1:20 Detailed Section Model

1:20 Detailed model prepared for Technical Review tomorrow with Sir Colin Stansfield Smith and two other visiting architects.

Corner detail of timber insertion

Stair detail 

CAD 1:20 detailed section

Ashmolean Museum Film Photographic Study

As part of a progressive photographic study this year I borrowed my fathers Zenit-E, 1970's USSR fully manual camera for the trip to Oxford.

If you look really carefully you might be able to see 36 exposures onto the one piece of film. 

Oxford Field Trip

As a studio we visited Oxford yesterday, centring our visit around the Ashmolean Museum by Rick Mather, housed within an existing building the museum focusses on a beautifully detailed staircase in a light-well. Unfortunately the museum could exist anywhere as all traces of the existing building have been smothered with white polished plaster!

Brickworks Client Presentation

The presentation was warmly received by selected members of Bursledon Brickworks committee, various suggestions were made including the possibility of keeping the engine house in its current form as the working machinery has been listed, or how a roof might work over the kilns. A useful experience!

Bursledon Brickworks Client Proposals

Preparing for client presentation

A series of images prepared for the client presentation on Wednesday.

van Heynigen and Haward field trip

No 1 Smithery in Chatham Dockyard.

 White render insertions were made within the space to house a delicate collection of naval models. We were lectured by the project architect who said the building was on site for nearly 10 years. The existing building has single skin brick walls and a simple uninsulated metal roof (the architect stated that the roof had not been designed to accommodate insulation therefore they could not justify adding insulation. Talking to the security guards the unheated spaces were used almost all year round and were not unbearable in the summer due to adequate openings for ventilation. The insertions are built to passivhaus standards therefore do not work with the existing building environmental strategy, these insertions were made as plain simple white boxes as to not intrude with the very colourful character of the existing building.

 I believe this to be an issue as the insertions exist as a monolith within the existing building and do very little to break down towards it. Such monoliths arguable freeze the narrative of the existing building.

RSPB Birdwatch Centre

The RSPB Rainham Marshes building is located 20 minutes up the road from Chatham and is an interesting design. The building is a simple domino frame construction clad in painted timber boards, in the architects words "the birds don't care what colour it is painted and we believed it to reflect the nature of the surrounding (wasteland) site." 

Polycarbonate lightwells allow light to be brought down into the building and hot air to be ventilated. The building was designed with great attention to security, all glass surfaces have automated panels which slide in front of t on closing, and access is via drawbridges which presumably are raised.

Detail Development

The Marshall House by Dow Jones provides a considered approach to tectonics which I would like to apply. In the pass lecture Alun Jones told us that the  clay and the timber panelling were sourced locally and the design through very carefully about how the two touched. I intend to apply this sense of rigour to how the insertions touch the existing brickworks...

London Trip

As part of attending Pass Lectures this year I decided to travel to London to view some of the buildings which have been mentioned and may inform my thesis project.

Wilkinson Eyre's bridge of aspiration, linking the Royal Opera House and the Royal Ballet School

Christ & Gantenbein's Insertion within the Swiss Church, mentioned in a lecture by van Heningen and Haward as a very loud insertion within an existing building.

Norman Foster's Courtyard Insertion at the British Museum, the central insertion forms new gallery spaces and springs a glass roof in all directions which encloses the courtyard of existing buildings.

6a Architecture's extension to the South London Gallery, unfortunately the existing building was closed. An interesting lecture before christmas revealed that during renovating the existing building a pattern of a window was revealed on a wall. This was incorporated into the first exhibition. Such working with the buildings fabric characterised 6a's approach as extrapolated intervention.

6a Architecture prototyped various door knobs making references to the existing Victorian door knobs. 

6a Architecture's extension in Raven Row Gallery. The existing building was previously gutted by fire and the architects used this to inform the interventions they made with the building's fabric.

 The lightwells were clad in burnt timber and various interesting material choices were made - for example the building's interior walls were painted white but the timber floors and windows were merely cleaned leaving a rich tectonic quality.

 The architect also explained that the interior panelling in one room was previously bought and shipped to the States, this lay in storage for 100 years and thus survived the fire, it was then returned to the building by 6a and refitted. 

Such a narrative richen's a buildings experience and 6a Architects use this very well.

1:200 Section Development Models

Making Insertions within the existing building causes problems with head height. 4 options have been modelled in section.

Option 1 : Raise the existing roof (a large and expensive undertaking)

 Option 2 : Run the insertions straight through the existing work (this would result in a total reconfiguration of the existing roof structure)

Option 3 : Dig out and underpin the middle 4 sheds to allow enough head height beneath the insertions (another large and expensive undertaking!)

Option 4 : Dig out and underpin only beneath the insertions, allowing the existing workshop floors to exist on a split level. This seems the most interesting and feasible option so shall be taken forward.