A Note on Third Places

The nature of the Third Place is increasingly bastardized in the studio. If not that, then it is a demonstration of students' lack of effort or willingness to take initiative and actually complete the assignment.  With the former I would much rather have students be honest and admit that they have not consulted resources (online or otherwise).  To simply annex huge swaths of the ground floor under the generic label of "Third Place" is an insult to instructors and reflects poorly on the student; doing so demonstrates a failure to understand the Oldenburg concept. Even in the instances where students are able to articulate the ambiance they wish to create in their Third Place designs, it is imperative to do more than simply state that the components as autonomous elements. Ambiance and functional elements are not mutually exclusive in proposing a Third Place.

Third Places are more than a sum of its parts.  Designers do not claim that their home designs (or First Place) are defined by their washrooms, bedrooms, or even kitchens; nor do designers present proposals solely on qualities such as "homely", "warm", "comfortable, etc.  Similarly, students should neither be describing their Third Place as "interactive", "engaging",etc. nor defining their Third Place by generic programming such as "coffee shop", "lounge space", or "hangout area".  It is the combination of programmatic elements plus a well defined design approach in creating a desired ambiance that creates a truly successful Third Place.  Though the Oldenburg definition casts a wider net in its taxonomy of place to include commercial enterprise such as pubs and coffee houses, strong students are able to recall the fundamental concepts behind the Third Place. 

Students in this assignment are asked to design a Third Place - not simply allocate area for one. If an architect were asked to design a house and simply rough in areas for kitchens and entryways, then one must ask whether what was proposed was functional programming or truly architecture.  This is not a space planning exercise.  It is incumbent on students to actually design their buildings both inside and out.  An inability to understand this demonstrates a failure in an awareness of the responsibilities and tasks under the purview of an architect. 

Rest assured that there will be projects that will fall prey to any one of the three criticisms I have raised in this commentary: ambiance, functional elements, and responding to the assignment.  If by the end of the term these projects remain unable to properly address these issues, it is the responsibility of instructors and peers to communicate this flaw.  Fortunately students spend far more time with each other than instructors so it is everyone's responsibilities, most notably students, to be critical both with themselves and each other.

Late Post

Sorry for the late post. I was away on a me week.

These are my residential levels, with shared apartment style housing on the lower level, and several single apartments for married students. The entire floor is accesible so there is no need to segregate folks on wheelchairs. On the west face is a shared space on each floor, making a strong, and shared, expression of work and community on both Yonge and Gould Street. The space is of double height on the shared-apartments level, and more enclosed on the married level. 

 This section shows the relationship between the two levels. The rooms are accessed by corridors along a double skin facade. Through this strategy I was able to get natural light into the apartments from both the North and South face. Bedrooms receiving light through more private openings on the South face, while living and shared spaces receive light from the more public Gould face.

Quick render of corridors. The empty spaces on the right of the clay render are the shared work spaces on each floor. 

ACSA Steel Competition

For those of you interested in developing your project with design ambition and technical resolution, keep in mind that the ACSA Steel Competition 2013 is a perfect opportunity to capitalize on the work you have invested.  The Open Category is perfectly suited to your final projects and demands that you really engage interesting design work with technical awareness.

The registration is FREE but you have to speak with me to set you up and officially register you as a student affiliated with the studio/university.  The deadline for registration is only a couple of weeks away (March 6th) but the final deliverable works with the studio deadline at the end of the term.  Do not regret these types of opportunities...

AR Volunteers Required...

Coming off the success of the prototype for the AR project, I would like to solicit students who wish to demo their models from either P1 or P2 for publication.  Please understand that the files have to follow these parameters:

• exported at 1:1 scale (millimeters) as an OBJ format
• <10Mb; it should be noted that detailed elements such as bolts contribute to higher face counts (i.e. larger files

If you get something to me and it works, I will use it and have it published in upcoming documents that would likely be presented internationally and published in peer-reviewed academic journals. 

Better late than never I guess

So first sorry that this is my first post, I kept changing my design based on the problems I saw from the other posts (plus nearly everyone changed their entire idea after they posted their design, so I was stuck between showing you something underdeveloped and buggy or developing it and risk restarting after showing you). Anyways this is the design I presented to Michelle. The main focus of the residence is trying to increase the amount of times people interact with each other by making it so its easy to see each other more often.

