Final Project, Final Post

Fulfillment of Design Goals: My main goal for this chapel was to provide an environment that encourages and facilitates reflection and introspection, and I feel my project should be evaluated with regards to how well it has accomplished that design goal as well as the overarching project goal of: "to astound us, astonish us with the play of light within the chapel..[through the use of] expressive light" (from the assignment handout). The above picture shows (with wall removed) what that expressive light looks like. The Chapel Sanctuary in general, and this gesture in particular is where I focused most of my effort on this project. I feel this particular lighting scheme provides both focus and inspiration. Focus because the main "light line" really leads you down to the altar (and lines are extremely straight forward because you can only follow them, you can't get "derailed"), and inspiration because of the sweeping ocean and reflected gestures on the side. This focus and inspiration is a requirement that I felt was critical to encourage introspection and reflection.

lighting when the sun is southeast

lighting effect when sun is south

What went well (other than expresssive light): Besides the main lighting feature, a lot of time and effort went into siting, and I felt that my final decision made a lot of sense for a number of reasons. Looking is also a nice foil to reveal my other strengths. So, if we compare my final and original site placements...



I think looking at these two pictures shows a lot about what this project was really about for me. It was about finding ways to relocate these buildings to provide order and meaningful sequences for people while making programmatic sense. Ultimately, and though I was reluctant, it meant recentralizing the buildings. I think this helped out aesthetically too, because it made it easier to develop one vocabulary instead of needing to develop ones for the other buildings. Also, the final design has the Chapel literally at the center of the space, and was successful at using the main Chapel mass to divide public and private space which I struggled to accomplish earlier.

A lot of this project (being a first studio and all) was learning how to go through the process, and all the blogging I've done was a little for you, but mostly for the sake of process capture, and learning to think about how I'm actually spending my time and what I'm doing. So aside from lighting and siting, that's the other strength I've really had.

3 STRENGTHS: expressive lighting, siting, and process capture.



Room for improvement: I really wish I had more time to develop the landscaping elements. In fact, there are many things I didn't get to due to time constraints, and some I did that just weren't as strong as my lighting. In no particular order, they are:
waterfall siting space
water flows outside of the main wall
main entrance
chapel lobby/entrance
development of path language to encourage people to move one way or another

I think the comments on relocating my entrance to the site were spot on, as were those on the lobby. My main "how to" is:
How might I relocate the entrance to the site to encourage circulation towards the chapel, while not eliminating the initial wall (not the massive one, but the one on the side of the classroom) I felt was crucial to separating the spaces?

Overall, I'm happy with the result of this project. Though I didn't get to some things I wanted to, and wish I had a little more time to develop some things, I felt I did a reasonable job of accomplishing the design goals and project criteria, while getting things done in time.

beloved detail: sitting space cut away from mass (the negative space + mass) is a scaled version of the classroom space (see aerial view below)