Say Something...

Well last semester's results are out, and after reading them I don't feel overly disappointed at all. I ended up with my marks safely landing in the H2A and B section of the university's mystifying grading system, so I feel a lot more comfortable posting this. It means I at least did half decently in this last assignment to make it worth sticking up here, I hope you like pictures.

This last project is for a train station on the Haymarket roundabout near the hospital on the Royal Parade side of the uni. This design was intended to act as part of the link between the North Melbourne lines and the Caufield line, similar to that proposed in the media in recent times. Most people who have been there will know what an nightmare that place is to get around and isn't exactly one of the city's bright spots. So besides the obvious requirements of providing space for passengers to board and alight, there was also the need to provide space for commuters to shop as well as the usual facilities and amenities.

I began my investigation by looking at the types of underground societies in current use. While searching for material for my Theories paper on biomimickry, I stumbled upon this image of a plaster cast of an ant farm.

They claimed that they managed to recall most of the ants to the surface, but really I'm not so certain. You can't really tell from this scale anyway. From time to time I referred to the man in the picture as the butcher, in a sense the Saddam of ants, but now I'm being silly. Back to the story.

From this image, you get a sense of what proportions and forms come from a nest of these tiny creatures. Collectively they build wandering tunnels that over time form small alcoves and in turn are further excavated into full sized chambers. Tunnels cross over and link up to form a vast network that can span thousands of square kilometres supporting a population in the hundreds of thousands. If nature can support such a grand society underground and out of sight, surely they must be doing something right.

A major part of an ant nest is the ventilation. The visible portion of the nest comes in different forms depending on the species, or at least that's how I understand it. Some nests may appear above ground in order to provide natural ventilation by means of solar exposure. The heat of the sun's rays provide a source of natural convection within the nest, drawing stuffy air from the depths of the nest and out into the open. In buildings, not nearly enough is made of natural means of cooling. Most office buildings are designed to operate on air conditioning throughout the entire year, ending up in hefty operating costs plus not to mention the health factors. Being a self contained environment leads to all sorts of microbes being trapped, often resulting in all sorts of medical maladies. A naturally ventilated stack would constantly draw fresh air into the building and reduce the need for artificial environmental controls.



My manifestation of this concept came in the form of using the flagpoles that currently occupy the site. Hollowed steel tubes run from deep inside the station to high above. The heat of the sun's rays create a current and circulate air throughout. Air intake is provided via subway entrances and smaller openings in the ground as somewhat explained in one of my presentation drawings below. There's an awful lot of detail in those drawings, which are printed at A1 size and is a major cause of poverty among architecture students. Help an architecture student today by pledging to one of my many legal charities today.

The other major component of my design is the path from the surface to the platform. Using the form of the ants' tunnels as inspiration, I devised a spiral ramp descending to the platform that links all the shops within the station together. The shop 'pod' is loosely based on the formation of new chambers in the nest. I only wished that I had thought of making each one slightly different in layout to reflect this. The expression of the path and pods are manifestations of positive and negative space, much in the same way the ant nest's innards have been exposed by filling it with plaster. Suspending it in midair changes the cavernous feel of the tunnels and transforms it into complete openness, exposing form.


Each subway entrance is situated at some point around the intersection, providing pedestrians access from one side of the the street to the other without having to brave the seemingly neverending traffic. Using the corridors does not require you to enter any ticketed area but descending any further down the ramp requires the public to use the turnstiles.



Originally I had been going for a far more open scheme where the top is more like a canyon where the components were to be suspended in midair, spiral and shops included. But I guess the minor issue of holding it all up finally caught up with me. Though having filled in the majority of the space above does create many more opportunities for playing with light. The platform ceiling is an abstraction of a cave, with the height constantly shifting depending on where you are. Openings in the ceiling are indicated by sloping in the surrounds to show the face of the wall give way to the entrances and lightwells above.


That concludes this somewhat truncated explanation of why I don't sleep anymore. I do have to say while I am pretty happy with the plans and sections I really got let down by the quality of the renders, it may have made the difference between an H2A and an H1 but in the end I'm just happy to have done well in the first place so maybe I should just stop complaining. This however would possibly defeat the purpose of half my posts here so for now I will keep it in moderation. Thanks for reading if you've come this far - and if you got confused by the architect talk don't be too dismayed, architects usually end up talking like this...