C O N T E N T S
STAGE 2
P P
2.3
2.5
Leith 2025: A Vision for A Neighbourhood
Berwick: Exploring Experience
STAGE 3
P
3.1
Enclosed Order: A Tale of Heterotopia
OTHERS AA Visiting Workshop - Singapore 2011
Winning Competition Entry - Hub to Hub Singapore ArchiFest 2011 - Fringe Event
LEITH 2025:
A Vision for A Neighbourhood
Cables Wynd known affectionally to the locals as the Banana Flats
Q: How long have you lived in Leith for? J: We’ve had a lifetime in Leith, 59 years just in this block M: Aye, wouldn’t it change it. Q: Why? M: Oh the people. J: Aye, definetly the people. M: The community, oh its lovely. You know all you’re neighbours and everyone looks out for one another...// the interview was broken by a young woman walking out of the flats and stopping to greet and chat to the couple // J: This is what we mean, its the people.
Estate Life:
JIM & MARY
“We’ve had a lifetime in Leith; it’s the people that make this area”
Leith 2025 was about coming up with a masterplan. Initially hesistant at the start, we started to embrace that responsibility in a shared vision we had as a studio. Understanding the community was a key part of our brief, hence during the site visits, interviews were carried out intensely, listening to the stories of the locals, their hopes and dreams of how they see their community. Realizing that there was a psychological boundry or even a barrier between a community in the famous(or infamous) Cable’s Wynd and the neighbourhood it sits in due to its history. Even though the stigma was everpresent, these communities were very positive on the chance and possibilty to change their environment into a better one, more so that they had a say in it.
POSITIVE ENERGY
&
COMMERCE
Diving into refining the masterplan proposal in a mirco scale. A plan to make a community be proud of their own sense of heritage, home and self. Through commerce and the creation of positve energy as our main key drives, the dwelling + project turned from being a purely architectural authoritarian vision into a building that nods to its locality and its
people.
ISOMETRIC EXPLOSION - FACADE & APARTMENT RELATIONSHIP OF FACADE AND INTERIOR apartment unit plan
Having the site as a narrow insertion between the community centre and the whiskey distillery did pose some hardship in the intial design regarding to the basics such as light and circulation. Yet the factor of positive communal interaction drove the dwelling to be lifted up a 2 storey inverted arch monolithic mass.
Cafe section with site context community centre cafe & distillery whiskey bar
Bar Solving the issue of insufficient light getting into the apartment units and opened up the ground floor, connecting the community centre, the distillery, the site, Cable’s Wynd, the historic park in front of Cable’s Wynd and the community surrounding Cable’s Wynd itself.
‘‘ Banana Flats’’
Cable’s Wynd
Local Shops in undercroft
We can’t try to help a community by destroying their homes, we take it, repurpose it and give them a better home and neighbourhood.
preserved brick facades of the ‘demolished’ / stripped apart tenement house’s that use to stand in place of the site
front elevation ( community centre - site - whiskey distillery in relation to Cable’s Wynd
BERWICK: Exploring Experience Titled Berwick and Beyond, the task of this project was the tackling of the idea of how the digital world/ reality affects the physical one directly or indirectly. Every studio had a different topic to handle and create a brief around it. And so happens mine was travel. That nowadays right after the wanderlust in us takes over, we explore the possibility of travelling through the medium of the internet such as google earth, maps, trip advisors so on and so forth. Our studio was to come up with a brief to allow the users to experience the , in a way feel of travel, digital or virtually. Maybe to experience the world, past present future? Or a museum. It was such a paradoxical flaw of the aim. Because travel itself is a physical act. What brief can I create for myself as a guide.
Q:
virtual travel ; travelling while still staying still ?
MATERIAL EXPLORA
is this sufficient enough, what can I take from Berwick’s history? culture ? or even location to further build a strong arguement
BRIEF
skyline of Berwick with the Tower overseeing
a critique on digital travel / virtual travel that it, itself is a
physical metaphysical physical done so via
paradoxical flaw,
travelling is on its own a physical action. Transporting oneself from point A to point B. And that we can only achieve this to a certain degree, either the cheesy singular method we currently employ or re -imagine it to the extreme end of the creative spectrum to a point of science fiction.
transfusioning the consciousness
into biomechnic subserviant avatars
To live up with the brief - a non existent metallic material similar to damascus steel, a direction looking for a balance of oragnic yet corporate that acts like a two way mirror. Opaque from the outside, transparent from the inside, so that the users would still recieve sufficient light. And this viable as my proposal is of a dystopian vision.
