Matthew Patrick Rooney
Architecture Portfolio Newcastle University
15-16
Yr. 2
matthew rooney; yr. 2 apologia “
Retrospectively I can see that this one year has been the biggest year of development within my architectural education thusfar. Its been a year of pushing new methods and ways to work and in doing so I have found greater confidence within my thinking and the practice of my ideas. I have developed my own personal interests within the projects contained in this portfolio and have discovered where my passions lie. I am taken by an architecture of people, a focus on stories, lives and narratives that can be explored through space. If there is one core idea to take away from second year it will be this one. Certainly I will aim to form a continual devlopment of these ideas within my final year thesis and dissertation studies.
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04 -09 10 -17 18 -37 38 -41 42 -59 60 -71
germanika typology
leith 2025
the spice market of leith
engineering experience
a love hotel for berwick
contents
non-design work
01 - typology [germanika] “
Family + Space The ‘Asia Minor Catastrophe’ between Greece and Turkey ended in 1922 resulting in an influx of 1.5 million refugees into Piraeus, the port quarter of Athens. The scale of this event led to a wide-spread housing crisis. To tackle this the government and aid agencies stepped in; by 1929 27,000 houses in different urban refugee quarters were provided by the Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC). Germanika – one of such quarter in Piraus – was established in 1927. Within this zone, destitute refugees were housed and given a chance to start a new. Families were allocated a standard two bed pre-fabricated timber house from which they could commence their new lives. In the years that followed this initial settlement a very interesting and uniquely greek phenomenom was exhibited within these spaces. As time passed and families grew the homes adapted and fluctuated to accomadate the births and deaths of the households, new spaces were tacked onto existing sections in a form of spontaneous expansion to suit changing needs. The spatial phenomonem observed here ties in uniquely to greek cultural values which promotes strong family ties. The marriages between neighbours promoted residential proximity over a long time span, thus creating a high density close-knit community.
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5
Typical Regugee Family Tree; fluctuations over time & spatial impacts
Germanika Refugee Community 1925, Pireaus Athens
6
Evolution of Space alongside familial changes [growth, shrinkage, marriages, births and deaths]
b
7
d
f
a
c
Recreation of the family spaces of Germanika
e
88
Germanika; capturing the essence of the community
02 - leith 2025 “
At home in the City The Cable Wynd Estate, Leith was the focus of our symposium group work, we used our studies from the street to feed into a proposal for the area to tackle inner city decline and suggest an imaginitive future for the area with a focus on restoring economy and identity to a long deprived community. What became apparent from studying the small area around the estate was the enormous pride that many residents felt for the block and Leith as a wider community. This came through from interviewing residents about their opinions on the estate and greater area. The information we discovered by talking to locals fed into the proposals we made for our vision for 2025. Residents gave their opinions about Leith’s decline and its future which became invaluable. The responses were diverse, the vast majority believed in the area and felt strongly that its identity must be retained or celebrated by any fututre proposal however a minority believed a white washing approach of knocking down problem estates like the Cable Wynd was the best solution to the area’s issues. Residents’ opinions feed directly into our 2025 proposal for the area.
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Q: How long have you lived in Leith for? A: 43 years...I’m proud to be from Leith! Q: Where do you live? A: The banana flats [Cable Wynd House] Q: What’s the problem with Leith? A: Hard drugs, a little bit of hash is fine but nowadays they get the hard drugs if possible and they don’t respect the area. In my day there were more youth groups, like the YLT [Young Leith Team] which I was a part of. It kept us kids busy, I remember we used to make canoes and sail on the river. But nowadays there’s nothing for the kids and the devil makes light work for idle hands
Estate Life:
PAUL
“the devil makes light work for idle hands”
[Graphic Presentation of Leith Site Readings]
Q: How long have you lived in Leith A: I’ve been in Cable Wynd since March, I moved to Leith for work Q: What’s the worst thing about Leith? Estate Life:
CONNOR
“there’s blood, shit & vomit; knock it down”
A: Theres a few junkies; undesireables if you get what I mean, that I’d be happy to see the back of. The communial areas are really disgusting. you don’t want to know what you can find there [oh no tell us] Blood, shit and vomit all over the stairs. Q: And your neighbours? A: I dont know any of them. I see a lot of foreign people moving into the area who tend to keep themselves to themselves and don’t mix with the community.
