Caitlin Rae

This project focuses on designing a building which relates to 3 key themes energy, landscape and culture. However, this design in particular focuses mainly on exploring the land scape and environment. The design houses a Hub spaces which allows visitors to  learn about the urban food exchange (UFEX). By growing produce on site then preparing it to eat. They also learn about the cultivation of produce along with the cooking of it. the design also includes a house where visitors can stay for long periods of time to really learn first-hand about the UFEX. This design aims to make a conscious effort to preserve the environment and actually use it by implicating key strategies which will use passive interventions to run and build the building. and really  connect with the sites landscape and cuture community.

The idea of the design is to have a pathway from the top of the site leading down to the canal at the bottom. The pathway will lead down the exterior between the buildings. The interior of the hub has a circular layout. The layout is a cycle mimicking the urban food exchange: production to kitchens to assembly (to taste and share the food), to learning classrooms, to studying and back to production to continue the cycle again. There is an entrance at the front of the assembly area for the public to use for events and seminars. There are also entrances to the hub via the back, located next to the house, only for guests of the house to use. An entrance via production for the canal boats to allow produce an inlet float into the production areas.

The original design concept was to arrange the building is a way so that wherever you stood in the design you would grasp a different view of the over the canal and to the city. utilising the hill to do so was key and arranging the house on the hill as small individual buildings with courtyards in between allowed for this concept to be achieved. Being allowed to walk through the buildings from the top of the hill all the way down to the canal. This idea also allowed to me utilise the sunlight from this south facing site. Each of the rooms stepping up the hill stop any wall from blocking the sunlight for every room in the design.