February 16, 2011

Productive Day

Today, I produced two sections and a plan, meaning that it was an extremely productive day. Tomorrow I will begin studying my buildings skin a bit more heavily. I want to create a form that is a bit more organic, treating the individual panels as cells rather than a thick exoskeleton. I have been researching Melbourne's Rectangular Stadium, which uses tessellated dome structures to cover the outer perimeter of the stadium. The use of a strong steel frame allows each individual panel to have the option of becoming translucent, which has been a problem for my building skins thus far. Hopefully tomorrow something fruitful will come of this.

Melbourne



Sections

February 8, 2011

Spider Stadium

I have decided to use a repetition of solid and translucent to compose the skin of my stadium. The solid skin will be able to go up and down in a folding manner, seen in this piece done by architect Andre Kikoski.



The facade, found in Brooklyn, closes and protects the store fronts behind it. When opened, the facade provides an awning over the storefront. My building will use these doors to open and close the stadium to the public.


After I built a quick study model, it seems that my building looks like a arachnoid of some sort. I am spending the rest of the day, going back and looking at my site to re-invent my building.


February 2, 2011

Theoretical Backup

I have been trying to grasp my thesis the past few weeks with some success and some failure. To summarize, I am looking at how technology can be used in an architectural format to better the urban environment. In reality, it is the spatial reaction that can be utilized through new technologies and information systems that I am most interested in. The problem with this is that all of my research has been done studying new building systems and products rather then writings and theories from the past. No longer. My chair, Paul Emmons, has lent me a book, "Rethinking Technology", which is a collection of articles from architects that discusses how architecture should embrace technology. These articles range from Frank Lloyd Wright to Le Corbusier to more modern writings. I will be using this book mostly for quotes to support my thesis. It is 450 pages long, but given the short amount of time I have on my thesis, I will try to read all of it the rest of this week. Good luck to me.....