UCA 3D 5: ‘The Pitch’

Introduction

The idea behind this project, from our tutors, was to respond to a brief not with work and the assumption of a contract, but with a pitch. The aim was to simulate competition and working to win a contract. This is the brief as given to us (there were 3, I chose the architectural one):

BRIEF
The School of Architecture at UCA Canterbury is in collaboration with DEZEEN and HEATHERWICK STUDIOS and are inviting innovative and sustainable proposals for designing and constructing further studio spaces within UCA Canterbury, utilising exterior areas, which are currently redundant.
Proposals must be fully sustainable and involve the use of eco friendly and recycled materials.
Designs must be forward thinking and cutting edge, reflecting the creativity of the art and design community.
Spaces can be separate units or connecting.
Any separate unit should house a minimum of 10 students.
We invite you to consider original and contemporary possibilities.
All redundant exterior spaces should be investigated and considered. The potential spaces can be independent structures, or an extension of an appropriate existing building. Consider light, height, views, and accessibility.
Emphasis needs to be made in design development regarding inclusivity and diversity and regarding individual places for warmth and safety looking particularly at those students who are alone and away from home, or in need of an escape. This is meant in any context and includes international and national students who might need some kind of haven.
The emphasis must be a warm and friendly place in which to work and communicate.
These spaces are not intended to live in, but to use for appropriate work, group critiques, tutorials, and consultations.
Max budget £1,000,000 Minimum 5 units No Maximum

Site Analysis

My first step was to use satellite imagery to determine which spaces could host new construction. I’ve coded the site into 4 distinct sections, with the rest deemed as not possible for use.

Orange, green and yellow represent outdoor spaces that could be expanded into.

Orange spaces, however, I considered, are used too frequently (the lawn as a social space; the welding area, until redevelopment, for welding) to be replaced.

The yellow space represents the current staff car park, which given Canterbury’s accessible park and ride scheme, the nearby bus stop, and upcoming low emission zone I considered could be a viable candidate for expansion.

The green space represents unused outdoor green space, specially coded as green space on site is limited and valuable. Any solutions around this space, given sustainability is an important factor in the brief and more generally, would have to accommodate the current semi-wild nature of the space.

Blue spaces represent roof space that I considered to be usable. The entire site is of steel beam construction (see fig.1 below) so I worked with the assumption that additional, light weight and well distributed structures could be added. I have not included roof space that sits on less than 2 storeys, as I assumed additional loads would be more of a structural issue.

Research

Geodesic Structures

Geodesic structures, popularised by Buckminster Fuller (Wikipedia Contributors, 2019), are intrinsically strong and simple to build. Aiming to seat 10 per unit, a dome of 4 m diameter would be needed (Ase Domes, s.d.), but this could be a simple way to quickly create permanent outdoor structures. A mixture of opaque (sustainable fibreboard or cut sheet wood) and transparent (perspex or glass) panels would allow the structures to be well lit. Ventilation could come from removable and openable panels. The single floor nature of a dome would result in intrinsic accessibility, given the lack of requirement for lifts, assuming the doors are built large enough. Panels would need to be insulated, using either recycled clothing or sustainable sheep’s wool. Given enough light, it could be possible to achieve passive heating when combined with working students (MVHR would likely be needed in this case to maintain passive heating with ventilation).

Image credit: von Nellenburg (2004).

Greenhouses

Usually used for growing plants, the idea to increase interaction with nature on site drove me towards looking at the simple glass or clear plastic structures. Easy to build using either timber or lightweight steel or aluminium frames, combined with glass (more expensive) or clear plastic (sheet material is inexpensive, and insulates better), the large amount of light would again increase passive heating. Well lit spaces are also known to boost productivity, among other psychological health benefits (Peek, 2023).

Image credit: Halls Greenhouses (s.d.).

Polytunnels

Cheaper and simpler than greenhouses, polytunnels consist of super-lightweight frames with plastic sheeting stretched across them. The lack of insulation means the structures extend growing seasons for plants by a few months, but aren’t designed for winter use. They are often considered an eyesore (Brennan, 2012), compared to greenhouses.

Image credit: Brennan (2012).

