Week 6

Coming down to the pointy end of this assignment. Beginning to put together the final  panels for the presentation and tidying up some details and loose ends at the same time.

The fist thing to be sorted was the tram, we have chosen to run a hydrogen tram system that eliminates the over head wires, making for a cleaner more streamline look for Canberra (good for identiy and presence). Investing in the hydrogen system will also bring cleaner energy into the for front. it will also allow for hydrogen cars to be marketed in Australia.

The Precincts are still fairly free form in purposed as the areas are designed to be flexible ( our theme group) and the forms of the buildings are being left open so each group member can put their own spin on the flexible ideas and what they think the buildings and architecture around parliament should be like.

My thoughts are that the architecture should make a statement and generate intrest on its own, (moveable buildings pretty much do that) the way the site slopes up to capitol hill  much of the architecture can be hidden way until you  come upon it from a certain point. as i feel it is important to maintain the iconic dialogue that the Parliament house creates. the landscaping around the main drive creates some interesting interactions with the mall.

The project statement is also going through its final revisions incorporating many of the ideas that have been discussed.  but essentially its still focused around condensing Canberra  through flexible transport and moveable (straddeling) and buildings and generating more interest and making it the place to be....

Week 5 ideas

Thinking more about how the tram system can be expanded to meet the needs of Canberra possibly in the future etc.

Other things ive been thinking about is the architectural presence and the idenity of our development one of the main things people will initial interact with is the trams and the tram stations. these could be like nodes that foster flexibility in  those areas offering more than just a space for the trams to stop, they could be information nodes. These nodes are being left with no fixed shape as each of us may want to envision the stations and stops a little differently (along with the hole scheme / strategy) .  

Week 5

Week 5 one week before our assignment is due. Ideas are still flowing and things are constantly changing more addition and subtraction. 

During the tutorial Hannah had the idea opposite to myself that instead of moving the people around to the buildings. the buildings might move to meet them or at least move around depending on demand. floating the idea with Brant we revived some positive feedback.

We also earlier in the week came across an idea around a straddling bus that straddled the road ways not interrupting traffic that kind of inspired the idea of  the moving buildings.  Would certainly create an interesting presence for Canberra to have moving buildings/ stations.

Other ideas surrounding the use and presence  of the architectural entities were that the circle around the Parliament and the rest of the precincts in the area would become a Think Tank. This Think Tank would help with government policies and research and education and act like a moderator. the think tank would aslo include Expo spaces for each of the states, to unify and bring them together more.

 and the transport network would allow for all these spaces to be visited in much less time as there isn't time wasted having to get into a car to travel to these other spots. instead of only seeing one or 2 sights in a day we could possibly get in 3 or 4 if we take out the travel in cars and swap to a much more efficient  mode of transport that puts less stress on the people using it.

The idea is to turn Canberra into a leading edge city in terms of technology and  ideas thinking along with condensing the city down with a tram system that aims to take cars out of the equation.

We also choose to narrow down the building area around parliament to the blue sections as directly behind parliament there is a more residential area there.  to the left hand side of parliament there is quite a few embassies etc in that area so one of the purposes we are considering is a political science and international relations uni.

The red areas are ear marked for possible areas that can be utilized by the flexible building system we are considering. the idea would be to change it up every 2 years or so, have the precincts constantly changing and generating interest.

Week 4 ideas - World Expo

Thinking about the precinct and the ring around parliament I had the idea that this development could possibly be treated the same as like a World Expo as they generate interest and could invite many more tourists to Canberra and also general Australians.  it could be flexible and then after the expo ends the pavilions are kept and re purposed into those that a deemed to be required keeping the design flexible ans modular.

There is also some discussion about what type of transport should be used it is decided to use trams as they don't involve complicated raised stations and allow for ease of access across the tracks without breaking up the areas due to the need fro bridges etc.

Week 4

This week is the first week with our proper theme group and smaller group.

The smaller group within the theme consists of

Stewart (myself)

Hannah You

& Tahni Jansen

After Brant introduced the Theme etc, and talked about the Six “S’s” of architecture. We split up into our groups and began discussing our ideas around Canberra.

(due to this being the second time i’ll have written this blog post due to blogger eating my first one... i’ll summarise what we essentially came up with)

Capital Strategy - We looked at a couple of different capital cities (one major one being Washington) around the world an noticed they had a lot better transport systems and pedestrianization of areas to make them ore appealing at a human scale. 

