Massing...

Now that I haven't designed the transport system, including the structure and transportation vehicles, found a location for my building and decided upon what the overall intent my building is to be; it is now time to begin to plan out the building or start to "mass" the building.

 

When starting to mass, I always begin with a basic geometrical shape and start to modify it as I go through the steps.

 

 

In order to maintain a healthy flow of pedestrian traffic through Queen street, I decided that the building should have edges defined by current traffic patterns exisiting within the site.

 

To ensure a smoother transition of the passers-by, the edges of the shape were rounded out to create a gradual increase in shape.

 

 

This then created an oval shaped building footprint.

 

However, the building was still quite imposing and left no permeability to it. Due to the fact I didn't want to turn Queen street into two seperate spaces either side of this building, I decided to cut walkways through it.

 

The resultant ground floor would look similar to this, a pattern of small shops and walkways stretching from end to end.

 

This sketch shows the three layers I was hoping to incorporate into this design. It has the ground floor plain, with shops and permeable walkways. Then it has the platform level and pod system, while on top it has a small retail space which would become useful in a centralised and compact urban envornment such as our idealised future.

 

After getting this overall shape from the ground floor on which to work on, it was time to start to model it within context to attach a scale to the building.