Structures Using Greenhouses as Inspiration

The article ‘5 Greenhouses That Are Actually Homes’ by Glink (2014) had 2 key structures that inspired me.

’Naturhus’ — Bengt Warne

Although not living in a greenhouse directly, this 1972 structure encases a timber frame home. The external cover means that the house is effectively built in a much warmer climate, and so features large balconies and open spaces, as well as Mediterranean (Glink, 2014) plants.

’Pennsylvania Greenhouse Patio’ — David Fierabend

This glass extension is built like a greenhouse, with a partially shaded roof and clear walls. The heated floor, combined with passive heating, allows the space to be used throughout winter, and indoor plants flourish.

Glen Mills Garden Cafe

Cited as an inspiration for the Pennsylvania Greenhouse Patio (Glink, 2014), this café uses natural light and an extensive collection of plants to create an airy, comforting space for socialising and eating. Not directly a greenhouse, the space works through similar principles, such as open spaces and light.

’Camouflage House 3’ — Hiroshi Iguchi

This structure, designed to fit in with the surrounding forest (Glink, 2014), makes use of glass panelling to create light spaces, as well as openings for trees, to better fit in with nature.

’Upgrenna Naturhus’ — Tailor Made Architects

This hybrid house-greenhouse incorporates a large glass-roofed living and growing space to provide both large amounts of natural light, and a space where food can be grown year round to help the inhabitants with self-sufficiency. Designed for the Swedish climate (Swinehart, 2015), the space is warm year round.

CADDesign

I worked in CAD to create a final product for my pitch. A timber frame provides structural strength, while large clear (or translucent, depending on materials) panels for natural light.

Isometric projections of the studio space.

Two aerial views taken with 45º projections.

The interior of the space would be largely empty, with no curtain walls. I wanted to make the spaces within as flexible as possible, given the variety of functions (group critiques, presentations, studio work, socialising) they need to serve.

Inspired by the flexible walls on the existing UCA site, found in fine art studios for example, as well as at Ravensbourne university, I have added a series of cork-boards. These would serve as moving walls for the interior space. The cork material would allow people to pin both images and work on the walls, whilst they provide their other function of dividing the space between functions and students.

For lighting at night, and to maintain the same flexibility, I designed some work lights based on the popular tripod site light design found in construction sites. The omnidirectional, diffused light they provide is perfect for painting or other physical work, whilst their tripod bases make them portable.

Front and back views

Ecological Impact and Budget Analysis

Construction Materials

The timber for the frame is possible to source sustainably, and depending on the price projections (timber will hopefully fall to pre-pandemic levels at some point in the next year) can be cheaper than steel frame construction.

Non-structural elements can be made of composite wood boards, such as MDF or, as in my render, OSB, which can all be made using recycled wood or waste from other industries, for example wood chip.

The large panels, rendered as a largely translucent glass, could be made of plastics to reduce direct emissions at the cost of recyclability, provided a UV blocking layer is applied to increase their lifetime. Recycled glass is another candidate, as are some bioplastics, although these are relatively new and cannot always match regular plastics (there are also concerns about the environmental impact of using farmland for bioplastics (Fairs, 2019). The work of Carolyn Raff, who experiments with agar with algal additives, interests me here, as the panels need not be fully translucent to provide natural light.

Image courtesy of Raff (s.d)

Heating and Cooling

The structures have been designed without individual heating systems, as I have made the assumption that a link to UCA Canterbury’s central boiler would be the most efficient way to heat them. It would also be counterproductive to design a new heating system for new, ‘green’ structures when the existing site continues to be heated by the old: retrofitting the central system is likely the best environmental option in this case. In addition to a central heating system, the large clear or translucent panels would provide a high degree of passive heat.

In summer, given the passive heating effect, the spaces could become overly warm. Although I didn’t have time to include this in my renders, if the wall panels were light enough, I would aim for a design that included struts and a hinge system. With these in place, the walls could be open out and upwards to increase airflow.

Budget: Using Similar Structures as a Reference

My aim in this project has been to create a single, repeatable unit which could be placed wherever possible on site, given the uncertainty over which areas would end up being used. To this end, prefabrication is useful and possible, given the design is repeated for each unit without custom elements besides utilities and accommodations for surfaces.

