Priya Grimes Academic Portfolio part 2

Plant Research Facility

ARCH2100, SEMESTER 1 2020

In this project, the aim was to revitalise Hanlon and Jones Park, a now socially stagnant space that attracts little community life. The brief was based on an existing council proposal to initiate environmental repair in the flood prone space. The project asked us to propose a glasshouse, research facility and community hub and situate them in an overall planning strategy for the park.

Plan Arrangement

New form taken from the existing Hanlon Park shape

First Concept

Digital Model Development

Glasshouse

Repeated Glasshouse and Viewing Dech

Roof Plan

Research Centre

ouse For A Collector

This project came from a ‘magic mat’ assignment at the beginning of the semester, where we were instructed to find the optimal clustered arrangement of 1x2m mats with magic properties. I decided to take my arrangement into the next project to explore how geometries could govern the design and expression of a house for a collector. Set in Mount Cootha, the house was to sit subtly in the landscape whilst showcasing the treasures of the collector in a grande interior.

ARCH1201, SEMESTER 2 2019

Model Photos

Model Photos

PAVILLION In-Transit

ARCH

1100, SEMESTER 1 2019

This project prescribed the design of a pavilion for bike parking and a social stop on the go for students on their way in to the University of Queensland. The site was situated adjacent to the green amphitheatre on campus and would require the removal of existing green life. For this reason, I decided to make my pavilion an organic pop in the landscape. Natural of form and artificial of colour and material. A pavilion that would pay artistic reference to the landscape and serve as an occupiable and functional ornament in the landscape.

Model Photos

Situating the Curves in the Site

Innitial Contour Line Drawing of a section of the tree

Curves Extracted from the Drawing

ARCHITECT: CARLO SCARPA

STONE

PRECEDENT 1: Tomba Brion, Veneto,ItalyCarlo Scarpa

ALTERNATING GEOMETRIES

PRECEDENT 2: Casa TabarelliCarlo Scarpa

VERNACULAR ADAPTION

Scarpa

PRECEDENT 3: Fondazione Querini Stampalia- Carlo

West Screen Elevation

1:100 @A1

North Screen Elevation

1:100 @A1

Making Things Better Part 3

393

North Elevation 1:200 2m8m10m

South Elevation 1:200 2m8m10m

Under The CASSIA Tree

ART PROJECT 2018

PEN AND ACRYLIC ON PAPER WITH STRING

Capturing an element of my grandfathers life as augmented by his Parkinson's disease, the work pieces together his and my memories with him. The robust paint scrapes on scrap paper are stitched together with red string. Expressing his struggle to formulate clear links between his memories and express them coherently. Bringing colour and light into his life, natural fauna which he has studied his whole life and shared with his family is highlighted. The cassia tree at the bottom left stands outside his home in Yeppoon, a symbol of the tranquillity I feel returning there each year on holiday. The motor bike that he would ride between towns to court my grandmother in his youth, the vehicle that has driven his life and will continue to for the rest of his life. The sign on the top, Indonesian for welcome home, a sign I have walked past all my life, each year met with a figure gradually appearing less like the man I know. The text, entries from my night journal I used to keep as a kid, noting the constant comings and goings of the family of the night as I watched from the couch. The bottom right corner is left blank, it is what is still left to be filled and also where a video of my feet dancing in a silhouette projects. His movement is slowly decaying as is his mind, but he always sits there with a smile and an attentive ear.

Decades

ART PROJECT 2021

PEN AND ACRYLIC ON PAPER WITH STRING

Thsi is a project in the works weaving together my most significant memories from my first 20 years. I plan to do one every 10 years to capture a story that can not simply beexpressed by photographs. Memory is something I hold very dear. Here two significant trees that defined place for me in primary and high school are growing together, their leaves will permeate throughout the peace.

DANCing

What excites me about dance is the era of fusion of styles that we now live in. There is so much depth to the history of dance foundations and in the unique interpretations people and groups are making of them. I believe I have something to contribute to this global discussion and this is a stance I share with my view on architecture.

From a young age I began classical ballet training and continued to participate in dance activities in senior school in the school dance troupe from 2015-2018. It is here where I learnt jazz and contemporary and participated in dance showcases and local dance eisteddfods and national competitions with my group. When I was 17, I began to establish my own style of dance and was pulled in a less classical direction. For the past three years I have been heavily participating in Street Groove, the UQ Hip-Hop dance society as well as in other street dance circles. I have dedicated my free time towards learning new styles of dance including, hip-hop, locking, popping, house and waacking and developing my own fusion style from dance classes, jams, freestyle battle events, dance showcases, choreography competitions and video projects. Most recently, I have been choregraphing and teaching my first locking and hip-hop routine for stage.

