Contents AlgaeLand: Worlding Conceptual Framework and Narrative
01
The Journey: Master Plan with Key
02
Architectural Drawings and Key Views: P.O.O. Building
04
MicroFutures Building
05
AlgaeTheatre
06
Sea-Weed Perspectives
07
Design Process: Procedural Explorations of Green Rush: AlgaeLand
Polemics on Infrastructural Landscapes and Architecture
08 09
Appendix: Experiments and Ecologies
Easter Eggs
10 11
Worlding The world of Green Rush uses architecture to speculate on how the microbiological world of algae can help to shape the macro scale of human waste management. It reimagines the Western Water Treatment Facility a water treatment facility as a site for the farming of algae as a powerful agent to reduce human pollution. The nature of this experiment is a speculation on the potential for our architecture and its infrastructures to manufacture symbiotic relationships with its surrounding ecosystem. The AlgaeLand experience is designed to engross its participants with a range of multisensory experiments, including algae purified air and AlgaeTheatre Planetarium viewings.
Not animal. Not plant. Not bacteria. Not fungi. Produces 50% of the world’s oxygen. Absorbs two billion tons of CO2 each year. It can fuel your car. It can fuel your body. Can it fuel our future?
The Journey: Masterplan Four buildings on Site 06 of the Western Water Treatment Facility act as sympathetic interventions in the water recycling process, extracting excess pollutants in exchange for usable byproducts such as nutrient rich biomass, clean water or pure energy. These buildings are designed to function in symbiosis with the ecosystem that hosts them, proposing an architecture that challenges convention and offers new solutions to the climate crisis.
1
2
4 4
3
4
Key - Buildings
Key - Infrastructures 1 P.O.O. BUILDING
4 ALGAE BOARDWALK SCULPTURES 2 MICROFUTURES BUILDING
2 URINE FERTILISATION TANKS 3 ALGATHEATRE
3 SEE-WEED PERSPECTIVES
P.O.O. Building As the entry to the Pollutant Operations and Opportunities Building, or P.O.O. for short, this mid-terranean path submerges visitors at new depths. This is the first of multiple connective walkways designed to initiate new perspectives of the ecological systems working on site. The EFTP plastic walls also function as presentation zones, laying out drawings and diagrams describing the technical features of its end destination.
Plan
The P.O.O Building is an immersive learning centre, greenhouse and recycling centre. While the larger treatment facility converts Melbourne wastewater, the POO BuildingAl converts locally accrued human excreta into organic fertilizer. Urine extraction units and bioreactors are displayed at the fore, drawing attention to the philosophy of closed systems, which sees a complete reutilization of material for the maintenance of life.
MicroFutures Building
RESEARCH OFFICE SPACE
ALGAE FACADE
Third Floor Plan, 1:250
N
AlgaeTheatre
Ground Plan, 1:250
N
See-Weed Perspectives ARCH DRAWINGS
RESEARCH OFFICE SPACE
ALGAE FACADE
Third Floor Plan, 1:250
N
Infrastructural Landscapes
PROCEDURAL EXPLORATIONS OF GREEN RUSH: ALGAELAND Form Describe your Design Process briefly Micro and macro scale Took specific architectural types that we wanted to emulate their features. So I used parliament buildings in Melbourne and distorted them through a series of procedural experiments. I used a data set of rainfall patterns in the local Western District of Victoria to slice and skew the spatial arrangement of monumental parliamentary building forms. For example, the wings of the POO Building derive from fragments of the staircase and column façade of Parliament building typology.
PROCEDURAL EXPLORATIONS OF GREEN RUSH: ALGAELAND Space Malls, circulation space in shopping centres and how anchor stores are connected via pathways that are lined with subsidiary stores to keep the visitor engaged. Culminated in a series of bridges and walkways that connect the main buildings but also connect the visitor with site in new ways. For example, when visitors are on the pathway between the R&D building and Algatheatre they are invited to participate in algae harvesting and zones for education where they
can learn about the waste-management systems on site.
Polemics on Infrastructural landscapes and Architecture AlgaeLand seeks to invigorate the Western Water Treatment Facility with civic identity and an environmental philosophy that extends beyond anthropocentric perspectives of scale and ecology. The P.O.O., MicroFutures, AlgaTheatre and SeeWeed Buildings reframe infrastructure as an engaging, dynamic and participatory tool, essential to our function as humans. In Australia, contemporary infrastructures are located in secluded zones, out of view for the everyday person. The Green Rush project proposes an alternate infrastructural landscape that positions micro and macro algae farming as didactic entities.
Appendix
CLOUD ATLAS In this exploration, Ava created the formal composition using a GoD that referenced its building type as Parliament Houses. The idea was to skew and morph these monumental buildings using rainfall data from the local area. In doing so, the buildings fractalised and broke apart, creating opportunities for multiple buildings scattered on site. Ivy created the spatial composition using a GoD focused on pulverisation, that simulated effects of grinding, eroding, enolgating and twisting. The oozing forms created bridgeways that connected the scattered buildings on site. These buildings function as theatres, galleries, offices and terraces that seek to lure in tourists and patrons to view and engage with the water treatment process. The Cloud Atlas also has the potential to facilitate water renewal infrastructures such as aeration and recycling, as explored in the Worlding.
RENDERS
RENDERS
RENDERS
RENDERS
RENDERS
RENDERS
RENDERS
Ava Clifforth Amber Guo
PANORAM-ARCH This project aims to reframe the way we experience the ocean through a cinematic lens. A thread of undulating bridges connects social, education and retail centres along a “scenic boulevard” above the ocean. These buildings are designed to tread lightly on the earth, acting as obsrvation towers from which to experience (and host) native wildlife such as barnacles, birds and seaweed at new heights. Grand entrances, sweeping promenades and abstract forms are manipulated to frame the ocean in a seductive and vivid light. Panoram-Arch encourages curious exploration from the visitor and extends an invitation to see the Western Water Treatment Plant from a new perspective. Future prospects could include a seaweed harvesting system, bird watching tours or whale gazing.
GROUP WORK: ECOLOGIES 2
Ava Clifforth
CIRCUI(T) STILT In this spatial exploration, I am analysing the typological behaviour of large scale shopping malls in Melbourne, Australia. I have chosen these three samples for their general similarities and simplicites. In the GoD, I tried to incorporate the circulatory nature of Chadstone with the right-angled sharpness of Highpoint. The sub-typolocial behaviours of these types multi-arms leading to “anchor” stores, or points of focus. Avenues are lined with regular shops in a linear or cyclical fashion, connected by stairs, escalators and elevators. I relied heavily on the Southland precedent not only because I know this shopping centre best, but because it traverses layers in an oddly stacked hierarchy, providing more opportunity for differentiation in datum lines in the final result. I required a system that would encourage fluctuations in the spatial arrangement of forms, bringing it closer to the ground and away from it again. I decided to look at fluctuations in wind speed and direction, as I hoped this would create a turbulent outcome.
INDIVIDUAL EXPLORATION (B)