Monthly Archives: April 2017

Midterm 1 Reflection

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The Vision:

The vision was to create a vertical village in the sky. With the chosen design principles of mixed use, density, community, accessibility, and sustainability I hope to create a place that empowers its users and connects them with the macro and micro-systems in which they are a part of. The tower has multiple atriums that start and stop in order to keep a human scale and let in light from two sides. A gradient of public to private units encompass the atrium and large green spaces are found throughout. The idea is to give each unit a piece of land and ample sunlight, resulting in the ellipse shape of the tower that elongates along its east-west axis. The unique shapes and spaces in the tower create a distinctive experience, sometimes subdividing the room by program, framing views, or playing with the light. This form was derived from a single piece of paper but brings an organic feeling to the building. I find that the human body is highly responsive to it, perhaps because it is reminiscent of natural structures.

 

Strengths:

One of the strengths of this project is the emphasis on the human experience. The forms created are artistic and evocative. The apartment organization makes sense and gives the important rooms ample light. The idea of smaller communities organized around the atrium also works well in establishing a sense of neighborhood.

 

Bringing it Forward:

While the ideas are all nice and fun I need to work on fine tuning them into reality. Revisiting the plans for the atrium and the hierarchy of spaces is needed. Smaller adjustments can be made for the apartment units in eliminating awkward angles and adding more storage. I also need to work on my idea of curved walls and ceilings and establish basis for their existence – why am I using more materials than needed? I think I need a better reasoning rather than them being artistic. Perhaps when I structure my sustainable systems it will become more clear, or maybe I need think in terms of moveable and temporary pieces and this space is where they fold out or hide.

 

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/ecotopia/files/2017/04/4-584s17athornt6.assign3-1o98z29.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

Midterm Review

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The Vision

The goal is to create a place that people are happy and healthy in. They should have easy access to services that fulfill their biological and social needs within their reachable environment. Barriers in existing infrastructure and zoning exist, but do have the ability to change (i.e. rezoning, building renovations and additions). Each person, regardless of class, race, and gender, should have access to services that fulfill their biological and social needs within the place that they live. An ideal urban building is mixed-use with services that fulfill the communities needs. A combination of offices restaurants, small businesses, retail or markets may be included in one building. Employment and resources are within a reasonable distance due to mixed-use building programs and their close location. Density is important in to be able to efficiently use limited space. People also feel a strong sense of community by living and working in close approximation to one another. Feelings of safety and support often result from increased interaction in communities. The issue of crowding with dense areas can be amended by providing a variety of spaces that people can retreat too. Designing spaces that has access to biological and social needs of its users empowers the user. Some degrees of equality can be achieved through the design of the built environment and if all future buildings followed this path WE COULD CHANGE THE WORLD.

Strengths

Emphasis on improving the social conditions of the world through equal access to opportunity strengthens the architectural argument behind this concept. The idea of designing a tower supporting all individual and community needs while also bringing health to the environment is important to design for as access to transportation and housing is often a barrier to quality of life. Strengths of my studies so far lie in the geometric catalogs and form finding studies.

The Future

Taking this project forward, attention must be given to the form of the tower itself. The hexagonal floor plan poses too many limitations, therefore the lessons learned from designing with unusual geometry will be translated to city scale and applied to the design of these towers. Important facts to consider as I move forward are views through the site, relation[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/ecotopia/files/2017/04/midterm-24nfbsw.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ] to the context of Portland, emphasis on use of color, incorporation of building program, and mass of building volumes.

 

the tower of tomorrow

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[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/ecotopia/files/2017/04/combinepdf-1atl0ax.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

The project summary:

The idea is that the skyscraper will represent the culture and future of the Portland City. The tower contains mixed communities, including workplace, community college, residence, culture center, plant cultivating center, trash recycle industry and new energy manufactory. The building can collect and purify the rainwater for residential and commercial usage. The trash recycles industry disintegrate the trash and generate electricity to power the building. In addition, there will be a basement for Drone, which the small aircraft will be in charge of the delivery in and out of the building. At the same time, the parking lots inside the building can power the car by green power. All in all, the building will maintain a good sustainable system and become a role model to the other cities.

