Sunday 30 June 2013

Back on the roof

In a previous post on this subject, I talked about the possibilities for developing London's unused flat roof areas.  I think this is a hugely underused resource and when the Forgotten Spaces competition came around, I couldn't help but submit an entry to demonstrate, (if only to get it off my chest).

Our entry for the Forgotten Spaces competition 2013

The proposals were for a hydroponics roof-garden on an institutional building, somewhere that could produce fresh fruit and vegetables for the restaurant below, and where staff and visitors could come up to chill out, or even hold meetings; a park less than 20M away.  The site chosen was the RIBA headquarters on Portland Place.  They typically have lots of spare space, a good place to start, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.


Roofs = weather proofing and services only? 

It's unfortunate that in so many cases, the roof-scape of a building project is not considered a key part of the design.  In the Architectural press, the latest and newest projects often tend to hide any reference to their roofs and when they do, they normally are given a token bit of greenery.

Extract from the AJ 30 May 2013, for example.
But with Google and Bing maps, and the fun new software which comes with our iPhones, our citys' roof-scape can no longer hide.  

This screen grab over Wandsworth, London helps to illustrate how hospitals, health clubs, schools, industrial, institutional buildings and housing blocks appear to offer the most potential for roof-scape development.  

There's even more on offer over the City of London.

For roof top developments, there's lots of examples and inspiration to work from.  The competition proposals for the RIBA (above) worked on the basis that the installation would be accommodated within limited loadings of the roof plate of 0.75kN/m2, with localised supports for the tanks or larger plants as required. 

Roof top hydroponics and aeroponics system using rain water harvesting
to supply the restaurant below with fresh fruit and vegetables.

The initial idea came from examples in New York.  More installations like these would transform any concrete jungle and could make great destinations for people to escape to for a quick work break, or to chill out in on an evening.





Another example like this in New York adds vibrancy to the city and
suddenly draws attention to the unused flat roof areas around.

Rooftop bar in New York
Some other cool uses to draw from are obvious activities like cinema, bar, pool etc., made more fun from their elevated location...

Roof top pool, Singapore, with an amazing infinity edge.

The rooftop cinema Melbourne.  Imagine if the film was projected on a neighbouring building though...
Or try to take the roof off a building with an impromptu gig.  (The building and surroundings U2 chose in LA in 1987 could have staged a whole festival).





Built roof development projects generally seem to fall in to two types:  
  • Expanding and adding value to a building with smaller installations, or
  • Adding an entire additional floor over the original building 


Expanding a building by adding smaller installations on the roof, or building an entire new floor.

Some neat examples I can think of include the use of playground space on the roof of the Montessori School Fuji Kindergarden in Tokyo, and the ArtBox extension to Furzedown Primary School, in London SW17, even if I do say so myself :)  



Montessori Kindergarden School, Tokyo uses the roof as play ground space in a tight urban site.  

The ArtBox at Furzedown Primary School, London SW17

Please check out our Pinterest board and share your thoughts, ideas and examples of work.

Monday 10 June 2013

Bespoke Components, Makers, Tinkerers and WikiHouse

Many of the posts on this blog site examine the difference between the Building Industry (BI) and other industrial sectors, and ask what lessons can be learnt to make us a bit more dynamic, especially when it comes to developments in materials.  But, it is also important to acknowledge that the structure of the building industry allows for dynamism and invention which is not really seen in other industrial sectors.  In the BI there are large and small manufacturers and suppliers, and all are subject to the revolution in digital technology.  Many large companies produce standardised components.  Many smaller companies purchase standardised components to work further to 'add value' as bespoke items, to sell on.  More and more, technology lowers the bar for entry, and this plays to the advantage of the BI more than any other because its supply structures are set up to produce one-off products (e.g. office buildings, cultural centres etc.) or short run products (e.g. housing).

The BI champions the bespoke.  In our 21st century post modem society (a Neil Spiller term) the BI can demonstrate more industrial agility than the car industry, for example (to which it is often compared in Modernist literature).  When choosing a new car, the options are not all that great (make, model, colour and accessories), whereas for a new building, pretty much everything is up for grabs.  Is the production line system, once the hero of industry, now restricting the further innovation of the car industry?  Our digital technology revolution is allowing the BI to produce more and more one-off creative products in a variety of areas with a variety of materials.

Companies:
More and more companies are now able to print images on glass to order.  One larger company Okalux have a large ink-jet printer which they can send large sheets of glass through.  They also experiment with ways of encapsulating other materials in to glass units.  Products made to order.

Examples of encapsulation and printing with glass at Okalux

Milliken Carpets are one of several companies which can print the design you want to a carpet layout.  The carpet is fed through a huge industrial machine, to make the order, but other smaller companies have caught on to this and smaller scale carpet printing machines are available for smaller orders.

Digitally printed carpet


Cowley timber works is well known because of their willingness and ability to take on projects of geometric complexity, and make them work. They have a great team of designers and timber engineers, supported by some high end software and manufacturing capabilities, including a 5 axis CNC machine.  They have an apetite to trial, test and play with materials and components to see how they work, or at what point they don't.

Cowley's meeting room pods at Peckham Library

Even other, more low profile timber companies like CandM Joinery in Tamworth, have machinery set up to receive a 3D stair drawing, then process it in to components, 'eat' timber and 'spit' out the parts at the end of the process line, all millimeter perfect.

Perhaps the rise in information led technology, and its ability to expand the possibilities in architecture and building are described with the growing use of the CNC machine and the 3D printer.  3D printing was the subject of a previous post.  One fun company to look at for CNC work (in addition to Cowley's) is the CNC Workshop in Hackney, London.  It all starts to look so straight forward and accessible.

Bench for John Lewis by Foreign Office Architects

This is to add to the list of manufacturing and engineering companies which have always supplied the BI with purpose-made specialist components.

Approach:
It's not surprising with technology lowering the bar for entry that there has been an increase of work taken on by makers and tinkerers.  The talks on TED show some great projects and adventures when experimenting with materials and components.  Some talks to watch are Gever Tulley's and Dan Phillips, who challenges our preconceptions related to buildings as commodities with his analysis of apollonian and dionysian perspectives and the 'divided self'.  Well worth a watch.

Another is Alastair Parvin's work on WikiHouse, directed to revolutionise housing for the lowest paid people (which is approximately 98% of the world's population).  Very cleverly he combines the accessibility of digital technology with open source software and hardware to allow flexibility in design, by anyone who wants to access it.  Even the shanty-towns in Cape Town, South Africa have a market value, so why not make them better?  With this system, anyone with an inclination can.  But, as they say, time is money, so I bet that before this system takes off on a large scale to better the lives of people in developing countries, we might see its presence first prototyping low cost housing in places like the UK.  There is a lot of milage in system approaches like this.

WikiHouse prototype and trials...