Terminal Studio projects on Scholar’s Bank
High Desert Deep Green: photocollages by Garrett Kroll
Joy Rackley’s 2005 Corvallis Cohousing Project (above)
Josh Kolberg’s Museum at Vestbaden, Don Genasci’s studio (above)
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of lights and shadows. This crossroads of activities is meant to be a colorful and energizing transition from the market boulevard to the first’s floor cafe and exhibition space or up to the second floor to the Theater/Dinning area. The rest of the building offers you a few surprises with nooks and gardens for socializing and relaxing. Reading a book maybe? Join our little library club and start reading here with a coffee and finish at home with a tea. Want to get lost in nature? Go on ahead to the first floor and there passage way will guide you to the little gardens surrounding the building, offering a little bit of shelter from the constant zoom of traffic. A place of calm…
The strategy for the final review is to present my project in a competition board layout and organize them by scale. In keeping with my modernist hero mies van der rohe , I will be exercising”Less is more”. I dont want to over stimulate the reviewers by filling my board with a ton of stuff. I honestly picture the review facilitating itself around the models. The boards will be there to demonstrate the quality of space i have in mind. Im debating putting together three small booklets that will have site photos/research that I can pass out so that the reviewers can thumb through them as I present. The book will demonstrate the research but also not clutter my presentation boards.
The Urban focus set of boards will allow viewers to understand the extent of this project and see how important transportation is to urbanization.
The site focus board is the design proposal, highlighting the elements of the entire site as a plaza.
The Building board will get into the specifics relating the programatic portion of the site.
 I haven’t been posting much this quarter in terms of progress, partially because time is precious and with 15 credits, volunteering 12 hours a week at Central City Concern and trying to fit some time for sleep and eating in between blogging has taken a back seat. But I’m getting into rendering (fun!) my model and I’m getting some interesting base renders so I figured I’d post some pre-post processing in photo shop so sorry no trees, no entourage, no hidden funny things only I know about photoshopped into the background that will have to wait for the monograph. 
View from Link between buildings
Based on the comments I received from my last review I started to update my thesis booklet. It’s still a work in progress (of course) and I need to work on diagramming some of the environmental ideas more clearly but I’ve started to draw out some of these. I was particularly interested in some of the comments I received on water catchment systems. Using some of the rules of thumb that I got from my reviewers I began crunching the numbers for rain water catchment potential and storage capacity. This is particularly important for my project because in order to cultivate and grown mycelium you need a lot of water. Furthermore mushrooms do not like grid water because of the chlorine content but many of the contaminants that are in the water from bubbly creek are nutrients for the mushrooms. My next plan of attack is to work on some of the detail drawings, figure out my roof plan, rework my environmental diagrams, make a section showing these environmental ideas, and create some great looking perspectives. My 3d model is almost done but needs to be updated but once finished I will be able to get the line work for my remaining drawings from it. I used this opportunity both to explore my ECS systems in-depth and to test graphics for my final presentation. In winter, at the peak of the school’s occupancy, heat loss through the envelope does not far exceed internal heat loads (occupants, lights, and equipment). Though Portland’s perpetually overcast winters make solar heating a challenge, the small heating load can be met using a ground source heat pump, delivered through a radiant slab. Thus, the high-mass, high-insulation interiors create a very stable interior environment. If occupants feel that they need an on-demand heat source, rambunctious children is also a good resource. In summer, these same systems work to create cool indoor climates. Night-flush of mass, as well as the ground source heat pump, create cool interiors that remain comfortable for the low occupancy levels expected through the summer season (mostly small summer school activity and occasional community programs).
Though all parts of the building are provided ample opportunities for daylight from two sides or more, I took a deeper look at the daylight performance of the Savanna Commons. Overhangs and clerestory openings provide direct access to sunlight (or what little is available) in the wintertime, while blocking most direct rays in the hotter months. Through testing of a physical daylight model, I was able to achieve a very desirable daylight factor of 4.0 for much of the space. Because all daylight to the space comes from high clerestories, the center of the space receives the highest lighting levels, while the perimeter is somewhat dimmer. The use of a baffle near the lower half of the windows redirects some of the light to the room’s perimeter without compromising light that penetrates deeper in to the space.
In developing the landscape concept of my design, I have again come to the question of how the building and landscape interact. Conceptually, the building and the greater landscape exist on a sort of continuum along the experiential trails that run through the site. The building represents the more structured, formal kind of learning environment, while the landscape represents a looser, more discovery-based kind of learning environment. But what lies between? This is where the idea of interpretive gardens comes into play. The interpretive garden lies between the building and the greater landscape, and is structured to provide a certain learning experience, while beginning to introduce students to the language and materials of their natural world.
Each of these gardens has its own lesson, language, and form. The Forest’s garden is a raingarden, which dramatically collects runoff from the building into a retention pond, which in turn connects to the constructed wetland in the forested habitat of the site. The Oak Savanna’s garden is more anthropological in nature, expressing the relationship between Native Americans and disturbance regimes (by fire) that made savanna habitats viable for other species. The Prairie garden is a display of biodiversity. To many, prairies seem to merely be “empty land,” as devoid of value as they are seemingly devoid of structure. This, of course, is far from the truth. This garden will showcase the many and varied species that thrive in a native prairie; as students learn from this garden, they can begin to see the diversity of the prairie landscape beyond.
From here, I have made a schedule for the final review as far as drawing model production is concerned, and am still working on illustrating my passive and active systems in more detail through wall sections, elevation details, and diagrams. |
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