PLA Sustainable Transportation Facility
Module:
Design 5A/5B
Year:
2019 - 20 - Fifth Year
Location:
Venice, Italy &
Westminster, London
Even though cruise and shipping companies are polluting more and more every year, they are currently exempt from the Paris agreement on climate change and have largely unregulated pollution levels. All other transport types have regulations in place for emissions, yet boats have remained unscathed by policies for years.
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Previous work earlier in the final year explored the impacts of large boat transportation on a local scale, exploring its impacts to the city of Venice, due to its increased tourism to the island. With a final pavilion design task aiming to educate on the images of climate change through a piece that explored ruination through changes to climate. The process of controlling ruination through channelling were used from ideas taken from a temporal task earlier in the term.
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Moving into the final design task the issues surrounding boat travel were investigated in the area of Westminster, London. The possibilities of using steel mesh as a main material element was explored to investigate its use as both structural and decorative elements. Aimed at creating a similar sense of education to the impacts of changing climate conditions through direct ruination, the use of channelling was explored further.
With coastal areas becoming more at risk to extreme weather conditions due to climate change, a Climate Machine was designed and modelled, aiming to be placed in these coastal areas to detect strong wind speeds that would signal the risk of weather events such as high tides or cyclone's.
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High wind speeds in coastal areas are often the main indicator of an increase in tide levels, and through the sounds created from the machine, it would allow for early detection and warning to those nearby of the potential threat that may occur.
Using themes which had emerged through our earlier climate work, for the next task we were asked to select a three dimensional object or architectural fragment within the John Soane Museum to carefully study, analyse and expand its narratives in response to the weather and ruination.
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Soane was responsible for the creation of the first museum of Architecture. He created an internal climate through the manipulations of light and temperature, curating a vast collection of antiquities according to the atmospherics of the interiors and their contents.
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Reflecting on Soane's approach to re-associate architecture with climate, my own piece selected explored adding elements of control to temporality, through elements of heat, air and water.
As the palace of Westminster signifies the most important sense of governance, the location of site allowed for the a unique framed view towards the Palace of Westminster.
With the use of steel mesh as the main building material it also allowed for the structure to appear more lightweight and transparent higher up with the use of sprayed concrete at lower levels.
The use of layering of mesh allowed for the opportunity of a variety of differ ent spaces, playing with the ideas of transparency to represent mor e private and public spaces.
With the main structure of the buildings consisting of mesh it also allowed for areas which have been made mor e solid through the application of sprayed concrete to gradually deteriorate over time to reveal complete mesh structures.
