Rainbow City Gallery

This was my second year semester two project at Robert Gordons University. The brief was to design a photography centre in the heart of Aberdeen city with a focus on reuniting the fractured urban fabric. The site was a long and narrow space linking Union street and Justice Mill Lane.There was to be a permanent exhibition that showed Aberdeen’s urban context in the photography centre. This exhibition, as well as the building's design, aimed to address and reconcile the change in use that is evident between the two streets its built between.

The area had been subject to some very unthinking developments which damaged the natural qualities of the space. There had also been dynamic changes in the local infrastructure effecting transportation and local engagement. I wanted to design a space that would interact not just with the current context but offer a reflection on what had passed.

I undertook an extensive exploration of the area, looking at the built language which established three central elements. These were Scottish Baronial, Brutalist and Modern Commercial. While the Scottish Baronial and Brutalist works shared elements, the Modern Commercial buildings largely rejected any substance of these projects.

I looked at the work of Archibald Simpson who was responsible for many the buildings that created Aberdeen's traditional style. His work paired very nicely with the Brutalist projects of George Keith who was the primary architectural supervisor for the city during the 1960s. They both had weight and materiality as the central tenements of their work.  

Weight and material, granite and concrete were the enforced forms in these two eras. The materials desired form became important to the design project.

The site itself had a building made of brick which I managed to establish was Aberdonian in origin, made from the clay pits that had been at the centre of the city. It was important to explore how this precious substance could be reintegrated in a way which reprinted the historical narrative and minimise the ecological footprint of the project by not wasting the embedded carbon present in the bricks.

I started to explore ideas of volume and void, making a series of rough models where voids would be desired. This reversal of void and volume came out of an idea of playing with the photographic form of the negative and starting to manifest aspects of the captured image and photography within the design process.

This lead me to think about the channeling of light in relation to time. I examined how there is a correlation between aperture and shutter speed to the resulting photograph. I wanted to explore aperture through openings and mass within my design. This also correlated the established material language of Baronial and Brutalist styles. I hoped to complement this with the appropriate shutter speed to capture the best photograph. I began to design the building's circulation in a somewhat circuitous manner which would also reflect the traditional design of Scottish castles.

I started to think about the traditional urban infrastructure which consisted of a main house at one end of the site, a stable at the opposite side and a garden separating the two. The models I made at this stage helped me explore the channeling of light and view, playing with and inverting the traditional grid, identifying a vocabulary to use within the circulatory system.

Light and materiality was very important to the design so I made a series of abstract models exploring these two themes.

At this stage of the project I started to sketch the spaces the I wanted to make and develop their relationship to one another.

After doing these initial drawings and models, I returned to think in more depth about the urban context of the project and how it could affect its surroundings. What could it bring to the surroundings and how could it be something that the community might use and relate to? There was a lot of 1960's constructions in the Aberdeen area that showed varying levels of success in how they have managed to remain relevant to the changing city.

I read about the concept of fragmentation, particularly in relation to the work of Rem Koolhaas. I thought there could be harmony between this and the local urban fabric which had changed a lot over the past 20 years. I started to make a series of diagrams exploring the build-up of the project's spaces, enforcing various hierarchies upon them and seeing what the results were. I also thought about the site's traditionally established language and then inverted it into a more representational manner that would allow its presence to persist.

The schedule of contents was the jumping off point for my next set of exploratory diagrams which I used to designate the spaces into use, relation and concept.

Visual representations really helped me understand how important the nature of the brick structure was on the site. I realised a way to create contrasts in materiality to define different characters of the zones within the project.

The relation of void and solid that I looked at earlier remained important. I wanted to make courtyard spaces which could offer separation from the streets. These were meant to act as sheltered areas that could offer an enticement for passersby to enter. The surrounding area does not offer any seating or rest points which I thought was strange considering the aging nature of the population. I deigned these seating spaces to be used by pedestrians for a rest or as a meeting point but I also wanted them to encourage people to go into the project.These courtyard spaces were very important to the project so I spent a while modeling and exploring them.

It became important to model more of the spaces physically so as to understand them better and get a comprehensive idea of where the fractured elements of the design are interrelated. I made large scale models of different parts of the model which helped to refine and edit the spaces.

The façade of the building and its relation to its surroundings became more important at this point. I spent worked through different forms and started to make axonometric drawings to better explain how the spaces relate to one another.

For my final presentation I refined my work and attempted to identify the drawings which best explained the project.

In conclusion, the urban block had been left somewhat fractured by recent developments, which were at odds with what feels to be the more natural rhythm of the streets. I explored this fragmentation and began to apply it to the project. Thinking about basic elements of photography, such as aperture and shutter speed as complementary concepts and communicating them through openings and circulation in my design. A formula began to emerge that would allow for the development of a ruin that reflected upon the exterior and its separation from it. Finally, I wanted to make a cloistered space for reflection, this led me to design my project around a series of courtyards interrupted by façades.