Tuesday 17/02/09: DESIGN COMPETITION DAY!!

Today unfortunately we lost the design competition against the other group working on bricks: E1! Here is the description of our studio day.

We all came to the studio after the early morning lecture and started working on our final design for the competition. Everyone in our group worked by himself for more than 1 hour and after this brainstorming exercise we all shared our design ideas.

First, we agreed that there would be just one curved structure in which the barbecue would be integrated at one of the edges. Also, this unique piece of work woulb contain seats, everything obviously made out of bricks.

 

Examples of the small bricks we made and how we ‘played’ with them

 

 

Some ideas for the final design for the competition!

Then one of the group’s members came out with a different idea that definitely called our attention. It would not be just one unique piece of architecture in which everything is connected (barbecue, seats) but different small structures workings as seats/walls organised around a central point (a rounded barbecue). This design would allow people to walk through the structure to reach the centre, then get some food and finally seat on the top of these low walls (all have different heights). The seats are arranged in order to encourage people to seat and choose where they wnat to rest for eating and conversating. With this organisation there would also be a sense of community because seating around a barbecue and talking have real social qualities. As said before, food and especially the act of eating really stimulates conversation between people, and even more if they are seated somewhere.

 

From this image we can see the design idea. People can choose where to seat and which way they want to face: for example, two people can choose to face each other as the whole structure allows different seating positions.

 

Other images (plan, elevation) showing this design idea

 

2 hours before the competition we had the idea of changing our design again and return to the previous concept of one unique piece of work. This decision was because with the previous desing we should have used too many bricks and we would probably not have enough time to actually build it. Also, we thought one single structure looks more like a piece of architecture, whereas the idea of different separate seats around the barbecue seems as different brick blocks have been placed. So we worked really hard for these last 2 hours and decided to design a sort of curved wall where the barbecue is located at the edge and the level of this wall changes in order to create seats for the people. Actually we almost returned at the initial idea of something curved, unique, where seats and barbecue are totally integrateg and linked. We also imagined where the queue of people waiting to be served should be and this final idea really seems to be clear and functional as well as aesthetically pleasant.

Some developments of our design

Plan of the design we presented for the competition: at the edge there is the barbecue and the rest of the structure becomes lower to allow people to sit.

 

At 4 all groups went to one studio and the design competition started. Unfortunately we lost (however we have to say that the votes were almost equal) even if we tried to convince people to vote for us serving them some sausages with barbecue sauce!! It did not work but it was fun and we were very proud of our design, especially of this ‘insolite’ idea. 

The people who won designed 2 brick chairs and their concept was a chaos to order. Anyway, tomorrow we will meet both groups together and start working on the design that won the competition!

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