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.