space laboratory for architectural
research and design
In this Studio, all projects deal with Brisbane, which is in many ways an extraordinary city. The skyline of the Central Business District (CBD) in the middle of the river bends, the magnificent Botanical Gardens, and the few bridge crossings dominate and characterise the cityscape. The CBD shows traces of a hurried, unreflected development. During the late 1970s, inner-city residential high rise complexes were first developed in the area bounded by Margaret and Alice Streets. Brisbane 's towers reflect a shift of types and atmospheres between office usage, short-stay hotels, long-stay boarding houses and more permanent apartment accommodation. In the last few years the Brisbane Apartment Tower seems to have become legitimate again, perhaps through persistence or quality, but for the most part due to the serious attentions of both thinking architects, as well as commercial hacks.
Cnr of George / Turbot / Tank Streets, between the Queen Street Mall and the Transit Centre, opposite the new Magistrates Court complex. This is currently the CBD's largest vacant site.
The schemes will be dealing with specific responses to specific place. The project will be a large scale planning exercise within an existing Brisbane context, informed by a complex program and site. The student will develop an individual proposal for a rectangular site (approx. 80 x 60 m; 5.100 sqm plus the footprint of the existing building), to be seen in conjunction with the development of a 'Legal Precinct', between two justice institutions. The site is in an area that will undergo rapid change over the next three years. This particular inner-city site at 400 George St. has been chosen for its specific context and detailed urban analysis is recommended. Urban analysis: Firstly, study the existing building density around the site.
High density is encouraged and likely to require a compact multi-storey approach, with a slab tower of 14 - 20 storeys. The task is to compose three new elements - the slim tower slab, the low block, and a public square - incorporating the existing heritage building (the old McDonnell & East Ltd. Department Store), and to integrate this ensemble in its difficult urban surrounding. Approximately 2,200 sqm (approx. 45%) of the site area is given over to a public plaza, which has to be oriented towards the North to catch maximum sun.
The 5th Year projects are a student's ultimate opportunity to exploit the Studio as a 'laboratory' for intensive design inquiry. We want to develop individual architectural positions, with relationships and scenarios to be seen as structuring devices for new programs while demonstrating an understanding of city life. The students are expected to demonstrate their ability in collecting, diagramming and utilising various data.
A high rise tower has considerable influence upon its surroundings. Above all, the high rise building is a sculptural problem in a very specific sense, as its structure depends to a great degree on its scale. There is a great difference between an object which is one metre and an object which is one hundred metres high from both the constructive as well as the structural point of view. Further, a high building should correspond to the three levels of perception - the city, the neighbourhood, and the surroundings - attributing to each its appropriate scale and the same importance.
Working method: Conceptual diagrams to introduce the urban strategies, site analysis, and observation of the urban situation are expected. A shared context model showing the larger urban context is recommended to enable an immediate test of the individual proposals and response to the site conditions / topography. Small scale organisational diagrams and working models (physical or CAD-based) are required in the early stage; present your massing study in Week 2.
A naturally ventilated sub-tropical high rise tower without air conditioning systems - can a convincing model of such a sub-tropical high rise tower be developed?
We ask you to speculate on new models for high rise in the CBD.
An ensemble of three elements: How are these parts interconnected? How are these pieces interwoven, where each of the functions express themselves differently?
Create a composition of buildings that have a strong urban presence yet respond to changing conditions of scale, view and texture.
The program is to add to the 'legal precinct' and to the hotel facilities that give the site its character (the new Brisbane Magistrates Court tower, the existing Commonwealth Law Courts, the Ibis and Mercure hotels).
An inner-city high rise building with a civic component.
Total floor area: min. 20,000 sqm gross floor area for the entire ensemble, plus 2,200 sqm provided for a cosmopolitan, public, open space at ground level: A "square for people".
The project is part retreat (public space and landscape, leading to the entrance hall, 2,200sqm), part entertainment and legislative building (low, more solid block with 3-5 storeys with the 'Brisbane Aquarium', with Court rooms, and retail space on ground floor, 6,000sqm), and part Hotel (3 stars) for Student Accommodation (tower slab with 14-20 storeys with approx. 220 hotel rooms, or approx. 150 one-bedroom-apartments, and conference facilities; tower total min. 14,000sqm).
