Project 04: Contextual design

October 8, 2014 · by speranza@uoregon.edu · in Assignment

Project 04: Contextual design Due: Friday, 10-10-14

Objective:

In the design of a complex building, a wide range of forces, constraints, issues, needs and intentions must be accommodated and integrated. A building parti represents the synthesis of these issues. Not all are equally weighted in setting the parti; a critical aspect of both analysis and design is the setting of priorities, the conscious judgment on which issues shall be privileged relative to the others. However, it is important that this be carried out in a rigorous and comprehensive manner: the designer must be fully aware of the significance of all the forces in play before any decisions can be made on which ones to emphasize.

All of these forces have implications for the design of the building. Particularly for beginning students, understanding the implications of any one force can be confusing, as it is often too entangled with the other issues. Therefore, the intention of this exercise is to help you see the implications of a series of issues individually: before you try to produce a design which integrates all the issues, you should look at each issue on its own, and ascertain what an appropriate response would be to that one issue.

This exercise asks you to produce a series of small study models that address different aspects of the project context, before you get caught up in the detailed building program, and before you have to produce a single, integrated proposal. These study models don’t have to be realistic proposals for a building design; rather, each should embody a conceptual approach that responds to a particular intention. They can be descriptive, evocative, challenging, interpretive, imagistic, analytic, expressive.

Scale:

These models should be at a wide range of scales, as appropriate to the issue being considered.

Neighborhood / site scale issues, 1/32” scale.

Building scale, 1/8”.

Direct human experience / spatial issues, ¼” or 1/2″ scale (included furniture).

Materials and methods:

Give consideration to volume or planes. Please use white foam for volume massing and white Bristol or other white board for planes. You must include cut outlines of people in all models.

The models must convey your ideas, primarily to yourself, but to your peers as well.

Context-related models:

While we often refer to a building’s “context”, in fact there are many contexts. Even within the area of physical context, there are many different forces to respond to, some of which might call for contradictory responses. One of the points of the mapping exercise was to make you aware of issues and forces that you might otherwise not have noticed. You should produce a series of site-responsive models, each focused on one issue.

Context is not just the immediate physical surroundings, it is also the larger cultural understandings and meanings within which any building is conceived. How might your concept embody multiple scales – that of the neighborhood, the city, the region, etc.? How does it relate to the urban fabric of the city? How does its physical manifestation call attention to its agenda? How would it be experienced from the outside, versus how would it be experienced from the inside? There is not a short checklist of different models that are required for this – it is not as neat and tidy as immediate physical context. You should make a list of the larger cultural ideas, currents and values you think are at play here, and then see which of those you can address in a building concept. At the same time, you should think about the small-scale, quantifiable factors that we mapped on Friday. Again, it will likely not be possible to represent them all in one model, but in a series of models, each of which addresses an idea.

The list below is a starting point, listing some contextual ideas which might drive your design. Determine which concepts/factors strike you as having a possibly important influence on your design, then build one model for each concept.

• Public and open space: How would your project help to define or determine these? The establishment of a streetwall might be an important component of this.

• Form and massing: How would the nearby spaces and solids help determine the massing of your project?

• Street front and edge: How would your project engage people on the street, both passers-by and building users? How would entry work?

• Surface: How would the skin of your building relate to the context, in terms of opacity, transparency, porosity, reflectivity, color, etc.? Is your skin a thin membrane, or a thicker zone?

• Natural forces: How could your project respond to available sun, daylight, shade, wind, temperature? How could your design mediate these forces in your building, but also how would it affect these forces around your building?

• Larger context: How would your building respond to the context larger than the adjoining properties – maybe the neighborhood, or the city as a whole?

• Views and adjacencies: Are there ways it should interact with larger fields – short or distant views out, short or distant views of your building, public presence and image, possible negative exposures (noise, blank walls, etc.)

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Sou Fujimoto, Steven Holl (Light), OMA/Rem Koolhaas