materials

Work in research groups of a maximum of 2 people per topic.

Materials:

1. Cardboard, Paper composites
2. Ceramics, ceramic composites
3. fiberboards
4. Foams, hard & soft
5. Foils
6. Membranes (teflon, nylon..), ultra strong textiles…
7. Metals, ultra light metals
8. Plastics, fiber reinforced plastics..
9. Wood, Composites…

Present a summary in 11x17format. print 3 copies each material research, due fr nov.2

Research Phase construction

Work in research groups of a maximum of 2 people per topic.
Needs to include a Diagrammatic presentation of concept and at least one exciting example of built structure.

Present a summary in 11x17format. We will combine the research into a reference book for use by the entire studio. You will not be limited to your research topic during the design phase.

1. Structural systems:

1. curved trusses
2. Rigid Frame: space frames
3. Rigid frame: geodesic surface
4. Rigid frame: lattice surfaces
5. Self-supporting shells – compressions surfaces
6. Tensile Structures/Membranes – tension surfaces
7.Domes
8.structural honeycombs
9.pneumatic structures (optional)

print 3 copies each structure research
print 3 copies each design research (last assigm pavilions)

all due wed 24 (day of midtern review)

Berlin Hauptbahnhof

Now you are asked to make a proposal for the actual counterpart, the Infobox to be situated on the south-plaza of former “Lehrter Trainstation”.

Description/ Masterplan Program:
The whole site development (see copy “city masterplan”, MK1-MK9, train station) proposal envisions areas of total 220.000qm, with 33% of it used as residential areas. Approximately 100.000qm office space, ~11.000qm retail spaces on all ground floor levels, leave ~20.000qm for residential use in most of the blocks. The trainstation itself is considered to provide for an additional 20.000qm retail areas.

The infobox’s major use will be that of an indoor public space focused on the nearby construction. All persons involved in the construction-site, such as developers, local architects will make special use of the building for exchange with the public via presentations etc...Refer to the precedent on the Potsdamer Platz for further illustration. The program needs to incorporate also the spirit, ideas and concepts of the previous research phases. This means to think the extension of the project to the virtual global space. After several years when the whole site is fully developed, the infobox needs to move on as well, the virtual might stay. Therefore the actual infobox should be a temporary building with a transitory feel to it, and its design needs to be flexible in that in could be adapted to a variety of sites.

The infobox brief/ program should include but is not limited to:
-exhibition space (digital & traditional media)
-conference/ media hall
-office space
Optional:
-cafeteria
-shop/ kiosk
-functional areas/ circulation areas/ construction space
Total area should not exceed 500 qm

Consider the strategic placement of the infobox on the site. Be aware that there needs to be enough space left around the construction sites of the future buildings (masterplan!) for machinery, cranes, trucks etc...There is also a highrise office building in the middle of the site to respect.
Special attention should be made to:
construction technique, contur-line building (figure-ground), Proportion, Relationship openings- massing, Organization of openings, Natural daylight, Noise, etc…

building-street relationship; pay attention to public infrastructure systems, open plaza-concepts for air, light; entrances to the plaza, etc.; consider the site work is under way – be careful how to ground the building;
building / unit - typical plan – and sectional conditions; aspects of infrastructure (circulation- vertical and horizontal connections) and programmatic distribution (unit/s and building); space for structure- material- mechanical services.
Building system/ components – construction system needs to fit in industrial shipping containers!

Requirements: (teamlevel 2 persons) scale 1/16”~1:200

· digital sketch drawings, draw up your first concept thoughts about the Infobox! Consider it to be the extension of the vitual site!

· diagrams; plan & sections diagrammatic - scale 1/16”~1:200

· mass models/ 3D-pattern models/ parties; scale 1/16”~1:200; minimum 3 schemes;

· design presentation: one architects “pavilion” selected from the list (analog 11x17 pdf & digital ppshow), analyse general dimensions, exterior cladding, cladding joint, structural system & material, structure joint details, floor-wall connection, daylight system, program, access, infrastructure& circulation system etc..

designer pavilions:

1. V. Acconci, River Mur building

2. B. Tschumi, Video Gallery, Groningen

3. K. Oosterhuis, E-motive house

4. K. Oosterhuis, Web of North Holland

5. L. Spuybroek, Nox, Freshwater-Saltwater pavilion

6. Toyo Ito, Serpentine Gallery

7. Toyo Ito, Parque de la Relajacion

8. Renzo Piano, IBM traveling exhibit pavilion

9. Berhard Franken, BMW pavilion, the bubble

10. Bernhard Franken, BMW Dynaform

11. Shigeru Ban, Japan Pavilion, Expo, Hannover 2000

12. Shigeru Ban, Paper Studio 2003

13. Shigeru Ban, Centre d’Interpretation du Canal de Bourgogne

14. Monika Gora, Octatube, Greenhouse

15. M.Goulthorpe, decoi, Miran Gallery

16. Anish Kapoor, The Cloud

17. Siza & Souto de Moura, Serpentine Pavilion 2005

18. Future Systems, Lords Cricket ground

Berlin

BERLIN

In the 20th century the conventions and experiments of Berlin’s architecture and urbanism have had a guiding influence on construction all over Germany. Whether Kaiserreich, capital of the German Reich, centerpoint of the cold war or political stage for the reunification strategies, public planning and its results were visionary for its time but ideologically surpassed some years later.

