Week 5 Exercise

This week we looked at all the areas on parliament house that we thought would have the possibility to be enhanced by an architectural statement. After doing some more research we stumbled across the plans for the underground car park. After looking at the plan it was very noticeable how wasteful the area is, and that parliament should be embracing greener options of transport rather than relying on private vehicles.

Our proposal is to replace a portion of the existing Parliament House car park with a new development that will include a new public transport hub for bus and light rail. The scheme is to promote the use of pubic transport over commuting by car, as this is a more sustainable option of travel for the future.

The underground car park has a huge footprint at nearly 25,000m2 and can house up to 2000 cars, we will retain around 300 existing car parks and we will turn the space from an under-utilised service area to a thriving transport hub and a new and flexible precinct for future Parliament activities.

Existing Structure

The existing space has hundreds of support columns that form the structural support for the public courtyard above. We plan to use these columns as a flexible grid that will house transportable and flexible modules that can be moved and arranged to service different spacial requirements that Parliament may require.

Our proposal will also incorporate a large transparent skin over the new transport hub and Parliament precinct that will create vertical connections to the courtyard and green space above. This skin will add an interesting aesthetic quality to our structure and form an overall cap for the services below.

Cross section of proposal

Flexible Diagrams

While resolving this idea I did some diagramming to further explore our idea

Presence

We also looked into building presence. The presence that a building creates can be a positive or negative experience for the users of the structure, if the form is two overpowering this can overshadow the true meaning for the structure, and on the flip-side if the structure has a weak form or presence the building can be lost in its surroundings.

Our proposal will make use of strong forms and materials to give it a strong visual presence. With the addition of a large transparent skin capping our new developed precinct, this skin will create an interesting form that will complement the organic form of the existing parliament house.

Below is some images that we have created to show the presence of the building

Possible forms for site

Week 4 Exercise

Group Selection

I have been put in the group Flexible 1

This week we formed our groups and I am with Ben and Wei. First up we started brain storming to come up with ideas for where we wanted to head in relation to the first project. We have looked at a number of opportunities to change and area of parliament house.

I guess the first thing that we looked at were the issues with parliament house, or what we think is wrong with the way that parliament house is being run today.

some of the ideas we looked at were:

Transparency

An issue with parliament today is the level of transparency between the politicians and the general public. This issue can be split into two categories: physical transparency or theoretical transparency.

The physical transparency relates to the actual viewing of the daily running of parliament. At the moment parliament is run locked behind closed doors, and there is a feeling that the politicians are keeping the inner workings of government a secret from the public. There needs to be more opportunities for the public to physically view the running of government on a day-to-day basis. They would feel more connected to parliament, and get a sense of control of the decisions that were made.

The idea of improving the theoretical transparency of parliament is an interesting one. At the moment government seems to make decisions on topics that affect the greater public behind closed doors with little consultation between parliament and its people. What if this process was more transparent? Would it benefit the public to have more input on important decisions made about climate change or the new mining tax? How can we improve the connection and transference of information between parliament and the general public?

Speed of Information

Getting information between parliament and the public is a really slow process by today's standards. The way information is released at the moment is though parliament 'Question and Answer' time on television, through media releases and interviews or through press conferences. For the information to get to the public it has to go through a series of outlets before it is even in the public's hands. What if there was a direct connection between the public and parliament house so that information could be transferred seamlessly between the two parties? Maybe this could be through a network like twitter or through a series of “info booths” that are scattered throughout the cities of Australia? With the new NBN coming online at the end of the year it is going to be crucial to have systems in place to take advantage of this boost of internet speed. There could be live-stream conferences over your mobile device instantly rather than waiting on long buffering times and poor connections through today's conventional internet outlets.

Parliament should be a leader in sustainable practices

One of the hot topics of today is climate change and the incorporation of sustainable practices into everyday activities. At the moment parliament does not take a leading role when it comes to creating a sustainable working environment. At parliament house there is a large underground car park that can house up to 2000 cars. Government pump millions of dollars into public transport each year but it seems that this dose not apply to the occupiers of parliament house. With peak oil becoming more scarce and carbon emissions increasing maybe it is time that parliament led the way forward on utilising greener forms of transport? Maybe this could also have a side effect with increasing public and politician interaction over a morning train ride?