A Piano Bar and a sun deck might be integrated.
Additional 3 storey underground car parking is required.
The historically preserved building 'McDonnell and East Ltd. / The White Store' (with 3 storeys) has to be incorporated. Keep the façade line along George Street with retail shopfronts along the property line.
Consider carefully the access/delivery and drop-off issues; delivery traffic can only access via Tank Street.
Calculate your final plot-ratio. We aim for a high plot-ratio of around 4 to 5.
Use 3,50m as typical floor-to-floor height for the tower.
Over the last several decades, the world's cities have witnessed major shifts that have dramatically affected urban form and density, as well as programming. How can we re-position architecture at the centre of debates on the city of the 21 st century?
In the space of a few years, Brisbane has experienced the intensive modernisation of one of its oldest quarters, the CBD. Since the World EXPO in 1988, the growth of financial activities in the CBD has caused a rapid influx of multinational organisations requiring modern buildings to accommodate their expanding business services and staff. Dozens of new large office buildings, all privately financed and developed, appeared on the dense urban pattern. City buildings manifest a respect for urban context and historic fabric. The design of buildings within the existing fabric of the CBD, so-called "urban in-fill buildings" that sit between older buildings, have become increasingly significant in the renewal of Brisbane 's downtown.
While the complexity of the modern city calls for continuity, it also furnishes a great delight: the contrast and specialisation of individual character. We have the opportunity of forming our new city world into an imaginable landscape: visible, coherent, and clear. Like a piece of architecture, the city is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, perceived only in the course of long spans of time. Brisbane 's central business district is distinctive, because of its obvious density, function, size, new buildings, and definite edges.
Landmarks are types of point-references, like towers, a clue of identity, memorable in their context and with prominence of spatial location. At the base of the landmark is a public square: Some famous Italian squares, like the Piazza San Marco in Venice, are highly differentiated, and stand in sharp contrast to the general character of the context, and to the narrow spaces of the immediate approaches. San Marco for instance has an oriented shape that clarifies the direction from which one enters, and is within itself highly differentiated and structured.
The problem of the ever evolving office box: In Australia, the box-theory of workplaces in the office towers, strongly influenced by earlier American examples, was exemplified by many of the 1950-80s high rise towers which gave minimal consideration to spatial, environmental and design factors. Most of these modest towers were planned around central service cores - containing lifts, stairs and service areas, characterised by small entrance halls, cheap materials and mean detailing - and tried to maximise the development potential of a site by piling up as many floors as the planning regulations would allow. Only in the last decade, skyline identity, street credibility and the quality of communal parts (the lobbies, lift cores and entrances) became material considerations. At the same time new air-conditioning, increased awareness of energy conservation, office space without suspended ceilings and new ways to solve flexibility set future standards.
Emphasis is given to inventive ways of thinking about the conventional program and typology for a combination of a series of different functions, such as ... - Students will be asked to develop their own more specific briefs and to derive a possible strategy from these parameters.
The new building ensemble has to satisfy various user needs in the broadest sense. The organisational scheme adopted for the building should be clearly articulated and readable from the inside and outside; it should reflect a clear attitude about this public space, the various building components and their combination on this particular site. Precedents, especially with respect to this issue, need to be studied.
Please try to apply, as far as possible, the Council rules for your project, especially the 'Tangential Rectangular Formula', which is a Brisbane guideline for floor area, distances, light/shading and an idealized tower footprint above the podium.
Brisbane City Council has recently approved changes to the City Plan which will impose new height limits on CBD towers. The height changes are currently before the government for commencement of formal steps to amend the City Plan. They will soon be advertised for public comment. What do such changes mean for the future of Brisbane city? How descriptive should BCC be in setting the design parameters for the new buildings?