SITE ISOMETRIC CONTEXT
ATION
intially started with the idea of using peforated green cooper as a the secondary skin of the facade - however was deem not science fiction enough.
showing the futuristic metal facade material which acts like a two way mirror
SPATIAL PROGRAM EXPLORATION
human circulation - public circulation diagram
1:25 SCALE PART SECTION
FLOOR PLANS
ENCLOSED ORDER:
A TALE OF HETEROTOPIA
MANIFESTO & BRIEF
Sacred. What is it? Sacred objects, sacred spaces, sacred activities. They are an accumulation of material and immaterial constructs defined by us. No matter how much we try to define, design or dictate what it is. What we take as “sacredness” is very subjective and varies from different perspectives of different people in different periods. Therefore for in the sense of questioning the brief and my own fundamental understanding of the term sacred. I have gone forward with a critique on it. Whereby it is set in a reality where in the future, religion has faded into dissolution and stories. People do not pray to entities of divine forces but to ordinary objects, ones that they hold the greatest significance to individually. Moreover, in the ritualistic unconscious self-reflection regarding their “sacred item”, they offer them up into an archive, storing it and exhibiting it. Cementing the memory of us, comparably immortalising ourselves just like the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt did. This sense of heterotopia is a reflection on our current behaviour in society whereby the obsession of collecting and curating a diverse collection of objects is so prevalent (ie: museums). Almagamating into a type of material obession , not only of what it is but of how and what it was made of. This process of pilgrimage to offer their most “sacred” objects funnels everyone’s individuality into a specific a space, resulting in the formation of a line of ascencion, a tower. The tower itself is a bold statement of representing the condensing of individuals into a collective in an urban context. A contemporary Tower of Babel? Nevertheless, it has set out parameters and definitions to my design narrative, concept and spatial programs.
Though in the broader overview of the design brief, I have imagained a pilgramage of 6 towers plotted along the North East coast starting from Newcastle and ending on Holy Island. Each tower focusing on a Mahayana Buddhist take on materials; metal, wood, fire, water, earth and void. And for this design project, focusing only one particular tower and material
Newcastle Upon Tyne - Timber
&
PILGRIMAGE ATMOSPHERE
CONSTRUCTION SECTION DETAIL
CO
TERTIARY BUILDING ENVELOPE - TIMBER LOUVRE FACADE explained in further detail in portfolio SECONDARY BUILDING ENVELOPE - POLYCARBORNATE PANEL WITH INSULATING GLASS mm thk transluscent polycarbonate panel mm thk air cavity insulating gap mm thk triple glass glazing aluminium frame
3 STEP HEXAGON STORAGE SYSTEM hematically sealed container to ENGRS detail aluminium frame drawer system with electric remote system 25 mm glass insulated planel storage structure
AUTOMATIC RETRIEVAL SYSTEM robotic arm for retrieval and storage of “worshipped” objects numatic track system electronic track system for robotic arm
FINISHED FLOOR LEVEL - INTERNAL FLOOR DECKING 25 mm thk timber decking 60 mm depth raised floor system floor panel 200 x 200 mm electrical socket system 230 mm depth raised floor support frame 100 mm thk mineral wool insulation
SEPERATING FLOOR STRUCTURE - RESIDENTIAL FLOOR & ARCHIVA FLOOR 185 mm deep pre-cast concrete structural floor slab 25 mm thk aluminium sheeting deck bolted onto truss girder 660 mm deep stainless steel strucutral truss beam 75 mm acoustic lining 25 mm thk timber ceiling panel 175 mm x 600 mm steel structural beam 15 mm thk steel L plate bolted to column stiff insulated spacer
DESIGN CONCEPTUALISATION & NARRATIVE ATMOSPHERICS
ENCLOSED ORDER
DESIGN CONCEPTUALISATION & NARRATIVE ATMOSPHERICS
DESIGN CONCEPTUALISATION & NARRATIVE INTERNAL ATMOSPHERICS - ARCHIVE