Isolation of Parliament House

Another issue that we looked at is the isolation of Parliament House. Parliament House sits on top of Capital Hill and is quite isolated from its surroundings. There is next to no connection to the CBD and it's more of a specific destination rather than a building that has been interwoven into the city fabric. Does it hurt Parliament House to be so separated from the general public and the CBD? Would it be possible to move parliament house to a more active location? There seems to be a really poor connection between Parliament House and the people of Canberra, there is a bus line that links the CBD and Capital Hill but it only circles the building and doesn't really interact with the structure at all. There is no doubt that the building is a great design and is an iconic building but having it so far from anything seems to dissolve the presence and identity that the building is trying to create.

Next we looked at adding a skin over a portion of the building (as per theme brief) and we quite liked the look of the "Reighstag" building which is the parliament house for Germany.

Next week we will look at the flexible theme in more detail and decide what part of the building we will change.

Week 3 Exercise

For this weeks exercise we looked at at Infrastructure, Strategy and Presence. We broke in to groups again and started looking at what these ideas meant to us.


Infrastructure
One of the points that came out of our discussions about infrastructure was the idea of connections. This could be a physical connection such as the rail network. we discussed that maybe our part of our parliament building could travel on the rail network between cites so that other areas of australia can have a sense of connection to parliament. Maybe the buildings could be transported b site then unpacked and used?

Our group also looked at virtual infrastructure such as the National Broadband Network, this new service will allow a more seamless connection between parliament house and its public. Maybe this increased internet speed could allow interviews and meetings to be broadcast over the internet in real time rather than having to wait for huger video buffering times that are an issue with live streams today?

Our group also looked at the actual building at the site of parliament house. Do we really need a physical parliament house? could interactions be over the internet? may there could be several parliament houses spread over australia that are connected through a virtual network?

Presence

How do we create presence with our buildings? parliament house has a strong presence with strong classical architectural themes and a strong feeling of order in the building. Parliament house also is a subterranean building that is built into capital hill, this gives the building an interesting aesthetic quality and adds to the mystery of the building.

Parliament house also has really strong forms such as the pillars to the front of the structure and the large flag pole on top of the building.

Identity

How dose a building create identity? is it really import that it does? Should we build buildings from timber and tin because that is whats recognisable as australian architecture? or should we look deeper into what makes a building australian? 

Its is important for a parliment house to create some form of identity, I don't belive that this has to be Australian identity but it would be good to have the building reflect that it is a goverment building. This can be done by flags and government forms and icons, but it can also be achieved by more traditional forms of architecture eg classical.

Week 2 Exercise

This week we looked at the different theme groups that we will be going into in week 4.
the four groups are Mobile, Flexible, Distributed and Virtual.


Mobile
So what is involved with a mobile theme? to me it can mean a few things, obviously i think that mobile architecture can involve the actual structure being able to be transported from location to location, but i think that you can look deeper into what other opportunities and aspects that can come from mobile architecture.


Mobile = connections. I think that having buildings that are transportable could establish a strong connection between Australian citys. Maybe an area of parliament house could travel from city to city to connect with its population? Could this be integrated with the existing network?

Some other aspects of mobile could be:

• International connections
• Packable
• compact efficient design
• hard wearing materials
• movible spaces 

Virtual

Virtual architecture is a really interesting topic. Do we really need a floor walls and roof to determine a building or space? or could it be the activity that happens inside of the space be what is really important?

Some other aspects of Virtual could be:

• Digital- use of technology throughout the space? maybe this is part of the construction or maybe its just some form of entertainment.
• Connection - I think this is really important when talking about virtual architecture. Are we connected to other buildings? through a network or WiFi? 
• Translation between built and virtual form

If I look how this ties back to parliament house, maybe there could be a virtual connection between the politicians and the community? at the moment its all speeches and press conferences but what if there was more of an interactive virtual space at parliament house to increase interaction between the two parties?