The strategies I used to for this is by incorporating a glass elevator that rises goes through the main community spaces and an atrium (that is included on a plan that I haven't made yet) that is located above the left lounge area in a hope that people will break off from their usual routine to go and say hi to one another.

For the DMZ I tried used a similar strategy where the would be many open to below spaces in the floor that would allow the public to enter an area where they can test and play around with the DMZ's new gadgets and see the DMZ workers on the floor developing the stuff below them, plus the public would find it cool because it'd be like their almost floating on a bridge.

For the Third space, I decided to include 2 one similar to the coffee shop from friends (where coffee could be dispensed from a vending machine) and another which is a series of levels increasing in height that people can sit one (this is something that I've seen in my high school that was very successful).

So anyways it was determined that my washrooms should be more private, my kitchen should be bigger, I should open up the communal areas to sunlight, my married units should have more amenities and be separated (btw how many grad students would ever even get married and move to a student residence), the walls on my first floor need some massaging, I should lessen the amount of different shapes in my plans, and reconsider how I would plan out my open to below condition on the DMZ.

Anything you want to add?

Post crit thoughts..

I presented this conceptual sketch as how I want my building to look like, with the undulating-patterned glass facade along the residential floors to Michelle.  My floor plans needs major reworking so I didnt post them  because I'm embaressed of them I still have issues with dead end hallways and theyre going to drastically change soon. She didn't seem too impressed or comment much on the massing of the building, other than that I could consider pushing and pulling in some walls.

The idea of "verticality" was the driving force towards only having vertical mullions, and just spiders / sealant instead of horizontal mullions. She pointed out that if verticality was my concept, perhaps I could have one of the "senses" react to it (auditory maybe? with a floor to roof atrium?)

Also, what are your comments on going over the 20m zoning restriction? I'm having difficulty comfortably fitting all units + a good common / residential third space I want under 20m, and I feel a better design would come out if I went 25m.

Demitri's Design Process

Part 2 - Parti, Rhino Massing, and Plan Development

Demo of the AR Project in Section ONE Studio

Using Augmented Reality (AR), Section ONE studio is the testing ground for mixing virtualized ideas from CAD into real tangible conditions such as the physical context model created for Project 2.  Though still early in development, the prototype of the AR interface has been deployed in the section and will be free to utilize by students in the section.

The way the system works is basically referencing an origin point in the virtual model (in this case the Northwest corner of the site) and exporting it as an OBJ file in the appropriate units at full scale.  The origin is referenced in the real world with the computer-generated pattern (similar to a QR code).  Once the prototype visualization app is run on the computer, students may load the model OBJ (including material settings) and calibrate the appropriate visualization and reference code scale.  Once that has been done, the model appear in real time on the screen in a mixed reality environment.  This is only the initial test, however today Section ONE demonstrated that the prototype worked with a student's model (however face counts should be modest).
Special thanks go to Matthew Compeau from Hot Pop Factory who has been helping with the software development as well as Kevin and Tricia for their research support!

Third Places

Examples of good third places:

Calatrava's Allen Lambert Galleria:

Lobby of the Royal Ontario Museum:

Design Exchange:

Bahen Centre by Diamond + Schmitt Architects:

Initial Design

Had a hard time beginning the design process, I looked at some of the technical regulations in regards to egress and structure and used that as a jump off point. Using the Corner at Yonge and Gould for my "Discovery Zone" a place where students and member of the public come to beta test and interact with the new things the dmz is coming out with. Second floor is more for members of the DMZ to use as a complimentary facility to their main operational headquarters at AMC.

Ray Should Learn How to Post with Titles...

Initial concept

These are just some resolved residential floor plans. The next step is to resolve the bottom 3 floors (DMZ and mixed-use floor).

Initial Idea

Design Process

Part 1 - Conceptual Design Ideas:

PART 2 - FLOOR PLANS AND PERSPECTIVE SKETCHES TO COME TONIGHT ONCE MY SCANNER DECIDES TO WORK AGAIN...

 

Just a Thought...

Goodnight!

Initial Design

A brief programmatic diagram

A more in-depth programmatic section

Very rough obby floor