ITERATIVE SKETCHING - GROUND PLANE

Another important aspect was interacting the different connections that need to be created on the ground plane. These spaces become the most public aspects of the project but also relate directly to the open space and green spine as well as Hoddle Street. These sketches often places commercial entities along the primary transit route such as health, sport or retail as they are less susceptible to the noise, traffic and pollution and can serve to activate elements despite the busy street. These along with the drop off area serves to shield the social homes and dwellings from these undesirable elements. Communal functions such as the Neighbourhood House and Drummond Street Services will interface with the green spine and open space allowing more desirable pedestrian traffic and safety for kids and the elderly. Co-health should also interface with the more quite residential street of Perry Street to allow convenient access and an appropriate scale toward the street scape. I think its important to have an access route across to Hoddle allowing people to traverse across the site easily and toward important contextual elements such as the public amenities at the town hall and the railway stations in close proximity

These sketches explore the extension of ‘armatures’ to the existing ‘S’ Shaped building fabric. Considering the existing floor plans layout and access routes its logical to support additional lift cores to shorten long co-corridor lengths and provide access to new apartments forming around the existing. When sketching I focused on how I can layer the apartments in a terraced formation to maximise outdoor green space for residents and contribute to diminishing the overall scale of the monolithic wall-like construction within the initial building. Solar access and maximising northern orientation was also essential. The sketch above also indicates possible bridge of Hoddle street and exploring these opportunities to create a green linkage

These are initial thoughts on extending the amenity for the existing apartments. Much fo the problems with the units are their small size and their low floor to floor heights as well as access to daylight because of the diminished windows. There’s opportunities to extend these through addition structural elements which support ‘pod’ like elements to the facade. These pods as indicated in the sketches above and right can go from window lintel to the sill of the unit above, therefore expanding the height of each of the units. Alternatively there is also opportunities to make two-storey apartments (see right). These will have interior stairs and the existing building envelope will services as a mezzanine level. This gives the impression of double height space. The red crosses indicate areas of walls or slabs which will need to be removed these structural investigation pending.