Tomas Hartley-Cook 2020 Portfolio
BA(Hons) Architecture Liverpool School of Art and Design
About Me I’m a 22 year old Architecture student, currently finishing my Bachelor of Arts Degree at Liverpool John Moores University. I am a keen hands-on worker, spending a large chunk of my spare time working Two jobs, One as a theatrical technicial and the other as a labourer on building sites. I’m a relatively well travelled individual and enjoy immersing myself within different cultures. A key passion of mine is the contrasting styles of old and new Architecture when combined in to one project.
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Contents BA Year 3 Semester 2: The Birkenhead School of Art and Design
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BA Year 3 Semester 1: The Calder Education Centre
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BA Year 2 Semester 2: Purple Walks
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BA Year 2 Semester 1: A Journey Through Theatre
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Small BIM Project
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Curriculum Vitae
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Tomas Hartley-Cook 2020 Portfolio
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The Birkenhead School of Art and Design
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Contextual Understanding
An understanding of the chosen sites context was crucial throughout the design process. The contextual information gathered throughout this project led to many questions and many more beliefs as to how a site such as Hamilton Square should be dealt with. The end product was to be elegant and robust at the same time, but most importantly, respectful to its’ surroundings and the subliminal site “laws”.
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64mm sq image
64mm sq image
64mm sq image
64mm sq image
64mm sq image
64mm sq image
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Basement Plan
The basement plan indicates an external access point via a large staircase running down from street level, this staircase acts as the main access point to the public gallery space situated in the basement.
1. Fire Stairs
The gallery spaces can be filled with artworks created by the students in the above floors and could consist of many mixed media, creating a varied exhibition for public enjoyment.
4. Storage
The cafe offers something new to the site as there isn’t one in the local vicinity to provide for the Square’s many businesses, and though small, the cafe’s extended outdoor seating makes it perfect for attracting people to the gallery/ exhibition space.
7. Outdoor Seating
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2. Mounting Board for Exhibition 3. Public Gallery
5. Water Closets 6. Cafe/Bar
8. Main Staircase and Lift
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Ground Floor Plan
The ground floor plan starts to lay out the spaces created inside the building a little better, helping to determine room sizes as well as how access is achieved across the site.
9. Fire Stairs
There are Five ways to enter or exit the building, as shown on the plan, these include Three entrances located on the smaller leg of workshops, One at the main entrance and the one running down towards the basement level.
12. Storage
The main focus of this design was to draw people towards the basement level and create as much natural light as possible in the process, this is were the voids came in to the design. Creating the voids from the ground floor to the basement allowed light to flood the basement as well as give a perpective of the exhibition space below to those on the ground floor, on the other hand it also created the illusion of a grander space in terms of the basement, instead of it being a closed off area.
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10. Main Foyer with Central Voids 11. Reception
13. Water Closets 14. Lecture Room 15. Workshop Staff Office 16. Carpentry Workshop 17. Small Meralwork Workshop 18. Fabrication Workshop (3D Studio) 19. Masonry Workshop
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First, Second and Third Floor Plans
The remaining floor plans show the different spaces and their uses throughout the design, dedicating a large area to studio space and confining office space to one short length of the overall plan.
20. Library/IT Suite
The double height spaces are there to maximise comfort in the workshop portion of the building, allowing maximum air flow as well as keeping the heat down to a minimum workable level. The gantry level above the workshop floor is a route available for creatives to take for inspiration or artistic purposes.
23. Staff Offices
The First floor is mainly aimed to provide the functional elements of an Art School whereas the Second and Third floors are laid out to provide spaces for the more creative elements an Art School should consist of. Linking all the studio spaces to One floor allows for the flow of creative inspiration throughout different forms of artwork.
21. Private Study Chambers 22. Seminar Room
24. Staff Room 25 + 34. Water Closets 26. Lecture Room 27. Gantry Ring Overlooking Workshops 28. Studio 1 29. Studio 2 30. Studio 3 31. Dark Room 32. Storage 33. Main Studio 35. Studio 4 36. Main Studio Upper
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Roof Plan
The roof plan is helpful in visualising how light would enter the building. The idea behind the window placements was to maximise natural sunlight from the South and flood the main studio with natural daylight from the North. The large lightwell at the Northern-most point of the building provides a huge amount of daylight in to the main studio upper floor as well as penetrating the main studio lower through the void on the Third floor. The glass panel situated above the main staircase will allow light to flow through the floors beneath it. A similar sized panel can be seen above the masonry workshop, allowing for a well of natural light to enter the large open space.
