Hi everyone, my name is Danny and in my final year studio I will be exploring how architecture of public buildings can take on attributes of healthcare, and how spaces for care can fuse as places for culture. This exploration has been achieved through a co-existence of the NDIS headquarters in Fitzroy, together with an artist in residence program that seeks to encourage involvement an engagement from underrepresented artists and everyday individuals, abled bodied and not. The studio and project have been represented through a series of illustration and narratives from the point of view of characters using the space. This project was completed with Shira Baker.
NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE OF THE NEW NDIS
The conceptual narrative perspective talks about the concepts of dialogue, permeability and transparency are integrated into the hardscape of the architecture which we wish to demolish anything that is hard and rigid and replace with soft elements, tactility and colours to enhance better circulation, inviting more public interest to come and understand the activities that happens in the buidling.
PHYSICAL MODEL
The physical model shows the 3 key elements that are implemented to elevate the new building which introduces contemporary reductivity, and modern distinct tectonics. The first part features an open ground floor space elevated by concrete pilotis that merges with the public streetscape, follow by a custom punched copper braille cladding on the facade and finish by a dark grey sawtooth roof with different angles, mimicking the existing central core that sits on top of the building. The yellow interior lift adds a complementary contrast to the new building as well as the existing cores vertical feature.
A PERFECT PICTURESQUE
The view is meant to be a a glimpse of an orchestrated picturesque scene filled with colours and texture, the contrast of the existing and contemporary intertwine to create harmony of an unfinished work, a work in progress, with its stripped and exposed ceiling in polar to the ground planes built in organic curve seatings with plantations. This promotes an immense contrast of tactility by the granitic sand blasted concrete columns against the slim black metal finish columns. Colours formed by the neutrality ground plane with embed green nature versus the exposed industrial machinery reinvented in yellow and red as a wayfinding tool.
PERMANENCE AND FLEXIBILITY
Urban continuity forms the basis of comfort circulation which is guided by the continuous concrete flooring and a glass wall that mediates both the front and the rear, exposing and merging together as a soft boundary. The same sense of familiarity is brought in with its immense contrast of permanence hardscape of the pods, ceiling services and ground plane, versus the flexible manipulability suggested by the negative space that surrounds the pods. Its about the interplay between permanence and the always alternative spatial temporal spaces, ever changing and adaptable over time.
THE MAKING ROOM
Again, the contrast gets more intense between light and shadow, colours and textures. The curtains device as a calming agent that creates a gentle effect, elevating the ethereal and tranquil quality projected by warm sunrays from the black crowned roof. The room promotes innovation and iterative making as suggested by the tactile braille wall painted in copper, encouraging curiosity and explorations, sharing and exchanges, a room of interaction and making.
Hon Kuan Ng (Danny), NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE OF THE NEW NDIS
In the spirit of reconciliation Monash University acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
