This first diary entry, if you want to call it that, were studies of the landscape in context of reciprocity, materiality, threshold, When looking back at these drawings you can see the investigation of splitting and threshold of contours, this investigation led from one stage to another before the construction of my building, which i will illustrate later in this post.
While this project was meant to use the land as a source of inspiration, it is also helpful to look into other architect's work that would fuel my design ideas. Above are references to architects and buildings, and below is explanations of how these works help me.
The idea of half floors was a way of translating circulation into a process of continuous movement which was explored in the analysis of nature being a 'growing' entity. In order to get to this stage i was exploring the use of forms and their skins that would lead to the form being shaped by the contour and the skin shaped by the surrounding fauna.
Thus when i put these ideas together i used the contours as forms, trees to create a courtyard and a skin to not only create more light for people walking inside, but also to use the fauna as an 'image' of nature. As you can see one of the captions mentions BLOCKADE, and in essence from the road thats what it would appear as. From here i would explore the buildings impact on the surrounding buildings by reducing its impact on neighbors but at the same time improving its design and appreciation.
On the top right corner you can see a quick look into a very large canopy and in the lower left corner an idea of relating the land, the roads and voids to create the shape of my building. Although this didn't define the shapes so much in the final design, it gave me the ideas necessary to explore a sunken building with a roof emphasizing growth, fragmentation and integration.
These are the first sketches of what look like the final model. Originally the roof was going to be curved but it was always going to house a void inside for either a tall standing tree or to be used to let sun into a usually darkened space. As you can see on the bottom left of the drawing there is two pieces to the roof and each roof was going to overlap the other, but at later stages this proved almost impossible didn't capture the same feel when looked from above.
Because this subject was tied with Construction and Structures part of the course i had to look into some sort of way to make the roof possible. Thus i came up with a truss type system usually used and made from steel in concrete, and was able create a type of two-way slab instead of the usual lightweight roof system. This system wasn't used throughout but influenced the structure on both the northern and southern end of the final design.
These last twp drawings where the final stages of design before the physical model was built. The drawings illustrate the shape of the roof and how it would b supported. Instead of quick sketches as above, these drawing help considerable more because they have been drawn to scale and can be analyzed in relation to people.
When dividing spaces i find it always easier to draw the areas to scale and then placing them into the building, this technique did work, but in a more orthodox manner. In that the spaces where defined using interesting angles and heights.
This first diary entry, if you want to call it that, were studies of the landscape in context of reciprocity, materiality, threshold, When looking back at these drawings you can see the investigation of splitting and threshold of contours, this investigation led from one stage to another before the construction of my building, which i will illustrate later in this post.
While this project was meant to use the land as a source of inspiration, it is also helpful to look into other architect's work that would fuel my design ideas. Above are references to architects and buildings, and below is explanations of how these works help me. 
Because this subject was tied with Construction and Structures part of the course i had to look into some sort of way to make the roof possible. Thus i came up with a truss type system usually used and made from steel in concrete, and was able create a type of two-way slab instead of the usual lightweight roof system. This system wasn't used throughout but influenced the structure on both the northern and southern end of the final design. 
When dividing spaces i find it always easier to draw the areas to scale and then placing them into the building, this technique did work, but in a more orthodox manner. In that the spaces where defined using interesting angles and heights.
This was the first mock-up model that mapped out the contours of the land with the surrounding streets and used the voids in between to define the building. For the second submission the building behind the roof was inspired by this model.
And again you can see the investigation into the mapping/construction of the building.
When exploring the impossibility of supporting the roof, the use of a dia-grid was incorporated. The model above is the final sketchup model and show the guides used to create such a complex form.
Creating the roof was another step. As you can see it is flat, the roof follows the forms that support it underneath and thus also creates a unique cut that shows a less uniform split in the earth.
Mapping out the ground was the first stage in this model, once shapes were set you could easily pull them up, but what remained hard to judge was the clearance for the people underneath.
Above is the final model with roof and all. East Elevation.
Looking down into the building from the roof.
Taking off the roof to expose the structure greatly helped my exploded axonometric, which seemed impossible from the start let alone the end.
Clay model that helped me illustrated the curvature of the hill and the overall emotive nature that i want to achieve when i finish.
This a1 includes 3 x 4 meter contours broken down into property lines, streets, trees, public and private domains and surrounding building footprints. Also included is the sun path on July 21 at 9am for the buildings surrounding the oval/site.
The 3 other contours contain the elevations from 14 meters downs to sea level. On the top right is the threshold created by the buildings surrounding the oval/site highlighted by the darkness of building closest and the lightness of the buildings furtherest/hardest to see. On the bottom left is the sun path for December 21 at 3pm when the is the highest in the sky.