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Exploded 3D Floor Axonometric
Creating Three dimensional floor plans helped to establish the scale of rooms in an easier way than using Two dimensional plans. Once the plans were complete, the extruded floors became unnecessary and so were made in to the axonometric to the right. Adding materials to surfaces helped to distinguish elements of the design from one another, for example the contrast between the beige sandstone facade and the grey facing brick. A pre-fabricated facade was to be used for this design which would cast facing brick and the extruded stone on to single panels allowing for a simplified build.
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Main Elevation
The layering of the floors came in to fruition when inserted in to a Three dimensionally genenerated site of Hamilton Square. Though pretty basic, the site model helped to establish the massing of the design and provided great insight in to the scale of the design in comparison to the adjacent buildings. The Three dimensional model was then used to create the main elevation. Adding the model to the detailed context elevation that was made at the beginning of the project really drew the whole design together from the starting point to the end product.
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Sections
The Two sections to the right provide a great in depth look in to how the spaces are affected by sunlight, daylight, circulation and massing. The voids through the ground floor are clearly visible in the first section, showing how exactly light would flood the basement floor and create a space with a larger feel than reality. The slanted window openings in the roof maximise the amount of natural sunlight the building can achieve without making the studios uncomfortable to work in. The same can be said for the main studio and how the roof is angled to allow as much daylight as possible to flood the lower level. It’s interesting to see how different the workshop space looks on the Second section in comparison to the rooms adjacent to it. Being a double height space, the workshop takes advantage of its’ high walls and allows the natural light to spread across the entirety if the area.
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Main Section
The main purpose of this section was to emphasise the angled front elevation windows and the access through the building. Included within the section is the workshop gantry also. Being taken just after the exterior steps, the section shows the drop from ground to basement level perfectly. The angled front elevation windows were created to replicate the form of the adjacent Georgian terrace windows, sharing a similar scale. The front elevation faces North-West and so it’s capabilities of maximising light intake is low, however with this being the side of the building to face Hamilton Square, it was more important to make the elevation aesthetically correct than worry about the actual light in take, hence the inclusion of skylights across the building. The ground floor window opening can also be seen on the first section. This window was designed to emphasise the “levitating” aspect of the facade. The aim was to create the look of the facade levitating over the original wall, using the opening in the middle as a focal point. 22 Tomas Hartley-Cook 2020 Portfolio
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Environmental Section
The environmental section goes in to greater depth as to how light effects the building differently in different areas. For example, the section shows a flow of natural daylight coming in through the main studio upper floor angled roof, brightening up the entirety of the room, whereas in contrast, the one South facing window in the main studio shines a single strong beam of direct sunlight on to the bottom of the staircase. Being such a narrow opening, the sunlight should in theory be visible as a beam to the naked eye, creating a spectacular effect. Circulation was a tricky aspect of the design process, however opening up voids in the floors to create doubleheight spaces as well as creating a core of access at the centre of the building, helped to establish a good flow of air throughout. With cool air entering the basement through the natural opening at the base of the exterior steps, and hot air rising through the voids at the Southern-end of the basement, a stream of air flow is created. 24 Tomas Hartley-Cook 2020 Portfolio
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Structure
A steel structure had been decided on rather early in the design process as planning needed to abide by certasin span distances in order to work. The main issue that arose from the structural process was what to do with the pre-standing wall. The original idea was to underpin the wall and build off of a huge underpinning pile foundation, however after realising that this would require far too much concrete to complete and remain reasonably environmentally ethical, the decision was made to look in to CFA piled retaining walls. This led to the CFA piled retaining wall to double as the foundation for the Western facade from the ground floor up and as the main wall structure for the Western basement wall. This can be seen in the structural process models to the right, followed by a close up of the CFA piled retaining wall and capping beam detail.
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Detail
The detail that was focused on throughout the design was the “levitating� aspect that the design was meant to convey. This design detail is demonstrated through the detail provided as well as the emphasised renders available to the right. The idea was that the facade would extrude from the first floor level over the top of the existing wall to create a slot in between the existing wall and the facade as the existing wall only rose halfway up the wall of the ground floor. At the top of the wall there was to be a large window placed to flood the ground floor with light, this was also to emphasise the slot created by the facade and the wall. An IP rated lighting system has been placed on an aluminium tray sitting in the void created between the existing wall and the building in order to shine light at the base of the facade, again emphasising the levitating aspect of the design. This would look tremendous from the interior of the ground floor as well as street level, especially at night time.
