The Lounge @ Large

I helped my girlfriend with her final work last semester. She was in her final year studying Media in UNSW. Find it quite interesting, it may contribute to architecture thinking? Maybe hehe...

Basically, it tells a story about a lounge tries to find its identity and belonging, he sort of breaks out his home and explore a new world. It uses calymation, montage, and some other techinques, here is the outline.

Does a lounge have to belong to a place? If yes, where is it? Home, office, furniture shop or even street? Our persona doubts it. He leads a simple and boring life. Since he had memory, he was placed in the middle of a room and be seated all day long without warm care or any kind of excitements. He gets totally sick of the life he has and tries to break out. After painful struggling and numerous endeavors, he finally manages to get out and his dreaming world gradually opens up. What he finds? A splendid paradise with endless joy and lots of friends? Or a cruel reality that everyone leads a harder life? Is he happy with the outside world? Regret to come out? Or searching for new destination? Here we present, “the longue at large”…….

Some pakage pictures.

And here is the video

Architecture presentation as play ground

After 4 year study in architecture school and been through thousands of presentation. I figure out that there are quite a few presentation formats that suit to various purpose and stage. Instead of the conventional presentation format, there are "pecha kocha", "4/4 presentation", "charrete" and more if i can come up with. 

Considering the level of excitement, architectural presentation is pretty much like a play ground :p, and there are lots of interesting issue, like stage, player, big boss, activity pattern, excitement level and so on we can study on. If taking that as a research project, it may even contribute to improve the quality of all the presentations. Well, we see how it goes. Here they are,

1

• individual or group
• paper panel/ model can be chosen to play
• players are often given 10-20 minutes to play
• no guarantee that other player will pay attention to
• big boss will decide your life or death

2

• mostly individual presentation
• PowerPoint only
• player has 20 slides to go, each one 20 sec
• if you cannot finish one slide, concentrate on the next one
• big boss join the crowd
• with snack and drink in some relaxing instance

3

• 4 key players play at the same time
• other 20 players divide into group of 4
• every player need to present 4 times to all the groups
• big boss join one of the groups
• normally 2-3 minutes on one presentation

4

• playing first and then presenting
• divide into groups and work for certain amount of time
• big boss hang around
• when time is finish, move to a conventional presentation

Week 3 presentation

Besides the powerpoint, there are some interesting links showing how railway works in zurich.
http://www.swisstrains.ch/
It shows real time moving map. Trains are moving on the map as they are really are. Wish Sydney could have that.
There is another one shows the stimulation the mobility of trains in Stadelhofen. Cannot find it now.lol.

Stop motion

A test run for the model.

To THINK beofre you LEAP

When everyone is anxious and cannot wait to visualize their "dreaming" train station. I found several precedents which were regarded successful and heritage at times. But time proves its shortage and finally brought down. (Well, world trade centre is an extreme example, not mentioning here)

Penn Station

It was at the time the biggest station in Manhatten, even North America. The original Pennsylvania Station was an outstanding masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the architectural jewels of New York City. It cannot afford such a big burden and was demolished in 1963.

"Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn't afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."-Newyork times

The Big Dig

A project happened in Boston, takes seven years to finish, cost nearly 22 billion US dollar and it was the most expensive highway project in the US history.

It started in mid-20th, car traffic in the inner city was extremely congested, especially so for north-south trips. Then a elevated high-way was built, which not only physically divided the city, but also attracted more traffic onto it. Without enough support from branch lines, it carried 190,000 vehicles a day. Traffic jams of 16 hours were predicted for 2010.

Then the whole idea was to put this highway underground that activate the dead traffic. It finished successfully although some problems like leakage and substandard material still exist.

Lean a lesson that every operation on the urban planning need to have enough prevision and estimation. Issues like energy efficiency, pollution, overcrowded city center etc. need to be taken into seriously consideration before designing. When architecture comes to the urban scale, it is no longer a buildng, but a metaphor of the city.

Cut and Cut Out

Above is the cut shapes and its nagtive left out. Interesting composition when mirrored and put together. Several hints we learnt from laser cutting,

• Pure red line means cut through, black line hatches on the board.
  
• Numbering is very important when cutting massive amount.
  
• Always think how it stacks up when drawing lines. Joints especially.
  
• When gluing, follow carefully the curvature. Try to be as precise as possible.
  

Do not through the cut-out piece. Use it, at least as reference.

Randomness