Starting to build my office.

Upon starting to build my office I had to refer back to both the requirements of the brief and both the influence and ideas behind the work of Le Corbusier and his Carpenter Centre. Upon showing Judy and Ian some of my sketches done over the holidays, my initial idea was to create an office space in my first intended site on an empty parking spot along the Strand in Parnell where it was situation next to an elevated over-road railway crossing. Judy wasn't entirely keen that I had not chosen a more challenging or unique site, which I agreed with, mainly because I also saw the way that the lack of any close buildings influencing or adding anything to my office or site, subsequently choosing a site across the road on Parnell Rise, No.53, that was cover by a billboard on the front and surrounded by a Appliance Store on the left and the elevated railway crossing going on a diagonal from the right to the left. I chose this space (with a map shown on my matrix sheet and soon to be added on my blog) for a couple of reasons:

1. There was considerably more interest in the surroundings of the site in respect to that of the previous carpark which was rather boring and stale. This site was irregularly shaped with space provided both above and below the structure of the railway bridge allowing for an office space that was able to reflect the possibilities of Victorian industrial influence from my first light project because of its already existing truss designs that I utilised.
2. This industrial influence of a functioning, "living" industrial 'relic' of a railway line, with its history in the 1800s also works quite well with my idea from Le Corbusier of a building being a machine for living in, with the play on the idea of a slightly moving building that aimed to have an idea of being both monumental, bold and concrete but also having a sense of responsiveness to wind levels or similar through creating flexible prims that moved.
3. The site is within our triangle, while being close to both Parnell and New Market which is situated over the hill, is surrounded by 2 different parks, The Domain and Fraser Park allowing suitable forms of leisure activities, while also the Central City and different industrial services including the docks and major highways are close by as well creating an optimal walking distance of 10minutes (or a tiny bit more, of course depending how fast you walk ) to a number or industrial as well as business areas.

In responding to my chosen site, because of the reduced room available in Kaiako on Second Life it was entirely suitable to build my building between the hustle and bustle of some of the earlier work of the previous semester. I chose a site that was between what was Nathan's group of the previous semester with its really industrial front end that had a lot of containers and walls around it, reminding me very much of my actual site with its number of bill-boards, rubbish, Victorian industrial metal trusses and brick supports and thus found it suitable for my Second Life location to reflect that of real life which I haven't quite tried to do in my previous projects aiming to instead find a nice "clean" plot of land. While on the other side was similarly a group from the previous semester's library project that had also a large space designated for an engineering element that I thought could influence my truss/Victorian influence of patterns from my lamp project earlier in this semester, or could at least be observed from my building.

With my plot of land being close to the shoreline my idea was to create a panel base for it to stand on (at least for now) so I have something to work on, although upon talking to Judy on Monday, she gave the class a number of ideas on the use of the landscape within Second Life, even if it isn't quite perfect, in that we should aim to make our building work with that and use those perceived imperfections of what isn't an ideal site to create an influence on our architecture that would aid the idea behind its form and positioning, which I will definitely think about while making it.

Going back to my talk with Judy on Monday, showing her my initial designs that I sketched over the holidays, she was a bit apprehensive in terms of my lack of connection with my space and the idea of reducing my time spent drawing things on paper and the allowance of using Second Life to create almost a self-entity and self growing space within the 3D world of the computer to allow for interesting and ultimately complete architecture, that worked from the inside out, rather than concentrating too much on the "2D exterior" form as Ian and Judy said. While I can't say that I was initially a bit apprehensive, I aimed to try that out in my final office design and from there I created a network of Le Corbusier like ramp spaces throughout the initial site that aimed to create a seamless journey and seamless space through the building space that offered a variety of views out and within the building. The space is functional as it allows both a space of physically disabled and abled people and much as in the Ville Savoye (although not my given building but still one by Le Corbusier) allows for a main network through the office space that is able to split different spaces by stories while still maintaining a sense of a fully connected and not broken up space.