Q: What do you like about Leith
Estate Life:
GERRY & CSENGE
“Leithers don’t litter”
C: I love the cultural mix, the social life, all the nice bars and places to eat. One thing that’s not so nice is litter, that’s actually why I started ‘Leithers don’t litter’ a month ago. We now have over 760 followers on facebook and have organised our first community clean up last week...I moved here 2 years ago when I got married to my husband, Gerry. Gerry! G: Yes, hello. Leith? Well i’ve worked here for 27 years and lived here for 3. Its changed a lot since then. Some call it gentrification, theres a very good ethnic mix here, good mix of down to earth pubs, very upmarket restaurants, michelin star restaurants, little cafes. Walk up to Leith Walk, definetly the most intresting street in Edinburgh, there’s so many differnt buisnesses, all hanging on by a thread.I just hope that it never gets to be as expensive as London. Although i dont beleive that will ever happen in Leith.
Q: What do you like about Leith A: It’s the best part of Edinburgh, culturally and artistically. It’s thriving and there’s an amazing sense of social cohesion, for sure it’s a real melting pot. There’s even a growing gay communtity nowadays. Above all I guess I love the rough and smooth, it’s definately an area of contrasts.
Estate Life:
JO
“It’s the best part of Edinburgh, culturally & artistically”
Q: How would you improve Leith? A: As a teacher I’m quite invested in the social aspects of the area. Especially when it comes to the children. I’m very interested by more Scandanavian ways of planning public space, I feel the area around Cable Wynd could benefit from greater commiunity space for children’s play and events that could tie the community together greater. Part of the problem is that kids and adults have a lack of pride for the area which causes them to act out in negative ways
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[Cable Wynd Sound studies, mapping dB levels across the estate]
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[2025- a long term plan for the area based around bring water and associated boat building facilities into Cable Wynd ]
03 - the spice market of leith “
Dwelling + The Spice Market of Leith is rooted firmly in a desire to respond to the surrounding vernacular in the most atypical manner. From the outset I set out my aim to create a haven for newly arrived Syrian refugees in Scotland; it was to be a bubble of middle eastern culture that celebrated its difference to everything around and thrived on the foreign. This decision opposed assimilation to local cultures and the built environment in the vicinity, therefore I utilised infuences of islamic and middle eastern architectural precedents to feed into my own design process. The Spice Market complex is formed of paired family, single and professional units that vary in size and interior layout to respond to the differing needs of its inhabitants. The division of public and private zones is demarkated by external staircases that lead up to the dwellings; these stem of the central market place that forms the unifying backbone of the complex. It stands as the platform for the market users and the dweller’s lives to play out
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ثيل يف مكب ابحرم 20
+
Leith 2025 Emergency Rehabilitation
ثيل ىلإ بلح
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The Spice Market in relation to Cable Wynd House & surrounding Leith context
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Vignette 1; the refugee’s call to Leith
the Cable Wynd Estate and the Middle Eastern Bazaar; development through drawing
Section AB
Section BC
Section CD
Section DA
27
Professional Units
Family Units
Singles Units
0 28
AB
Plans 1/200
1
BC
2 29
3
DE
CD
30
The Spice Market of Leith: inhabitation
31
Rendered Plans
32 << saturday 7:00 am - 3:00 pm >>
نوبحري نوئجاللا
<< t h e s p i c e m a r k e t o f l e i t h >>
Refuge
The Spice Market of Leith: inhabitation
Shelter
Home
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Economy
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Inhabited Market Plaza; section view
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04 - orphee; adapting cinema â&#x20AC;&#x153;
Engineering Experience Adaptation of a scene of Orpheus [1950], taking from its spatial cues and suggestions to form a unique experience based installation utilising the skills from both an arts and engineering background. The scene examined is based around a crossing of thresholds, the protaganist Orpheus is forced to cross into the underworld from the realm of the living to retreive his wife from the dead. He does this by passing through the portal that manifests itself in a mirror. For the installation not to merely recreate the scene but to explore the spatial and narrative qualities of the scene to build upon within our installation.
