[2 plantrooms]Site Atmosphere Images. 1

[2 plantrooms]Defining Atmosphere for Ourselves

[BRIEF] 2 Plant rooms

For our first design session we had to create three spaces each exploring with different materials to create an interesting atmospheric space which we got from the site. Later on when we have a through understanding and development of these spaces, we will create 2 plant rooms with it. One on the site of Waiheke Island and one on the site of Auckland city (dystopia/utopia) . These 2 plant rooms are to be situated on the top of our two hotels which have either a dystopian or uptopian style. 


We have decided as a team to create not only a plant room that will provide an additional beauty effect for our hotel but one that also multifunctional so that we can get the most out of the given environment. So, being multifunctional while also creating a beautiful sight manipulating the effect of space would become our main ideas to work with.

City Site Images

This is my finished left city site image, inspired by dystopia in "The Ultimate City"

-Shelley

This is the right side of our part of the site and our version of Utopia of "The Ultimate City"

-Yinan

This is the imagined section of the left side.

-Alex

Utopia vs. Dystopia

What is a utopia?

A utopia is classified as an imagined place or state of things where everything is perfect.

What is a dystopia?

An imagined place in which everything is unpleasant or bad, sometimes an environmentally degraded one.

We think it is quite debatable about whether the utopia is applied to the garden city or the city. From the description of the garden city we would imagine it to be tranquil, beautiful and overall a utopian city. The city itself is a ruin, implying that this would be dystopia. However, the way the character Halloway feels about the city suggests he feels the metropolis is more utopia. We think this shows that a place cannot be classified as a utopia simply by the way it looks to everyone. We think that every individual would have a different version of their own utopia. We also discovered the fact that both of the cities had both utopian and dystopian qualities. The garden city may have appeared utopian by the description of the flowers, canals and the sophisticated “green” technology, yet the social conditions that were forced on the inhabitants of the garden city (vegetarianism, young people of different sexes living together in dormitories until married) makes us begin to question if this place really is utopia. The inhabitants freedom and free will is restricted. The city, whilst a ruin, has the freedom that the Garden City doesn’t offer. It has the ability to be who you want, and do what you want. We have agreed that in the story, The Ultimate City, there is no distinct Utopia or Dystopia

Hotel Research

We've been told to begin researching hotels to help us design our very own hotels on the city site, and the site at Waiheke.
These are a few hotels that I've found that are quite interesting.

This is the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai. This hotel is quite well known for being one of the most luxurious hotels in the world. The shape of the building is done to mimic the shape of a sail.

This is an example of a capsual hotel. This is the idea of a hotel at it's most basic. Simply somewhere to sleep.

This hotel is the Conrad Hotel in Beijing, China. I like the exterior facade on the hotel, it almost looks like a web has been woven over the top of it.

This is one of my favourite hotels from my research. After reading the text, "The Ultimate City" I really wanted to find out about hotel architecture that could be used in a utopian place, a type of hotel that was sustainable. This is only the concepts of the hotel.

This is designed by the firm, Atkins. The hotel has been designed to fit into the local quarry. Waterfalls, underwater aquariums and green areas are planned to be integrated into the design. 

This is the view of the hotel at night. 

-Shelley



LOCAL RESEARCH:

While walking around the site that we were given, we saw some local hotels around Auckland CBD and went around "sneaking" some information.

This one is situated on Symonds Street, unfortunately we weren't able to go inside and have a look.

The colour contrast of black and marble white gives a cool look to it and with the environment it is in, it makes use of the limited space it has and each balcony is shade for another balcony. 

We quite liked this picture as it shows the relationship between the street, environment and the hotel/apartment itself.

This was a quite interesting placing of the balcony for the different rooms.

 The photos above are apartments around the Vector Arena Area.This was the space between apartments that we thought was interesting. The placing of trees and how each building faces each other and, in contrast, their facade design that will be the thing that attracts their target market.

These photos above are the interior of the Sky city entrance, there are colour similarities and contrasts, different use of materials but most of all, they make use of the space inside to create a spacious welcoming. This is the first impression that travellers and tourists will have of their hotel upon arriving.

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH:

Some build new buildings to turn into buildings, some retrofit old castles or old buildings to create a new sense of space and some just find extraordinary places to put their hotels.

This hotel is situated 155m underground mine setting. They make use of the environment around it and shows its industrial history of mining silver, and the beautiful scenery that is around.

This hotel is called "Locanda Rosa Rosae"

This is an ancient converted mill near Treviso dating from 1570. The architect took four years to bring back to life and the most esquistte thing about this hotel is that it has a small water mill running through the bedrooms too.

This hotel is a concept that is supposed to be situated in the United Arab Emirates. This is called the White Hotel that combines the classic Arabic architecture with contemporary design. Steel and concrete will be the main material of this building with facade material that is responsive tot he local climate of Zayed Bay, Adu Dhabi. The whiteness and the illumination from these block parts show a great sense of aesthetic and will be fun to play around with if combined in our designs.

-Yinan 

Stop Animation of Plant

This is the stop animation of my two plants. I managed to produce this by layering many different pictures taken around the plant on top of each other, and then using the animation tool on photoshop to produce a GIF.

At the moment this is just a stop animation of the two plants turning around, hopefully by the end of the next few weeks I will be able to produce another stop animation of the plants actually growing.

-Shelley

 

This is the stop animation of my plant and i am turning it partly to show some angles of my plant. This was produced on photoshop by layering and choosing the right speed of animation. This can be produced by choosing the animation bar from "window".

We are gathering data from the plants and will be able to create a stop animation of the plants growing as my team-mate has referred to above.

-Yinan

This is a small GIF i made in Photoshop like the rest of my team. In the future we should have an interesting set of images througout the plant's life, which may be used to create a more meaningful animation.
-Alex