2004 Common First Year Studio, Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Architecture
This is a project that was done during in 2004 during my common first year studio in the Georgia Tech College of Architecture. The assignment was to design something that would be placed in the building. I approached this assignment by trying to figure out the thing that the building needed the most, so I walked around the building for several hours observing and exploring. At the conclusion of this exercise I decided the the most disturbing part of the building was on the first floor where the lockers used by the first year students were located. This are was a nonstop mess. The location of this mess was the real problem. These lockers were on the main floor of the building where they could be seen by everybody.
Another thing that bothered me about the building were the exhibition boards that we used to present our projects. There were simply flat vertical boards that rolled where you needed them to go. My problem with these boards was the lack of space to show models. In order to show one you had to either create a shelf yourself that could be pinned to the board and support your model or you had to simply place your model on the ground in front of the board.
My solution for these two problems was to relocate the lockers to another part of the building and replace them with a new type of panel exhibition wall system. My design for this system would include a two main exhibition panels, one on top of the other. The top one of these walls was able to slide up to provide space for a model or to expose a third panel for extra exhibition space if needed. Another bonus of this type of system is that space would be located behind the bottom panel for storage.
The final products for this project were a poster and a model. In the poster you can find pictures of the space as it was (a mess), sketches of my design through the process, a plan view of the site, and some renderings of how the space would look with the new system in place. The model shows the basic design of the system.
(You will have to excuse the model for being a little out of shape. These are recent pictures of it and as you can see it has fallen apart a little over the past 6 years)
Another thing that bothered me about the building were the exhibition boards that we used to present our projects. There were simply flat vertical boards that rolled where you needed them to go. My problem with these boards was the lack of space to show models. In order to show one you had to either create a shelf yourself that could be pinned to the board and support your model or you had to simply place your model on the ground in front of the board.
My solution for these two problems was to relocate the lockers to another part of the building and replace them with a new type of panel exhibition wall system. My design for this system would include a two main exhibition panels, one on top of the other. The top one of these walls was able to slide up to provide space for a model or to expose a third panel for extra exhibition space if needed. Another bonus of this type of system is that space would be located behind the bottom panel for storage.
The final products for this project were a poster and a model. In the poster you can find pictures of the space as it was (a mess), sketches of my design through the process, a plan view of the site, and some renderings of how the space would look with the new system in place. The model shows the basic design of the system.
(You will have to excuse the model for being a little out of shape. These are recent pictures of it and as you can see it has fallen apart a little over the past 6 years)