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Film is a medium that I have always had a great interest for and the prospect of forming a spatial narrative through cinema is something that excited me. Even more the thought of working alongside students from different backgrounds was intriguing to me. I have had some experience in the design and construction of experiential installations before yet I thought itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be interesting to view the input of artists and engineers. In the end of course this didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come to be due to the absence of an artist and limited participation from engineers. Despite these initial teething problems I felt we gained momentum fairly quickly. No one in the group had seen Orphee or heard the myth of Orpheus and in this way I felt we as a group could interpret the film as one. This aided our initial brainstorming; our first strong lead was the concept of refining the scene to its absolute essence. In this way we chose to interpet the room as a threshold space, or the very portal into the underworld. Henceforth our designs focused on forming an immersive transition zone that would play with the senses and evoke an emotional reaction that could place the audience within the shoes of Orpheus. Although I felt this idea was strong, its translation to a working design and moreover operating as a group proved challenging. We encountered a considerable amount of petty issues relating to absences and differing schedules, which tends to always be the case with a large group of people. Despite this I felt we managed to get everything together within the deadline to form what proved to be an exciting maquette and film pair. The challenges we faced are no doubt what any architect and civil engineer combination would face in real working conditions and for this reason the project was enlightening to me as to what we all face beyond the comforting boundaries of a university setting.
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05 - a love hotel for berwick â&#x20AC;&#x153;
Exploring Experience Set with the task of creating a spatial resonse to the digital dating world I set down a personal brief for my site in Berwick that in turn developed concecptually further than I had ever imagined. What my project became grew out of an intitial rather simplistic take on translating tinder into a spatial manifestation to become a more extreme critique of modern dating and the pursuit of love. The basis of my project started off with spatial zoning and a set and clear circulation routes that followed my concecptual intentions. The journey through the spaces was developed from thinking what the spatial layout of a tinder hookup would manifest itself like. I considered the notion of the meeting, the idea of two strangers coming together and what spatial qualities would this neccesitate. The route follows a path of increasing intimacy and desire, it is space as a game. From the meeting zone comes the hotel lobby where a decision must be made, to stay the night or to depart and exit the spaces. The hotel rooms form the largest block taking the form of an opaque tower with 14 rooms to rent. These are purely for the purpose of physical intimacy, the rooms have no individual identity as anominity is promoted. Materiality is functional and subtly romantic. From this zone comes the next choice; users of these rooms must check out the next day and are given the choice to extend their stay by moving into the longer stay apartments if they feel a romance developing with their partner of one night. Once within this zone the couple is encouraged to settle down and develop their relationship, apartments are comfortable and domestic and enable the flexibility of a modern coupleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives. The final stage of this journey lies within the wedding chapel where couples once ready are given the choice to tie the knot. This is a celebrated zone and also is the only zone to have an exit route to the street; all other guests exiting from earlier zones must pass through the sexual health clinic to make an appointment before leaving the compound.
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Berwick
44 River Tweed
Tweedmouth
north
45
02; the meeting
01; the arrival
03; the decision
04; the night
05; the long stays
06; the marriage
07; exit through the clinic [excl. newly-weds]
diagram of zones
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50
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LOBBY
BASEMENT Tecnical & Material Outcomes: Steel frame composite construction, Thermal frosted U-glass curtain wallis cupids palace A Love Hotel for Tweedmouth Construction Detail; 1/50
ck
Do Ro
arrive single & descend
ascend with date
-1
ad
the meeting zone; dating bar with couples tables
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Plans 1/200
ck Do ad Ro
sexual health clinic [exit for hotel and long stayers]
speedy exit doors
ascend to hotel lobby
0
Plans 1/200
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hotel rooms
speedy exit external walkway
1 long stay apartments
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ck
Do
ad
Ro
Plans 1/200
celebrated route to street
wedding chapel
2 57
Plans 1/200
58 hotel core continuation
3-7
Plans 1/200
06 - non-design modules â&#x20AC;&#x153;
Architectural Technology Environmental Design 20th Century Architecture The Place of Houses
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Tectonic Realisation [Spice Market of Leith; family unit]
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Place of Houses; Gender and Space
