Site Visit

In one of our first monday classes we went to visit a newly finished project in Bray. It was an old church that was restored, with very much interaction from the community. I liked the way the project had turned out. It showed a nice way of "refreshing" the old with the new.

The community house had a new extension jointed with this nice copper structure.

These ambient light fittings has an upward lighting as well creating a nice effect in the ceiling.

Wallpaper image

This floor has a wood finish, but it is actually tiles.

There was an emphasis on "country life" which you can see on the choice of materials.

The Church

Site Visit

Sunday the 9th of October I visited The Gibson Hotel, to get some inspiration, and to see what to do and what not to do for my next studio project.

The reception is in the third floor, with very nice colours and layout, but it is a little dark.

 The reason why you have to go all the way to the third floor to find the reception is because there is supposed to be a shopping center on the three first floors. The hotel does actually not start until this floor. 

I like they way they have added lighting to emphasize the stairs. The handrails are only metal cylinders going from the floor to the roof, and it makes a really nice effect.

Nicely lit elevators, creating a luxurious space.

This is on the third floor, yet it seems like it is on ground level because of the nicely constructed gardens outside of the hotel bedrooms.

The restaurant has a warm atmosphere with bright colours. The fabric in the ceiling is hiding light fittings.

Site Visit

Saturday 8th of October we went to a few open houses. I really enjoyed this day, it is nice to actually see that works are getting built, instead of always just drawing imaginary projects ;)

Henry J. Lyons Architects 

Reception desk.

This image is illustrating very well the way the architects have been able to join the two buildings and use them to the full without doing anything with the facade of the protected structure.

I love the concrete walls with wood panel patterns. It gives a modern and stylish look, but keeps the warm feeling you would only get with the wooden structure.

Another very interesting way of texturing walls

These skylights that are already below ground level lights up the meeting rooms down in the basement.

This room is 8 meters below ground level, still it is the room with the best natural light source. 

An interesting design for the employee kitchen which is used for lunch hours or staff parties. Bespoke workbench in corian and stainless steel. Very nice with almost invisible jointing between steel and corian.



Later this day we went to see the Criminal Courts of Justice

Because of security reasons we were not allowed to take any pictures within this building, but we got a nice tour, and a very interesting talk about the building. There are three completely different infrastructure systems within the building, so that the Client, the Jury, and the Judge will never have to meet outside of the court rooms. 
We learned why things are designed the way they are, we learned that the building is meant to last for a 100 years, and how the architects went about solving that. All in all a very interesting tour, and the most interesting building I have visited in a while.  

LEARNING LOG

As mentioned earlier the clients for my project has many parrots. Three to be exact. And they also have a dog. I figured it wouldn't do any harm to research this a little bit too so that I can customise my design further.

The family's three parrot's

Parrots have a strong, direct flight. Most species spend much of their time perched or climbing in tree canopies. They often use their bills for climbing by gripping or hooking on branches and other supports. On the ground parrots often walk with a rolling gait.

The diet of parrots consists of seeds, fruit, nectar, pollen, buds, and sometimes arthropods and other animal prey. The most important of these for most true parrots and cockatoos are seeds; the evolution of the large and powerful bill can be explained primarily as an adaptation to opening and consuming seeds.

Studies with captive birds have given insight into which birds are the most intelligent. While parrots are able to mimic human speech, studies with the African Grey Parrot have shown that some are able to associate words with their meanings and form simple sentences. Along with crows, ravens, and jays, parrots are considered the most intelligent of birds.

Amazons, cockatoos, macaws and other big parrots have human lifespans- up to 80 years.

Amazons, macaws and cockatoos have dramatic plumage, talk the most, and can be quite affectionate. 

Birds need to bathe at least once every couple of weeks to keep their feathers in tip-top shape. For larger parrots, use a heavy ceramic dog dish as a bathtub. (Big parrots will tip over anything lighter.)

Many dogs can be taught to leave birds alone.

