Macro/Micro Study + The Review

MACRO study

From the first initial diagrams I posted in my last post, I developed a site plan which has 4  buildings, each house its own theater, scattered all over the site all the way out to the river. All of which will be connected together through a natural habitat pathway. In my drawings, the Salmon street is blocked by a building and the project extends throughout the 200′ block.

Problem:

The biggest problem I already knew when producing the drawings is that my program is not big enough to cover the 200 sq. ft. city block.

MICRO study

For the micro study, I went back to my site with my camera and took pictures of everything on the site I found interesting – the layers of things which made me chose this site in the first place. Which results in this collage.

Part of the micro study is the material study. I’ve found a very interesting material called LiTraCon which is also known as translucent concrete. In a nutshell, it is concrete casted with fiberglass. It sounded pretty easy to make. Too easy that I had to try to see if it will work.

I happened to have an acrylic rod in my material box which is close enough for a test object. And I chose to use rockite as a replacement for concrete since I’ve had experience with it before and it dries much faster than the actual concrete. With that, I made a form from cardboard and cast a block of concrete with acrylic rod. And here it is.

casting

I successfully made it translucent

THE REVIEW

I felt pretty good after the review. I’m glad it went in the conversational direction instead of me presenting like it is a final work. A few things for me to consider …

• Blocking Salmon street with a building may not be such a good idea. Especially, when I’m trying to connect Water Ave to the river. I should have seen that coming, really.
• Maybe my project site could be Salmon street itself, and I can build around it.
• If I want to build in the water, go all the way into the water!

I almost forgot to talk about the material study during the review. Luckily, architects love their concrete, so it got brought up – which I’m glad. I think it really helped the reviewers understand what this project could potentially look like. I definitely want to explore more into what else I could do with this material. More casting coming up soon.