Marcus Poon Architecture Sketchbook

MARCUS POON ARCHITEC TURE SKE TCHBOOK

CONTENTS SKETCHES 2015-2017 TOWER RENEWAL Studio, 2017 Perspectives PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE Studio, 2015 Perspectives, Diagrams, Details NEW GROUND PLANE Studio, 2016 Perspectives, Diagrams SHEAR HOUSE Wood Construction, 2016 Axonometric, Plans, Elevation 3D EXPERIMENTAL SKETCH History of Digital Media, 2016 Multimedia

TOWER RENEWAL STUDIO 6 PERSPECTIVES Toronto is home to many post-war slab towers that are often clustered in dense suburban sites. Tower Renewal is a project that aims to address the shortcomings of these aging towers in the present urban climate in terms of architectural and urban design. In Mississauga, the Sherobee Tower complex is a typical model of post-war housing, but the new light rail that is planned along Hurontario street provides the site with new opportunities for the introduction of mixed use functions and pedestrian circulations. Tower Renewal also attempts to introduce solutions for the retrofitting of the existing towers for 21st century energy efficiency needs.

The following set of sketches are part of a larger project that reimagines how existing spaces would be redeveloped.

Pedestrian access to the Camilla Park ravine system from Hurontario Street connects the high density towers to under utilized green spaces.

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View along pedestrian road showing semi-private entry conditions to private stacked townhomes.

Intersection at Queensway and Hurontario showing proposed massing at grade to encourage pedestrian use near the future LRT station.

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Pedestrian streets are introduced perpendicular to the main road in order to draw foot traffic into the tower site.

Proposed additions to mid rise towers allows for increased pedestrian interaction with retail opportunities at grade.

Pavement and landscaping design between the existing post-war tower and the new proposed vehicular access routes.

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PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE STUDIO 4 PERSPECTIVES, DIAGRAMS, DETAILS Several iterations are explored through various sketch diagrams that explore the planning and construction of a transit museum that is situated at the intersection of the Yonge-University subway line, and the proposed Eglinton Crosstown LRT. The approach used in designing the Path of Least Resistance attempted to reverse a typical workflow of constructing the building with 3d software with renderings being byproducts of the digital model, but instead starting with perspectival environments and spaces, upon which plans, sections, and elevations would be based on. However, drawing with pen and paper did not stop after project conceptualization, but continued on throughout working through iterations of schematic drawings, and construction details.

Above: Conceptual sketch showing entry from park into Eglinton LRT concourse Opposite: Initial conceptual diagrams that explore massing, program, sightlines and daylighting.

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View from the proposed Eglinton LRT loggia to the sunken park and exposed subway tunnel.

Different sightlines and circulatory pathways are presented through the use of mezzanine levels, bulkheads, and floor curbs.

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Conceptual sketch showing views to the atrium highlighting the vertical connection between the concourse, ground and second levels.

Conceptual sketch showing the intersection of multiple pathways on the second and ground levels, the latter expressed in different paving patterns.

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Opposite Top: Details of structural girders that span through the building.

Opposite Bottom: Heating and ventilation strategy through a plenum underneath the main auditorium.

Bottom: Detail of foliage along south exposure to minimize solar heat gains.

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Opposite: Roof detail at the intersection of structural girder and glass clerestory.

Above: Joinery detail of the bottom chord of a wood glulam girder.

NEW GROUND PLANE STUDIO 5 PERSPECTIVES, DIAGRAMS Designing New Ground Plane started with a site visit to assess site conditions that could not be captured through photography only. An afternoon was spent wondering the neighbourhood and drawing street conditions, with particular attention paid to isolating details that showed how the community used the public spaces around the site.

After site documentation was done, massing diagrams, sections, and perspectives were made without the use of any digital medium. This approach was chosen to not only take advantage of the speed of sketching, but also to limit the amount of detail that could be included, which would detract from clearly showing overall themes and goals.

Below: Close up sketches of existing site conditions that show eclectic mixes of various architectural styles.

Opposite: Existing street conditions on a Sunday afternoon.

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Series of perspective sketches drawn during conceptualization that were used as guidelines for laying out plans and sections.

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Diagrams, sections, and perspective drawings created throughout the design process.

SHEAR HOUSE WOOD CONSTRUCTION AXONOMETRIC, PLANS, ELEVATION Shear house was designed as a single detached house of wood construction that measured less than 600 square feet. The design introduced two stacked volumes that are oriented to different along surrounding elements; the top volume is angled southward and allows for panoramic landscape views, and the bottom volume aligns to the existing street edge. The alignment of the two boxes allows for parts of the building’s form to serve as a terrace, shelter over the main entry, and shelter over the carport. The design was first drawn up by hand, and later redone digitally.

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Opposite: Initial massing axonometric design to visualize spaces that resulted from offsetting two volumes.

Above: Preliminary plan and elevation.

3D EXPERIMENT SKETCH HISTORY OF DIGITAL MEDIA PLAN, SECTION, ELEVATION, MULTIMEDIA 3D Experiment Sketch was an attempt to explore how digital and analogue techniques could be combined together into a 2.5 dimensional space, so that the advantages of both computer software, and sketching could be combined. The Hydro One building atrium, at the corner of Bay and Queen streets in downtown was chosen due to it being a space with a diversity of forms, materials, and lighting, that could be a testing ground for many different techniques. In that space were varieties of orthogonal and organic forms, as well as static and dynamic objects.

The exploration began through sketching individual elements in the space, with a self imposed time limit of two hours, in order to test the boundaries of the speed of drawing in comparison to modeling through computer software. Orthographic projections of objects were sketched on grid paper, to establish relative scales to each other, with some elements existing as elevations only, some as plan only, and some assemblages of plan and elevation. Light shadow and movement were roughed in stylistically to infer properties of the drawn element, instead of through measured calculations.

Shape and forms that were repetitive such as floor tiles, and lighting fixtures were reduced into typical swatches that were rough representations of the existing elements, and were later manipulated during digital postprocessing. Highly levels of detail were also attempted through the drawing of small elements such as coffee cups, and foliage, to test its feasibility within the three dimensional sketch scene.

After the documentation of individual elements into sketches, they were scanned and imported into Adobe Photoshop for processing; the blue lines of the grid paper was removed, smudges and miscellaneous artefacts were cleaned, and contrast levels were adjusted. Each drawing was cropped into its own separate file, and as assigned a corresponding alpha channel, which could be used to show various material transparencies in each object. Each alpha channel was mapped to its corresponding sketch image with the same UV coordinates to create image pairs.

The next stage was to place the image pairs together into Rhinoceros, in order to use its features that allow for the mapping of images and alpha channels onto planes, along with real-time manipulation and feedback.

Images were placed in the virtual scene in a way that was similar to the physical site in terms of their spatial orientations, positions, and relative size proportions. Each element was arranged in relation to the viewport camera in order to minimize visual distortions, especially with planes that did not face the camera lens. Care also had to be taken to place objects in a way to minimize software limitations from backface culling, which affected proper object occlusion.

When all the parts had been placed in the scene, it was rendered as an animation flythrough to show the efficacy of conflating two and three dimensional workflows together to represent a space. https://youtu.be/V9uTyuOeEo8

Opposite: Catalogue of individual sketch elements that were recorded from the scene. The elements are shown after post-processing.

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Opposite and Above: Stills taken from the animated sketch flythrough at 50 frame intervals.