Progress with Movement

by fcahill

These past two weeks I focused on refining my plans with the feedback I received at my mid-review.  This also meant working in section and elevation.  I began by addressing the courtroom (and breaking the box) and then moved to the support spaces and in-custody movement.  From there I finalized a site location and building form.

I am currently trying to figure how the building works with the landscape and the surrounding connections and influences of Bryant Park and Greenway through site development and material.  My next step is researching skateparks and seeing how that can help influence the site as it is a pivotal part of my overall design (as my flex-space) in making the courthouse a destination.

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Breakthrough

by cchlebda

Level 1 Plan

I spent the past week working through the problem of designing two different, crisscrossing vertical circulation paths (public and private) that could never touch in my reconfigured atrium. Initially, all of my schemes involved long stairs that would stretch across the atrium and over each other, but I kept running into problems of not having enough headroom under crisscrossing lengths of stairs. Also, because the public and private sides of the building reverse at Level 2, even when I finally got the stairs to work properly, I ran into issues extending a walkway across the atrium from the public elevators that were located on the opposite side.

Finally, I discovered a breakthrough solution–having the stairs spiral around each other, like a double helix, and moving the public elevators to the center of the atrium, rather than one side or the other. This way, I wouldn’t have any headroom issues, the public and private paths would never cross (just spiral around each other), and the elevators would only need paths to span across half the atrium on any given floor level. In my most recent (and likely final) iteration of this idea (depicted here), the stairs closest to the eastern wall of the atrium are stacked on top of each other, and the stairs towards the center of the atrium crisscross to achieve some of the dynamism I liked about my intial crisscrossing schemes.

Public Atrium Stair at Level 1

Public Atrium Stair at Level 2

Atrium at Level 2; Public Elevators can be seen on the left; Private Stair in the foreground with the Public Stair in the background

Now I have an atrium that truly reflects my concept: the intertwining of public and private spaces.