Sub Rosa
Ross T Smith & Bryon Kinnaird
SHENG HELEN GUO 327470
Design Thesis, 2012 The University of Melbourne
Contents Exploration The Dookie Thesis
The Project Final
References
Exploration
photograhpy notion of shower
it is a special kind of experience escape that created by a mix of mental and materials. Our senses activated though heat, blurriness caused by the steam, connection through materiality by touching and sound of running water
photograhpy the mist
the ever changing form of mist can leads to caries of imaginations for man to interpret
blindfold Drawing produced by blindfold from impression deep in mind which allows to explores imagination and memories from past experiences
“the tree”
“the tree”
“suddeness”
intimacy the mist
Continue exploration of blindfold drawing, these sketches are done with the idea of intimacy in mind
testing testing with new drawing method, inspired by the blueness quality of chalk
the undefined boundaries darkness and the softness
overlapping Continue exploring the characteristics of chalk and overlaying them with different layers
the chalk inspire by the glowing characteristic of chalk yellow chalk on black paper
site exploration the softness within harsh building environments
site exploration Small moments within the nature, intent to capture these moments and reconstructed within compact urban environment
layering ontinue explore though different methodologies, interest in the over layering of materials and texture A more three dimension piece of work that might can help with continue exploration of space
escape Collage of man with business suits and juxtaposition them within nature landscape
escape in to their own moments and spaces
The Dookie
drawind exercise nature’s work the trace of shadow
Every single subtle movement leaves a different mark on the paper Light and darkness
Lost my self entirely through the experience, which then become a main part of this drawing process
shadows Traced over in three different time, marks the movement of nature’s work
screens layering of the space, panel that able to creates foreground, middle ground and back ground views as well as adding privacy to the space
quick sketches some own moments in Dookie and some private moments with drawing and the landscape
quite night drawing done in the dark night Dookie’s landscape
the experience a very special experience to go out to country side with the big group, lot of fun and good relationship built up among the group, enjoyed the way that play, live and work all come together in Dookie
Manifesto
Intro Architecture design is an ongoing exploration and progress thinking development. During this design process, it is a non-stop conversation within me and it is a process of being suspicious, confident, passionate and sensitive. As a final thesis studio, the biggest challenge is to be true to myself and interpret my own understanding of architecture. Though this process of self-reviewing and questioning, I have been looking at spaces that are most attracted to me and influence me the most. By doing so, I have looked into sensory architecture and spaces that can provide a complimentary experience of all our senses. The project will also continue to explore in this direction and aim to create space that is most pleasant for the users to inhabit from all senses and offer a unique experience throughout the space.
Self-Exploration Architecture to me is not just a building object or a structure, it has the power to create space, movement and therefore design moments for people to experience and inhabit. It is very much like the weather we experienced in our everyday life, good weather or buildings make us feel pleasant, enjoyable and want to stay. But in contrast, bad weather makes us feel down, want to hide away or escape to another place. During the progress of self-reviewing, methodologies such as drawings, sketches and photography were used to explore my own “deep concerns�. When I was walking in the middle of CBD, urge to take some time and moments for myself that allow my mind to think and explore. However, I released that there is very limited space in city allows me to do that. I was pushed by the crowed, forced me to follow the same pattern of footsteps with majority force. As soon as I stop, I will bump by the person behind me and give an unfriendly look in my face. At last, I end up myself in
small alleyways which give me more space and time in the CBD. With that experiment of myself, I think it is very important to have some kind of pleasant and quite space in city for people to slow down their footsteps to have peaceful moments in which to pause and be still. It is also essential to think and meditate, to be true and honest to yourself. With the fast city lifestyle it can lose your shelf very easily into the big crowd, the walking style in city already verified that people tend to rush to their own destinations without too much thinking and questioning. In that case, people can be very easily affecting by the surrounding environment, lost themselves amongst the others.
