Undergraduate Design PortfolioLachlan McTaggart

Guide

Social Housing - Three Courtyards..........................

Open Arch Centre - Disrupting The Grid....................

Community Centre - Forest Fringe...........................

Facade Revitalisation - Technical Drawing...............

3 - 8

9 - 14

15 - 18

19 - 20

Social housing - three courtyards

The brief called for the integration of social housing and flexible community spaces into an existing church and chaplaincy. Reconciling the public nature of the church and community spaces with the private social housing programme became the driving idea behind the design. A series of three courtyards with varying degrees of accessibility were used to facilitate this relationship. The three courtyards set up three very different experiences, ranging from very public to sheltered and private, to ensure that while the social housing residents remained connected and active in the community they had the ability to seek refuge and privacy in smaller gathering spaces.

Support services were arrayed throughout the complex to provide both social housing residents and at-risk nonresidents with an avenue to seek assistance. The housing programme site above these support services and is by nature of its elevation is separated from the public functions of the complex while still being able to observe them.

The public programme is located at the same level, and has a relationship with, the street. This encourages the public into the complex. The church, once a closed and insular building, was opened up to become an integral part of the public programme of the complex as a multi-faith gathering space and a flexible space for a range of activities.

LOCATION PLAN

The church spills out to create an upper deck above the indoor garden and restau-rant seating area. It is both indoor and outdoor with no boundaries to restrict ac-cess, open at all times and to all people. The sunken indoor garden is observable from the street, luring the public in.

The housing programme is raised above the public elements of the programme. Residents can observe these activities without necessar-ily being a part of them.

SITE PLAN

Open Arch Centre - Disrupting the Edge

The brief was to create a complex for a Open Arch, a nonprofit organisation which aims to educate the public on architecture with a strong focus on the education of school aged children. The complex was to be inserted into the existing Barbican Centre in London, UK. The Barbican is a housing and cultural centre which exists on the raised platform. The insular nature of this podium and the centre is houses often lead to the Barbican being described as a “city within a city”. Therefore the focus of the design became to disrupt this existing edge condition to open up the Barbican Centre and invite the public into both the centre itself and more specifically the Open Arch complex.

PLAN

Disrupting the Edge Reconciling the Grid

PLAN

The building aimed to reconcile the two existing grids of the Barbican to facilitate a smooth entrance sequence for visitors. The geometry ultimately led to the form of the building. It exists on both grids simultaneously, locat-ing visitors comfortably within the complex. This geom-etry was also used to generate a street level information centre that doubled as access to the Open Arch centre and the Barbican generally. It also informed the internal spaces and circulation of the Open Arch centre.

The geometry generated a series of double height spac-es within the centre to be used for the public programme of the centre. The internal circulation continuously switch-es between the two grids to reflect both the alignment of the building and the circulation through the Barbican on a larger scale.

COMMUNITY CENTRE - THE FOREST FRINGE

The brief was to design a multi-use community centre housing a public visitors centre, facilities for a volunteer organisation dedicated to preserving the surrounding greenspace and private forestry research centre. Located in a large clearing, the site acted as a gateway to the surrounding forest. In line with the conservationist aims of the centre the design strived to have the building disappear into the forest fringe and to encourage visitors into the surrounding greenspace. The design achieved these goals by directing circulation through the main avenue of the centre up into the forest over a series of terraced levels while the form of the building itself pulled back into the forest fringe. These terraced level changes mirror the natural slope of the ground such that they seem natural and large timber elements reflect the elevation of the forest fringe, disguising the building form as part of the forest.

FOREST FRINGE GATEWAY LEVEL CHANGES

SECTIONS

FACADE REVITALISATION

A technical drawing exercise to document the replacement of the facade of an existing building with a new, more environmentally passive cladding system.