architectural portfolio
BEREA PARK LIBRARY
Honours in architecture
the university of the witwatersrand
This project was undertaken in 2015 as part of the Honours Degree Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand.
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Project Brief
We were tasked with designing a library on the site of a public park in Berea, close to the Ponte City Tower. The park is surrounded by roads on three sides and is terraced to take up the considerable level differences of the site. With tall buildings all around, the library would inevitably be seen from high vantage points and had to be an attractive addition to the park.
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Research
Part of the project was thorough research of the site and its surroundings. Through my research, I discovered that the site includes a natural spring which is the highest point of origin of the Jukskei River. As the city developed, most of the river was channelized and built over, but the natural spring, which is currently hidden underneath an abandoned underground reservoir, still produces water throughout the year. This source or water became the inspiration for the design approach.
Concept
One of the central aims and conceptual drivers of the project became the celebration of the Jukskei spring which is currently hidden and forgotten. The design provides for rerouting the pipes which currently pump the clean natural spring water into the storm water system and instead pumping it to the highest point in the park. A system of streams, wetlands and waterfalls, following the terraced fall of the site, would transform the park into a rare oasis for birdlife in the city. The library building would then surround and bridge the wetland system, with a central public plaza incorporating a waterfall and becoming a beautiful gathering space.
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In terms of form, the large, flexibly open plan spaces of a library program present a unique opportunity to create a building with organic plan forms without compromising the usability of the spaces. While the existing park is designed using fairly orthogonal geometries as was common at the time of its construction, contemporary landscape design commonly makes use of organic forms. As an addition to the landscape, building would then show this contrast between the historical and the contemporary through the way in which the organic form of the building integrates and interacts with the existing park.
The structure and consequent aesthetic of the building is to be made up entirely of tightly packed vertical elements as these could be made as straight panels and placed in such a way that the create the curvilinear plan forms. The façade would be made of structural precast concrete fins, allowing the entire exterior of the building to be load bearing. Strategically placed structural service cores would allow the slabs to span between these and the façade without any need for columns or other visible structural elements interrupting the open plan library spaces. To create interest, computational design was used to apply sine and cosine wave patterns to the outer edged of the precast fins. This would allow formwork information to be exported for each fin for CNC milling only the front edging of the otherwise standardised formwork. The result is a dynamically changing, wavy structural façade with a strong aesthetic connection the water which is central to the project.
In placing the building over an existing park, the project runs the risk of replacing a valuable and rare bit of greenery and spoiling the views of the many surrounding buildings which look out over the park. For this reason it was decided to integrate green roofs and planted terraces into the design of the building so that it becomes an extension of the park, particularly when viewed from above. Planters are integrated as light wells, balustrades, shading devices, etc. This allows creeping plants to hang down from and climb up the façade, making the integration of park and building a visible element in the project. The building is also designed to keep all the existing terraces of the park in place, allowing different levels of the building to access each of the different terraces.
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Systems
The building integrates a number of cutting edge systems which have been included in the selected construction details. Most notably, the building is heated and cooled through a hydronic system which uses a hydro heat pump to utilise the adjacent water bodies as heat storage vessels, making it far more efficient than any conventional temperature control systems. Other integrated systems include rain water harvesting and integrated reclaimed water irrigation.
Workflow
Though hand drawings and physical maquettes were used during the early conception, the building was predominantly modelled and drawn in Revit. The visual programming scripts used to create the wave facades were developed using the Dynamo for Revit plugin. The project was rendered using Enscape and the presentation was finished using Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. The final physical models were done at three different scales due to the size of the building. A 1:500 model of the entire building was built from laser cut MDF and cardboard. A 1:100 model was assembled from 3D powder printed elements showing only one wing of the building, and lastly a 1:20 detail model showing the construction of a small part of the façade was also done.