Water To Steam

Young Archirects Competition - Cultural Stations

For the competition design, I partnered with my friend Rebecca Jak on a project to revitalise the small Sardinian town of Elini for tourism. The brief left ample room for imagination and interpretation. Ftom a research based approach, our final project incorporated refferences to the island and town's train, cultural, and ancient roots. Culminating at the enlivened town centre, the proposal draws together an artists retreat and stay cabins on the fringe of town, providing a destination for intimate holidaying and relaxation. Whilst the sculptural heart of the town builds upon the simplified geometries of the sqaure, arch and circle to revive Elini's stature as a cultural station along the Sardinian journey. The heart comprises of the steam and clock tower at the hearth of the site, which offers a ritual practice to bind together the community. In addition, the ampitheatre and central precinct offer a sculptural playground for the community to meld and inhabit with their own sensibilities. The carriage boulevard offers small capsules that can cater to the flexible needs of a shop, bar or food truck in order to provide a market villiage at the centre of town.

WATER TO STEAM

Culminating at the enlivened town centre, the proposal draws together an artists retreat and stay cabins on the fringe of town, providing a destination for intimate holidaying and relaxation. Whilst the sculptural heart of the town builds upon the simplified geometries of square, arch and circle to revive Elini's stature as a cultural station along the Sardinian journey. The heart comprises of the smoke and clock tower at the hearth of the site, which offers a ritual practice to bind together the community. In addition, the amphitheatre and central precinct offer a sculptural playground for the community to meld and inhabit with their own sensibilities. The carriage boulevard offers small capsules that can cater to flexible needs of a shop, bar or food truck and provide a market village at the centre of town.

CARRIAGE MARKET

Along Elini’s historic train track can be found a series of “train carriages” along a track that can be occupied by any local business owners from food venders to hair dressers, clothings stores and the like. Functioning like an outdoor market, locals and tourists can visit permanent sellers and the town can hold community events in this large expansive outdoor landscape.

MUSEUM

Existing building along train tracks to be turned into a museum of Elini’s history. A history society can be formed in the town to collate stories of local families and their stories. This will give locals a chance to share their history with future tourists of the town.

CHURCH

It has been decided that the existing landscaping and public space adjacent to the curch should be left untouched. The considered design of the space is inviting and pleasant thus no intervention should take place in this area.

HOTELS

Allocated building sites in the suburban area of Elini are to remain as be with an interior renovation to accommodate bed and breakfast or hotel/hostel accommodation for tourists.

CENTRAL PRECINCT

Being in the centre of the town with the main road looping around it, this site has the opportunity to be an urban cartalyst for the town. Due to its close relationship with car traffic, the site should involve visits but not prolonged stays. In many large cities these points houes clock towers, ferris wheels, arcs of triumph and the like. This project proposes an urban playground culminating in a clock tower that involves a ritual for tourists and locals to partake in.

1 HAIR SALON

2 CASA MUSEO - MUESEUM OF OGLIASTRA HOUSE

3 GROCERY STORE

4 BUTCHER SHOP

5 BAR

6 HOTEL

7 BAR

8 CHURCH

9 GYM

10 HOTEL

AMPHITHEATRE

Across the road from the town’s new social precinct is a vast open site with remarkable views of the surrounding landscape. Also located adjacent to this site is the primary school. An amphitheatre takes advantage of the natural topography, frames views and provides school kids a destination to congregate before, during and after school. This amphitheatre also provides the opportunity for a semi-formal setting to host events like theatre and music productions.

CABIN ACCOMODATION

For nature seekers like the avid cycling community that passes this area on a famous bike route can stay in tiny home cabin accomodation in the forest reserves on the outskirts of Elini, still within a short walking distance of the town centre.

ARTIST RETREAT

The old olive oil mill will be renovated into a place for artists to gather and congregate to practise their discepline and disconnect.

WATER TO STEAM

The journey begins at an elevated platform floating abve a pool of water. Here, visitors collect a portion of water and understake passage through the tower - weaving through its walls as they ascend and discover a view of Elini’s expansive landscape. Their journey continues to a room behind the town clock with it’s silhouette framing another view. Culminating at the tower’s peak, is a bed of hot coal upon which the visitors tip their water. The coal exhales a gust of steam funnelled through the tower’s apex to signify their presence.

This ritual is inspired by steam locamotives to honour Sardinia’s historic train history and Elini’s connection to this story.

