Arch 200 Project 1

Following what could be considered the 'warm-up exercises' for Architecture 200 we were given a project that had real-life applications. The school owns several properties around the campus area, a few of them being older houses that were donated by the owners' estates. One of them has been converted into a sort of group-function building called the Alumni House. Directly across from the Alumni House is a large, sunken field that used to have some ornamental gardens and a pond in it. It has sense just been turned into a lawn but the outline of the pond remains as does the steps on one side.

The project called for that site to hold 3 buildings for the Global and International Studies department of UWM. These buildings had to be specific sizes and contain certain features, but their orientation, dimension, and other variables were left entirely up to us. Also, with each building (object) it had to be associated with an open area (space) that reflected what the building had.

I chose to put the two smaller buildings in the sunken area connected by trellised walkways and then flood the remaining area with water. The larger building is up on the raised area with the entrance courtyards on both sides. The north side is the student entrance - the one closes to campus. The south side is the closest to Lincoln Memorial Drive and Lake Park, making it the public entrance. The wide area between the buildings is a smaller gathering space and the peninsula off of the medium building would be considered an 'intimate' gathering space.

Organization of Space

The main buildings (blue) are organized around a series of spaces (green) and connected by a series of trellis-ways (red). The site itself is positioned as shown (in blue) on the map.

Renderings

Pictures