Drawing Out Mahon Pool by Albert Rex

DRAWING OUT THE POOL

ALBERT REX. s3602426. STUDIO 6. WITH ANTON JAMES. 03/06/2019

CONTENTS 01. DRAWING OUT ST KILDA PROMENADE 02. GETTING TO THE POOL 03. WALKING TO THE POOL 04. DRAWING OUT THE POOL 05. INTERLUDE: DRAWING OUT SHOREHAM 06. ADDITIONAL DRAWINGS 07. DRAWING UP THE POOL - ANALYSIS 08. DRAWING UP THE POOL - DESIGN 09. FINAL DRAWINGS 10. CONCLUSIONS

PETER KINGSTON

The following drawings were undertaken as a part of ‘Drawing Out the Pool’, a studio looking at how a designed process that put drawing iteration at the forefront could work in response to the challenge of providing access, shade and climate mitigation to Sydney’s famous depression era ocean pools. We began by testing an iterative drawing process along the St Kilda foreshore before spending a day in Sydney drawing ocean pools with a specific focus on Mahon pool, which would remain the study area for the rest of the class. After returning to Melbourne we undertook a 5 day intensive at RMIT where we worked up, refined and built on the drawings done in Sydney to produce design intervention strategies. I undertook this final stage of the class as a member of Group D, with Chillie Vary and Robbie Broadstock.

01. DRAWING OUT ST KILDA PROMENADE

These drawings were made in a 2 hour period along the St Kilda Promenade. The aim was to use plan section and perspective to loosely outline the relationship between landscape elements at speed. This exercise was intended as preparation for our subsequent trip to Sydney where we would draw Mahon Pool and surrounds.

While not immediately directly communicative, this set-out plan was very useful as a kind of memory aid later on off site. Given we were not able to use aerial photos, it acted as a great prompt for locating various views, plans and sections.

A series of 5 minute set-out iterations were used to work out the best way to organise the preceding drawings on a single a1 sheet.

This final drawing is an attempt to distill the key elements of the above drawings down onto a single page and blend them in with a section of pre-defined aerial. I feel this drawing ended up being a bit overblown colour-wise and I certainly aimed to for a reduced colour palette through the rest of the class.

02. GETTING TO THE POOL This section features drawings made on the way up to Sydney. I chose to catch the train with the aim of getting more of a chance to see/ draw on the way and get into the swing of drawing, drawing and drawing again.

MORNING COFFEE ARGYLE SQUARE

STATE LIBRARY FORECOURT

TRAIN TO SYDNEY TRAIN TO SYDNEY

SUNDAY MORNING IN SYDNEY

FERRIES

SUNDAY MORNING IN SYDNEY

FERRIES

REMEMBERING SYDNEY’S TRAMS

BIG FIGGY TREES

FERRIES

03. WALKING TO THE POOL These drawings were made on the walk from Coogee beach to Mahon pool. They feature a number of related ocean pools including Giles baths, the Ross Jones Rockpool, McIver baths, and Wylie’s baths. They also help give a sence of the topographical and geological/ material makeup of the area.

@ Giles Baths

This is where a blue oil pastel was first used in plan to distinguish the ocean from the shoreline. It was rough, quick, and - i felt - pretty evocative and so was used right through the rest of the project, even through to final presentation drawings.

@ Ross Jones Rockpool

Sections can be particularly useful for marking out features in coastal areas where there are often sharp engineered and organic vertical transitions from the shoreline. Ocean pools, paths, roads and amenity are often built into/ take advantage of these features.

@ Ross Jones Rockpool

@ Wylie’s Baths

04. DRAWING OUT THE POOL These drawings were made in the space of about 3 hours at Mahon pool. Plan, section and perspective is used to collect as much data about the site as possible in the time available. Colour begins to play an important part in these drawings. Most importantly it helps denote the important distinction between land and sea as well as the material impression of stratified cliffs and boulders.

SET OUT

Set out plans proved the most useful memory-jogging tools once back in Melbourne. The intensive took place a couple of weeks after we were actually at the pool and these loose sketches were great for jogging the memory in terms of basic spatial organisation of features.

SET OUT

This drawing marks were colour started to play more of a serious diagrammatic role in plans and later views and sections. Bright colour helped t really punch out boundaries and areas of ‘type’. Here for example, orange is used to quickly give a clear sense of the many pathways and thoroughfares of site.

The height of the cliff face is exaggerated in these two sections to give emphasis to how the pool is experienced. While the rock wall is relatively low, and can feel much higher when sitting underneath it. Additionally, the drawings aim to help bring out the quite striking -especially to a Melbournian- stratification and breaking of the sandstone.

While very rough, these final 3 sections still proved useful when subsequently interpolating the topographical change across the site. They help show how a drawing can still be very useful even when not necessarily offering up a hugely refined aesthetic.