Strengths:

The strength of this project is that the concept of design for Portland’s tower of tomorrow is completed and strong because the idea involves the goals of Portland’s development plan. Right now, the elegant form of the building and its podium could be a future landmark in Portland. At the same time, the various unit types could meet diverse tastes and people’s need in their life. Finally, the mixed community will bring more vitality into the tower, and green power and sky garden make people live in an eco-friendly environment.

Lessons learned and bringing it forward:

The multi-functional building doesn’t mean that the tower should look like a pie in section, which each layer only contains one type of jam. The tower could mix the programs into the same layer so that maybe I could mix different programs into one layer. For instance, the sky gardens and restaurants can exist in different floors with a small proportion so that people who live on different floors can experience the building in a similar way so that people who live on the top floor don’t necessarily need to come down 20 floors to get a meal, and he or she can enjoy a meal near his or her unit. In addition, I will create the floor plans with more details and bring more diversity on the facade of the tower. What’s more, the podium and landscape is under designing so that the tower of tomorrow will truly become a green living space with Portland’s cultures and glory.

Creating Neighborhoods

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The Vision

The vision for this project is to design an alternative future for displaced persons around the world. This may include providing people in need with resources to get back to where then need to be. Taking a look into a furture where it’s necesssary to provide basic human rights to those who do not have access to them, I believe it’s important to find long lasting solutions for those forced to flee. Looking at temporary housing for those in need, I hope to create a community that provides services of education, daycare facilities, job opportunities, and events that encourage people to share their culture with the people of Portland.

 

Strengths

Identifying a current issue with a vision for a better tomorrow, I look forward to the opportunities for program development. I believe it’s important to create communal spaces, and creating smaller neighborhoods will facilitate closer relationships. Form finding was beneficial when thinking about how the building would be on the site and how the internal apartment units will react with he curved features of the paper strips.

Bringing it Forward

While the strip morphology inspired the master plan of the building, I need to translate the concepts of creating micro-neighborhoods into the strip’s curvilinear form. I’ll be thinking about orienting the curves to plan, rather an elevation and playing with less rectilinear apartment units. It may have presented as problem thinking about the apartment occupants as permanent. I may need to rethink the layout of the apartments, as the people occupying them would be there only temporarily. I was also advised to think about programming for people with different backgrounds; this may include playing with color, incorporating religious facilities, language schools, communal kitchens, etc. I hope to introduce programs that will encourage people to share their backgrounds through food, culture, language, etc.

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/ecotopia/files/2017/04/A3_EcoNeighborhood_ATubau-thc7m6.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

Steven Liang Midterm A Reflection

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Steven Liang Midterm A Reflection

Project Summary:

This high-rise tower is thought to be a multigenerational residential community. It is located in Portland south waterfront. It was developed from a concept inspired from Mobius strip paper folding and bio-mimicry for green living. The reflection of my design intent is to be a socially and environmentally responsible example of sustainable developments in Portland. Based on the form of Mobius strip whereby continuous surface. Each unit features two floors, three bedrooms, and two L shape window walls. Each residential unit is strategically oriented to allow for distant views and optimized sunlight. The architecture will enable the community to live in harmony both socially and environmentally.

Strengths:

The strength of this design proposal is that the form of the pod shows strong language. The paper folding process did influence the way of thinking and generate interesting forms that can potentially change the configuration. The shape of the form and the surface create a visual effect that gives audience sense of vertical sectional relationship.

Lesson Learned:

The configuration of the unit could potentially be more flexible and more sensible. I could suitably scale down the configuration that currently fit in the form in order to do more flexible combination. I could keep the consistency throughout the stacking option to create more visual effect in terms of the overall shape of the skyscraper. The configuration of one single story could be more interest rather than round shape and core-centered.

