10/31/09 Form -> Circulation

The idea we are trying to convey through the design is this
: space grows and shrinks by people's movement

After constructing some study models, however, I realized there is still not much logics in the circulation yet. Though the idea is clear and we already determined general distribution of public/individual space, there is no system that moves people around the building.



Each mass above strongly expresses what it wants to do in their design. "Donut" building wants people to move around, creating center space as gathering, while "square" building frees people from certain direction (like crown hall). Each has its strong representation of its characteristic.

At this point my opinion is that we can think of form first, and then putting programs into it. It seems things are never going to be realistic without determining certain appearance first. I remember last semester (we were designing Detroit Cruise Terminal) we had time to make 20 mass models in a day- these models were pretty simple though, such as a crumpled paper, one big chunk of pink foam, etc. Through this quick form generating process I was able to start from some amount of restraints.

So now I'm thinking about the best form for growing/shrinking space.
(But still can't fully imagine how space can actually grow and shrink) :(.. I'm stuck

10/28/09 Mid-point Summary

I think it is time to shrink our idea concisely

Even though we have come up with various ways to work on this project (having unit based model, playing around with digital project model, stacking up strategy of classrooms, jello model idea, etc) and certainly they all are good trials, we both felt we jumped around with only few constant ideas.

It's not that we are going to continuously focus only on the classrooms. But if I can tell people our concept as one sentence, I would say "We aim to create flexible school space": which is the latest conclusion we made yesterday with Karl.
(It's also interesting to remember we were looking at futurist paintings and expression of movements at the beginning, giving some connections to what we have now)

In Shigeru Ban's naked house there are movable boxes for each family members.
These box shaped rooms provides infinite possibilities of arranging them.

By saying flexible, I meant to create space without only one kind of given program. The word flexible could actually mean movable space (i.e Shigeru Ban's naked house), but we decided to think of that word as more programmatically. At one point gym and hangout space can be one area, whereas another time the same hangout space can be linked to library : programs are pouring their quality to their adjacent space. Even some programs can be used as circulation as well. This will lead us to have fixed but flexible space as far as program matters.


We are now setting up these possibilities among programs. programs which are fixed, or being overflowed, mixed with circulation. This diagram would let us start building real space and study model based on its rules.

Additionally, I hope we can carefully join our concept with sunlight analysis eventually- creating bright classrooms though they are not all on the top.

Example: Diagram of time and movement of people

These diagrams are from one hospital design process in South Korea, indicating people's movement in a day. The first three diagrams are classified depending on age of people, and the last one is the combination of all of them.

There are lots of parameters we need to think of:
different group of people, time, movement, public/individual characteristic of space

I think this is the type of diagram we are in need of, since we do have groups of grades and different time table from each group. By doing this we would be able to realize what is the main activity among the groups, how big that has to be, and where to put the program for easier movement.
( It would be interesting to have animated diagram that Laura suggested, instead of showing static images like above.)

10/25/09 program.?

Now I remember one important message of someone from my old school, a couple of years ago, that the original school started from "The student and teacher starting conversation under the tree". The definition of school was never defined by space but by the actual activities going on in school area.

I realized how I was stressed out to make all programs arranged properly- struggling to make circulation only to connect programs. It was almost a stubborn decision to set up all programs settled first and try to connect them.



During this weekend I started doubting what we call as programs. We already got specified programs- classrooms, therapist workrooms, auditorium, gym, and cafeteria.. etc. However as long as we keep the activity in each program, I thought we don't need to classify spaces depending on these programs. (This also reminded me of my high school years how easy it was to switch classrooms to exhibition places or any other different purpose-serving areas.)

This is when I started to set my own way of defining program: honing into primary acts that people do in school. They are: Thinking, Listening, Displaying, Inventing, Moving, Talking
These are not even specific activities only for school, thus it gives a possibility of creating space open to its program.



Each basic activities are distinctive. In contrast to thinking (the thing we do by ourselves) , talking is a very socialized gesture. The place where we talk will be more public space than where we go to think something.




By looking at one example of time table, I was able to break it into primary acts. And depending on whether the acts are social or individual, I set up vertical levels for different characteristics.
This time, since the arrangement is only defined by people's basic acts, we are free to place real programs anywhere. For there are various types of classrooms too, classrooms can be either in the first floor or the top floor based on if it's a place for individual work or social activities. ( Just like jellies in Jell-o) :)

10/20/09 Grouping strategy

After creating a few blocks for each program, we placed them thinking specifically of grouping grades. It eventually created a cluster of boxes, which I think we wouldn't get much ideas of massing out of it.

So we switched back to rhino model again, which looks like we are kind of back to our preliminary concept. From those diagrammatic configuration, however, we are going to "condense" classrooms so they are not spreaded all over the site. Condensation includes: pairing, stacking and narrowing the gaps between them. This will enable us to have more voids in general.

After constructing iterations and picking our favorite tomorrow, we will be back to Digital Project model, developing accurate model further.

10/17/09 DP

We are finally in the step of having Digital Project model. Our design is quite easy to manipulate in parametric modeling system, since it consists of unit and the form is determined totally by arraning units.

Squares are classrooms, and rectangular pieces represent other programs. For specified program we were given a couple of days ago, we decided to have several blocks for each program: We took into consideration whether the program has to be divided by three groups of school (individual) or shared by them altogether. (Yet they are connected as well)

Case Study: North Kildare School

It was very fortunate for me to find out this school, since it deals similar matters that we have concerned about.

North Kildare Educate Together school in Ireland, was built for making normal kids and autistic kids stay together. Yet they are supposed to be separated at the same time in curriculums and activities. ( Also for safety for normal kids.) Having these two big conflicting issues, the designer might have thought much about how shared and individual space is related one another. It is just as we are doing now, grouping students in a big name of k-8 school.

The architect's strategy to mix and isolate students was quite straightforward, in my view. What he did was to have one entrance connected to main courtyard , but having separate classrooms all around it. Also for different activities each classrooms has their little garden behind. In plan view programs are distributed having the public courtyard in the center. The overall appearance of the school, therefore, doesn't have strong outstanding features.

The fact that the school reacted quite easy to given condition makes me think a bit easier to our massing process. Often times I feel weird when things are straight and simple. In the progress of arranging programs I would have to be careful to answer to given matters in direct ways, rather than considering too much about nice looking surfaces and secondary decisions.