Week 14 - Concrete Wall Panel Detail

As all walls within the community will be pre-fab concrete, they must all be easily installable. When they are built they will have indentations that mean they can sit in place before they morph into their proper place.

The bottom section of the panel will sit on top of a metal panel  that sits on the floor. This relationship can be seen above. The morphing of the concrete will fix the wall panel to the floor panel.

The top of the panel will meet with the roof panel. They will site in place while the concrete morphs and fixes into the position. This morphing will fill the hole before being sanded back, flush with the wall panel. 

This allows the concrete walls panels and the roof and floor to be fixed to one another, without drilling into the roof and floor continually, damaging them. The morphed concrete can be melted through a spray that breaks the particles down. This allows for ease of deconstruction too, if a new family moves in with a new dwelling.

Week 13 - Concrete Square Section

This is a sketch of how I think the concrete squares could work. I think the first idea probably wouldn't work because the panel could just slip off. I think that the second idea would be good though, because then the squares can fit perfectly within the holes and not slip off or through the hole. 

At the moment I think the panels will be made out of some composite light concrete material with a lightweight but strong steel core. This means they will be bale to be picked up and moved easily by a machine.

Week 13 - Layout of Community Decided

This is the final layout i have chosen for my  community. As you can see from the drawing below, there are two different types of paths; ones that are straight and lead to each dwelling, and the curved paths that lead between the four vertical vegetation and light shafts. This idea allows people, no matter where they are located in the underground community to have direct access to at least two shafts within their 'street'. All dwellings will sit 12m deep and the straight 'streets' will sit 6m deep. The depth of these two allows them to fit perfectly across the site.

This drawing also shows the three corridors that will lead to the surrounding underground communities and the public transport. The service cube can also be seen to the left, where all the power, water and concrete squares will be kept. Four ventilation shafts will also be located in the four corners of the site to constantly direct air throughout, no matter which direction it is flowing in above ground.

Week 13 - Nagasaki Capsule Inspiration

This hotel (and the one in New York) show examples of people being able to live in small and confined spaces. Whilst this example is obviously above ground, the concept can still apply to the underground car park living.

small confined rooms, yet people will happily stay there for the night or a few. People in the underground will have a lot more space and will be able to change it to suit them. They will actually 'own' the spaces, be able to walk in them, and live similar to how they use to, when they were above ground. 

It seems unusual that people are willing to sleep in public type areas with other people less than two metres away. I suppose in such confined living cities like Tokyo  people would just come to expect it. 

Very unique looking building. Whilst the community will be underground, there will still be a very unusual aspect to it and theoretically it would be similar, because people within both would be living in what are basically concrete cubes.

Sourced from: http://funandmania-places.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/capsule-hotel-in-japan-pics.html

Week 13 - Water and Drainage

Within the design there will be a water pond at the bottom of the underground community. The water body can be seen in the image below. All water in the site will be stored in this body and the water tanks that sit in the service cube. Rain that falls onto the car recycling facility and rain that falls into the shafts will fall down into the shafts and drain into the main water body. 

This water will be purified and then transferred through the whole site. This will be into the dwellings for all amenities and into the watering systems for all of the vegetation. The grey water will then recycle back into the main water system while all of the black water will go into another system. This water will also go through a number of purifying stages before it can be reused for any needs.

Week 13 - Possible Dwelling Layout

Their will be no typical layouts of the dwellings within the design. However the image below shows a possible layout that someone may decide to use. The layout shows the house in the middle of their block. The block is a double block (meaning 12m x 24m). The dwelling resembles what a house would be like above the ground, sitting in the middle of the block with grass and vegetation surrounding. Like any normal house, the dwelling has a front path, grass, a garden and a back patio area. The areas around the house can be illuminated with U.V light so that all the vegetation can grow and it seems like you are outside. The lighting inside the house would be the same as one would be above ground. 

 

The rooms in the house can be to any layout that a person wishes. All the walls within this design will be concrete panels. Alternatively someone may decide to cover the whole block, cover a smaller portion of the block or live over two levels. There really are no  set layout types.

Week 12 - Progress Reflection

Up until this point, I have found that the amount of work from all of my other subjects has left me little (if any) time to work on this design subject. This is very annoying as I would like to produce something good for this final assignment of the degree and I feel as if this is not possible. With four final assignments due for my three other subjects next week, very little has been done for Archi. I think I have some good ideas for this assignment but I have had very little time to develop them and make them stronger. Thankfully after next Friday I should have a clear run to get this assignment done. It does worry me however, as next week is the last tutorial week and I still wont have anything to show Ruwan because of all the other assignments. Starting to get worried...

Week 12 - Dwelling Differences

I think maybe an idea within my design will be the ability for everybody to be able to change their dwellings as if they were actually a real house. People can choose whatever material they want (brick, timber, plasterboard etc) and have it installed. The materials will come in some thin sort of finish that can just be stuck on, but will look real once its finished. This will allow people to personalise their dwellings to whatever style they like. They may even wish to try and recreate their old house so they can adjust to the underground lifestyle better.

I think they will also be able to have windows that mimic a different environment. So they can show allocation of where ever they choose so they don't have to look at a boring concrete wall all the time.Within someone's dwelling one may not even be able to tell that they are underground surrounded by concrete.

