Working share link to your Forma project, view access for the teaching team.
Comparison matrix, one page.
Design memo of 300 to 500 words: what you read in the site, the three strategies, what the analysis said, your recommendation, and the surprise.
The site is very interesting because it's flanked by buildings of extremely different heights: 30ft on the southern and eastern sides and 200ft on the northern side. This causes very interesting dynamics with mass, sun exposure, and wind. It's also next to a park on the west side of the site. This creates interesting opportunities with the view from the west side and opens up the structure to views of the greenery.
Strategy 1 [Plaza]: I created the arc shape to open up the building to the street and create a lot of exposure for the spaces. I put the residential on the bottom to connect it to the street. Theres a opening in the ground-floor middle of the west branch of the building to allow a line of site from the park to the inner plaza. I also placed a little commercial building on the street-side center of the plaza for easy-access commercial space. I think it also adds visual interest to the site.
Strategy 2 [Urban pyramid]: A sloped building that takes into consideration the gradient of surrounding building heights and attempts to blend in. Allows sunlight to all spaces, especially due to the gap in the center of the stacks. Residential floors tapered in from the commercial base to dampen vertical wind currents. Open plot in front for greenery.
Strategy 3 [Blocks2]: Two mid-rise block buildings with a raised bridge connecting them in the center. Shaded underpass in the center for gatherings of people. Residential floors tapered in from the commercial base to dampen vertical wind currents. This design has the most commercial space along the west road. This could be used for restaurants to target families in the park.
The analysis gave back a lot of interesting feedback. The most interesting was that all three of the strategies had a profound dark spot on the north side (for the urban pyramid, this was on the north side of the southern wing so on the inside). The Blocks^2 design also had a dead spot of no wind current in the center gathering space which is really unfortunate and detrimental to the purpose of the space. The Plaza design also works as a bowl that amplifies the sound from the street which is greatly ineffective. The carbon across all the projects was pretty consistent.
I dont think any of the designs are complete on their own. My recommendation would honestly be to combine the plaza and urban pyramid but simply rotate it so in the opening is on the southern side. I would keep, however, the sloping, pyramid-style wings on either side for sun exposure.
Three massing images, one per proposal, from the same viewpoint.
