Final Plant Rooms

Here are images of our final plant rooms, from various angles and elevations.

The exoskeleton architecture one was sooo fiddly to make. It was basically handmade with the offcuts from the other, box-like plant room.

Here are our concepts:

Plant room 1, Waiheke site: This plant room is inspired by the city. From the exterior, it appears like a solid rectangular prism, a simple shape with a very linear aesthetic to it. However, on the interior, there are moveable curved shelves and partitions with a dizzying, almost spiralling pattern engraved on each. Slots in the exterior façade and holes in floor allow the curved partitions to be moved- whether the space is to be divided differently simply due to taste or because some of the plants have grown into them. When the holes aren't being used by the partitions, they act as a drainage system for overflowing water. The linear pattern on the façades of the plant room make it appear as a solid, as one wall is the inverse of its opposite. This gives the plant room a sense of illusion and mystery, something that can be felt in a city. The linear aesthetic also gives us a grid like notion which reminds us of the planning of an urban space, and these linear façades will create grid like shadows on the interior, making it darker and more exciting, once more trying to gain the ambience of a city.

Plant room 2, city site: This plant room is an example of organic appearing exoskeleton architecture. The abstractness of the façades contrasts with the overall cuboid form of the building. We can imagine this plant room being constructed out of organic materials such as bamboo. The floor and ceiling of the plant rooms have irregular shaped pieces stuck into them, complementing the irregularity of the façade. This plant room has a very open and light feeling to it, something that we were aiming for as this is the atmosphere we experienced when on Waiheke Island. This also gives a lot of space and light for plants to grow to their full potential. The rods of the façade are slotted into holes, which can also be used as drainage for any over-run water from the plants. The texture on the floor is made up of light, straight lines, which mimics the lines of the façade but in a more subtle, open way.

Outcomes from this workshop

Over all, we were quite happy with our progress with this workshop. It was commented that we should have shown human figures in our section drawings and thought more about the scale of our plant rooms. These are points that we will remember and employ in our work from now on. We got quite good results over all, particularly in the theory, architectonics, and form and space of our designs. We feel that we learnt quite a lot in this workshop, particularly in relation to laser cutting, the program Adobe Illustrator and in making spaces that will create particular atmospheres. We thoroughly enjoyed this work shop and hope we only keep improving.