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The Calder Education Centre
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Ground Floor Plan
The ground floor plan consists of a cafe, open to the public, an exhibition space open for bookings, a learning centre for local classes to be held and water closets. The learning centre was defined by the “flowing� curtain wall on the front elevation. This flowing wall took its shape directly from the ground beneath it, and follows the eroded bank beneath the site. The Two South-facing windows in the exhibition space allow more than enough light in to flood the room.
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First Floor Plan
The First floor houses the testing facility for the local weather station, providing a base of operation for work and relaxation with the inclusion of a lounge area. The roof is part grass, creating a natural feel to the space and allowing for an area to relax or take measurements for the work being handled inside, without having to leave the building to take them. The light well above the foyer can be seen in this floor plan render, this is intented to make the foyer seem a lot larger than it actually is and allow light to penetrate the building from above.
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Roof Plan
The roof plan gives a better indication of the rivers flow around the site and explains how the wall created in the rivers path slows the velocity of the river down and will therefore decrease erosion speeds. The entirety of the floating platform can be seen on this plan. It is intended to allow direct access to the river when needed or to be an additional area to relax/eat/drink during the day. The single roof light above the First floor allows light to flood the lounge area. The access core is a good source of circulation/ventilation as well as providing heat from the direct sunlight from the South to rise and heat the First floor.
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Sections
The sections help to provide a better understanding of the spaces within the building and explain the differentiations in height restraints across the First floor. The Two variations in the floating platform can easily be seen across the Two sections and renders to the right, delicately providing a helpful diagram of when and how it would be populated. The water level of the river is changed via the bridge’s gateway opening and closing, when closed, the river is forced to rise as it has nowhere to go, allowing the platform to rise in to a flat position. The platform would not act solely on behalf of the river, it would be assisted by hydraulic pistons to rise and fall when necessary, all the while giving the illusion of the rivers water doing the work.
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Design Resolution
The design of the Calder Education Centre had subtle reasoning being certain aspects. The angle of the sloping roof was taken from the buildings to the back of the design, as shown to the right, hence the building having such a high wall at the first floor. Unintended at First, this then allowed additional windows to be placed and would maximise the amount of light entering the building. The curtain wall, as mentioned previously, was taken from the natural erosion of the bank directly beneath the site, pictured. The flow of the river also affected the way in which the design took shape in its’ final stages. When deciding on materiality, the flow was something that needed addressing and so a course of concrete was made to flow through the exterior of the design, creating this sort of wrapping effect.
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Environmental Section
Underground water sources and the grounds natural heat provided a substantial amount of heating for the flooring of each slab in the design. The flow of cold air beneath the groiund slab will have made it cold and so these pipes were necessary in counteracting this. Sunlight effected the First floor in different ways throughout the day, however at all times there would be some sort of light entering both floors. The circulation provided by the access core, as mentioned previously, can be seen easily in the edited render to the right.
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Section Detail
The smaller section detail was taken from the front elevation and provides an insight in to the workings of the structure behind the glass frontage of the access core. It was at this stage of the design that the coarse of concrete was to flow around the building and so the detail was edited to include this change. The larger of the Two section details was then taken from the back bone of the building, the Eastern wall. This detail runs down to the ground and helps to explain the stilted design of the building.
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Structure
The main structural elements of the Calder Education Centre are laid out in the wire frame drawings to the right. The highlighted portion is the area in which the large section detail was taken.
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Purple Walks
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Master Planning
This project was the First time I had really had to deal with a masterplan, it seemed easy enough to cope with at the beginning but once reviews began more and more unanswered questions started to emerge. The purple walks were intended to take place of a select couple of alleyways as well as taking place of derelict buildings which would be demolished. Along the walks a person would find a gym, a library, cafes, restaurants and much more, inhabiting Four alley shaped voids and parts of the adjacent streets.
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A Journey Through Theatre
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Content
This Second year project was based around the intention to create a theatre across a sloping site. Surrounded by derelict buildings, the design was intended to rejuvinate the area, hence why there was the inclusion of a restaurant, a cafe, and lots of outdoor activity space. The inclusion of a public performance space was also given way to attract local talent and bring in passers by to the site.
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Small BIM Project
The BIM project was an additional submission as part of technology and practice in relation to the Second year of University. It was intended to help learn about how to calculate heat and light gain/loss in a quickly designed building.
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Curriculum Vitae & Contacts
Contact Email: tomashc@hotmail.co.uk
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