Movement in Hotels

This study is an observation on how people move around hotels. Chosen case studies are the Love Hotel in Shibuya, the Metropolitan Hotel, London (United Designers), Hotel al Naoshima, Japan (Tadao Ando), Miramar Hotel, Egypt (Michael Graves), Grand Hyatt, Indonesia (Geoffrey Bawa) and the Hotel Puerta America, Madrid (various designers). These hotels were selected because of their different nature and concepts. From these study on movement, I will make series of options for my intervention and see the possibility on how people move around at the ground level and through the hotel.  

Shifting and Slanting

The first image is describing the possibility of shifting and twisting the massing of the hotel in order to capture specific views around the site. This technique is 'borrowed' from MVRDV's Gyre Building in Tokyo, and will be tested against different techniques and processes to refine the potential of manipulating hierarchy, layering and surfaces in the design. The second image is an exploration by slanting the building mass, which is a continuation from the shifting and twisting process. This operation is also speculating the effect of the intervention based on earlier ideas of my design statement. This process will create a visual and physical phenomena for the site and allow the ground level to still function as a garden. 

Tokyo Revisited

Revisiting the Tokyo precedent study for Gyre Building, trying to understand the relationship of public movement and circulation system (inside-outside) that hopefully will help in my formulation of design strategies.

Design Strategies Statement

Noise Level, Speed and Traffic Flow

Before formulating my design and urban strategies statement, I think it is good if I take a step back to analyze these site-specific condition of the area. Noise level, speed and traffic flow were mapped to help in the understanding and revealing other potentials and constraints of the site. The noise level mapping is speculative and not precise, but will be revised for better and consistent readings. Hopefully, these mappings would help in generating better design solutions for the proposal.

Study Model-Views and Extensions

This is a study on strategic positioning of views in relation to the site, surrounding areas and building types. 'Extension' of the city into the site would be the main interest in framing those important views, and also suggest types and configurations of rooms that will enjoy those views. The typology study is investigating potential parti diagrams for the building form. Four main strategic operations were also selected to be studied to manipulate potentials and see the scale of influences generated from the future intervention.

Urban Study Model

This massing model will be used to study conditions of the site, expanding thoughts from the urban strategies diagrams and to explore impacts and influences of the future intervention to the site and its surrounding.

Diagrammatic codes and materials will be inserted onto the model for these studies. I will upload the study progress images soon.

Urban Strategies

These studies are trying to exploit the potential and opportunities found around the site. Important elements to be manipulated are like extensions of the public realm from human's movement and activities around the site, slipping of the site with historical elements and circulation programmes, connecting the proposed hotel with any possible potentials with the existing surrounding hotels (programmes, infrastructure, etc.), and the issues of framing views.

These issues are extensions from my previous mapping as well as my interest in previous projects (i.e. unfolding the cube, views and spaces that are concealed and revealed, etc.) that I hope would help in generating ideas for the design development.

Hotel Design Strategies

From the previous mapping studies, which characterized walking activities as an important spatial and physical repertoire of the site, I developed series of sketches to help in the understanding of the site, within the idea of walking and connections.

My emphasis is on the idea of the site as a town square, which civic engagement is a priority. My massing design strategies are explained through the options and keywords in the sketches. Hopefully these studies would help in my programmatic and schematic diagram ideas. 

Journey Mapping

This mapping study is trying to achieve a more specific subject matter, which is walking patterns that suggest types of activities around the site. This study also try to explore the permeable streetscapes that expose the myriads of the ordinary and sees opportunities for spaces to be entered unintentionally or intentionally, maneuvering and exploring the spatial and physical repertoire of the site.   

Journey Mapping

This is the developed mapping from previous post.

Journey Mapping

These mapping drawings describe important elements found along the journey, and are described through layers of categories; land use, lot boundaries and functions, built forms and voids. I try to focus on these categories only and will add on other important notations from my research. Hope these drawings are okay.  

Sketch Ideas for Mapping 2

This drawing is a development from my sketch, that is to help in the understanding of the journey and the site in terms of layers of the area. The 'City Floor' layer is where the site boundaries and zonings are to be shown. The plots of areas in this layer will be rendered and color coded according to each zoning programs (i.e. commercial, leisure, infrastructure, open space, etc.).

The second exploded layer, the 'City Mass' is where the urban form is shown. This layer is drawn to help in the understanding of the city built forms, connections, height, width, volumes and taxonomy of building typologies found around the area. All significant and important building will be labeled for more information. The scale and density of the architectural form will help in the understanding of the context.

The top most layer is to show series of voids found around the journey area. These voids will be color coded to tell what they function as (i.e. services, courtyards, open plaza, public park, entrance to buildings, etc.). I think the study on the 'City Voids' would be an interesting research because of the potential of the voids as design strategies (i.e. programmatically, environmentally, views, connection with the city, human interaction, etc.). I will also draw connection lines between voids that are physically connected to show connection between each parcels of building blocks/ zones. Maybe this study will provide a link between architectural spaces and urban social dynamics.

Sketch Ideas for Mapping 1

My sketch idea for the mapping of the journey would be series of drawings, each of them are fragmented from the sites of the journey. This sketch, for instance, is a fragment of one site (near Boundary Post) that is located at the beginning of my journey. Each drawings will show layers of information showed in axonometric. I hope this strategy of mapping would help to accentuate the important information that made up the whole area (i.e. site boundary, building volumes, voids, separations and openings, etc.). The series of drawings would be a selection of sites that have important remarks to the surrounding context and would be drawn in a sequence, as if they were pieces of puzzles that can be assembled together to form a map.

Presentation 16.01.09

Since I will not be able to attend the presentation on 16 January 2009, here are my drawings that I have prepared from the Japan trip studies. I will present them once I am back in London, on 20 January 2009. Sorry for the inconvenience caused. Many thanks.

Kyoto Study 2

Continuing with the view/moment framing of the journey,  this composite drawing tries to capture those moments by utilizing perspectives, photographs and site sections.  

Kyoto Study

This is a study of the Katsura Imperial Villa, showed through a conceptual section of the Shokintei and the overall site plan. The drawings try to explain activities within different hierarchy of spaces and the overall journey. These drawings are soon to be further developed. 

Love Hotel Study 2

This is an updated version of the drawing, with the cross section of the love hotel to show the constructed axonometric spaces in context of the whole building. Hopefully the section would help for a clearer sequence of spaces experienced by the users.

Journey Sketches

Love Hotel Study

Axonometric drawings showing the spatial layout of the Love Hotel in Shibuya, Tokyo. These drawings are still in progress and are parts of a drawing catalogue showing components and spaces of the hotel.