Draw Inspiration Carry on with the studies and researches towards busy city lifestyle, it was very interesting that this concept has drawn me towards Japanese culture and how they dealt and seek for peaceful moments within high density populated city of modern lifestyle. The idea of Japanese Tea Ceremony is their way of escaping and that it is also why this tradition is still so popular in the modern culture. It creates a small special moment for Japanese people to escape from dairy lifestyle, offering private and intimate space for people to be clam, empty their mind and allow them to meditate. With the new understanding of Japanese tea culture, it is this kind of moments and small experiments that are important to high density urban areas. With the continued growth of population and process of urbanization, it’s an unalterable fact that there will be more and more people choose to live in the urban centers.
Research also shows that it is expected that over ten million inhabitants will be living in the urban areas by 2025 and Melbourne’s population is forecast to be double by 2050.1 It’s clear that future lifestyle will be towards a more urbanized and compact city. However the more busy and noisy of city lifestyle, the more people will seek for quietness as an innate behavior of human beings. And this role will become increasingly important as urbanization continues. The art of tea ceremony was founded in the eras of Onin and Bummei (1467-1480) which in a period of civil war. But, because of that special period, people are desperately seeking for peace and calmness. Therefore the entrance of tea house was so low that samurais had to remove their sword and crawl inside the room.2 It emphasis the importance of this intimate moment and that you must leave everything behind to enter the room. It also demonstrated that people will always yearning for the missing piece within their life 1.City of Melbourne , 2006 population and household forecats, 2011 2. Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea, Dover Publications, 1964
and this is also when tea ceremony become popular in Japan. Similar to the spirit of Japanese Tea Ceremony, the project is aim to explore a peaceful and still moments within the busting lifestyle of today’s modern city, offering a private and intimate space for people to escape and allows them to be calm, relax, explore and reviewing the true nature of self, mind and consciousness.
Philosophy “Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul” – Gaston Bachelard. In the busy city lifestyle, it’s easy to get caught up in day to day and forget what really in you and the nature of yourself. A small break of time not only allows physical body to rest and be clam, more importantly offer some time for the mind and soul, allow your mind to wonder, to explore, imagine and dreaming. Mind and day dreaming is the essential factor in order to achieve a total relaxation process and much important than just the body itself. The experience of the body is more of a supplementary process that leads your mind into calm and still motion that allow imaginations and dreams to take place. The anthropologist John L. Caughey described it as a form of mental travel,3 that escape from the realities or boring routines into a more rewarding fantasy world. 3. Ehn&Lofgren, The Secret World of Doing Nothig, 2010
It is a way to mold everyday life, plane and rehearse future action also recapitulate past events at same time. Children are always the master of this, but as we turn into adult, we are too much driven by the ordinary life, educations, learn to understand and able to master at the knowledge we absorbed, but it’s very easy to neglect the importance of understand ourselves. Daydreaming is the most creative state of mind and allows our brain to be free. It motivates you into creatively solving problems, thinking up new ideas and ways of addressing important issues in your life. It provides an intimate connection reverie and the actual path of life, it reveal our predilections, yearnings and explore the truth of the inner being. The receipt of daydream is always to do with our senses that involve sight, sound, smell, touch and tastes. Many people found the best place of day dream is during morning shower, it is a special kind of experience escape that created by a mix of mental and materials. Our senses activated though heat,
blurriness caused by the steam, connection through materiality by touching and sound of running water.4 Sensory experience and imagination are closely related and fuse together. It is again evident in The Book of Tea when Kakuzo Okakura describes the sensory imagery of tea ceremony: “the kettle sings well, for pieces of iron are so arranged in the bottom as to produce a peculiar melody in which one may hear the echoes of a cataract muffled by cloud, of a distant sea breaking among the rocks, a rainstorm sweeping though a bamboo forest, or of the soughing of pines on some faraway hill.5 A sensory experience of boiling kettle and can leads to varies of imaginations for man to interpret. These elements has been closely interpreted by the French Philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who studies the materialities of daydream and explore into the basic elements of fire, water, air and earth as daydreaming materials. It is the power of the nature that plays an important role upon our psychological need and senses; it creates a sense of pleasure, 4. Ehn&Lofgren, The Secret World of Doing Nothig, 2010 5. Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea, Dover Publications, 1964
well-being and engagement with place. Iltis refers to this phenomenon as the “humane human environment: which is a compromise between our genetic heritage, which we cannot deny except at great emotional and physical misery, and the fruits of an unbelievably varied civilization which we are loath to give up”6 It emphasized that human is part of the nature and that is why we always closely connected and affect by the power of nature.
