Exercise 1

section through site to water

concept model- resin poured onto site contour mould and then cut so that pieces have a ying- yang relationship (see reciprocity concept). Then placed on mirror surface to reflect the building/ site onto the landscape.

copper wire reaches out onto the points of access.

resin is seen as glass and the clay as the landscape. they are inverted on the top form so that the dense material compresses the more fragile material. Perceptional.

Access.

Residential- Commercial- Public

Residential- Commercial- Public as a mapping that reflects the inert nature of the site.

Reciprocity. Two forms defining each other to create a positive- negative balance. Which colour is more defining? This is the reason I used the contour mould to make the concept model. I liked the concept of the contours forming and defining the shape of the building.

The work also made me think about threshold. Do I want it to be the clear cut definition such as that of the Salk institute water line or create a smooth transition?

Inspiration- Which colour is the positive and which is the negative?

Materiality originally but Threshold evolved from it. I gathered leaves from the site and sand from the beach at an attempt to grope at some conceptual ideas on how to link the active site of Coogee beach to the isolated community centre. The work has an interesting texture from the smooth crisp leaves to the raw rough sand.

The above was a result of a week1 watercolour of Coogee beach. I then took some photos of the ocean and coated it in resin. The result was extremely glossy smooth textured paper contrasted with a textured brick pattern that I added to the top. It was from this admitably strange experiment that my ideas for materiality evolved.

I went to Coogee and collected some materials from the site. I once again used resin as I did in the first experiment to capture the 'glossy' texture. I added the materials to it and observed the results. The light, less dense, materials (such as leaves) floated to the top and the sand and sandstone sank to the bottom. Keeping within the definition of materiality I thought it would be interesting to reverse the properties of the materials through design and ended up with a series of cones with leaves down the bottom and the dense stone at the top. I am aware that this sounds crazy but you can always take something from little experiments. To challenge materiality I think it would be interesting to emulate the reverse densities in a structure. For example image walking in an interior where the two upper third were solid sandstone and the lower third was glass in compression.

Threshold- a place existing inbetween with its own identity.

Gridded streets surrounding site.

Site contours. I found it very interesting to compare this with the above gridded streets. We have imposed the ridig order onto the ambiguous free contours and I see this as another way to approach reciprocity and threshold. The gridded system is the build environment and the countors are the landscape. Is there a threshold here that can be explored. A medium, separate place where they meet?


A work that attempted to capture the concept of the gridded build network overlapping the natural contours of the site.

Activity diagram. This shows that the main activity is relatively far away from the site, hence the copper wire 'reaching out' to the other areas. I think it would be fantastic if this was a serious proposal to address the fencing of the oval and the infrastructure on a larger scale, as opposed to just the confines of the site.

Site Model. I wanted to explore the relationship that the site has to the beach. I feel that the atmosphere of Coogee beach is completely lost by the time you reach the site and I want a way to link it. Physically it seems rather impossible, as I mentioned we cant work on infrastructure on a larger scale, but there are some concepts. For example, as I found through the model the site rests on a similar contour as the beach. I allocated each contour to a horizontal plane in the model so that distance isnt a factor.

I wanted to suspend the contours on the string grid because it is reminiscent to a previous concept I liked, the grid like streets contrasting the fluid shapes of the contours whilst also bringing out the same qualities of the 'cones' and resin so it looks like the contours are almost floating.