This is my last semester project (Semester 01, 2010) I've been wanting to put this on the blog since it was presented which is about 5 months ago.... but soooooo lazy to adjust and write... and now, I end up chucking in just my speech.
The Blurred Masterplan
The project is a metaphor of Melbourne city. It is generated by the blur master plan or a blistered satellite view of Melbourne city and its surroundings. The blur master plan is a reverse representation of a typical master plan which is meant to give a different perception about Melbourne city. It represents the fuzziness of Melbourne City, its history, urban life and memories. The reading of the master plan which has been visually interpreted by the idea of distance between the dots hence becomes the rule to generate the form of the building. The rule is explored through three main strategies that response to Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction.
Firstly, the project celebrates the interdependency between form and functions. The iterative rule from the blur master plan generates a form for the buildings. However the demands of the functions require additional rooms which could spatially serve the functions. Therefore, the programmatic needs of the building break and blend the generative rule of the form.
Secondly, it deals with the contradiction between ‘form and form’ and ‘form and function’. The whole project is a juxtaposition of complex and simple geometries. The generative form is complex in a sense of its illegibility and the extrusions are pure cylinders intersecting the complex form.
Thirdly, the outcome of the project serves the inherent variety and ambiguity of visual perceptions. The buildings in this project are hiding and emerging between the existing trees that maintain the sense of familiarity and the jagged shapes are vulgarly flowing. The project is illegible as a whole, giving variety of experiences as one moves through the site.
It is important to note that the notion of blur in this project is defined through the ambiguity between appearance and experience. It is not trying to expressively appear blurry as it appears in smoke or mist. It is blurry in a sense of lost in the experience of the whole project. The whole project from satellite view appears like a portion of blurred area in the land, camouflaging with the surrounding and vaguely depicting the shape of the building but vividly appear as whole. However from the street level, the existence is vivid but the project could never be experienced as a whole. The fragmented experiences narrate the blur idea of the whole depending on the side and the angle of view. Almost like the idea of a city (including Melbourne city) where one’s experience and perception are diversified from another depending on personal values, history, lifestyle and memories.
Another element that this project deals with is the cook’s cottage. The cottage is a disputable object. It is an artifact that full of doubts whether it should be celebrated as a reminiscence of glory or a doomsday. At this depends on whether the acknowledgement comes from the aborigines or the whites. Besides, it is also historically arguable whether Captain Cook had ever lived there. Therefore the ambiguous status of cook’s cottage is represented in this blur metaphor. The cottage is partially nestled within the whole, giving an idea of uncertainty whether it is inside or outside when it is in fact both, mimicking the dubious relationship of the cottage and Australia.
The Plan; find the building yo!
see! see! there's The Cook's Cottage
The Amphitheater, for the first time in my life, I wanna be in my building.
*that's so vain*
The following is my additional elaboration about the design process, I tell you it's really crappy, wrote them few minutes before the presentation. so bear with the grammar and all. my grammar is rarely correct anyway.
How did I design?
The dots become connectors , or generators of the buildings
Remember when we were young, we learn to draw things and learn numbers by connecting dots exercise... It is something similar to that
The image that creates the dots exercise is a clear thing, for example, a horse. But someone makes it ambiguous by turning it into a series of dots, which when connected, produce a horse again, but obviously the horse looks different from the real one depending on the beauty of lines or in another word the child that draws it… and as well, the traces of the dots is still there. The outcome would never appear exactly like the original image of a horse.
In this design, it’s all begun with a real satellite photo of the site, a readable photo of the site. Which hence turn blister using rasterbater. Like a child who does know what could it become, I connect all this dots, and out of it, I got a building, well.. a few buildings to be exact.
But this is architecture, obviously it has to be more than just learning the number sequences… the image does not tell me where should I begun and where to connect or even, what colour of pen shold I use to draw.
So there are other studies of the image that generates the rule. Like the child, before doing the dots exercise, she has to learn about numbers and how to read it.
The Iteration Process
Programs hence used to fashion the process into architecture... most of all, to determine additional height to most spaces which previously formed by connecting the dots.
Following are the process diagram...showing how the cylindrical volumes are extruded to serve the required programmatic space.
p/s: I won't blame you readers if you can't understand what did I blabbered about. It's quite a crazy thing...still I wasn't philosophical enough in my approach of this project if you must know. This project also has strong relationship with Venturi's Complexity and Contradictions. So you may need to read that to understand. But hey, don't bother.... just look at the images... hahaha... it's a land of no where. I doubt I will have any chance in my whole life to design a building like this in my architecture practice. oooh... and I'm sure... some ppl think this sort of iconic crazy philosophical architecture is too vain and nonsensical... not to mention, it's a waste of money.
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