PRINT FACTORY Third Year Architecture Project Christina Lipcheva Continuity in Architecture Atelier Manchester School of Architecture
PROJECT CONTENTS 2-3 architectural agenda 3-4 site context 5-7 design development 8-25 technical drawings and analysis 26-31 perspective experience
1
2
Left (top to bottom): Materials and technology investigation of the atelier’s urban territory. Conceptual large collage mapping materiality in the area. Map of the buildings in the area analyzed in terms of their main structural assembly, facade and roof construction. Materiality map with photo samples of all buildings, placed in their plan footprint. Materiality color palette map.
Right (top to bottom): Historic photograph from a textile factory in Manchester. Illustration by Brett Ryder depicting the new industrial revolution featured in The Economist. Textiles as activity sketch. Photograph from MOSI The process and outputs of 3D printing textiles.
Designing in the complex situation of the postmodern city is concerned with a concept that lacks utopian determination and position of total control. Connecting the need for innovation and progress with the need to preserve the artefacts of the past as markers of the historical development, memory and identity of the city, calls for an intervention that incorporates the material and structural tissues of both artefact and novelty. Designers observe and analyse the existent instances of the artefact and the novelty in the confined local and temporal urban territory of their intervention site.The two contradicting forces co-exist in a heterotopic condition, a complex combinatorics of old and new urban fabrics. This condition allows for a process where multiple narratives thread and bypass each other, each of them changing through the interaction with the other; artefact and novelty are no longer polar opposites, they start sharing common architectural and other elements; dominance is given in a natural way to the “good genes” of both, a form of mutation where the best fit survives. This mutation unites artefact and novelty in a physical expression that possesses the value and meaning of both identity, character, memory, heritage, and innovation, progress, development, future.
The project aims to preserve and develop place identity by expressing the integration of artefact and novelty in materials and technology on both physical and programmatic level. Materials and technology are essential in preserving and developing the identity of a place - they are the physical, visual, most direct, instantaneous translation of the meaning of identity in an urban territory. However, in their common architectural meaning they are also inert and passive - a sensory presence, an environment or building elements which is simply a backdrop for human activities. There is another relationship between people and materials and technology that also preserves and develops place identity. It happens under the conditions when materials and technology become an activity. Textiles are a part of Manchester’s industrial history and although the city is not anymore a “cottonpolis” textiles are still present in its industry and in its traditions and crafts. During the Industrial Revolution, textiles were a novelty, in the technology of their production. Manchester was the birthplace of the novel methods in fabricating, dying, processing textiles.Today, we are in the dawn of a Third Industrial revolution of 3D printing that presents textiles as a different kind of novelty and translates their artefact traditions in new materials and technology. 3
The new building height is determined as a response to the building elevations of the immediate site context which are analyzed in relationship to one another in terms of their overall height and the proportions of their floor levels. The site model with building elevations of the immediate site context and strings showing the relationships between building heights and proportions in 3D, is used to determine the new building overall height and the proportions of the floor levels.
The footprint of the building was designed through iterative analysis of inverse urban morphology maps. A cut off or stepped back footprint creates a better dialogue with the pub building and a possible public “island” or transition zone similar to the Malmaison hotel. However, the scale of London road requires a setback of corresponding size (as can be seen from the scale of the hotel’s setback entrance) which can not be accommodated by the small area of the new building site.
Views of the site showing the location of the new built and its immediate context’s materiality, color scheme, scale and proportion. Close-up materiality views of the bank facade showing the different types of facing stones and the form and scale in which they are used.
4
The most architecturally prominent features of the bank are the two facades. The dormer windows of the roof complement and conclude the geometry of the facing elevations and thus should be considered as integral part of the facades. Thus, the project for the bank and the adjacent empty site seeks to retain the facades and the roof with the dormer windows.
Overlaid sketch and CAD plan of the chosen site in the atelier’s urban territory. Building parti diagram development from top to bottom.
5
Initial sketch plans and concept development. Precedent study of the concept of MUS architects’ project for a fashion museum in Tokyo lead to the idea of representing the threads of textile fabrics in the circulation of the building. This is achieved through a curved staircase in the entrance part of the building that rises in a large void space until the last floor.
Following the journey via the threading curved stairs, on the last floor is situated the main runway and showroom where materials, local craftsmanship and the technology of 3D printing is celebrated.
6
Left to right: Progress building plans forth floor to ground floor (top to bottom). Old and revised building diagram: wrapping curved staircase vs. orthogonal plan and facades, organized around a central service core. Early design development of the curved staircase: plan views, looking down from the top floor and an isometric wire frame view. Precedent study of Armani’s shop in New York.
7
GROUND FLOOR PLAN VIEW 1:100
8
FIRST FLOOR PLAN VIEW 1:100
9
SECOND FLOOR PLAN VIEW 1:100
10
THIRD FLOOR PLAN VIEW 1:100
11
FORTH FLOOR PLAN VIEW 1:100
12
ROOF PLAN 1:100
13
EAST-WEST SECTION VIEW 1:100
14
15
NORTH-SOUTH SECTION VIEW 1:100
16
17
The main structural assembly of the building is a steel frame. It is a fast and flexible option that allows for large spans and voids and it would be preferable to use for retaining the loadbearing stone masonry walls of the existing building on the site. It would also be the less disruptive building method considering the density and complexity of the tight central urban site.
