Exemplars

This is an led curtain wall system. It shows just how big they can be made and produced, however, I don't want my building to have a seperate facade which hosts images but rather have the screen be integrated into the buildings skin.

This is the Kunsthaus Graz building in Austria. It has a BIX (Big Pixel) facade which lights up at night. I really like how the surface is curved rather then a flat facade. It provides a more dynamic aspect to the building and to the images applied to it.

This is the Arab Institute in Paris and has a facade which acts like a series of cameras. Each panel is made of tiny apertures which restrict and open mechanically according to the sun's intensity. Thereby controlling the amount of light which enters the building.

Aspects of Photography

This building needs a main concept to drive the design, and as photography is too broad, I decided to split it up in order to play with one aspect in particular.

I started to think about what photography implied to me on a purely physical level and came up with the following.

From here you can start to play with how these aspects will start to turn into concrete aspects of a building.

The Brief

Being as though we have complete control over what our building should be / look like / do, we also have control over our brief.

This means you have to start to wonder, who will use this building? What will they expect from the building? How are people going to use it? What do you want this building to do?

And from this, we can start to draw up a list of rooms or spaces. Later, we can arrange these spaces in accordance with which spaces have relationships with other spaces.

As the minimum floor area for this building has to be 500 metres squared, it is quite a large building and so will need a fair number of rooms.

The list I came up with was this;

-Amenities

-Gallery

-Dark Rooms

-Photo Balcony

-Equipment Storage

-Foyer

-Access

-Staff Offices

-Parking

-Interactive Scenes

-Computer Labs

-Printing Rooms

-Cafe

-Store

Then I inserted these spaces into a matrix to determine the relationships.

From here I could then draw a bubble diagram to start laying out spaces.

Building Typology and Technologies

The technologies to be researched are dependent upon the type of building chosen. There is no point in researching body implants if you are designing a prison. Therefore, the building typology must be decided before the types of technology can be analysed.


Then again, in saying that, a prison wouldn't be very suited to the site context anyway, so the building must also be well fitted to its location.


Building Typologies

A number of different possibilties presented themselves as an extension of my Folie, these included:

An observatory.

A weather station.

A photography lab/studio.

After considering each one, I have decided to design a Photography Precinct as it would be suited to the site and provide the chance to research a wide range of technologies.

After searching through Wikipedias list of emerging technologies, I have found a few which would be suited to this project. These included:

Machine Vision.
3D Displays.
Holography.
Organic LEDs.
Screenless Displays.

However, it should be noted that the list is not limited to these options and that there are potentially hundreds more technologies that exist which will discovered as I progress through the design phase.

Where To From Here?

The next step after designing the Folie is to take the basic concepts behind it and use them to create a new building.

In essence, it is Folie to Building.

The new building must be situated on the same site, but be a minimum of 500 square metres and a maximum of a 1000.

From here, the university students were split up into theme groups, where each group would focus on a different approach to the design, with different objectives and different outputs. Some theme groups chose the building you were to design, while others allowed you to decide for yourself.

The theme group I chose was called "The New Machine" with Ben Parker of CCN Architects as the Theme Group leader.

This theme group was to focus on emerging technologies and how they could be included in architecture. The idea behind it is to use technology which is cutting edge at the present, but could filter down through the ranks to be a normal building function in possibly 15 years. This can already be seen in practice, such as automatic lights, whole house stereo system and ambience settings.

After talking with the tutor, we were told to decide on a few technologies to research and a building typology to use that hold some relevence to the Folie.

The Theme Groups Banner

Final Poster

This was the final poster requirement for the Folie. The text reads like this :

This folie was designed to provide the user with a unique experience that was different to the usual activities of sitting and reading. After visiting the site, it became clear that Howard Smith Wharves contains some of the best views within Brisbane and as such would be a perfect spot for any onlooker or aspiring photographer. With that in mind, the design intent of this folie is to create a “living photo” through visual distortion, hoping to provide a space in which the user views a distorted image without changing their perception.

Fisheye lenses are often used for architectural photography as they allow you to encounter a space in a different way, while also providing enough visual scope to encapsulate a large area. This folie was designed to be a habitable fisheye lens, using a series of lenses to create a bending effect. This image will then be displayed within the habitable space of the folie and will change and distort as you move within the space. This then forces the user to view the city in a new way, therefore provoking reflection and thought.

As such, the folie is located underneath the bridge along the riverfront in order to maximise views of the cityscape, and to broadcast the follies existence to the districts of Brisbane City and New Farm. The arch, under which the folly sits, acts as a giant doorway with normality and distortion separated on either side.

The site of the Howard Smith Wharves is very historical, containing buildings from the 1930s and is largely undeveloped. This folie therefore, was designed to have a futuristic aesthetic that would stand in direct contrast to its surroundings while simultaneously creating a relationship between old and new. The futuristic skin of the folly also plays with the concept of visual distortion using a series of glass prisms set at various angles in order to produce a set of repetitive images. At night this skin will light up, showcasing itself to the city.

Final Drawings

Basic sketches of my Folie

Change Your Perception

The fisheye lens has often been used with Architectural Photography as a way of changing the perception of the viewer.

I want to force the user to think when entering my Folie and so have decided to base my design upon a fish eye lens. In this case, it is the architecture which produces the fish eye instead of the fish eye point at architecture.

This can be placed upon the cliffs in the site, or down by the river. Even suspended from the bridge.

Photography

The chosen experience I want to create is to incorporate photography into the Folie design.

Because the site is already a very photogenic location, the insertion of a photographic Folie will help to accentuate this feature.

What Does This Site Offer?

In order to work out what experience I want the user to have, I need to see what the site can offer in a way of providing an experience.

Thoroughfare

With the incorporation of the River-walk, this site becomes a widely used passageway for runners, joggers and walkers. Therefore it holds the option to provide a unique experience for these users that is different to the way they are using it now.

Floods

When the January Floods hit, they completely covered this site and it is currently under reconstruction. This allows the option of commemerating the floods somehow, or communicating the floods for years to come. As an experience it would be possible to show what it would be like to be in the floods.

Photography

Due to the location of the site, it provides an option to take many photos. You can have photos of the city, of the river, of the bridge, of new farm or of the cliffs. Overall it is a very photogenic site. Therefore an experience can be a place from which to take photos.

Other Options

While these previous options are site specific, there are numerous experiences which are fairly generic. These can include a place to eat, rest, read and meet. However, in my option, these opportunities are slightly safe, so if I was to choose one as my overall experience, it would have to be taken further to become truely unique.

What is a Folie?

In the lectures and readings a Folie has been described as an "activator of space." That means, something that causes interaction within the site rather than just a piece of sculpture that offers no more to the site than its existence.

We were told that there were many Folies in La Parc de la Villette in Paris and that the Folies here had become as iconic to that place as Phoneboxes were to London.

People within Parc de la Villette use this folies as a way of navigating through the parc and are often also used a reference point for meetings. They have been designed to be in a "vacuum" where they hold no relationship to the site at all but are a self standing piece of architecture.

This has led me to think about what activities or experiences I can introduce to the site through my Folie design.

Walkshop - Journey to the Site