Final Jury!

Hey! Here I am to share the final products of ARCH401 studio. Firstly, here are our lexicon and our previous studies that effects our design ideas.

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After that, we have our program proposals. You can see our programs for pause and play; and then we have some visualizations for our activators. Lastly, we have collages to understand the concept better.

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After the program proposal, here comes the system proposal. We have stated our concern first. Then we have a strategy, there are operations we used and we have created a tool kit. Our proposal is created by using that tools and operations.

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After introducing the proposal, we have the design of the system. To make that step more clear, we have two catalog that explains our operations. Here we aim to explain how we created the grid which we are using while creating the project.

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Lastly, here are our diagrams, drawings and renders.

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Program Proposal

In my previous post, I have shared the cases that we have analyzed to create a program proposal. We have created two program proposals that hybridize the programs in the case studies. Our main approach while creating the programs was pause and play. As you know, our main topic was agriculture and in agricultural field, planting stops when its fallow time; we call this time as ‘pause’. So what happens when an agricultural field ‘pauses’? We thought that we need some programs to activate the stopped area again. Then we have come up with the ‘Activator’ idea. Our activators are the programs that activates the agricultural field when it has paused. Here is our first proposal where you can see the play and pause programs;

We have categorized our programs as Cultivation Hub, Living Space, Logistic and Storage, Observatory, and Activator. On the left side of the proposal, you can see which program is taken from cases for which category. Cultivation Hub is a category related to agriculture. It contains programs like vertical farming, terrace farming, and such. The second category is Living Space and concerns about where will the seasonal workers live and socialize. It has programs like accommodation, retreat, or community center. Another category is Logistic and Storage, which is related to how to distribute the agricultural product to other places. The fourth category is observatory. This category is for examinations and it is basically a school-like laboratory. Our last category is Activators. They are the ones that come when a program has stopped working. In the right part of the proposal, you can see the play, pause programs that I have explained in the first paragraph.

Here is our second proposal;

This proposal is not completely different from the first one. We have the same program categories that we had in the first proposal and we again have the activators. But this time we have analyzed the working pattern of seasonal workers in the area and distributed the programs accordingly. You can see the program distribution on the right side of the first page. The second page is about activators. On the second page, you can see the detailed distribution of programs and the 3 types of activators. The diagram below shows how activators work. For example, in winter there is a plant nursery program. In spring it pauses and cow garden comes in that place as an efficient activator and in autumn plant nursery plays again but in that time this program is more efficient than its previous situation.

Case Studies

Hi! After pre-jury I, we have started to analyze some cases to understand their program distribution. We have choosen the cases from a list that our instructors gave us, and tried to make our choices according to features of our site and also our approach to the site. The next step is to take the programs from the cases that we have studied on and create a program proposal for our site. The cases that we have worked on are Seoullo 7017 Skygarden by MVRDV, Ecorium of the National Ecological Institute by Grimshow Samoo Architects, Modular Vertical Urban Farms by Andreas Tjeldflaat, Tainan Market by MVRDV, Floating Farm Dairy by Goldsmith Company, Pixel Cropping, and Umm Abirieh Farm by OMA.

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At the end, we have prepared a table which contains all of our cases in terms of scale, number, privacy, accessibility, determinacy, enclosure and serving. Here is the table as a summary of all of our case studies;

Pre-Jury I

As I have mentioned in my previous post, we need to create a topography according to the subject that we are working on. Our previous work was the topography of the risk but what we need to do is to create the topography of the site by considering the risks, so we tried to do that for Pre-Jury I. Firstly, we have listed our risks for the site. Then we have revised our lexicon and put it in our presentation too. After that, we have produced maps about the risks that effect agroscape and put the resources, supporting maps, and pieces of information for the main map. You can see them below.

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After that, here is the part about topography. We are focusing on agriculture and firstly we have analyzed 3 maps from different times. When the grid became denser, that means that area is cultivated on that map. After analyzing all 3 maps, we have overlapped them and come up with a map that shows the most planted areas. The most planted areas are the riskiest areas for us because of the use of agricultural products and such. After that, we have also added the other risks that we mapped to our grid on the second page. On the last page, we have created a topography by analyzing the overlapped risk map that we have created. Then we have made some operations to the topography to show how the risks deform our agroscape.

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Risk Topography

After we have superimposed the maps and come up with the risks for agricultural areas, we have deeply analyzed the risks and created a risk topography, then used some operations to re-create it. Firstly, we have divided our superimpose map into grids and analyzed the risks of every part, then gave points according to the degree of the risks. The first line of our sheet shows those numbers. After that, we have visualized those numbers by making a 3D model of it, and other lines of the sheet show the steps of making it 3D. In the end, we had a risk topography.

As the assignment requires, we have chosen some operations to re-create the topography. We have used the operations excavation, fracture, and spew. As I have mentioned in my previous post about superimpose, we have come up with three categories as risks pass from land to water, water to water, and water to land. Now we have 3 operations for those 3 categories. The second column shows the operations and how we have applied them in 3D. Excavation is used for the risks passes from land to water. We literally excavated the risks of the land and carried it to water. Fracture is used for the water to water risks that we have shown it by fracturing the water. The last one is spew, which is used to show water to land risks.

The third column shows the exaggeration of the operations that we have shown in the 2nd column. We have doubled the scale of the operations to exaggerate them. Lastly, in the last column, we have a physical model trial.

