Architecture 410 Project 2 - Milwaukee Culture Works
A new center for Summerfest
Description
The second project involved building a museum in the Historic Third Ward area of Milwaukee. The museum would house each 'cultural center' for Milwaukee, now in separate buildings, a cultural museum and offices for Summerfest. The narrow site created an interesting condition, however, the program called for over 100,000 square feet of space, much of it with 24 foot ceilings. As a result, the only solution to match the program was to build right-rise tower. My building topped out at 11 stories, and even though the stories were shorter that the neighboring buildings, it still stuck out significantly above the existing roof lines. The program requirements were relaxed when students created buildings over 20 stories high, but I made the original program work.
Some important design ideas that I took away from this project was using a structural grid as the basis for design, the concept of a 'core' system with stairs, bathrooms and elevators clustered and designing for high-rise fire safety.
The Site
The vacant site was long and narrow, ~50 feet wide by over 200 long, opened to the river on one side and the street on the other. The long sides were the side walls of existing, turn of the century warehouse buildings which have been converted into other uses. There is a slope down to the water, allowing for an exposed story on the back.
Precedents
I found precedents from a variety of museums, but also buildings built into narrow sites. I also wanted a glass curtain wall facade made from irregular shapes, so I located a few examples of them as well.
Renderings
I created an interior perspective of the main exhibition space to give the viewer an understanding of the space, as well as a 'bird's eye' isometric to show of the roof-top garden and pitched glass curtain wall. I also included more typical views of both elevations and a longitudinal section.
Presentation Board
For the final critique of the project we were required to produce presentation boards. My boards are shown below, combined three 24x36 color plots.
- View presentation board in full-size JPG - 13.4 mb (or click the image below)
- View presentation board in full-size PDF - 48.6 mb (or click the PDF logo)
Brochure
In addition to the presentation board, we were required to create a 'brochure' or hand-out for the critics to read before we gave our presentation to give an introduction to the project and to clearly define our concepts and goals before the critique begins.
- View presentation board in full-size JPG - 1.2 mb (or click the image below)
- View presentation board in full-size PDF - 831 kb (or click the PDF logo)