05. INTERLUDE - DRAWING OUT SHOREHAM In the break between the trip to Sydney and the intensive at RMIT I made a go of applying the same process used at St Kilda Promenade and Mahon pool to a trip to Shoreham (along the Mornington Peninsula) with some friends. This gave me another chance to think about how drawings come together and what in them is most useful when looking back at them later on.

This drawing shows how the use of oil pastel expanded and grew bolder over the course of the project. Expansion beyond just representation of the ocean shows how elements like these depth markers can be brought into sharp focus with a limited palette of bright colour.

06. ADDITIONAL DRAWINGS Additional drawings made after visiting the Mahon pool but before the intensive back in Melbourne which begin to build up on the base material collected thus far as well as starting to make some kind of sense of the topographical/ regulatory restriction that make disability access to the area problematic.

Sections became very useful for illustrating distance or vastness in a less cluttered way than a plan or a perspective drawing. The begin to illustrate how far the inter-tidal zone actually extends in comparison to the cliff, as well as how small and brittle the pool is in the broader context of the Pacific Ocean.

These two drawings show experimentation with water colour beginning to be used in perspective drawings of the site. While very striking, this was not an aesthetic that was re-used as the project moved forward. I reckon I might not have been restrained enough for a medium that produces a lot of strong colour very quickly.

These DDA drawings start to explore the regulatory constraints and requirements for reaching DDA access minimum requirements for ramps and steps at various grades. Grade became a central part of the second half of the project and negotiating a ramp through the jagged cliff-face would become a central design driver.

07. DRAWING UP THE POOL- ANALYSIS This final set of working drawings was made as part of our final 5 day intensive at RMIT. During this time I worked with Chillie Vary and Robbie Broadstock as part of Group D. The aim here was to build on the drawings made while at Mahon pool and subsequently to build up - through drawing itteration - some kind of design proposal aimed at providing easier acces, shade and seating, as well as climate remediation.

These initial drawings worked to outline the broad geometries of site. Iteration helped to square them off with the drawings of my group members and come to a kind of interpolated average that probably best represented the actual situation on site.

This group drawn a3 plan of site became the base for many subsequent drawings. It was a drawing interpoalted from our various site observations and its reproduction and use as a based ensured we were all -quite literally- on the same page.

08. DRAWING UP THE POOL- DESIGN OPTIONS

Iteration started to play a more central role as we moved from analysis more into the design phase of the project. A number of versions of designs were developed which responded to the various problems needing to be addressed in different ways. Each group member did this and then we compared drawings afterwards.

DESIGN OPTIONS: RAISED PATHWAY

DESIGN OPTIONS: WATER PATHWAY

Perspective drawings -as well as to a lesser extent sections- began to play a central role in helping us to visualise our various plan-based design options in the actual space.

DESIGN OPTIONS: CENTRAL PATHS

DESIGN OPTIONS: OCEAN DOUGHNUT While pretty outrageous, this ‘Ocean Doughnut’ design option became a bit of a reference point for the rest of the project. We liked the idea of the whole site being linked together by an accessible path in a kind of loop, and also that any ramp would provide direct access to the pool. We ended up abandoning this particular iteration of this option because of the massive visual block any raised pier would create between the pool and the ocean.

DESIGN OPTIONS: HUGE MILLED SANDSTONE SCULPTURAL PATH

DESIGN OPTION: MEANDERING PATH ACROSS CLIFF

This working drawing by Robbie became central in working out the grading and orientation the central ramp at various points. It was important for us that the ramp kind of meandered through the cliff face and we felt accurate grading was key to achieving this feeling.

We produced a full mock up of the final a0 plan as a group before we began work on our final drawings. This helped in ironing out a number of small but difficult issues we had maybe put to the side up to this point. Drawing is helpful here in that it forces you to confront these things. The old Laurie Olin line that ‘If you can’t draw it then you probably can’t build it’ comes to mind here.

09. FINAL DRAWINGS These final plans, sections and details lay out our group design proposal for the site. This proposal includes a long meandering ramp with lots of entry and exit points that provides DDA access right down to the pool itself -not just the edge of the pool- as well as featuring a number of designated viewing/ rest areas. Shaded seating areas are also provided underneath the ramp. Rocks and boulders displaced by the building of the ramp will by piled around the outside of the pool’s concrete wall, reducing the effect of larger and stronger storm surges predicted to result from a changing climate. Additionally, and in the longer term, the ramp will be able to serve as a new boundary to the pool in instances of sea level rise.

CONTEXT PLAN

10 CONCLUSIONS Its been really satisfying and a lot of fun to work in a class focused mainly around drawing as a design driver. Its been great to focus in, work up skills and habits and learn solid processes for iterative thinking/ designing through drawing. Working more or less only with drawings has been liberating, and it has been really interesting to see the way different ideas come out differently when working this way. The group element was also great, a huge thanks to Robbie and Chillie for being excellent group members. Our final proposition is pragmatic, well thought out/ built up over time and has a feel/ aesthetic that I feel stays true to the site.