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Delirious New York - Rem Koolhaas Book Print - 1978 Matthew Rooney “In terms of structure, this book is a simulcrum of Manhattan’s Grid: a collection of blocks whose proximity and juxtaposition reinforce their separate meanings.” My interest in Delirious New York arises from the way in which the book metaphorically embodies the city’s physical state. The book is the personification of the grid in terms of layout and blocked structure. The implementation of the grid as Koolhaas describes is what defines the city’s Manhattanism, this term in essence describes the unique quality that has been subconsciously present, governing the spatial development of the city since its birth. The grid was intended to control and to regulate the city, a means to subtract the element of design and creativity in the name of convenience. In truth the city reacted against the grid, conditions that could have only been set forth in the prosperous years of New York’s growth allowed this rebellion. Each block took on a vertical ego, competing against the next for pride of place in the city, each one ever more extravagant. Verticality was key to this permitted by the technological advancements of the turn of the century. Ever higher, ever grander buildings rose from within their blocks creating a three-dimensional anarchy from the once 2D purity of the grid, embodied within the ‘City of the Captive Globe’ by Koolhaas’ wife, Madelon Vriesendorp. My poster takes on the form of the purity of the grid and its significance in the development of the city and Koolhaas’ theories of Manhattanism. Bibliography Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Monacelli, 1994. Print. Still Delirious – Observer Publication – Clay Risen – 09/08/03
R
E M
K O O
L H A A
S
Matthew Rooney
City of the Captive Globe - Madelon Vriensendorp [1978]
20th Century; Delirious New York
Swiss Cottage Central Library London Access Audit & Report ARC2009 Architectural Tecnology Coursework Submission Part 2a B3015640
process + reflect “
Throughout the course of the year I have been getting into the habit of documenting my design process in effort to be able to reflect upon my work and aid my decision making. My main tool for this has been my blog: the themeantime6.wordpress.com. This has been my go to for documenting a years worth of crits and peer feedback sessions as well as a means to view my own progression and development. Feedback is crucially recorded here, and even more importantly the blog has been a means to reflect and process the feedback I’ve recieved in order to make appropriate descions in the direction of my projects. Secondary to this has been my notebook that has accompanied me to all my meetings and crits, it is the first point at which a quick idea or piece of advice is jotted down and eventually processed.
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https://themeantime6.wordpress.com/
Selected blog entries
Pen to paper; the humble notebook
design doing; representation This year has been a year of great development within my CAD abilities, this I have found a crucial tool for the progression of my representational skills. I have adopted Revit as my preferred means of working realising the potential that the software gives when combined alongside Photoshop and Illustrator in terms of forming more complex graphical representations and inhabited drawings. It is the potential for inhabitation that excites me about these methods the most, the wealth of material available from Revit has allowed me to view my designs more fully and within greater site context to a higher degree of render.
The render at its most basic; my design represented wholely gives graphic clues to form, materiality, structure and lighting yet this requires greater attention to inhabit with life and colour, people and furniture of full eventual use.
I have found Revit a valuable tool for early stage on site massing and viewing the effects of various designs.
design doing; drawing I have maintained drawing and sketching throughout my pojects this year; although my level of digital design work has increased greatkly I am still drawn to analogue methods and am interested by how the two can cross over. Sketching still remains an important tool to convey my initial ideas and develop my designs despite my transition to computer based design this year. I have attempted to use drawing to greater levels and complexity by mixing digital methods with the hand work. I have discovered how photoshop can transform flat white line drawings [whether they are hand-drawn or from CAD] into images with more life and character.
Adding colour on photoshop; taking a very flat base image from the hand-drawing and bringing out certain elements through colour
The same can be acheived with line drawing exports from Revit
design doing; modelling Modelling has been a key area of development this year and has proven to be crucial to the exploration and representation of my ideas. I have learnt a number of new skills whilst exploring new material applications and techniques. These include workshop tecniques such as CNC routing and laser cutting of which at the start of the year I was yet to understand as well as casting methods including concrete and plaster forming of which I used for my final models of both major projects this year. Furthermore I have discovered the importance of experiimenting 3dimensionally through simple massing models in blue foam. I find these a very quick and effective manner of viewing form and scale on site.
Experimentations in blue; massing through modelling
Materiality & modelling, understanding material qualities [plywood, plaster, card and mountboard]
This was my first time using the laser cutter, I used it to precisely form the tower for Berwick model to scale.
Site context model using a variety of materials; concrete base structure poured from a timber mold, site routed from a timber block using a 3d computer model of the surrounding site context, timber supported by plastic tubing and blue foam massing inserts.