We looked at Canberra and using the by-line for the unit "the place to be" we asked why isn't Canberra the place to be? we came up with many answers to this question. but the main points that stuck out were

• largely political bias (no really incentive for more people to come to canberra other than parliament) - no voice for Australian people (except for at election times)
• hard to get around on foot - very car orientated city 
• large and expanded city with lots of open and unused / underutilized space.

So we are aiming to generate something that will address these issues  - The initial problems in our problem statement essentially. 

Capital Infastructure & Presence

From the problems we highlighted we came up with the flowing thing that could help enhance Canberra an parliament:

• possible solutions: 
• centre for asylum seekers and immigrants, to educate and assimilate them into australian culture
• mini-embassies which are modular spaces, which join together regarded the space and size needed generate interest around Canberra
• small museums or the like could also be included
• transport system and plan as Canberra is too distributed and not 'pedestrian-friendly' 
• master plan Canberra and allow for flexible use 

Analyzing Canberra  (see image above)we also noticed these precincts the orange contained more science orientated building and the yellow housed many arts buildings so these could possibly become more filled out precincts with related buildings.

The blue lines ( see above) show the possible routes for a public transport corridor.  that will connect the precincts and parliament. the ring around the outside will possibly house some of the solutions talked about above.

These areas that we have examined need to be developed more and possibly expanded over the next week. 

Tutorial theme / Week 3 more ideas

Choose Flexible 2 as my first course - found out i got into it. so that's good. need to start thinking about more in terms of feasibility now as this will be the main focus. 

Began looking more into Canberra as a city and noticed there was a major short fall in the types (or flexibility??) of public transport available. Canberra is very automobile orientated but also there was enough for thought to design the corridors large enough for different forms of transport. so this might play a role in our design.

Will also look into more stats and research around Canberra. 

Week 3 Tutorial Session

Week 3 Tutorial much like the first tutorial in week 2 but more looking into the Infrastructure, Strategy and Presence and be integrated with the 4 main themes.

main ideas discussed and explored were

Mobile/ Distributed

Distributed cont. / Virtual

Virtual cont /Flexibility

Overall Summary -
With all of these themse it dependent on what is devised for the strategy the infrastructure could be existing or new.  At the end of this tutorial everything was still as clear as mud... hahaha. But the one thing that we noticed is that all the themes kind of overlap and can become each other, this might be an interesting thing to explore once the second project is underway.

One of the more profound ideas that kind of resonated with me was an idea i had at the start of the tutorial. in our group of three we were discussing what was / might be wrong or could be improved with the current parliament. And I figured that the way to get more acceptance of things that the government are proposing (eg carbon tax, and many other things, more so climate change initiatives) would be to educate people more about the topics that are being discussed, as fear of the unknown is what is stopping the acceptance of various issues. and once they have more knowledge on the subjects they can have a more informed say. It needs to stop being a popularity thing and start being an issues driven parliament. more proactive.

Week 2 Tutorial Session

Tthe week 2  lecture explained alittle more about the ideas of Flexible Mobile Distributed and Virtual ideas / themes. The tutorial sesssions were a little diffrent to a normal where we didn't have a fixed tutor but a rotation of tutors from their respecitve themes and would tutor for a half hour or so and then the next set of tutors would come around and give us some inspiration or questions to answer or a little insight into what the theme could be realating to. In our group of 3 we brain stormed our ideas an wrote them down, a lot raised more questions than answered which left a lot of us confused about what we are aiming to do.... which we were told was a good thing to be at this stage. Below are the scans of the disscussion and brainstorming

What is Australia

Firstly some context is needed in order to find the opportunities (good and bad) available in Australia that can be addressed by the four main themes. Apart from the ideas/ topics in the scan above, some other considerations like sustainability (due to our size and the way use what we have) and the way the states interact with each other.

Virtual

Virtual - quite interesting so vast and brings up more questions what is considers virtual and what isn't the definitions can get a bit sticky, but from the four themes this kind of seems the most different as the others can be realized more tangibly (depending on the way you look at it)

Flexible

Flexible - quite a lot of ideas around flexible, so many avenues to travel down with many thing being able to be made to have some form of  flexiblity design into them.

Mobile

Mobile, something similar to flexible but from what i got from the exercise it would mean possibly moving away from the parliament site in Canberra not that that is a bad thing. 

Distirbuted

Distributed - Brings up some ideas about the distribution of power in the government and how its organised. 

From all this brain storming its not any clearer what we're trying to achieve, but that is what this is about.

The First Post

I never know what to post. The competion looks interesting and once the themes are fleshed out a bit more i'm sure i'll get into the swing of things.