The Project “Water, you have no taste, no color, no odor, you cannot be defined, and you are relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, you fill us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses. Of the riches that exist in the world, you are the rarest and also the most delicate: you, water, are a proud divinity.” ANTONIE DE SANIT-EXUPERY, Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des Hommes) 6. Stephen R. Kellert, Judith H. Heerwage and Martin L. Mador (eds), Biophili Design: The Theory, Science, and Practice of Bring Buildings to Life, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2008.
To achieve the overall sensational relaxation of body and mind, bath house is selected as the main program of the project. The ritual of bathing is the most appropriate program that can express the full notion of relaxation both on body and mind. It’s an intimate process that allows you to concentrating on yourself and inner beings. The project also complimentary with a quite beverage area for causal users that don’t have long hour break to experimenting the bathhouse but it also offers quiet and peaceful moments to enjoying within a bustling lifestyle. The project is an individual forced, exploring intimate moments and experience to take place within architecture spaces, which enhance the overall relaxation of body and mind. It is isolate from the changing phenomena of the outside world and concentrating only in the present. This reflects of Zen’s concept that “here there is no past or future, on the present, to which one is expected to devote oneself entirely…”7. Therefore, the place will focus on its own time of being and the overall experience of the space in that moment. 7. Kevin Nute, Place, Time and Being in Japanese Architecture, New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2004
The project will be an individual element stand in the middle of CBD, plays a highly contrast role with the surrounding environment of hard concrete building blocks. It is viewed as a floating light box with water as a connection between ground, emphasis the idea of frozen in space and time as well as representing the idea of stillness. In order to private an intimate space for busy office workers, the project is locate in the central part of CBD, on the corner of Spencer Street and Little Lonsdale Street opposite Southern Cross Station. The selection of this location is intent to provide easy access for the workers, which allows people to visit on the way home after a long day at work. By locating in the central city also provide opportunities for quick causal users. Even a short or tem minutes of quietness in between lunch break resting in beverage area can offer profound for overall wellbeing. Within the high density urban areas, the project is also aim to explore and search for new typology that minimizes its footprint by allocating it above an existing building.
Provide positive contributions to the existing building and surrounding environment, offer quality living condition and lifestyle within urban centers. The design of this project explores the qualities of water, steam, mist, light and shadow resonate evocative and diverse sensual experiences for the users. Introducing natural elements within an artificial contexts, recreate nature phenomenon in urban setting and forces on human perception of its relationship with architecture and landscape.
The Experiences The project will explore a comprehensive experience of body, mind and spirit. From the visual connection of the building, arrival point, the building and then leaving, a total sensory experience will be provide and guiding the guest into and throughout it as a constant, fluid process.
The entrance is the most important place that gives the visitor the first impression as well as a physical and mentally transitional place from one to another. Guest will firstly arrive by walking through a narrow corridor that is fulfilled with plants which plays a highly contrast role in urban centers. The first connection the nature landscape can immediately built up a sense of belongingness that allows people feel secure and comfort. This can be verifies in the art of Japanese tea ceremony that a garden is an essential component to the whole process of ceremony, it is the first stage of mediation to purifying themselves of the “dust” and introduce them self to a peaceful mindset which offer refer as “the passage into selfillumination”8
guest can step their feet into water to enhance physical connection with the ground and water. This process of walking barefoot has scientifically proven as a healing and creates a deep sense of wellbeing. It can lead to a perspective of the steam room. There are small holes on the wall of steam room which allows the diffusion of light though steam filled air within the stream room but it also allow the mist to escape from the room and creates a misty effect on the outside wall to create the first impression as entering the building. The subtleness of the mist quality and its ever changing from is the first stage that allows mind to be calm and as a beginning point that allow our mind to drift away and let imagination and day dream to take place.