Still visible is however the tabula rasa executed on the city through different political systems: from the razing for the “Welthauptstadt Germania”, the bombings of world war two, the postwar execution of the Charta of Athens with western super-highways and communist neo-klassizist magistrals to the new towns of the sixties and seventies and the critical reconstruction of the eighties.
Urbanism in Berlin is “a mindless pendulum movement where the acceptance of one particular doctrine leads - as surely as day follows night- to the adoption of its exact opposite a few years later: a negative sequence in which every generation ridicules the previous one only to be annulled by the next…it condemns the discourse of architecture to become an incomprehensible chain of disconnected sentences.” Following this analysis of Koolhaas,Berlin’s approach to heal any mistakes done from the fifties to the seventies with a renewed historical consciousness; the 18th century grid and its street and plotlines are once more the new paradigm of German urbanism.
Already in the mid eighties, set under pressure for reasons of political party ideology and demographic statistics, Berlin started to invest in large urban planning projects known as the IBA, focusing on the city center with new housing experiments. The texture of the old city started to be the base plan for any new planning subordinated under the now fashionable doctrine of “critical reconstruction” understood as a critic of the modernist ideas and the Charta of Athens.
Against the backdrop of two political systems and their ambitious urban planning and architectural competition, the reunification challenged the new ruling power. Huge prefabricated housing slabs in the communist part of the city were still under construction and the outdated city infrastructures, until now separated and neglected, needed to be joined again. While any planning coordination by the municipality for rushed international Investor-projects and additionally urgent necessary competitions were still unorganized, 300 milliards of DM have already been invested in major constructions. The historic Friedrichstadt, Potsdamer Platz and the Spreebogen and its major representative projects were under construction when in 1996 the “Planwerk Innenstadt” was presented to the public as an overall planning strategy for the center of the city. As an effort to get at least some influence onto the already investor-generated city development in Berlin, out of control since the early 90’s, the municipalities and the planning authorities set up in a working process of three years the new zoning regulations as a kind of historic beautification program. Already heavily criticized during its inception, the proposal is a historic interpretation of the “urban city” according to Habitat II, with densification and mixed use at the level of the 19th century Berlin “quarter” and block structure. With short distances between living and working, compared to the suburbs, the public infrastructure and amenities would be used more efficiently and it seemed the simplest solution.

However, since 1990, just after the reunification of the two German states and due to the reclaimed freedom, Berlin is characterized from an enormous mobility. The historic center is loosing inhabitants mostly to the suburbs but also to the other surrounding city areas. The exodus from the center triples the amount of other city areas, mostly for lack of housing in good condition. A big problem is that especially the middle class, the economically most secured group, is leaving for the suburbs because the existing aged housing does not satisfy their requirements of size and amenities. As a result the typically heterogeneous quarters change into ghettos of the economical poor social classes. During the nineties, the public housing policy was regarded as secondary to the prestigious national projects, but is becoming now an acute problem for the city, following demographic scenarios of an increase of the city population to five million inhabitants by 2010. The 90’s solution of a quick and fast production meant that 46% of all planning was directed to developer areas and new towns in the rural suburbs. Still, out of 130.000 new apartments, only 8.000 were built in the center, compared to massive new central office space for over 200.000 workers. Berlin’s new building law regulations were investor friendly and reversed the dwelling/office mix of 90/10 to 15/85, while the FAR (Floor Area Ratio) increased from 2.0 to 6.6 in developing areas. The low obligatory percentage of 20% for dwelling that had to be included with new construction during the nineties, resulted typically in standard penthouse floors or boarding houses. Dwelling was pushed to the seams of the city by other more profitable uses.

With focus on housing in the new rural areas, Berlin is now paying not only additional service and maintenance but also cost intensive public post-infrastructure such as schools, kindergardens while the same institutions maintained in the center are gradually emptied.
Berlin is still today characterized through car-oriented mono-functional low-density habitations according to post war modernistic urban strategies and vast open areas in large parts of the inner city. The city is not only suffering from the derelicted city center but also vast swathes of redundant industrial land- brownfield sites- that illustrate our industrial legacy and the break-down of the inefficient communist state industry or the globalization of the western market economy. These areas in itself are a task for re-use, recycle, and regeneration before even touching the country-side.
The fast pace of development in Berlin needs to involve the citizens in a more immediate and direct manner in order for the administration and public policy to have continuous feedback and address the “real problems” of the city. The Infobox at Potsdamerplatz was a small but successful step forward to keep not only residents, but also international visitors “up to date” on one of the biggest building projects in city history.

You are asked to develop an organizational concept for the virtual space and a potential link/s between your actual project and the parallel web project. You start by building your project for virtual space first (it might be built in second life) and at the same time decide how and what might be transformed to the actual site.
Keep in mind the steps to develop a strategy for your virtual site.

1. the information structure of the site; how is information displayed and accessible? Texts, icons, transformation options etc.
2. the spatial characteristics of the site; are there different possible ways of circulation through the web-site which you can describe and draw? diagrams, animations? Can you move freely in three dimensions? Can you access information in three dimensions?
3. links to actual sites, locations; (videocam, projector option, etc.)
4. the effectiveness of the interactivity of the site;
5. Which of the technological aspects are useful for your infobox, and how and where could these be implemented?