LHA Staple Off

There comes a time when a human must look into one's self and ask some serious questions, some of which can't be answered...

Here at LHA we are a supportive bunch and decided to lend each other some advice in order to help answer these behemoth queries, queries such as which way to tackle a stack of paper with a stapler!

Do you take Ben's 'toy soldier' approach and bang it straight up and down in the 12o'clock position?

Or perhaps you follow Mike and whip it in horizontally sending the 'aeroplane' across the page?

Or, maybe you're still a bit confused like myself and can't decide which is more appropriate... so you take the best of both, cut it up the middle, and fang it in sideways!

Considering I'm writing this post, I can also add that the 45degree pin allows for a near perfect fold when reading through multiple page stapled documents.

 

I hope this helps next time you're confronted by a stack of processed timber and armed with tiny pieces of folded steel!

- jeremy

casting

I've always wanted to sneak inside the hallowed doors of Millar Paterson Metals...

Today we did just that.  And the experience was just lovely.

fabricated place

This semester, we're teaching Design 6 at the The University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning

title: 

FABRICATED PLACE

program:

An architecture that catalyses meaningful collaborative exchanges and assists in the formation of community by providing a site for shared experiences.

key collaborator:

AUCKLAND AIRPORT

original image courtesy auckland airport

project vehicle:
Auckland Airport wish to fabricate place to augment ‘The District’ and operate as a nucleus of collaborative work space within The Quad Precinct. 

Auckland Airport have a 20 – 30 year vision for the Quad Precinct however they wish to build community and provide extraordinary collaborative work amenity in the short to medium term. The brief of this project is to explore and present strategies both at an urban design scale and a particular scale for how Auckland Airport can develop The Quad Precinct to provide this amenity.

This is a live project with a real client and has real intentions for a built outcome. 

design intentions: 
Fabricated Place studio explores the role of architecture in catalysing meaningful exchanges and the formation of community through shared experiences. The studio will also analyse and extrapolate through design action the possibilities inherent in offsite construction. 

The design agenda is: 
fabricated landscape + fabricated shelter = fabricated place 

original image courtesy Holgar Lippmann  

generative art based Peter De Jong map equations

Fabrications [stories and elegant lies]

Through active research, drawing, modelling and writing, the stories of the site and context will be represented, reviewed and opportunities for nodes of congregation and the interstices that link them will be offered. Through a distillation of the environment’s context, a site strategy will be formed.

original image courtesy SHoP

CAMERA OBSCURA

Fabrications [off site systems of manufacture]

The studio group will undertake a series of site visits to a number of fabricators. These visits paired with further research and a extrapolative design process will result in at least two fabrication strategies being explored in terms of qualities for fabricating landscape and shelter to produce elegant systems of construction. 

Details are strategies for how materials, forms and stories meet – these fabrications will be worked – collusions and corroborations made and presented.

skyline

This semester, I'm assisting Judy Cockeram with her design 5 paper:

title: 

SKYLINE

program:

BOUTIQUE CASINO

I just love Jack's line in Croupier - 'Hang on tightly, let go lightly.'

Sounds a little like drawing to me.

We've noticed that there doesn't appear to be a lot of really beautiful BIM extrapolated vector drawings out there. Not renders, but line weights so pretty that you'd want to hang them on your wall.

Can it be done?  BIM to lovely line drawings? I gave it a quick bash... Here's a selection of maquettes from my investigations into the the paper's title image.

Possibly a little too influenced by James Bond, no?

Maybe these aren't the most fantastic digital sketches but I'm happy to say it can be done and that it needs further work.  I'm sure Piranesi took a moment to work up his etchings.

So that's some of what we're going to be interested in this semester.  Beautiful drawings extracted directly from BIM models.  Wouldn't be nice to get something that illustrates Paul Klee's take on a drawing?

'A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.' - Paul Klee

Oh, and we quite like mobiles too...

Alexander Calder | Vertical Foliage 1941
original image courtesy Calder Foundation website

henceforth... 

mike

schooling by design

or an architectural stimulus by way of a series of unique projects (SOUP), was an Advanced Design 2 design paper run with Judy Cockeram for the School of Architecture and Planning at The University of Auckland.

Excerpts from the paper description:

You know you’re in CHCH when         a blue box has landed outside your house and you don’t think the Doctor has arrived in his Tardis.

Using a Superhero for the city, a new School, and a reinvigorated Square as generative work, students will propose something that is not a school as we currently know it but something that allows people of all ages to engage with wisdom, commitment and passion in a vibrant city centre that is all it was before and more.

You know you’re in CHCH when           high-vis is the new black.

After such a serious event we felt that the city of Christchurch could benefit from a superheroes intervention.  

'Serious design should be fun not solemn' - Paula Scher

 Initial 'superhero' briefing paper to the students.

 Another briefing paper during the semester: public spaces precedents.

Some of the student's work: 


Kai Qin and his 'Oliver Mute' looked to reinvigorate the city through a school for the deaf.

Wade Southgate aka 'the Social Butterfly' designed a bold structure that redefined the cruciform of the square and provided social space to occur between the fabric of the form and the existing buildings.

Further background on the paper was published in Avenues magazine.