Flexible
What is a flexible space? i think that a flexible space can have multiple options for how the space looks, the activities that go on in the space and the type of people that use it. These spaces or building types create a unlimited number of uses, and create some really interesting opportunities for us as designers. 

The photo above is of the project "suitcase house" i think that this is a great example of a flexible space as there are so many uses for the building and it is up to the imagination of the people occupying the space to decide what activities will go on in the space. There are fold away walls that can change the orientation of rooms and some services like the kitchen are held below the floor under a trap door.

Some aspects of flexible are could be:

• Flowing flexible building materials.
• Use of technology to increase the flexibility of the spaces.
• Strong connections between spaces but maybe softer appearance of spaces use so the occupiers can decide what its used for?
• Transparent materials to create increased design opportunities.
• movible construction elements and fixtures.

Distribution
The idea of "distribution" could relate to the build form in regards to separating parts of the structure and reforming them into new shapes and functional layouts. We could also look at distribution in relation to the people that are using the building, maybe it relates to separating some groups and forming other groups. This could lead to some interesting interactions between the different parties. for example politicians offices are quite a private spaces but what if for a couple of hours a day their offices were relocated to a public viewing space so the public could see and comment on there everyday actions? i think there are many different ways that we could re arrange buildings that would cause different feelings and experiences of the people using them.

Parliament house video

I was doing some research and come across this video it looks at the external and internal of parliament house.

CAPIThetical Design Competition

The CAPIThetical design competition will form the basis for DAB810 design submission. The copetition bis basically looking at the following points.

• Would you build a new capital today or could the Australian Federation be expressed in a different way?
• Would it be a city in the conventional sense or not? If not, what form might it take?
• What ideas would drive its design and development?
• How would 21st century social, political and environmental factors influence the nature of the city?
• Of what should our national capital consist?

These pose some interesting questions, I don't think that i would create a new capital for Australia because of the history and identity that Canberra has already created. One point that i would look at though is the environmental factors of the city, I think that the capital should be at the forefront of environmental design and technology for australia and really forge a path in design for other australian cites to follow.

Canberra Parlament House

Parlament has been housed in three different buildings on the same site since 1901, the latest building started construction in 1981 and was designed by architects Mitchell, Giurgola and Thorp. The building was completed in 1988 and is over 250000 sqms in size.

Some facts about parliment house:

• The Parliament House site covers 32 hectares of Capital Hill; one of the hills around which Walter Burley Griffin designed Canberra in 1912. The building occupies 15 percent of this site.
• The building is 300 metres long and 300 metres wide. It is one of the largest buildings in the southern hemisphere.
• Parliament House was built to last at least 200 years.
• There are 8,340 spaces in the building including about 4,700 rooms and 2,700 clocks.
• Australian materials are used throughout 90 percent of the building.
• The building cost approximately 1.1 billion dollars.
• The underground car parks hold up to 2,000 cars.
• A multi-channel television and radio station broadcasts proceedings of the Parliament from both chambers and committee rooms.
• The building has two libraries; one a reading library, the other a research library for the benefit of answering questions on most topics from members and senators.
• The Parliamentary Education Office runs a parliamentary role-play program for visiting students and teachers to learn how the Parliament works.

This is a aerial view of parliament house, it shows the curving floor plan that seems to be replicating the curving city layout. This creates some really interesting building forms and open space opportunities.

This diagram of Australia’s Parliament House shows its scale and the relationship between the parliamentary, executive, ceremonial and public areas. The building is 300 metres wide, 300 metres long and covers a gross floor area of 250,000m². Massive curved walls separate and define the major component parts. The House of Representatives wing is on the eastern side with the Senate chamber and offices to the west. The executive wing is at the southern end of the structure, behind the ceremonial and public spaces of the central zone. 

Ref: www.peo.gov.au/students/cl/aph.html

Old parliament house is still situated on the site and is now the museum of Australian democracy

Canberra City Planning

I found these old images of Canberra on the net really interesting, the first thing that I noticed is the circular layout to the city, there is definitely a central hub to the city formed at parliament house. from this central hub streets radiate outwards to other points of interest such as king park, the city civic centre and Manuka oval. This allows easy navigation around the city and creates interesting urban solutions to the layout of the overall city.

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