IKEA lane - Capsule Hotel A1 Poster

Presentation Slides.

Character profile.

Carol Perkins works and lives in Brisbane. She has seen the changes the city has undergone and is still fond of 'the old way of life'. Like many Brisbanites, Carol likes to shop, Dine, rest, and play. She therefore needs a mult-purpose building, one that allows her to experience all that brisbane has to offer, an industry in which IKEA is developing in.

Screen Shots - Creating the Scenario.

After spending countless hours on the model, the overall stacking form has taken place, as you can see in the image I want the laneway to be an activator of connection and direction. Connection to the IKEA store undergroud ( to the right), a pathway to queen street (the middle ) and an entry point to the parasite capsule hotel above (at the left).

A sense of discovering through the walking is intended. Retail spaces take up the pods on the ground level - creating connection with the public - and activating the laneway during the day/night.

A sky shot looking at the context. The form is to act like a parasite the crawls the negative spaces within the city. The image below shows the contrast between the parasite and the block design of the past (brisbane square building).

Function Designed.

After playing around with ideas of movable walkways I resulted with the concept of tube walkways (non-movable). Essentially, the need for such technology as moving walkways in a compact capsule hotel, is unnecessary. Access would be difficult in such environments. I am however, considering the implementation of advanced digital technologies as a guidance tools in the tube walkways. 

The function acts as the core structure to build off of. Pods to grow from.. and over time these walkways can repeat over several levels.. and grow on top of buildings etc..

START and END. The journey of entering one end of the lane and existing the other.

3 different types of movements and speed (TIME) are developed. The hotel walkway, the ground laneway, and the underground Ikea Showroom, all create their own sense of movement for various types of people - the traveller/local rester, the business person travelling to work, and the shopper.

Circulation.

One thing that was questioned about this project - was circulation. How do users interact and access these pods? What technology could potentially impact the way we move through architectural space? Will we still need escalators? How will escalators change? Are moving walkways a possibility? Is Gravity even a matter of question. The options are endless.

A few futuristic visions from the 50's of moving walkways/tubes etc.

Futuristic moving sidewalks as illustrated by Arthur Radebaugh in 1959

Goodyear's proposed moving sidewalk at a sports stadium (1950s)

FUNCTION::
I started to think of the circulation as a separate entity. I want to explore the concept of moving walkways. Walkways that take you to your destination, your pod of choice. Perhaps an external element? This thinking reminded me of the Pompidou museum I visited earlier in the year. It was an amazing experience, the way in which the external escalator tube guides you to the various levels of the building. This sense of journey and movement is something I want to implement into my design. A tube element that allows the pods to feed off of.

Precedent: PARA-CITY

Another building of inspiration. Ruwan introduced me to this design. Essentially directing me into the idea of buildings that parasitically latch onto the negative space.

--- allowing public activity on the ground city level to still occur.
--- Bringing a new dimension to the city.
--- Although I find this design extremely interesting, I question the accessibility of such design, and the ease of use/function. What scenario have they designed this for??
--- It is interesting the way in which this entity feeds off its hosts (the skyscrapers) -- in this respect does the form act as a connection between skyscrapers??

‘With ever-increasing densities and changing programs,’ he [Somnath] writes, ‘Para-city grows in the entire three-dimensional space of its host: the existing skyscrapers of the present urban landscape’ [BLDGBLOG].

‘The system is imagined with an implicit geometric intelligence capable of being subject to or mediated by genetic algorithms to constitute evolutionary structures that enable its growth in complex environments to attain an optimum level of syntactic adaptability’