I use Tini homes prefabricated cabins as a reference for cost here, as the small structures are similar in scale and design materials. For a 100 sqm, roughly square unit [Tini® 3M], using plasterboard interiors and heat treated wooden panelling, along with large glass windows, they charge 138,500€ (Tini Living, s.d.). The structure I have designed is visually similar, but about half the size at 50 sqm (5×10 m). They are operating at scale, so have cost efficiencies from this fact. The cost of the unit also doesn’t include installation or transport, so as a conservative estimate I assume a cost of around £100,000 (based on very limited data). At 10 students per unit, this delivers space at £10,000 / student / 5 sqm, and 10 units at the budget of £1M, which is over the target of 5 units.

The design of a Tini Living unit. Image credit: Tini Living (s.d)

Effective cost estimates are difficult to achieve in a short time, so I have low confidence in my own, but am confident that a solution could be delivered within the target budget.

Presentation

As part of my pitch, we had a live pitching and review session, where I presented the following keynote:

I got the following feedback, presented here sheet by sheet as a GIF:

The main positives across the forms were the 3D renders in how they communicated my design idea effectively.
The main criticism was the lack of budget analysis. I’ve addressed the budget better in this sketchbook, having made the presentation.

Reference list

Ase Domes (s.d.) 4M Geodesic Dome - Buy & Rent Geodome Tents | ASE Domes. At: https://asedomes.com/4m-geodesic-dome (Accessed 08/02/2023).

Brennan, M. (2012) Staffordshire Strawberry Farms Can Keep Polytunnels. At: https://www.expressandstar.com/news/2012/06/15/staffordshire-strawberry-farms-can-keep-polytunnels/ (Accessed 08/02/2023).

Fairs, M. (2019) Bioplastics Could Be ‘just as Bad If Not worse’ for the Planet than fossil-fuel Plastics. At: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/04/15/bioplastics-bad-environment-damage-arthur-huang/ (Accessed 10/02/2023).

Glink, I. (2014) 5 Greenhouses That Are Actually Homes. At: https://www.cbsnews.com/media/5-greenhouses-that-are-actually-homes/ (Accessed 08/02/2023).

Halls Greenhouses (s.d.) Halls Popular. At: https://hallsgreenhouses.com/en-gb/halls-popular/p/64027/101890?gclid=CjwKCAiA0JKfBhBIEiwAPhZXD1FuZ5mMlUDyF0C1b0ZqxhxWja5WOi2KQcFgWV9qmdiVGkB66JaNThoCQsMQAvDBwE#gallery-1 (Accessed 09/02/2023).

Peek, S. (2023) How Lighting Affects Productivity and Mood. At: https://www.business.com/articles/flick-of-a-switch-how-lighting-affects-productivity-and-mood/ (Accessed 08/02/2023).

Raff, C. (s.d.) Carolyn Raff - algae experiment II. At: https://carolynraff.de/algae-experiment-ii (Accessed 30/11/2022).

Swinehart, M. (2015) In Sweden, a Self-Sustaining Farmhouse for Year Round Growing. At: https://www.gardenista.com/posts/in-sweden-a-self-sustaining-farmhouse-for-year-round-growing/ (Accessed 08/02/2023).

Terrain Garden Café (s.d.) Terrain Garden Cafe - Terrain. At: https://www.shopterrain.com/pages/glen-mills-restaurant (Accessed 08/02/2023).

Tini Living (s.d.) Customize your tini®. At: https://en.tiniliving.com/modelos (Accessed 10/02/2023).

von Nellenburg, E. (2004) The former Expo 67 United States of America Pavilion designed by Buckminster Fuller, seen here in the fall of 2004. The building now serves as the Biosphere, in Montreal’s Parc Jean-Drapeau. The Biosphere is missing the structure’s original external clear acrylic skin which was destroyed by a fire in May 1976. [Online image] At: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mtl.BiosphereinSept.2004.jpg (Accessed 09/02/2023).

Wikipedia Contributors (2019) Geodesic dome. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesicdome (Accessed 07/02/2023).