Week 4

The proposed circulation on site and the preliminary programmatic exercise dictate the form of the building. It is now conceived to be three separate buildings above ground with three separate functionary capabilities. During brutal Ontario winters, however, the students and the visitors have an option to move from one building to another through the below-ground connectivities.

Week 3

I believe in developing a functional approach to the school that works with the overall fabric of the city, as well as becomes an effective weave of different pedestrian and vehicular needs. The resulting morphology speaks as a defining factor for almost doing the job for me and deciding where to place my buildings.

The preliminary SketchUp model is created after looking at the resultant voids in the fabric of the roads. The next step is to run a wind simulation and determine how well the massing works with the wind on site - does it create any wind tunnels? Could the building be tweaked to take advantage of the dominant winter/summer wind directions? All answers that I hope to answer by the start of next week.

Week 2

I am toying with a couple of ideas of placing the different approaches to the school site in a meaningful manner. The service drive still makes sense to be placed below the ground level, as to hide all of the undesirable aspects of food prep, storage and garbage disposal.

The three zones that may dictate the program in the future respond to the levels of privacy and, therefore, transparency. The public-most sliver of land addresses into connection with the downtown and places importance in displaying the works and activities of the school to the city, while developing ties with the surrounding community. The interaction zone is semi-public - its main purpose is to foster collaboration and creativity amongst the school's students and provide an active working environment. The third zone is private and, therefore, requires an increased level of security. I am envisioning each floor plate as being a blank canvas, on which the ever-changing needs of the curriculum and the students can be addresses through flexibility while maintaining minimum spending as one of its goals.