New Light

I decided to take a little bit of a break to get a fresh start again.  When I came back to it I decided to stray away from the cables and came up with these two ideas.  Where the grey parts over the interstate are the elevated park and the other part of the grey the park is extended over parking.  The white is the actual building housing the rest of the program.  This way I was able to separate the parking element from the rest of the building (however it will still be integrated.)  In the second image I have included some cable stay structure, it is not as daunting as previous cable stay ideas.  The brown curving piece is a pedestrian birdge by cable stay.  I have found it important to include the design of the bridge and park.  They are important to include because for one they otherwise would not be created and two it speaks better toward an integrated urban plan.  I feel better about this concept than any others.  Some things I will look at changing include: employing the swirling effect, puncturing through the building (as in the first image,) and rearranging some programmatic spaces to take advantage of views.  

Double Arches

This concept was derived from a system that has been used on several stadiums.  This one does not really address the park, but I would imagine the park structure to be like those up the interstate with elements that carry through.  Though it does not show here I would really like to emulate Roche/Dinkeloo Arch.  Oakland Museum.  They have the building peaking out of the ground through a series of roof gardens and terraces.  This concept does not display any notion of connections other than the cable structure itself. 

Another idea off of this one is to shrink it down and use a similar structure over the park, suspending down from two space trusses. 

Again, I am working on a digital model to put this concept into to be able to give a little bit more contect to it.

Spiral

This concept is a little larger than the others.  I was inspired by the Bavinger House, a cable stayed house designed by Bruce Goff.  This concept tries to alieviate the disconnect from the building to the park.  Each dowel in the model is actually a mast which cables will suspend from to hold up floors.  The problem is that it is single directtional.  If I take this concept further, I would try to incorporate other directions that the spiral comes from.  I am also working on a digital model to help give some better context to the connections of the building to the rest of the city.

Early Concepts

These two concepts look at different ways to hold up the park.  They did not address any part of the building other than being almost column free.  This scale is too small to work with, the next ones will be a little larger.   Again, the cable structure was looked at as a way to visually reach out.  The park is also an attempt to functionally reach out and bridge the interstate.

Cablestay structure

The project has been about connections.  More in depth it is about reaching out to the community connecting people and places.   Cable structures and masted structures seem to best display that that concept.  So I have been doing some in depth studies on those systems. 

Programmatic

This multimodal transit station will include a highspeed train station, visitor center, car, bike, and segway rentals, parking garage, main hall/lobby, skywalk link, bus stop, deli, coffee shop, bar and restaurant.  The program will include expansion for other personal rapid transit (prt) for whatever the future brings us.  The program will be about 13,000- 15,000 sq. ft.  depending on how large the parking structure turns out to be.  I am also proposing an expansion to the park system that bridges across I-35 adding about 6 acres of park. 

A Collection

This is the site context model I have been working on and will continue to work on.  It is a work in progress.  I apologize for not having images from when I started.  It began as two series' of sections through the city.  Each were perpendicular to eachother.  So I had a grid across the city.  I then placed paper mache over the grid to get a surface.  This way I was able to get the surface relatively close to the topo map.  As you can see now I have plaster over the top.  Eventurally it will be nice and smooth with some surface buildings.  The scale here is very small, 1" equals about 250'.  To give you a little more perspective, it is just short of 2 miles lengthwise.  From the lowest part of the model (about at my site)  to the top of the hill is an elevation change of 650' just short of 3".