Celestial: A place to bathe

With spas and health clubs becoming increasing staples of contemporary society in addition to the growing universal design fundamentals it was only a matter of time until both ideas combined. This design is for a bathing space that can be used by both the able bodied and those who may be bound to wheelchairs. The space itself is divided, one being a more private pool with extra attention from attendants. This is designed for those who may need extra help, are embarrassed or simply seek a little privacy.

The larger pool located, opposite a partition wall is intended for 5 or 6 and also features accessibility to those in wheel chairs. However sitting in a pool in a wheel chair is hardly therapeutic and this space encourages one to leave the chair, to float or simply soak in the water.




Looking up towards the ceiling reveals a series of elevation changes marked with blue undersides, this form is an abstracted idea of water falling and encourages thought with its simplistic pattern.


Light is prevalent in this space with large windows allowing views to the outside but also allowing in much needed light which gives extra character to the space from the shadows cast.


The perspectives from the water may seem limited but they actually direct the view upwards either out the windows or towards the ceilings extrusions.




Attendants will be present at the bath to assist those in need of assistance but will also leave those seeking independence to do so at the guests discretion. With a single entry into the baths via the ramps it eliminates the implied segregation of those who are in wheel chairs and those who are not in addition the fact that the user leaves the wheelchair they may be bound to also removes that segregation.

Below are various drawings including the plan view, ceiling plan, wall section and elevation.

Shelter|Bus an Unabridged Legacy

With the conclusion of my presentation of my Star|Network Shelter|Bus project I am over come with joy and even still disapointed. I really feel like I didnt accomplish what I wanted to in my presentation, so much useful information had to be cut in order to squeeze everything into the four minute window established to save time. So tonight I regale you with everything including the left out stuff. After weeks of planning and research into the needs of my various clients I found myself leaning towards a series of devices that would assist communication. With this idea I began looking at networks and one stood out to me. The star network, this network of computers uses a single central node in order to connect all the others to the internet or a large office network. This same principle I decided was what I wanted to include in my Shelter|Bus. I wanted the Bus to become a central point that all the victims of hurricanes could go to, in order to get in touch with family, doctors, etc. and locate missing persons.
I realized that as we advance as a society our dependence on technology increases. So much so that every 2 years the amount of data stored on computers doubles. A frightening statistic, it means that in the near future this dependence will cause the community to deteriorate due to our increased introvertedness.
I decided then that the bus would need to serve as a gathering point while at the same time incorporating advanced technology to aid in the recovery process.
The Lack of light pollution in Eastern NC, provides a unique ability to see stars. When grouped together these stars form constellations. Just as constellations find geographic points within the sky, the facial recognition software within my shelter bus is able to locate missing persons.
Movement is inspired by my precedent the TGV 001 High speed locomotive found in France. In order to ease navigation through the space way finding has been implemented with the use of an LED powered lighting system that transitions from Green to orange as they go from public to private. In order to mark the entry ways to the Communications Kiosks and the Missing Person Location system are marked with a blue LED lights as well as a woven wall.
Along with the aforementioned facial recognition software this public area communication devices allow the user to communicate with family members, doctors, or anyone necessary via webcam, email and phone.

The computer within the private area allows the user to adjust the environment to suit their needs. Whether by making the glass opaque so lynn can pray or transparent so that Chi Chi’s bird Col. Clucker can be seen. Similarly to the contemporary computer photos, videos and music can be uploaded to the computer. By simply touching a photo similarly stored images can be accessed.

What I have just done is walked you through some of the major points of my design from the macro to the micro. This same principle is the over arching idea within my shelter bus where communication occurs on a micro and macro level.

Some Details of various bus features

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.

Bus|Shelter

Having concluded the latest charette in our bus|shelter and shelter|bus community design project. I present to you my bus shelter from start to finish. Given my site out side the weatherspoon art gallery I knew I immediately wanted it to relate and therefore I thought it should be sculptural, this led to a series of forms which I played around with.







I was inspired by the architect Tadao Ando who uses concrete and light to create interesting effects using a very minute amount of material, I came to the conclusion that I would use concrete while using light as a focal point of some kind. Taking inspiration from the Ectasy of St. Teresa by Bernini I found a phenomena of light called Zodical Light in which a wash of light goes up into the sky to a very fine point. I decided that this would be the effect that would recreate with my design.




With my concept and ideas I began to build my model






As you can see I took a very modern approach with a bit of minimalism as I wanted the form really to be what attracted the people. On the interior of the triangular wall are a series of glass prisms that will reflect the light and recreate the effect of the Zodiacal light.


These details illustrate a few of the minor details but are important none the less. One shows how the shelter is secured so it will not collapse or fall over the other shows how to keep the glass protected from the concretes expanding and contracting in tempreture changes.

Finally I prepared a contextual illustration of the bus shelter as it should appear in its site.

A bus for relief workers

after 44 hours of being awake continuously to finish I can say that I am satisfied with my design for the bus for relief workers that I have just finished. To aide those who dont know, I am uploading my boards so that you can share this experience. I cant really think of anything to add that isnt on the boards.. but I suppose its okay to just add the drawings were done with markers and colored pencil.

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.