Constraint by the density controls - please find the relevant Planning Codes on the web site: www.brisbane.qld.gov.au and search for 'city plan', go to 'city plan summary' / 'local plans' and look at the 3 relevant codes:
The operational criteria for the complex should address the following:
The program intends to introduce students to a range of issues arising from a process driven brief, including pragmatic problems such as retail spaces along the street, and delivery areas and car parking accessed via Tank Street . The brief also asks for three levels of underground car parking and a public passage through the site to be included.
The students are asked to investigate and consider notions such as:
Analyse the following 20 precedents and discuss these within your tutorial group. These are all iconic prototypes with a tall dynamic tower slab on pilotis, and a public plaza, often with a contrasting lower block podium:
Study the arrangements, plans and sections of these buildings. What defines the particular public and metropolitan character of these buildings?
Professor Steffen Lehmann will be offering optional and additional tutorials on 2 Thursday evenings, between 6.00pm and 9.00pm (see list to sign up available during Wednesday afternoon tutorials).
To help in the evolution of an independent approach, the unit will meet each week to review work, with weekly in-class reviews (pin-ups) of the project work. Special focus is given to the development of the work in the early stage and the inclusion of comments on the work from the previous week. You will be issued with a tutorial Feedback Sheet to record weekly discussions. This feedback is formative and tutorial attendance will be part of the overall assessment. Visiting critics will be invited to contribute to the Studio.
Our goal is to help students to start 'thinking like an architect' in the sense in which we understand that term, and to help in applying this way of thinking when designing. Therefore, architecture is understood as an assembly of formally related parts whose relations with each other are not arbitrary. To develop compositional skills, we intend to introduce strategies to a) interpret works of other architects as compositions, and b) develop students' own compositional skills.
The intention of the unit is to guide students to a point where they start to enjoy designing because they trust their own judgement and possess the confidence on which this trust depends. It is expected that in this project, students will apply their basic understanding of architectural vocabulary and be developing a language of their own.
There are no out-of-the-ordinary risks or health and safety issues associated with this unit in its day-to day experience.
The unit may require you to partake in a field trip to the CBD site and to Melbourne, of either a supervised or self-guided nature. A risk assessment for these trips has identified only low impact risks. You will be provided with relevant safety guidelines prior to any field trip. You will be required to obey all safety guidelines and directions while attending field trips.
This unit also requires you to attend tutorial sessions in the school workshop facility for model making. Participation will require previous attendance at an induction course offered by the school workshop staff. You will be required to comply with safety clothing requirements, and with safety directions given by the workshop staff.
The tutors will facilitate tutorial groups of approximately 15 students.
Please ensure that you attend all tutorial sessions and discuss the progress of your work with your respective tutor. Tutorial groups will rotate once after the Phase 01 - Final Crit, so that each student will be exposed to the input and guidance of at least two tutors during the course of the Studio.
We start to formulate an urban strategy with eight requirements for the future of the CBD site, and for similar Brisbane conditions:
Students are expected to produce exterior sketches of the volumes and composition of the multi-storey tower and the other volumes, and to find an appropriate name/theme (max. 1 phrase) for their proposal. Use photomontage technique with streetscape photos and aerial photos of the site.
A site plan in scale 1:500 and a complete set of standard drawings in scale 1:200 (one upper floor plan, ground floor plan, plaza level plan, two sections, at least two elevations) is expected for submission. All drawings to be submitted in the same set format (A1). A model is part of the requirements: early massing models (several alternatives) and a final presentation model in scale 1:500. These are the minimum submission requirements:
Start to discuss your proposal and concept at an early stage with your tutor, not later than 10th March.
17th March: pin-up session with working/massing model in scale 1:500.
Interim Crit - Thursday 25th March 2004, starting at 2.00pm. Pin-up at 1:00pm in 3 groups.
Final Crit - Wednesday, 21st April 2004, starting at 2.00pm. Pin-up at 1:00pm in 3 groups.
For this Final Crit presentation with invited guests, students will present their schemes in a five minute summary to the jury.
The crits are important events and students are asked to pin-up their work in time, to attend the entire crit session, and to engage in discussion.
elective advanced studio
year 5 collaborative