Bringing it Forward:

What I am planning on doing to bring the project to further step is to rearrange the floor plans of the unit and reach the goal of having the configuration and the form in harmony together. Furthermore, I will focus on permutation and combination in order to explore more diverse unit types. I will then explore more stacking options in terms of vertical section relationships. Investigating the site and collecting data from field trip will be helpful for me to discover more potential possibilities. The site information will critically impact stacking option and modules arrangement. I will incorporate local conditions and demand into the overall tower design.

 

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/ecotopia/files/2017/04/midtermAreport-25awohe.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

Josh Rosenthal Midterm Reflection

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Josh Rosenthal Midterm Reflection

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/ecotopia/files/2017/04/Josh-Rosenthal-Midterm.compressed-1qbfswj.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

Vision:

A person is walking along the sidewalk on a busy city street.  Slowly, the sidewalk starts to slope upwards through a path of gardens and businesses until it becomes a fully vertical pathway of circulation.  The person has reached the main street of a new vertical community containing shops, restaurants, and other amenities essential for life to flourish.  From this point, they can either climb up the street or ride an elevator to their respective floor.  Upon reaching the desired level, they enter a small neighborhood plaza of the city where neighbors gather to interact.  After entering their unit, they walk up a short stair and relax on their private sky garden after a stressful day at work.  This vertical community addresses the problem of diminishing urban land, and issue that is starting to plague major cities and will only get worse over time causing issues such as sprawl and a rising cost of living.  By introducing as much community space into the tower as possible, the tower has the same qualities as a low-rise neighborhood that would cover many city blocks.

 

Strengths:

The strengths of the project in its current state are that it is heading towards the vision that I have described above.  The module that I have developed will still work for the project due to its allowance for flexible spaces upon combination.  I feel as though the vertical zipper is a strong idea which I will have fun developing over the remainder of the term.

Lessons Learned:

The unit layout in its current state is not as flexible as it can be for combinations of units.  The major issue is that the units connect at the bedroom and should be connecting at the living room for a full embrace of community.  The double height space at the center of the units is also wasting space as it is too luxurious.  In terms of community organization, the areas around the core that I currently have marked as community space will be overly dark and are also too tall to be considered a good use of space.  I have also not thought enough about solar exposure for the building and how to incorporate other sustainable strategies.  I learned about several sustainable strategies from Tom Hahn.  These include how to orient openings in the building to scoop up the wind and how to collect water through the zipper feature.

 

Bringing it Forward:

In order to bring my project forward, I am going to first focus on how to rearrange the floor plans of the units for more possibilities including how to connect them vertically.  I will then rearrange the typical tower floor plan according to data that I will collect from the site.  I would like to also figure out how to integrate businesses into the zipper area of the tower in an appropriate way.  I am thinking about limiting to only two zippers, one for the public and one for the private residences.  I am also devising how to rearrange the core in order to enhance this process.

Design the Future

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Designers can bring hope to dire circumstances by imagining alternative futures and envisioning bright possibilities. Students will identify society’s biggest challenges and create a compelling vision that addresses these challenges.

The studio will use the Evolo competition (http://www.evolo.us) and the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats (http://www.ctbuh.org/competition) student competition to spur creative thinking.  The studio shares the same goal with the Evolo competition ,which asks students “to solve economic, social, and cultural problems of the contemporary city including the scarcity of natural resources and infrastructure and the exponential increase of inhabitants, pollution, economic division, and unplanned urban sprawl. The competition is an investigation on the public and private space and the role of the individual and the collective in the creation of a dynamic and adaptive vertical community… based on a dynamic equilibrium between man and nature – a new kind of responsive and adaptive design capable of intelligent growth through the self-regulation of its own systems.” 

Students  will combine social and ecological strategies with innovative forms, and practice telling the story with evocative presentations. The skyscraper design will be approached first as a conceptual inquiry, then as a bottom-up modular system and then finally as a top-down site response.

Through this course blog, students can share research and design ideas with classmates, friends, professional contacts and external experts.Welcome all!