This path will then leads into a slightly open space where guests can remove their bags, jacket and shoes once they arrive. Again to emphasis the idea of purification process that removes dust and burdens from daily life before entering to the space. A walkway also locate next to the locker area that
The main body of the bathhouse area is private and focuses on a personal experience. Therefore, unlike the ordinary bathhouses that guest will firstly arrive at changing rooms which is a public place that is shared with others. This project will be made up with series of individual private rooms that guest
8.Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea, Dover Publications, 1964
can changing, bath and rest all in a small private space that is not shared with others. Each individual private room is also carefully designed to fulfill the purpose of total relaxation process. Falling water is the key element in the design of private rooms. Water falls at the entrance filtering views that provides a screen effect that adds the privacy to the space; passerby can see only a shadow silhouette of a character in the rooms. However it also symbolizes the process of purifying and cleaning. In the process of tea ceremony, seen host cleaning tea equipment slowly with hot boiling water also plays a purifying sense upon oneself. Sam e as seeing water falling down and then washed away, it will also impact our mind and also keep us still as way of purifying our own heart and mind.9 Each room is slightly different in size and orientation which allows different experience for each visit. The public pools are designed to provide a unique experience that is different from small private rooms.
9.Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea, Dover Publications, 1964
It takes place in a much large contents but still individual forced, bath areas are divided into an individual resting area and separated with nature plants, which a total relaxation and experience of nature, the greeneries, water, mist, and the cast of light and shadow in contrast with concrete walls. The project constantly plays with these elements and creates a blur and obscure prospection for the users. It is a public and private space at same time, the quality of mist and water diffuse the vision that you can only see a shadow or a part of other person within the space. Played with the relationship of time and being, gives awareness of that is in a public space with other people but also maximize its own privacy and experience of space at same time. It often leaves us with a stronger impression and strengthens out emotion affects. It is mystery that we can’t see the full clear image that our curiosity and imagination start to rise. It allows our mind to explore and imaging what’s beyond that, it explores much more opportunities than a clear image, it trigged our eyes between the real and fake, it
also soften the edge of architectural boundaries. (*) Guest can then finish their journey at beverage area to enjoying some drink or snack before leaving the building. A different pathway is designed for the exit so that they are not experience though the same spaces again, but also able to pick up their belongings and then leave the building with different mindset as they comes in and carry on with that pure spirit.
The Project
concept drawings imaging spaces and experiments within the building, a essential part of my design process
planning spaces planning during Dookie, good working environment and constant feedbacks from tutors are very supportive
The Final
A place of nothingness Within the bustling lifestyle city of today’s cities, it is essential to have peaceful moments in which to pause and be still. This project offers a private and intimate space for busy workers to retreat within Melbourne’s CBD; it allows them to be calm, release their mind, and to meditate. It is a place for nothing, a sanctuary for the body to rest and mind to drift away from hectic daily routines; to wonder, imagine, and drift in the pleasure of day dreams. The bathhouse offers the ritual of bathing, solitude, and discreet socialisation. This project explores intimate moments within architectural spaces. The play of water, steam, mist, light and shadow resonate evocative and diverse sensual experiences for the users within a dense urban setting.
“the building”
“the arrival point”
“the entrance”
“the arrival point”
“the stream room”
“private rooms -bathing”
“private rooms - resting”
“private rooms -bathing”
“public pools”
“public pools”
“shower area”
“tea room”
Sub Rosa Group 2012. Semester 2 Design Thesis
Many Thanks to Ross T Smith & Bryon Kinnaird