Assignment 1:
Preliminary Studies
The Site Documentation and Site Analysis will equip us with a firm understanding of the site they will be working with this semester, while the Precedent Studies will provide an insight into architectural responses for designing an urban block of Learning Centre for the Urban Young. Our site located at Jaan Stesen 1, Klang is to be analyzed mainly through three aspects, perception, spatial and social.
Assignment 2 : Parent-Child Learning Centre
T H E F R A M E - F R A M E P L A Y S C A P E
“their curiosity piqued, they pause”
The youth learning centre acts as a contact point to gather and capture human behaviour, to let the community stop by and interact by creating “PAUSING MOMENT”. The layering effect of framing structure reveal one scene after another, provoke people curiostity, they tend to pause and observe the surroundings, the chance of contact between human encouraged.
The learning centre roles as a placemaker, to tie back the dispersed community back to this hidden street by transforming it “from dispersion point to gathering point” ; ” from impassivity to vitality” ;
to change the movement pattern, from passing through to actually “stop by to linger and socialise.”
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For me, the urban issue at our side is about it is too quiet and impassive, meaning absence of the people coming in, cuz actually Jalan stesen 1 doesn’t have much business and almost half of the subplots are dormant, it creates a huge contrast with the adjacent street which is more lively and vitality as most of the nodes concentrate there, so there are lots of activities happening there like chongkok kopitiam,ocbc ,ktm, Sheng huat bak kut teh, our site does have something that people will come for like the vendor stall and seraph awaken which is a cafe and the bak kut teh, it is the firsts in town but usually only old people will go, but they will just stay for a while and leave.
At our site, there are 2 open parking spaces, as I mention there are not many activities happening there, so people tend to park and disperse from this point, cuz usually the parking at the main road is all occupied, that means people will just pass by this street instead of staying for a longer time.
My inspiration is from this picture, during our tutorial, ms Alice asked us to choose the picture we like the most, and this is my choice, I don't know why I will choose this picture among few hundred of them, but at the first glance, I find there’s actually something inside the picture, it’s not only 4 people standing there, but from their body language, from their behaviour, I see that she’s looking at her watch, is she waiting for someone? They all were taking plastics bag, are they just done grocery shopping? But why are they standing here ? Waiting for someone ? Look at the boy, he seems impatient, one more issue can be found out here, there are no public resting benches at our site So my concept is about
to tie back the dispersed community back to this hidden street by transforming it from dispersion point to gathering point, from impassivity to vitality, and to change the movement pattern from lasting through to actually stop by and linger, I would like to say I want to create a pausing moment, to capture the human behaviour, to let the community stop by and interact Talk about what’s pausing moment, I am thinking what activities can attract people to pause? How long do people pause? And different activities cause different pausing duration. How could the spatial layout in the building affect the movement pattern?
As I feel that the site is quite stuffy and hot, people tend not to stop by longer at a point. I hope that my building could act as a shelter for people to rest. While observing the neighbouring building, I found that they all share similarities that they are ventilation blocks in each building to promote natural ventilation. Inspired by that, I hope that my building is well ventilated, so I started my design with square boxes. To integrate with my concept that I wanted to have the layer of framing effect to capture human activities, I achieve that "layer of boxes/framing " with vertical column and horizontal beam. To maximise the feeling of welcoming, permeable and ventilated, the structure of the building is totally exposed.
It is a 3 storeys building:
ground floor (public) : cafe, children playscape, retail, Bak Kut Teh restaurant
first floor (educational) : tuition centre, library, reading area, administration
second floor (activities) : workshop - watchmaking, sewing, dyeing, painting, office
open space beside to building: playground, outdoor gym, stage, food stall
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The buildings are vertically and horizontally permeable: horizontally permeable from outside and vertically permeable from the upper floor to lower floor. The 3 different levels are visually connected by the centre void, providing the chance of contact between people.
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The different setback of different levels allow visual connection on different floors, it encourages the interaction between people.
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The frontage of the building connected to the five-foot walkway from the neighbouring building to attracts the pedestrians
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The pitched roofs are in different directions to welcome people from both frontage and backlane, while the roof for the frontage is higher to emphasize the main entrance of the building.
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Different facades are designed for different purposes,
Perforated timber wall designed for passive areas such as office and library
Vertical timber blind designed for the exterior of the library
Fixed timber frame wall designed for active areas such as tuition centre and cafe
Movable timber frame wall designed for an active area such as workshop space(The movable timber frame wall changes throughout the day according to the activities happening. When the workshop activities are ongoing, it is opened, vice versa, active facade formed, the activities can be witnessed for outdoor) -
The indoor and outdoor playscape share the same language of framing design, to extend the idea of framing effect from the building towards the open space.