Despite the minimal preparations we have made for the the 'Sauna' workshop starting next week, we spent all THIS week designing the Sandane shelters. The Sandane project brief requests public shelter within a camping and hiking area in Western Norway to accommodate 30 students at a time. A previous shelter in the area had recently burnt down, as shown below, damaging some existing trees in the process.
As explained previously the Sandane project aims to utilise digital modelling and prefabrication to assist during the construction process. This being the major difference between it and the Sauna workshops and as such, design and preparations need to be made prior to commencement on site. Starting next week we head down to the aforementioned Bunkers to begin designing and constructing on site for the Sauna project for 2 weeks. This intuitive form of design and construct has been undertaken by Sami and Pasi enough previously that although it remains fairly ambiguous as to what is to happen, they have enough experience in the process to lay aside any uncertainty. They have stated that over designing prior to construction is not the always the best way to approach a project.
Over the past few weeks Pasi has been keeping us updated with meetings he has been having with heritage departments, the municipality and the recreational group who will be running the Sauna. Although we haven't designed anything significant at present, Pasi has made and gained approval for certain requests despite being somewhat vague. These include that we are constructing a sauna, which bunker we are using and also a zone for potential external structures. We had previously discussed constructing something on top of the bunker but this wasn't advised. But we'll see what has happened in a couple of weeks I guess.
But for the meantime onto the Sandane project.
We spent the week moving between different forms of work, individual and group, sketch design to grasshopper, and by the end of the week we had settled into areas of which maybe we felt a little more comfortable. But we all began the week together with some individual sketching, various analysis techniques and ideas about the project. Through this we came up with some key terms that were popping up between out ideas, as shown below and Pasi assisted in refining these down to common conceptual ideas. This generally was based around structures where sleeping was happening in a second level with more ambiguous storage / resting / sleeping platform underneath. In terms of the project's layout on site, by the second day this form was being explored in four ways, as a circular plan, two masses facing one another, an individual mass and a cluster arrangement. All of these were to be potentially focussed around a fire with discussions of community, privacy, add ons etc.
Within these four 'concepts' we then switched into a fairly objective analysis of each identifying quantities of floor and wall area and footings to identify a certain rational selection of each idea. Being that the project is actually going to be built, It was found that the circular and the larger mass concepts required a much greater floor area and structural size to make them work. As such they were dropped and the 'two masses' and 'cluster' arrangements were explored further. This analysis aimed to lay a framework for the project to set a certain scope in terms objective factors of cost and the like. The architecture and creativity could then proceed from this with fairly rational foundations.
We moved forwards again in small groups, coming back together to make decisions. Using a 3D scan that surveyed the site over the previous weekend, an exact siting of the project was argued and massaged into a position through a group discussion. It was surprising that from 13 perspectives a decision was made upon a preliminary massing and siting fairly quickly. This can be seen below.
We again worked in small groups on grasshopper to explore how a structural framework may work for this preliminary footprint. One group wrote script for a mesh type floor structure of triangular connections, another plotted the points on the 3d scan and a third group explored how individual foundations with many connections could adapt to one another.
The last few days of the week the groups divided in a sense to one working on the grasshopper script and another working on design. The design ended up in a cluster like form with sleeping units along a rock wall and a more open central kitchen structure. The floor of the sleeping units were to be around 2000mm from ground level with a low roof overhead. A platform underneath these would permit storage and further sleeping areas if required. The fire place ground level platforms around the units were pushed and pulled to create external spaces and to fit around existing trees. Some drawings below.
Though these still remain preliminary, the aim of this week was to establish fairly exact locations for the foundations as these are the elements that are to be prefabricated. The design will be able to shift following the Sauna workshop but the manufacturers require a certain scope of works early to get a gauge of the workload. These foundations are to be made of 800mm x 800mm x 120mm cross laminated timber pieces which will be placed at junctions and prefabricated or cut to accommodate columns and beams. The entire structure is to rest on these junctions which will sit on further foundations.
This is what the grasshopper script below is trying to achieve. Some fairly competent grasshopper users in the class developed this throughout the week and prepared the little video below. This will provide a little more insight into how these programs communicate with one another. You can see that the segments of foundation, indicated by the larger squares in plan, are to accommodate columns, intersecting beams at varying angles, can be adjusted and will adapt to surrounding changes. I can see the rationale for parametric design in a form like this, which I believed prior, with my limited understanding, was largely or solely devoted to form finding.