I briefly touched upon this in my journal post, but for someone who has been in the design development stage for three weeks now I have done very little, close to none. I have been thinking about the possible designs and I wanted to make something that would be aesthetically pleasing and beautiful, a lot of projects like mine can end up looking monotonous or like they belong in a dystopia I find. But at the end of the day what the buildings looks like is of small importance compared to what the building is like for its inhabitants. I want to offer compact modular spaces, that I'm imagining would offer a fresh take on student accommodation to the point where the "system" could be taken up by others. At the end of the day this project for me is about being innovative and how innovative can a building really be if all it brings is a beautiful new design. I think the answer to that is not very much, architects share principles, concept, building processes but not so much design. An innovative building is not taken up by other architects who then design theirs in the same style as that innovative building. So my approach has to shift architecture is not just an art form, maybe it's not even one at all. I shouldn't think about designing a building that will be in the class of a Gehry or a Zaha building, not that I can,but rather a building that serves its purpose very very well, not to say that Gehry's or Zaha's building don't do that it's just that they are unquestionably visually jaw dropping. In anyway making a student accommodation with for example huge sweeping lines, and extra pieces wouldn't be appropriate because it would cost more for the commissioners and student in return. One change I'll make is focus on designing systems, or smart ideas to make the use of space as smart as possible, rather then designing beautiful facades.
The next thing will be to look at and focus on buildings that serve their purpose very well, sometimes at the cost of aesthetic, at least what I perceive as aesthetically pleasing. Two great example of that are a building I've learnt to like even love, and a building I have tried to like but can't seem to like despite how well it serves it purpose, all I can do is appreciate that it is well thought-out. The building I cannot seize to dislike is the Centre Pompidou by Renzo Piano and Richard Roger and I am not an isolated case, Renzo himself you could not call it a beautiful building. It however seems to hit all the criteria, the choice of moving all services outside (served and servant spaces) allows for 6 storeys, which all have the equivalent of two football pitches of floor space, that is column free, completely empty. Spaces that can be completely be moulded for what they need to do. It is the largest museum of modern art in Europe, but it also contains a multi level library and a centre for music and acoustic research, and offers the only free panoramic view of Paris in the city centre; and in a city like Paris filled with monument and landmarks it is the most visited on a daily basis with 25,000 people. But despite all of that, and the fact that it caters to all those different types of need really well, I cannot like the building solely because I hate the way it looks. However my opinion on the building is of zero significance.
Centre Pompidou- Renzo Piano & Richard Rogers (1977)
The second building is Homes for Senior Citizens by Peter Zumthor. It is a building I was given to study at the beginning of my work placement. I first saw the concrete monotonous structure and thought of my grandparents and what it would be like for them if they had to live in a place like that, and based on their characters I thought that it would be quite depressing for them. But after researching into it I realised how well it was designed, each elderly had his own apartment but everyone on the same level would share the main corridor, and the space in front of each room would be theirs, meaning that ultimately after time the main corridor would be filled with objects that these elderlies chose to bring with them creating a beautiful community I found, because the building gave these people a space to share and create what they'd want, with the buildings story ultimately being the story of it's people.
Homes for Senior Citizens- Peter Zumthor (1993)
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