Upper Left: Axonometric view of the steel columns and beams frame and the load-bearing pile foundations.
Lower Left: Structural plan view 1:200
Lower Right: 1:20 detail through the roof: 50mm Protective layer 5mm DPM 100mm Rigid insulation 130mm Reinforced concrete slab on metal deck 450mm Steel Beams 50mm Air space 30mm Hung Ceiling 1:20 detail through floor section and cross section 30mm granite tiles 50mm leveling screed 130mm RC on metal deck 450mm Steel Beam 50mm Air space 30mm Hung Ceiling 1:20 detail through the foundation slab 30mm granite tiles 50mm leveling screed 130mm RC slab 100mm rigid insulation 5mm DPM 300mm Hardcore
18
The building project accommodates a public, residential and a semi-private workshop programme and thus required various service systems which lead to the introduction of two separate vertical risers. The larger riser serves mainly the ventilation needs of the workshop block and the showroom on the last floor while the smaller one serves the ground level restaurant kitchen and the dirty extracts from the public toilets. The public and workshop rooms have a central heating and cooling system while the residential block relies on local heating and cooling. Right: Service plans of the ground, second and last floor (top to bottom). The first and third floor are omitted as they repeat elements of the service programme of the second. Axonometric sectional views showing the relationship between the vertical risers, drainage and ventilation pipes and the toilet and kitchen facilities in the building.
19
20
Right: (top to bottom) 1:20 Facade wall and roof detail The facade walls rise above the level of the roof via hot rolled steel sections welded onto the main frame. 1:20 Facade wall and steel frame The facade walls, composed of copper and limestone cladding are supported by the in-fill steel frame (cold rolled C sections) which transfers the loads to the main steel frame. The cladding is hung and supported via brackets fixed to the C sections. 1:20 Facade wall and foundation The cladding comes in front of the main steel frame and supporting foundation piles and flashing or waterproofed material is used to prevent the contact of stone with cement. 1:20 Facade wall and terrace The stone cladding forms the cap of the terrace and glass balusters are fixed on it. 1:20 Curved stairs detail The stairs are supported by steel sections and the copper cladding is fixed with almost invisible joints with a delicate light steel frame into which interlocking panels are fixed with hook-on details. (precedent study “Villa Mallorca�)
21
EAST FRONT ELEVATION VIEW 1:100
22
23
SOUTH FRONT ELEVATION VIEW 1:100
24
25
26
27
There’s a lady who’s sure all that is printed is gold And she’s printing a stairway to heaven. When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed With a button she can get what she came for. Ooh, ooh, and she’s printing a stairway to heaven. Ooh, it makes me wonder, Ooh, it makes me wonder. And it’s whispered that soon, if we all call the tune, Then the piper will lead us to reason. And a new day will dawn for those who stand long, And the forests will echo with laughter. Your head is humming and it won’t go, in case you don’t know, The piper’s calling you to join him, Dear lady, can you hear the plastic melt, and did you know Your stairway lies on the whispering wind? And as we wind on down the road Our shadows taller than our soul. There walks a lady we all know Who shines white light and wants to show How everything printed still turns to gold. And if you listen very hard The tune will come to you at last. When all are one and one is all To be a rock and not to roll. And she’s printing a stairway to heaven.
28
29
30
31
BIBLIOGRAPHY Texts Canniffe, E., & Jefferies, T. (1998). Manchester architecture guide. Manchester, UK: Faculty of Art & Design, Manchester Metropolitan University. Cullen, G. (1961). Townscape. Architectural Press. Hands, D., Collie, K., & Parker, S. (2000). Manchester: a guide to recent architecture. London, UK: Ellipsis. Hartwell, C. (2002). Pevsner architectural guides: Manchester. Yale Univ. Press. Shane, D. G. (2005). Recombinant urbanism: conceptual modeling in architecture, urban design, and city theory. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Academy. Tschumi, B. (2005). Event-cities 3: concept vs. context vs. content (Vol. 3). London, UK: MIT. Pallasmaa, J. (2009). The thinking hand: existential and embodied wisdom in architecture. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture Ching, F. (1991). Building Construction Illustrated. London, UK: Chapman & Hall. Material matters: architecture and material practice (K. L. Thomas, Comp.). (2007). London, UK: Routledge. Precedent Studies Armani Shop 5th Avenue, New York Hundred Meters of Fashion (unbuilt), Tokyo Villa Mallorca, Germany Building Visits 85 Buchanan Street, Glasgow - Former office building of British Overseas Airways Corporation 84-86 Stamboliiski Str, Sofia, Bulgaria - “Urban Model” office building 5 Biala Cherkva Str, Sofia, Bulgaria - Park Residence Web Resources Steel Construction, Tata Steel website Other “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin “Manhattan” (1961) by Woody Allen