BDES1020 <Suzanna Lin>

Abstract

The unit of study, BDES1020 Architecture Studio 102, aims to engage students to design and produce a single building in a complex international urban context, as to emphasize practical experimentation at a range of scales and in a range of media, such as digitals, drawings, sketches and painting. The course commences at an urban scale, in which a ‘generic city’ of geometry has been fused with 10 renowned cities: Dubrovnik, Madrid, Isfahan, Tunis, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Venice, Jerusalem, Paris and New York. This distinction ‘quarters’ is stabilized by two major diagonal axes (land and water) with a harbor crossing each another. Every studio group is allocated to work on one particular ‘quarter’ of the city, comprising 16 adjacent blocks. Students choose one block with its figure ground plan (built form represented as black, and open space as white), to serve as a basis to initiate exercises. Students are required to elaborate the basic plan, and to generate a range of possible buildings which suits the city needs, then decide a specific program for the allocated city block, in order to develop a concrete architectural proposal for one building on the block. Weekly exercises are a series of related exercises with an emphasis on practical experimentation. The final work is drawn together into a final presentation, comprising a finely crafted model and an A1 size panel of drawings in an exhibition standard. At the end of the semester, a summary document of all works conducted throughout the semester will be a piece of design work students create and produce in its own right. Our group is assigned to the city of “Dubrovnik”, and I have chosen to work on the D2 figure ground plan. My building is a Garden Library, it provides a public space to local Croatian citizens and tourists, as offering a place embedded with programs of Café,Book reading, Children Playground,Tourist information centre, Croatian Mixed-Media exhibition, and Gardens. Outdoor reading in the gardens is proposed in this project, to evoke a contradiction of ordinary indoor reading and innovative approach of outdoor reading. This concept is especially enhanced in the historical city of Dubrovnik, Croatia. This piece of building has incorporated the traditional Croatian rooftops and white brickwork with a new aspect of wood crafting on the side walls, to produce a traditional and modern mix of building.