Research Proposal

Title Brick: A Cross Cultural, Vernacular, Contemporary Hybrid Research Question

How can pavilions be used to explore the development of cross-cultural, vernacular and contemporary, brick hybrids in archietcture, through the Danish building tradition and work of Per Kirkeby?

Aim

The aim is to distil a cross-cultural hybrid model for vernacular and contemporary design that reacts to the ecology, climate and landscape of the site, the technological advances in contemporary design of the epoch and the rich cultural history of brick architecture. This will be achieved through an analysis of the process and oeuvre of Kirkbey and the convergence of key motifs derived from Denmark’s core design principles and historical design influences from the Gothic, Baroque and Classical era and his personal influences from Greenland and ancient Maya and Greece.

Methodology/Methods

Literature and Pictorial sources

Significance

The homogenisation of building design around the world following the second industrial revolution and the rise of modernism and an ‘international style, neglected the aspects of environmental response and adaption to local context in architectural design1. An arsenal of machines operating ventilation and lighting replaced traditional design considerations and the need for vernacular archietcture to accommodate for unique climates and create unique archietcture2. In the context of an exponentially expanding technological word, it must be assured that a symbiosis between archietcture, ecology, landscape and climate is not lost in design3. Pavilions inhabit an intermediary zone between art and archietcture, outdoor and indoor and permeance and semi permanence, lacking the functional necessity for machines in most cases. In addition, they are largely uninfluenced and restrained by bureaucracy, economy, politics and program function4. Hence, they can be used to re-introduce cultural and naturalistic design back into the frame and explore the role vernacular archietcture can play in the technical age of contemporary design. This is highly relevant in Denmark, where their traditional core principles of humanism, craftmenship and connection to nature, are being replaced by developer driven economic and technological considerations in their push towards sustainable design5. Instead of proposing a return to vernacular styles, a cross cultural approach of sampling and re-imagining tradition in the contemporary context, is needed to ensure local and international building history is not lost in the push towards sustainable architecture. The research will also uncover how brick as a load bearing material has been largely lost and reduced to a tapestry façade treatment and highlight how it can re obtain its former solidity and power in a contemporary context6.

Fig. 3 Photograph. Per Kirkeby: Public Sculptures That Commemorate Nothing but Their Surroundings. ArchDaily, December 26, 2019. https://www.archdaily.com/930520/per-kirkeby-public-sculptures-that-commemorate-nothing-but-their-surroundings/5d531133284dd17376000097-perkirkeby-public-sculptures-that-commemorate-nothing-but-their-surroundings-photo.

In this case study, the labyrinth and its connection to Greek and Baroque ideas is the main underpinning motif that classifies the importance of this work to the hybrid study. Conceived as an open-air museum, Kirkeby defines this pavilion as a simplification of the labyrinth. It is achieved by drawing six simple alternating shapes, the circle and square, derived from the labyrinth geometry of Greece (Fig 4) and connecting them with simple extruded walls6. However, the openings are hidden around the shapes to incite a sense of lost passage and overwhelming by the brooding, heavy brick structure. The labyrinth invokes the concept of scenographic perspective used in Baroque archietcture, with the simple, pure geometry comprehensible from a bird’s eye view (Fig 6), but indiscernible from a human perspective, as a participant runs frequently into closed rooms and blind walls as can be seen in Figures 1,2&37 Other motifs included in this structure is natural erosion and the bonded, brick arch.

Fig5.Kirkeby’sHybridFig6.Baroque:S’IvodellaSepienzaPlanGeometry -BaroqueMonumentality+GeometryMotif

Fig4.GreekLabyrinthGeomerty -LabryinthMotif

Fig.1LabyrinthArielviewFig.2LabyrinthInternalViewFig.3LabyrinthHumanHeightView

Per Kirkeby’s work strives towards a symbiosis between Archietcture, nature and history, through arid, angular, monumental red brick structures that are placed in the landscape as a large ornament, playing the line between sculpture and archietcture8. He merges the Danish vernacular influence having grown up in Copenhagen, with a rejection of modernism and an obsession with Mayan and Greek art and architecture into one melting pot of individualised motifs that distinguish his oeuvre9. What emerges is a model for design that is not tied to an international style and neither derivative of a national vernacular tradition. This is highly exemplified in this case study, which introduces the motif of the Greek meander pattern (Fig 8). The design employs the motif used as a border to define the edge condition between a shift in terrain and change in occupation between a public square and a parking lot (Fig 7)10. The wall is an example of the passageway work that Kirkeby explores in the late 80s and 90s11.A series of staircases lead the participant through the wall and directly to the other side, or along a meandering journey, weaving through and around the brick walls. The use of the solid stairs is a reference to the motif of the Mayan stepped pyramid (Fig 9). Kirkeby’s affiliation for monumentally is expressed through the red brick and derives dually from his travels to the Mayan ruins and his childhood in the neo-Romanesque built Danish town of Bispebjerg12. Kirkeby uses brick exclusively as his medium for all his built work, because he feels it evokes an atmosphere of gravitas and power that gives the building solidity and substance12. Furthermore, he sees his work as a hinge to pockets of bygone times and the memories and good craftsmanship they encompass13. Figure 4 highlights how this hybrid model assimilates into the local context of Danish tradition, whilst emanating aesthetic tension because of the rich layers of motifs that underpin his artistic expression.

