Sunday, August 8, 2010

Central core modification - First attempt

Comments from Phil and Joe

The comments from Phil was positive and he thought i have no fundamental problems. Some comments obtained as followed:

1. the scale of the hotel complex is a bit too large. could have some considerations on how many stages the project could be constructed. Maybe cut in a hlaf for each stage (2 stages) or an arm for each stage (10 stages) because each arm have a similar functions and each has inclusive funtions.
2. One bedroom in typ1 has no window.
3. thinking in section. The section can be smoothen more rather than sharp edges. and he thought some roof parts will have water harvesting and odur probems.



Comments from Joe:
1. Too many lifts
2. it could be good to have more cohesive connections of the central core and the balconies of the hotel rooms typ2. How they can help each other?
3. He suggested the central core could be the model of public space for the first project.

Master Studio B Started

The first project this semsester is required to build a physical model to demonstrate a public space and a private space. The public space selected in my design was the central core of the hotel complex. The user analysis of the public space within the Hotel Complex as followed:

1. The "public" meant in my project is consist of the local Queenslanders and international visitors. Within the genre of local, they include people from different ages, genders, interests and classes; the interantional tourists include people have various cultural background, perceptions and mindset.
2. The physical activities are various due to the large amount of occupant types. However, the emotional activities are mainly about recreation for the public visitors and stressed and rush for the staff and crew member.
3. The values for the hotel complex should be associated with the activities listed above. The belief is the hotel complex should offer a sense of home and freedom which is different from home offered. The values of the hotel are providing qualities hospitality services and recreational options for the visitors. Sometimes the hotel also acts as a role model for the hospitality industry and demonstrate a positive image of the local to international visitors.
4. The architetcural response of those values and beliefs should pleasant and a reflection of the contemporary Australian culture in some way. Also, the services offered could be innnovative and fit the needs for the occupants.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Diagram Set 1:: Programs Planning Ideas

Model Montage


The initial site of the building was set to be built on an artificial island where will be located at the northern bay of the site. However, the idea of building island is challengeable to be construted in the real situation due to the nosie levels of the second runway project, the reserved zone for biodiverity protection and the large amount of money investment. Therefore, I changed my site to be more closer to the Airport Village precinct and the intersection of the two rivers to integrate the concept of river city and more coherence to the existing shopping and leisure facilties. Furthermore, the gateway idea on water is also be enhanced refer to my pitch strategies.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Model 3:: Model 2 Integration

I took the form of the model 2 and reconsider the surface combination and relationship. I found that the surface in Model 2 is complicated and "messive". Then I started with one circle to create points on the rings and use the Range battery to set up a series of circles with gradual growing circles which all have the same centre point of the parent circle. Then I splitted some of them to start to make differences from the other circles. The first thing I did was divided points on the circles that had been splitted and their points were rotated. At the same time, the circles which were not be selected to rotate as the parents for the base of points then I used the battery of Surface from 4 Points to generte a set of planes and surfaces. The outcome was given me a basic layout of the building form and scale of ground area vesus height.

Inspiration



PLUS

(Sourced from www.flickr.com)

Concept 4:: Improving Competitive Advantages with Airport Precincts

I set up the programs of the proposing site comprises of conference hall(s), and entertainment arena, shopping mall and hotel block(s). To minimise the overlap programs that already in the Brisbane Airport, the hotel complex will play a role to reconnect the programs in a systematic way. For example, the DFO outlet stores in the Airport Village is an attraction and it can help to bring shoppers to the shopping mall in the proposing hotel complex via a transport system.

Concept 3:: Aviation Garden

The proposing site is located in the grassland where consists of lots of plants and living creatures and the inhabitat would be destroyed in the construction in the future. To maintain the biodiversity levels of the airport site. the aviation garden design is considered to be integrated in the hotel public spaces for the visitors to take a close experience to the nature and the aviation garden is also a place for the people who keen on aircraft.

Concept 2:: RIVER City

Based on the unique culture of River in Brisbane (River city), the hotel complex will introduce the local cultural perspectives to the visitors by the integration of the river and water into the hotel design.

Concept 1:: Transport Network Rearrangement

I take the the organic pattern from leaves to inspire the transport network optinos that serves as many nodes surrounded as possible.