This is the family's newest member, and of course a consideration in the design process.

Watch out for other dangers. Parrots chew electrical cords.

extremely important: birds' lungs consist of multiple air sacs that are extremely sensitive to fumes. Aerosols, overheated Teflon-coated cookware, plug-in air fresheners, cigarettes, even fingernail polish remover - anything that has an odor - should be considered potentially deadly to your parrot.

     Montana Denver Corner Parrot Cage

 

LEARNING LOG

As of my Studio Course requires I am doing a learning log of my research for my projects. I am currently designing a luxury apartment for a made up client with many parrots(!) The building being used is placed in Dublin, and to make the best use of the daylight I did some research on it. 

"Achieve a minimum of daylight factor of 2 percent"

Light levels in a building space are typically measured in footcandles or lux. Light from electric lights is fairly constant so exact levels of lighting can be obtained through the selection and layout of light fixtures. When it comes to daylighting the light source is the sky vault which is outside the building so it becomes necessary to install glazed openings (windows and skylights) to admit adequate daylight to meet space needs. Designing for exact levels of light from daylight is difficult since the light source is constantly changing depending on time of day and weather conditions. Instead of calculating exact levels of light (footcandles or lux) in a given space from daylight a daylight factor was created to measure relative light levels. The daylight factor is best defined as:

DF = Iin/Iout x 100%
Where:
DF = daylight factor
Iin = illumiance due to daylight on the indoor working plane
Iout = illumiance outdoors on a unobstructed horizontal plane

There are three possible ways that daylight can reach the indoor working plane. They are:

Visable light directly from the sky vault (define)

Light reflected from exterior surfaces.

Light entering the space and reflecting from interior surfaces.

All three of these components need to be accounted for to determine the daylight factor.

A daylight factor of 2 is a typical level one would want to achieve for an office space. It assumes that 2% of the total light that is outside the building ends up on the working plane or desktop. Assuming an average outdoor illumiance of 2500 footcandles and a daylight factor of 2% the indoor illumiance on your desktop would be 50 footcandles (2% x 2500 footcandles = 50 footcandles). Other typical daylight factors for various spaces are:

Discussion Groups – 14
Residential Living Room – 1
Residential Kitchen – 2
Office - detail work – 4
Office - drafting – 6
Office - corridors – 0.5
Sports facilities – 2

Traditional “daylighting” excludes direct beam-sunlight which typically introduces unwanted heat, glare and extreme contrast which may lead to increased energy use and uncomfortable conditions.

The sun is constantly changing positions (altitude and azimuth) during the day and throughout the seasons.

The MOU guidance recognizes that excluding "all" direct sunlight penetration may not be possible or desirable. If the building design incorporates both passive solar heating and daylighting excluding the direct beam would not be desirable since this is the main source of heat.

Excluding direct beam sunlight starts with good building orientation, placing the long axis of the building facing due north and south. Windows facing north will receive the greatest amount of daylight and can dispense with overhangs and fins for most latitudes (recognizing that some direct beam penetration will be possible during summer sunrise and sunset - see Figure 1).

The second best daylighting is from south facing windows which can be protected from direct beam sunlight using fixed overhangs. The least desirable daylighting is from east and west facing windows because of the difficulty of eliminating direct beam sunlight during mornings (East side) and afternoons (West side). The only way to completely omit direct beam sunlight during this time is movable shading devices such as blinds and roller shades which will also block the daylighting. Figure 2 provides solar angles for various latitudes which can be used to size fixed south facing overhangs.

Keep in mind that these solar angles allow for both daylighting and passive solar heating so it will be necessary to divide the window wall into two areas, an upper glass area for continuous daylighting protected by a overhang that prevents both summer and winter direct beampenetration, and a lower area which provides both daylighting and view with light colored blinds or roller shades to control winter direct beam penetration. A more optimum design would make use of light shelves to bounce light further back into the space (see Figure 3).