Other motifs present in this case study is the flat arch and the passageway.

Fig10.Kirkeby’sHybrid

Fig9.MayanPyramidPlan -Stepmotif

Fig8.GreekMeanderPattern

Fig7.MeanderWallArielView

Kirkeby’s work runs deeper than a veneer of instantly discernible beauty, it has an internal substance and design skeleton that he believes has been omitted from much of Denmark and the world’s modernist brick archietcture17. It is on this basis that he developed the transform wall, which is demonstrated in this case study. The transform is a culmination of all Kirkeby’s influences and rejection of modern application of bricks and dilatation joints18. From his travels in Greenland, his fascination with fault lines and the conception that they hold the world together, developed through drawing into a folded wall. The transform wall replaces thin brick structure with a double brick skin separated by an air gap. The meander pattern wall creates small niches where the dilatation joint can be hidden and where the building can cast a metaphysical shadow on itself19

This case study additionally introduces the importance that Denmark’s’ Gothic, Romanesque and classical history played in Kirkeby’s design methodology. The design of shadowing in his work is linked to the neo-Gothic Grandtvig Church that he grew up in the shadows of20. Kirkeby links the shadow to the atmosphere and pictorial history embedded into brick, the memories shadows hold of the unconscious past that he brings forth through a metaphysical shadow that is imposing, threatening and lends the building solidity and monumental prominence21. The plan of this case study additionally links in with the motif of natural erosion22. The plan is conceived of two squares eating one another, this consumption process allows openings to emerge, which in Kirkeby’s mind, has the implication that these access points will erode over time like nature, so the participant takes part in a brief moment in time of journeying between the folded walls, before they consume each other completely23

Other motifs included in this case study are the passageway, bonded arch, niche, column and red brick.

Fig14.GreekMeanderMotif

Fig13.SimplificationofFaultLinesFromNatureinGreenland

Fig11.ConsumptionPlanSideViewWithLocalTowninViewFig12.ConsumptionPlanSideViewWithLocationinMountainRangesinView

Fig15.Kirkeby’sHybrid -TransformWallMotif

Fig16. ConsumptionPlanDrawing

Fig17.ConsumptionplanSquare‘Eating’GeomertyDiagram

-MayanStepMotif

-GothicSteppedGableMotif

The hero image of this case study captures the story of this pavilion’s contribution to the hybrid study with the use of the natural erosion motif, where a menagerie of historical art and architectural references find symbiosis with nature. Kirkeby was captured by the Mayan ruins, erected as fresh formations that time and nature has broken down and swallowed, reclaiming the earth’s natural materials, the brick24. It is by this principle that archietcture encompasses natural and personal history, that Kirkeby situates so many of his brick structures in parks. This intrinsic connection between archietcture and nature borrows from Vitruvius and Laugier concepts of the primitive hut25. The neo-classical period informed Kirkeby’s interest in the archietcture of Greek temples. This case study exemplifies how Kirkeby reworked an image of the primordial hut and Greek temple into a simplified, monolithic brick work inspired by the brick Gothics. He uses motifs of a simplified square column and entablature and combines this with the Mayan steps and openings at the top pf the structure inspired by gothic stepped gables. Whilst not a passageway work, a participant can journey through the columns and climb to the top.

Fig22.PrimitiveHut -Simplificationmotif

Fig23.GreekTemple -ColumnandEntablaturemotif

Fig24.GrundtvigChurch -SteppedGablemotif

Classical

Neo-Gothic

Enlightenment Kirkeby’sHybrid

Fig 18. Brick Hut Burried in the Forest - Motif of Nature Erosion

Fig 19. Mayan Ruin Burried in the Forest - Motif of Nature Erosion

Fig20.BrickHutMiddleViewFig21.BrickHutInternalTopLevelView