Spatial Mapping <> Connections Generator

Proposed Site Location


Adjacent Programs


Space Hierarchy




Monday, May 3, 2010

Refine Hotel Typology - Human and Space

In the previous pitch report writing, I was more focus on the physical aspects differentiation on a variety of hotels. However, there is a much more significant part to determine the tyology of hotels. That is the amount of human involvement. Hotels offer more services and they require more staff to support the customer needs. Poses within hotel are various for different scale and size of hotel and the customer types are also one of the key to define the particular hotel type. Some poses are listed below and Quotes from Jones, L. http://www.ehow.com/facts_5407712_types-hotel-positions.html,

Front Desk Clerk
The front desk clerk is the person who will check you in and out. She finds your reservation, helps you fill out any necessary paperwork and provides directions to your room. She is usually the first hotel position employee you will encounter.

Housekeeper
The housekeeper is responsible for cleaning the rooms on a daily basis. She will also fill requests for things such as extra towels. Usually the housekeepers are on duty from early morning until around 4 pm.

General Manager
The general manager oversees day-to-day operations. He may assist with checkin and checkout during busy times. He is the person to go to with complaints or compliments about hotel staff, food or your room.

Concierge
Many expensive hotels offer concierge services. These people perform extra services for the guests such as ordering transportation, arranging sightseeing tours or ordering massages. The concierge often helps with tasks a tourist may not know how to do.

Room Service Delivery Personnel
Many hotels have their own restaurant on the premises. Most offer room service to their guests. Simply call the restaurant from your room and order your meal and the room service personnel will bring it to your room as quickly as possible.

Other Hotel Positions
Other hotel positions include bellhops, who carry your luggage to and from your room for you. Courtesy van drivers take you to nearby destination such as the airport or attractions in the area. Pool attendants provide towels and keep the pool area clean. Lifeguards watch people swim in the pool and render assistance if and when necessary. Maintenance people keep the hotel in tiptop shape fixing everything from burnt out light bulbs to a stopped-up toilet in your room.


Besides the accomodation of the visitors and customers, the hotel staff is also one of the occupants in the hotel and the facilities within the hotel should accomodate the personal and private spaces for them as well. Therefore, I do some modification of the hotel typology DNA with the spatial specifications and human factor together.

I would illustrate the relationship and functinos of human involvement and spaces as the cell system in any organism. Different cells have different functions and their collaboration makes the living creature grow, move, health maintenance and so on. If one type of the cells work inapprtopriately, the living creature may be influenced in death.


Sunday, May 2, 2010

Hotel Category


There are many types of hotel and it resulted a tones of search results in on the Web Wikipedia and I found that,
Hotel can be categorised (or ranked) by prices, building scales, facilities offered, infrastructure and uniqueness. From the website of Travel + Leisure, the coolest hotels are all categorised by the special aspects and spatial qualities of the hotel. Some of them are small like a capsule and some are site specific, such as the Kenya Giraffe Manor hotel with wild animals that are attractive for tourists to have a taste in living in the wild. The hotel take the advantage of the site and the hotel setting is site specific. The hotel is the most impressive one for me because the hotel is not only the living facilities for the tourists and it introduce the culture and lives in Kenya specifically, and the design of the hotel offers the opportunities for the visitors to experience the sense of the nature.




Another hotel project that I have been looking is the Macau Galaxy Casino Hotel project I participated during the summer internship in Hong Kong. The project architect is Simon Kwan and Associates, a Hong Kong based firm, the size of this project is really large and there are two hotel towers, a ground-level transport hub (for public buses and turbo ships) connect with the deluxe shopping mall which consists of a wide range of well-known brands' headquarter stores. The theme of the building design and decorations are a fusion of Thai and antique setouts. The floor areas and and the floor levels are still need to be confirmed because the client changed the budget and construction time frequently. However, the mixed use development of this Casino Hotel complex provides a reasonable proportion of areas and spaces for a variety ages and genders of tourists. The floor plans and sections drawings are not permitted to be published at the moment. This project is under construction and the completion date is about 2011.


Monday, April 26, 2010

Hints from the latest Issue of Travel + Leisure


The latest issue of Travel + Leisure announced the highest ranking airport terminal facilities among airports all over the world. Although the ranking system by the author(s) is subjective most of the time, it still bring out some innovative ideas and inspirations to borrow and further improved in my hotel complex project. one of the seesion of in the features tab called "the 10 Coolest Hotel", some of the ideas and concepts are crazy and sounds impossible but the designers step behind to solve the recreational use spaces and places an innovative ways. Overall, I only can say the hotels are fabulous!


