogrammed and empty space. Warehouses and open plazas often do not meet the needs of users because they do not incorporate a human scale. By beginning with human dimensions, ambiguous spatial conditions can begin to indicate use without dictating program. In addition they provide possibilities for users to occupy spaces as they see fit.

In order to test the robustness of ambiguous spatial conditions they will be applied to the programmatically diverse transit plaza intended for the UBC Student Union Building area. The open exterior plaza and food court are both possible sites for design, as each is required to support many different programs simultaneously.

Note: This project and my vocabulary no longer include the terms 'kit of parts', 'tool', 'deploy' or 'useful assembly'.

Post committee meeting update

I've spent a significant part of this week working on a paper for another course and trying to make up for the big work push from last weekend. But I'm back on thesis duty full time until the midterm review, which happens Feb 28th.

I was extremely happy with the last meeting. On Monday night I was finally able to spatialize the MA's (which will hereafter be known as ambiguous spatial conditions) by using Maya to loft between three conditions, producing this:

The consensus among my committee members was this is a productive direction and it's time for me to change scale and move up to what I think of as car size: find rules for assembling these guys.

I was shocked to find out that Thesis Advisor M, Big D and the Flame are unable to read my mind. They pointed out to me that the final intent of the project is still unclear to them and that I should really state that at the beginning of my presentation. I think one of the biggest things for the midterm is not so much that I need to move forward with my project as I need to find a way to clearly show what I've been working on, particularly with my DS, so that everyone watching the presentation is clear about where I am going. I'm totally going to rope Team into critiquing what I show so everything is clear. This is the first time I'll be presenting to people who haven't read my DS so it's a great experience, but I never know what's important about my own project.

The idea of a 24 hour diagram of use for the site came up again, so I'll try to produce one for the next meeting, and Thesis Advisor M suggested I be more specific about what I'm looking to critique in my site. I really enjoyed the conversation about how my project subverts all these givens in Vancouver architecture: it isn't anything I was thinking about at all, but I can see how it would apply. It's strange to have people ascribing motives to you that you haven't considered, but I'd like to play with some of the ideas and see what comes up.

Next post: intent!