Site design

For this midterm Dave and I debuted our attempts at urban planning for our site at 92nd and Harold. We conceived of this scheme as a way to connect the bike path and multi-modal commuter traffic to quieter avenues of lents. We accomplish this with a central greenway cutting through the east side of the site, leading into a courtyard that addresses 92nd. (Main St.)

One of the primary critiques was a lack of density/FAR utilization.  We sought to address this in future iterations by indicating our vision for phasing in multi-family living spaces on the east side of the site, bumping the site utilization up considerably.

Building schematics

Moving inside the building, I am retaining a fairly simple set of programmatic relationships. The classrooms and labs reside on the ground floor of the office bar, and face in toward the shop floor.  A central spine sets up an air/noise buffer between the shop and the instructional/lab areas. The west side of the building addresses the courtyard. This primary public entrance leads directly into the circulation spine, and sandwiches the occupant between the two most public components of the building; the tool library and the gallery.

In the characteristic section, I still have the shop space to the south. I am grappling with delivering adequate light to the central atrium and the south edges of the office bar. The current strategy is… clumsy. In this version I have diverted vertical circulation from the atrium on the 3rd and 4th floor, moving it into the adjacent offices to set up a tertiary sort of office space. I’m inclined to reverse this decision and instead stick to accommodating ALL primary circulation vertical and horizontal within the atrium. Why have it if you aren’t going to use it? A segregated arrangement makes for nice, clean flexible space within the office block.