Saturday, April 24, 2010

Model 2 - Play Around with GH


I initially wanted to create a pattern consists of geometries from circles and curves. I started with create a rang of sets for a variety of circle sets and set points along those circles to create line(s) to patch a set of patterns. However, I found my approach was only created points on a 2D dimensional plane and I want to have points on z axis as well. And then I add another set of points on z axis and y axis to generate a several sets of points in 3D. The shape come up is a bit wired and I use line battery to link the points each set. The messve lines seems to have a system then I make surface set up by the points and I found that some diamond like "curtain wall system" created that I am not expected. Anyway, I put a revolved surface battery to see what happened with these combination.









The final sets of surfaces look like this:





Monday, April 19, 2010

Model Exercise 1

Few days ago, I browsed the the hotel and hospitality websites to look for a typical movement and i find it's hard to seek one, especially mine is a hotel complex. I then brainstormed some possible activities in a hotel COMPLEX. Finally, i set the music performance in lounge bar and clubs as my target movement and take the movement of bowing by violinist 's right hand. I trace the joints of the violinist's arm to inspect the movement vectors, such as directions, angles and muscle relationships.


A diagram of the movement pattern generated by the joints and vectors. The mathematical functions are produced by the points on each body joint. The shoulder joint us set ti be fixed and the rotating angle of the shoulder joint is no more than 90 deg. in bowing movement. The angles of the elbow and wrist joints are set no more than 180 deg. Therefore, the sin and cos curves are applied in two functions to describe the absolute position of Point (xP,yP) on the violin bow.


Let r is length of arm, t is shoulder angle, t1 is elbow angle, x2 is x value of bow point and y2 is y value of bow point,

x2=2rt+r[1-Sin(t)]


y2=r[1-Cos(t)]+r[Cos(t1)]




I considered the music tempo for violinists. In the position of the bow on the E String, the fixed value input of r is 300 and i set a angle of 5 deg. for t and t1.

The result curve is:

After that, I enter 3 and 4 as t and t1 to simulate the the position of the bow on the other three strings. After that, there were 4 curves generated in total and then I applied loft functino in Rhino a model represent the movement of a single point on the bow. The final curve showing the general movement of the violinist's bowing movement in playing a range of music pieces.



Sunday, April 18, 2010

Design Brief for BNE Airport Hotel Complex

The hotel complex is a place for recreational use and it mainly serves a great number of tourists from all over the world and local Queenslanders. To identify the Brisbane Airport as a gateway of Brisbane and Queensland, the complex will offers the positive and international image to the occupants in Brisbane Airport. Therefore, the overall design parameters are:

· The planning parameters of the hotel complex will follow the guidelines of the stated strategies, the Building Code Australia, the design guides for environmental strategies. The requirements of the emergency vehicular access and other building services management and maintenance shall be oberved.
· The overall internal design should be human proportional and a user friendly and intimate environment, such as the convenient access system should also be provided.
· The design development shall demonstrate high quality aesthetic and functional tourist attractive airport precinct.
· The building height shall be considered to ensure the fluent flow of flight.
· The hotel complex should achieve cohesive and harmonious built form to provide the services for business, leisure, tourists and transportation and it should embellish the existing landscape.
· The building should maximise views to the Moreton Bay, the Brisbane CBD and other surroundings.
· The hotel shall integrate with the conserved open spaces and vegetated spaces. The proposed integrations, such as plazas, observation points, covered walkway and son on, should enhance the aesthetical and functional attractiveness.
· All the public spaces should cater for various users’ needs, including the disabled.
· The built environment should be safe and easily accessible by adopting appropriate vertical transportation systems, displaying signs and way-finding floor patterns, and using artificial lighting.
· Appropriate ratio of public spaces and private spaces is crucial.


In addition, the design of the hotel complex will be more focus on fabrication theme. Therefore, the tectonics and constrution methodologies are one of the siginificant key issues to be considered in the design process. The following possible ideas on tectonics and construction design are listed.


1. Material Use

The materials will considerably appropriate for certain manufacture methods and easy to apply in the building design. The materials will be carefully chosen to achieve the aesthetic aspects, postitive environmental aspects and occupant safety aspects of the hotel. Due to the climate change and overload of fossil energy, the materials will be highly recyclable and manufactured locally with embodied energy as less as possible.

2. Construction Methodologies

The construction of the hotel complex will need to be affordable to contribute the heavy duty of the hotel services in the forecasting future. The hotel complex will be a static and long life spanned building. Therefore, the construction systems will achieve the best performance in construction durability. At the same time, the hotel complex will also meet the needs for future deelopment, such as the airport extent and infrastructure improvements. Therefore, the building will also partly adaptable and the building site will be conserve areas for future uses.