I will reiterate the design constraints, themes, and challenges that drove our project from start to finish.
1. Site context - Community Center + Classrooms
This important constraint led to a desire for a youthful, playful environment with an organic feel. However, we were restricted to flat, orthogonal materials, which made creating an organic space very challenging.
2. Roof vs. Ceiling
As a team we struggled with the issue of which is more important, the roof or the ceiling. Although in a model it is often the roof that is most prominent, ultimately it is the experience of a person inside the space which is most important, which led to us focusing mostly on the ceiling. This meant we had to work on a human scale, keeping our design integrated well within the existing walls.
Both roofs began from a simple grid placed upon the site plan, from which we created all of our proportions.
Our Fehn roof began as a honeycomb grid which then could be pulled in and out of its modules. We then moved to the idea of floating Fehn grids within the structure of a larger Fehn grid. We decided to make it irregular to heighten repetition with variation, and considered adding unique installations like the bench and tree piece. In class, we were introduced to the ideas of using different materials and possibly working with vertical aspects of the roof as well. However, we wished to keep with an open, youthful feel and simplified our design to purely horizontal, floating, homogeneous panels.
Our Pinos roof started with the one constraint that the space in front of the community hall's facade could not be tampered with. We wanted a roof which wrapped around this open space with the image of interlocking fingers. The first goal was to wrap around the existing trees and somehow creep into the entrance area. The second insight was to introduce different heights which paralleled the different heights of floating panels in the Fehn roof. At first some were to be placed on top of the existing roof, but in order to preserve the site's integrity we later pushed all roofs under the height of the flat roofs. The third insight was to push the Pinos roofs into the exit area, the outer classroom wall, and the entrance wall. The fourth decision was to introduce varying flap sizes, sometimes leaving open gaps for light to filter through. The final addition was a skeleton structure of floating beams which gave the impression of sweeping tunnels at the entrance and exit.
From a large scale, the Pinos roof is integrated well with the Fehn roof because its overall mass is placed in symmetry with the Fehn roof's diagonal axis. It also has a generally square placement, sometimes jutting right through the roofs. Although all the pieces are flat and jaggedy there is a very organic feel because of its humanistic scale, looking almost like rolling hills inside the courtyard.
This was a great project in terms of design insight and building process. Feel free to leave comments or questions!