Let me share closer photos of the models;

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The problem about our work was, we have applied our operations to our risk topography, not the actual topography of the site. For our next step, actually it will be Pre-Jury I, we will revise our work accordingly.

Suuuperimpose!

Hey! As I have shared in my previous post, we have analyzed our site; its qualities, and its risks, threats. Then we have chosen some keywords and related them with our maps. Also, we have chosen concepts to associate with. Our next step is to superimpose those maps and come up with something new. To be able to overlap, the scales of the maps should be the same, obviously. In our study, we had a big and a smaller scale map so we have two superimposition maps. But we will focus on the smaller scale map, so it is more detailed. Let me first show the bigger scale;

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The first map is the result of the superimpose and the other two are the maps that we are overlapping. So we have overlapped the Eco-Boundary map which shows the boundaries of the area and concerning that, species diversity with the Inhospitable Salinity map which shows the salinity ratio of the area. As a result, in the superimpose map, we can see how salinity affects the species.
In our other superimpose, we have overlapped the risks of the site. The maps that we are overlapping are; first, the Eco-Degradation map which shows the negative effect of the fish farms, second, the Eco-Replication map which is about the agricultural areas, and third, the Eco-Territory map which shows the territories of fresh and salty water.

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When we have overlapped the risks and the agricultural areas, we were able to see which area contains more risk for the agricultural area. And we have also categorized the risks as from water to land, from water to water, and from land to water.

ECO_LEXICON | step_2 (final)

In my previous post, I have shared our work for step 2. To finalize this step and develop our work, we have made some small changes. Let me share them with you; firstly, here are our keywords that we have chosen from our lexicon. Our keywords are Borderless Order, Unlimitedly Expandable Libration Point / Threshold, Deterioration, and Colonies.

We have another poster which explains our keywords and the context that we have used them.

Also we have changed our gif a little bit, now it is more explanatory and it better gives the expression of ‘borderless order’. Additionally, we have wrote our keywords where they related.

As you know, everything should have a reason and we need to be able to explain everything that we did. So, we have prepared a poster which is like a guide on our parameters which explains how do we use those parameters.

That white areas you see in our gif are the forces and in this poster we have explained the parameters about it and how to evaluate them. First one is diameter, we decide the diameter according to the amount of the thing that we are working on. The location of the forces will be decided according to the place of attraction point. The number of forces are the quantity of attraction point in the scope, and their colors will indicate the type of scope. So if there are more than one force, there will be more than one color. And lastly, the opacity indicates the density of scope.

ECO_LEXICON | step_2

As I have written in my previous post, for the first step, we have chosen some words and prepared a lexicon with them. Now, for the next step, our task was to choose some keywords or concepts or themes from there and engage them in a provocative way. That means we need to visualize the concepts and their relations and etc. What we have visualized is, ‘Self-Replicative Self-Government Colonies that placed in Unlimitedly Expandible Libration Point/Threshold in a Borderless Order’. Yes, we have visualized this keywords. When it comes to studio, it will be hard and weird; obviously. So here is our gif about it;

Of course it is really hard to understand what this gif tries to say, because of that here is our step-by-step explanations which explains the keywords;

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ECO_LEXICON | step_1

Let’s start with talking about what a lexicon is. Actually, it won’t be wrong to say that a lexicon is a kind of dictionary; but the differences between a lexicon and a dictionary is, a lexicon has a context. That means a lexicon that an architect prepares and a lawyer prepares would be different. We will define the words in lexicon in an architectural context. And also another difference can be the way to explain a word, a dictionary just explains the word with words but we will also visualize what we will explain.

So where do our words come? To choose our words, our instructors gave us a text. By the way, we are working as a group this semester. Groups consists of 4 person and every group has one text to read. Our task for the first step is to first reading and explaining the text, then choosing some keywords, concepts or terms from the text and explain them to build a lexicon.

Our text was Securing Adjustable Climate by Felicity D. Scott. The text mainly argues the idea of colonization in space. In our presentation, we have briefly explained the main discussions, here they are;

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After the main information about the text, we have our words for the lexicon. For the hierarchical order of the lexicon, we have 4 categories as you can see in our presentation. Here they are;

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Lastly, we have categorised our words in two categories; the ones on the left side is the words which defines a space, a place or a community and the words at the tops defines some qualities. This table shows the qualities that the spaces, places or communities needs for their presence. This table can also give some information about the hierarchy of the words.

ARCH401, REALLY?!

Hi everybody! I am back as an ARCH401 student! It is hard to believe that this is our last year in school and it is sad to realise that I have just one studio courses left before graduation. And also we are still studying online. This is also sad. Yes, enough drama for introduction. Let’s start to talk about ARCH401 and what we will do in this semester. The name of the project is ECO_X; the syllabus says that, the term project of Arch401 addresses environmental exigencies which questions the encounter between architecture and ecological conditions shaped by urban, political, social and economic issues. Actually we are not really sure about what we will do but it is obvious that our keywords will be ecology and environmental issues, and we will work with their relations to architecture. By the way, our site is at Iskenderun; but unfortunately because of the current conditions, we will not go there to see and analyze. I guess this semester, the studio will be a bit different then the others that I have experienced because it seems like we will work with analyzes and visualization mainly. We will see, I hope it would be a fun and productive semester.