I will be posting to this weblog throughout the year-long design period to document my design process, ideas and more. Check back often to see how I'm doing, and add comments to the entries if you'd like.

Archive for January, 2010

Week 1

January 29th, 2010 by Alex Fortney | Posted in General Posts, Milwaukee Innovation Center, Thesis | Comments Off

This week I focused mostly on site conditions. I am masterplanning the whole 46 acres with a mixed-use development with the Milwaukee Innovation Center as the focus. I am presently having a difficult time deciding which site features to try to get a reference from. The North-South of the Amtrak is very strong, and so is the East-West of Greenfield Avenue. The problem crops up with the diagonal rail line in opposition to the diagonal river line. It creates a number of pointy corners which are very difficult to program with generally rectilinear buildings.

Below are some aerial and bird’s eye photos I have been working with. Microsoft Bing’s Maps + Silverlight interface make for a really slick browsing feature. I also noticed they knocked off Google’s Street View.

Overall Aerial Detailed

Solvay Aerial Aligned

Site Topo Overall

Bird's Eye

Below are some shots of my site model.

Site Aerial Axon

Site Aerial

Site Bird's Eye

Click on any of the images to see them full-size.

Next week: site model and massing schemes, stay tuned!


Beginning Thesis Work

January 20th, 2010 by Alex Fortney | Posted in General Posts, Milwaukee Innovation Center, Thesis | Comments Off

Happy New Year! I took a couple weeks off from working on my project to relax and recharge, but I am back now and ready to go!

I am going to begin by preparing some site topography and information to craft an accurate base to work on. The topographic data is from the late 1990s, and fortunately (or unfortunately, depending how you look at it) nothing has changed other than the addition of piles of rubble. Revit does an OK job of rendering topography, but MicroStation or potentially Rhino will be more effective. However, getting these programs to mesh can be quite a challenge.

Next I will work on modeling some of the existing structures which I will be keeping; the machine shop being the most prominent. I do not have measured drawings, but with the hundreds of photographs and aerial photos, and Sandborn Maps I will be able to scale the components fairly accurately.

Lastly, when I have these elements together I will move onto sketching a number of potential schemes.

Stay tuned!