Thursday, February 6, 2014

Relief in Urban Microclimates











1 comment:

  1. Thank you, Wing
    I am sorry that I couldn't attend your presentation and give you feedback in person.

    You have very interesting project here. The expressed concern is quite valid issue and your proposal to alleviate this problem has its merits. Now, I knew what you were doing, so I had no doubts when I read your statements on the second slide. But they could be somewhat confusing for someone who is reading them for the first time.
    Writing, or I should say, developing such statements is rarely an one shot deal. It takes time, thinking and continuous revisions to achieve clarity and precision that is required of them. It is normal process, the same as in the design, to use iterations and revisions, proofreading and feedback from others, in order to arrive to a strong and expressive statement. Don't hesitate in the future to use this process and ask as many different people as you can to read your statements and help you make them more clear.

    Not being present at your talk robbed me of the opportunity to clarify what exactly did you take from the precedents so that it affected your design decisions. I wish also to be able to understand how the form of your shelter was developed, i.e. if any of the external factors that you identified as determiners of the urban microclimate influenced your design. But, regardless, I see this very gentle and elegant curve that is forming an exterior envelope, and in contrast, this rigid, aggressive vertical partition, with tiny repetitive openings. Now, I understand your intention to protect people who are waiting for buses from the pollution, noise and heat of the intensive traffic as much as you can, but I still wonder if this could have been resolved in much more meaningful and architecturally interesting manner.

    One small, additional comment that goes to all of you who are doing some kind of green walls, urban vegetation, etc.: when representing the plants, please don't use just one kind of greenery, endlessly repetitive with almost military precision. First, planting monoculture is not a good strategy not only for visual, but also for functional and operational reasons (and I can tell/show you real life case studies of how such green roofs/walls royally bombed). But, more importantly, in most of the digital presentations/renderings, such green walls look sooooo fake! Plants are living creatures and they are never the same, they do not grow by the same rate. So, if you want to be a little more realistic, try to present it with more diversity.

    In addition, what such uniform renderings tell me is that: (a) either you don't care, so you just went with the most simple digital way to populate the empty surface, or (b) you are letting the computer tool drive your design. Either way, not a good message to send to the audience.

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