Steel Competition
Blog Post #5 by Hannah Pauling (May 2014)
Steel Competition, then and now.
I would like to share the submission I put in during my third year of architecture school.. I took the whole steel part a little too seriously, right? Oh well. Learning how to incorporate shipping containers in a beachside hotel design was quite a strange task to begin with. At least the Rainforest Hotel has a beautifully complex canopy system.
Recycled materials can sometimes be more work than they are worth. With my Rainforest Hotel Project for example, one of my peers did the research on hurricane damage in Miami and found out that shipping containers would never pass a hurricane test without added reinforcements.
Since I knew this project would never be built I kinda went crazy creative. That is the point of school, right? Get out all your great ideas and worry about implementation when you graduate..
CONCEPT: A RAINFOREST CANOPY
Rainforest. A sylvan extension upward and outward housed under a canopy. Layers of levels, one floating above another. Stems stabilize extending bridges of reused shipping containers.
Protection is provided from the sun and the rain but the breeze is allowed to flow freely through the entry atrium. The street view of this hotel suggests a hybrid of indoor and outdoor space. The sitting stairs extend out toward the street, engaging everyone to enjoy the space in front of the hotel and encouraging them to wander “inside”. When the visitor enters they discover the raw representation of connections in a sylvan network. They can meander in and out of the open structure encouraged by the architecture to wander toward the shoreline.
As this crossed beam pattern idea evolved into an architectural expression, it extended out and became both a system for holding the shipping container hallways and rooms, and a means of expressing the framework for the façade, the hint of enclosure from above and the ground of the outdoor portion of the site. The vertical layers of beams represent the idea of trees, and the horizontal enclosure above becomes a canopy of leaves with its mix of open-air, translucent, and opaque surfaces.
The hierarchy of the cladding structure reflects that of a tree: the thinner a branch, the shorter it is.
PROGRAM
Pieces of the program intersect or overlap to provoke a sense of connection and layering. The space is meant to be enjoyed by all and by keeping the private spaces high, the main public spaces (atrium lobby, sitting, shopping, restrooms/showers, pool area, beach) are accessible to anyone. The heaviness of the sky restaurant and bar draws in customers from the public to experience the amazing view. The guests of the hotel have private access to their floor and room with the use of a key card. Each floor has its own experience tied to it through the long hallways that allow the guests to be immersed within the forest of beams instead of below them. The hotel room units are each made up of three shipping containers and are arranged in a way that allows for maximum views and built-in balcony space. The public space within each room is on a separate floor than the private space.
The site is dug into for parking and the pool, leaving extra dirt to play with. The site rises up gesturing toward the ocean to provide lounging and eating space outside next to the pool. The project draws on its context by borrowing the stacked effect from the building next to it. The grid system within the plan connects to the grid of the city. It connects the passerby to the ocean by providing a straight shot view of the ocean through the building.
The person who won the 2010 Steel Competition, Dion Dekker, was actually in my class. I had known him since my very first architecture studio in 2007 and was actually his community advisor during the 2008-2009 school year in Poly Canyon Village. He was and still is, I would imagine, an interesting person when it comes to design.
The real interesting person, though, was my professor that quarter: Tom Fowler. He was known as the most intense professor a third-year at Cal Poly SLO could have. I dared to take a total of 19 quarter-units the quarter I took his class and paid the price for that mistake. (Most of his students were taking only 12 units.)
Tom still holds his students to a higher standard and insists that sleep is not necessary for any third-year architecture student. While I beg to differ, I wouldn't trade my horrifying quarter that year for anything else, because I learned so much.. Not only about architecture, but about life and the important priorities one often ignores under pressure.
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