Week 12 - Morphing Walls

An idea within my dwelling is to have walls that can morph into place. As I plan on having walls that are curved, rather than building walls with curved in them, the nano technology invented with concrete walls will allow the particles of the concrete to grow into a set place. This nano technology will make walls grow to a set size and place, and the particles will be able to be removed for easy deconstruction. 

 

This form of concrete is an evolution on the current concretes existing today (re-healable concrete). The current day concrete grows back into cracks that may occur in concrete panels and slabs everywhere. This is through bacteria in the concrete which continues to grow when the concrete splits. This is to stop the constant maintenance on slabs that may crack.

Week 12 - Concrete cut out details

This is the shape I think the concrete squares will be from a plan view. As you can see from this drawing, this shape will allow people to walk around the space even if all of the concrete squares below are missing. If they were just square, you would have to build bridges or some spanning device for people to access places. This shape will also allow smaller off cuts to be placed in the holes to allow different access over the holes. 

Week 12 - Green Space Section

This is what I imagine my green spaces will look like within the site. The vegetation should be dense so people can feel like they are walking through a thick garden outside. The garden is growing through the concrete square hole and people walking along  can walk through this environment. 

The trees and plants can grow in small soil space and still grow to their usual height. 

Week 11 - Solar Power

As light is desperately needed in the underground environment, it is important to be able to transfer the U.V and normal light throughout the whole system. Vegetation within the design will obviously need sunlight. Vegetation within the shafts will receive light naturally throughout the day. All of the vegetation within the green corridors will receive light transferred from the stored power. The car recycling centre and the shafts will house solar panels throughout the whole design.  There will be two types of solar panels which will include normal solar panels, which store light and then transfer that light as normal power into homes. The second type will be solar panels that collect and store the U.V light. The U.V light will be stored separately and then can be used for the green corridors and in the yards of the dwellings for all of the growth of the vegetation. 

Solar panels within this time in the future have also been developed and are a lot more efficient. For this reason, they are able to store and reuse the U.V light. The efficiency of the normal solar panels has also increased from around 10 - 15% today to around 85 - 90% in the period of this design. This allows ample light to be stored to power all of the services within the design. It also powers the car recycling centre above and the excess can be transferred to other buildings surrounding. 

Week 11 - Green Corridor and Dwellings

This is my initial thoughts of what the corridor may look like. People will be able to set back their dwellings or choose to not build on their whole block so they may have a yard surrounding their house. The first drawing below shows the two house on the green corridor with front yards. People can create whatever garden they like in their front yard. The second drawing Shows one yard with a very dense garden whilst another person decides not to have a front yard. The corridor between the two will also more than likely be vegetated.

These sorts of personalisation's of yards will add character to the underground spaces. 

Week 11 - Ventilation Sketch

Using the layout of the removable concrete pieces, the gaps created by removing them will allow for ventilation to move through the whole community better. While the site is over 6 levels and some sort of ventilation shaft will be incorporated to constantly move air through the system (with the vertical shafts), there should be air flowing between levels creating a breeze effect. This will sort of mimic the breeze of the wind outside. That way if its windy, then people underground will feel the breeze too.

Week 10 - Community layout Idea

This is a quick layout idea I have for the community. I want to have a layout where people always have access to the shafts and any street leads to at least one of the shafts. This also has a centre area which is like the community circle. Rather than being a shaft like the other four, there would be one on each level and would provide some sort of meeting point for the people on each level . Here they may be able to meet as a community and talk about things they may like to achieve on their particular level.

Week 10 - Concrete Squares

These drawings are my initial thoughts on the holes that I would like to include in my design. As my design will be a residential underground community people will have very little space to live in. They will only have 2.1m ceilings and probably only a small amount of area in which to live. As they will only have small areas to live in, I would like to include multi level dwellings. There will be concrete squares or shapes cut out so people are able to live on multiple levels. These cut outs will probably be in some sort of grid. 

People will most likely not be limited to one area on one level, but may be able to live over multiple levels. The drawing above shows a concept diagram of people living over multiple levels. The drawing is only 2 dimensional so it may look like someone just has a high ceiling, but in fact their dwelling may extend in the opposite dimension. The layout (which can be seen by the dotted lines)is different for all. Someone may occupy one level while another person might occupy fours levels. 

The drawing above shows the plan layout of the section above. The A in the drawing above related to the A in the section above and the same applies for the B. This is to show the layout extending in the other dimension.

Week 10 - Sketch Ideas

These are some initial drawings I did in class. They are just quick sketches of some of the ideas I'm thinking and what I may want to feature in my design. The image below is of a green corridor. The green corridors will be throughout the design and will have vegetation throughout. The plants should be able to grow in smaller amounts of soil by then and people can feel like they are walking in a garden.

Obviously I will need to get U.V light into these corridors to feed the plants with sunlight. I think the system to do this will be through some sort of shaft idea where sunlight can penetrate into the underground space in various locations through small shafts. These shafts will have some sort of reflection system within and at the bottom so when the light reaches the bottom, they relay the light to some mirrors which spread the light through the underground spaces; giving the plants the light they need. 

The drawing above shows the green corridor and the dwellings on either side. The people have vegetation growing all around them as they walk along the paths. Another important idea at the moment is the ventilation corridors seen to the far left and far right of the drawing. These corridors will hold all the light and water and other services and will act as a wind tunnel to feed the breeze into peoples home for a sort of natural ventilation.