Below are the images from the Bus|Shelter project. Our design focused around a tai chi position called snake creeps down. The design took on a more direct approach to the sprituality of tai chi. This design has 3 different degrees of spirituality with the greatest set in the enclosed space on the very end. Although ultimately deemed to have a number of concerns with construction the form itself was widely liked. Lights within the glass panes lit up the space to allow for a bit more safety and one pane of glass was decided to be used to display valuable information related to the bus system of greensboro.

Prècis

Having finished our charettes for the shelter|bus and bus|shelter projects I give you my prècis of all the information. Use this in conjunction with other students work to give you an indication of what our studio is all about.

Advertising Charette

In our final charette we have the oportunity to come up with all sorts of guerilla advertisements to publicize our projects. My group seemingly made some rather silly ideas that actually might be really interesting.. One such idea was the idea of a protest in which the protesters are protesting against iArcs involvment in the community. As highlighted in the image below

Over at the blog of Lily Glover you will find another idea of a viral video

Also at Katie Reynolds blog you will find our idea of a series of seemingly random words strung togehter into an attention grabbing system on a bus.

Finally on Kurt Huizenga's blog you'll find a rather humorous example of our fake arrest idea.

Codes +

An ergonomical analysis of the Bed systems in the shelter bus
An Erognomic and Proxemic view of the bench in our bus stop
An ergonomic layout of the operating theatre on our medical bus
A layout of the drivers seat of the buses illustrating the various measurements that would be optimal for our design
Quick analysis to see if anything was really within good reach of the desk for doctors on the medical bus.

Following our experiments with codes, ergonomics and proxemics a few issues of our designs have been revealed but I believe we have also learned something new about the way people are thanks to the research we preformed. For example we discovered that people are generally comfortable having a space of about four feet between them and people they do not know which interestingly enough has effected our original estimates as to how many people could use the benches provided in our bus stop. Proxemics also helped us to realize that in a counseling situation the distance between where the doctor and patient would normally sit may in fact create a little tension between them due to the discomfort felt. In codes themselves we saw a number of handicap accessible features are not built to code to better allow the mobility of handicapped people.
I would recommend to designers that one should never be opposed to any sort of change. In fact I would go so far as to say designers should embrace it, it may ruin some sort of element you sought but it could also create the possibility of an even better element to your design. Codes may seem like a burden but they exist to help make sure that no one is left out and if you have a great design would you really want to leave some one out really? I believe we will all be effected by codes at some point or another, at some points we will mash our teeth and react bitterly over it and other times I think codes will help us form a better connection with the people we are actually designing for, everyone is different and your architecture needs to be able to react to that, other wise it will be a failure and it will lose its intent.

Container Charette

My Group decided to focus for our charette for a shelter bus on shelter and Medical Care. I was more interested in the Medical Care aspect so I was really involved in that design. We selected a bus made by Motor Coach Industries due to its size and various modifications they allow to be preformed while the bus is actually being produced. Below are some renders and photographs of some of the work of this charette.



Our idea focuses on literally a mobile hospital complete with triage, phramacy, couciling, an ambulance and even an operating room.



A break down of the space from a plan view, the operating room is in the back and is located near the medicines of the pharmacy, this operating theatre is designed for common surgical procedures.



A perspective view of the operating theatre.



Since we anticipate that people will likely need access to counciling we added a design for a councilng center and doctors private office so that, doctors may have a space for administrative duties but will also have a private place where a counselor may help those who need counseling get the help they need.



A side view of the bus shows the division of the surgical section from the office.



An idea we enjoyed was the idea that their should be some kind of vehicle that could be dispatched to retrieve those people who were unable to make it to the bus. We were able to actually find a bus that had enough space to store a small vehicle as well as the tents needed to set up the recovery and triage area



The bus/hospital after everything is set up, the tent on the right represents a recovery and triage area where a multitude of paitients can be kept until they can be released. The Bus takes on a headquarters roles in a disaster situation in which only the major operations need take place while giving the resources to the doctors and nurses who work to help those who need it.



A plan view of the entire complex once fully set up, this sketch was actually a jumping off point for the whole unit. Heather Link worked with me on the medical bus and she has some more information present on our design on her blog.

Our second bus was literally catering to sheltering victims of a hurricane and that information can be found at Katie Reynolds blog as well as Kara Petrisko's blog.

Kings Group Charette Interviews

The interviews from the charette started on friday

As apart of our research for the bus/shelter client charrette we were sent out to get the opinion that matters the most. The city bus riders. Our group set out for the nearest GTA bus stop and when we got on we asked the lady sitting next to us if we could interview her. She said "yes." but she wished to remain anonymous. Thinking she was about to get off at the next stop, Kara quickly sketched her. She had short gray hair, glasses, and appeared to been in her sixies. We found out that she rides the bus everyday to and from her job as a Gulford County School teacher. She said it takes a about an hour of waiting and riding the bus every morning. At first she seemed a little shy, but as the ride she opened up a little bit and started talking about her children. When it was time for her to get off we thanked her for her time and went on our way to the depot.

Time is a factor

So following our first week of lectures I think that if I have learned anything from this project it is the importance of time and that if, a majority decision is reached that you should not wait until 10 minutes before it is due to ask to re vote/redo the project. I feel that if something is voted on and a majority rules then it should be stuck to and not constantly criticised as it only leads to problems. The other thing I've probably learned is that in 56 designers their are way to many chefs working in the kitchen and not enough cooks. 

The Space Between Drawings

These drawings were present on my board however they never really made it off and onto the blog, most of them are from the outside of my assigned building foust. Why outside, well because the interior was rather bland and boring and I enjoyed the exterior well enough to do those instead. Hope you can appreciate them.


The first one of these is very chaotic in a way I can appreciate that, all those lines running around giving it contrast while keeping the form intact.

The second one not so much, mostly because its an interior shot and was in fact about 3 times the size it is now, but was eventually cropped because their just wasn't a whole lot to see.. There is a guy there, guess hes reading something good.. in the corridor.

Truth be told the only one I really even like is the last one, the first one I liked up until I did the third you see before you. The lines just look more precise in all the chaos, like a careful blending of attempted precision while still keeping a loose form to it all. The only other problem I see are my scale figure sizes, they look like children... to small to be university students, they seem better suited to an primary school than a university.

Massive Masterpieces

Part of our final examination for our drawing class was provided on a sheet of paper only 1.75 inches squared. For the longest time I thought it was a billiard ball, that was of course what I believed it to be after I turned it on it's side. Turns out not only was it not a billiard ball it wasn't even in the States.


Look just tilt your head 90 degrees to your left and see if you cant see the billiard ball, its got a stripe and a shadow and everything. Either way in the end it turns out we created one huge picture of the Hagia Sophia located in Istanbul. I remember this from my former art history, and I thought it quite beautiful, thus when I saw that we had recreated it I was so impressed I had to snap a couple photographs of what we all did together.

See everyone's names down there, its a lot of people, so many people who all worked like dogs this semester and came together to make this. This is my second to last academic post of the semester doesn't mean I wont be drawing though, so back of peoples heads beware, I've still got my sketch book, Everywhere!

- cheers!