Otherwise I spent much of my time adding details to the model and building Revit families.

Street

South

Interior

Plans

• Jacking up the diagonal commuter railway on piers and letting the mound landscape flow below – solving the problem of the railway by eliminating its impact on the site.
• Using the piers to to envelop the raised office bar, rather than piece it.
• Add a roadway in front of the building running north-south.
• Preserve the idea of an exterior southern courtyard, as well as add an interior one.
• Bury the west elevation into the hillside and let the landscape flow over it.
• Add a bar to be used as a beacon as well as for light above the production area on the west side.

I also had to break my model into worksets and shut off the majority of the site and tree, etc so that I am able to effectively work on only a portion at a time.

Below are some plans and images of this weeks’ work:

 

Unfortunately, the committee did not care for my site change. I did it to solve issues with the diagonal railway, but as Kyle pointed out, it simply created bigger problems of access, orientation, etc. They also criticized the varied systems of organization and all the stupid ramps.

However, not all is lost. My committee did appreciate the usage of channel glass for the stairway and corten steel panels for some of the facades, as well as a number of other design choices with the office level especially. But, overall, back to the drawing board.

Below is the presentation:

 

During the course of my research I came across an article in Wired magazine from January which seems like it was written for me! The title of the issue was “Atoms and the New Bits” detailing how do-it-yourself has moved from software to hardware, i.e. people now have the capacity to make their own products and sell them worldwide without a huge investment in equipment – which is exactly one of the ideas for the Milwaukee Innovation Center.

From the article:

Tech Shop

In June, Local Motors will officially release the Rally Fighter, a $50,000 off-road (but street-legal) racer. The design was crowdsourced, as was the selection of mostly off-the-shelf components, and the final assembly will be done by the customers themselves in local assembly centers as part of a “build experience.” Several more designs are in the pipeline, and the company says it can take a new vehicle from sketch to market in 18 months, about the time it takes Detroit to change the specs on some door trim. Each design is released under a share-friendly Creative Commons license, and customers are encouraged to enhance the designs and produce their own components that they can sell to their peers.

Local Motors

Local Motors plans to release between 500 and 2,000 units of each model. It’s a niche vehicle; it won’t compete with the major automakers but rather fill in the gaps in the marketplace for unique designs. Rogers uses the analogy of a jar of marbles, each of which represents a vehicle from a major automaker. In between the marbles is empty space, space that can be filled with grains of sand — and those grains are Local Motors cars.

Read the whole article here: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/all/1

Below is a preliminary rendering of the interior office space, and a couple photos I was playing with:

Preliminary Interior

Interior

Exterior

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!

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!

Please click on the thumbnails below to veiw the slideshow, or click here to see the PDF »

 

Below are the slide thumbnails of the presentation, or you can view the PDF if you prefer »

 

Revised Thesis

Establishing a place where creative people can gather and learn, or start a business, will be of great value to Milwaukee’s economy. Producing highly innovative design and production within the city will foster the creation of many related business, encourage job growth, and reverse the exodus of jobs to business parks in the suburbs or overseas. Milwaukee has the potential to be the leader in innovative industrial design and production. The best way to bring notoriety and investment to Milwaukee’s renewed innovative spirit in the 21st century is to build a signature facility to draw international attention. The exemplar project ideally will be located in a formerly prosperous, but presently distressed part of the city combining design and production under one roof to serve as a combined school and business incubator; an icon and a catalyst for future growth.