Photomontage

St. David's Hall, Cardiff

St. David's Hall is another example of the overlapping, odd angled audience seating. As shown in the plans, the stage and audience areas are the center mass while circulation via stairs and elevators are aplenty on the edge of this mass, both for audience members, stage hands and staff, and performers.

Plan at stage level

Plan at balcony level
Longitudinal Section (acoustic boundary of the hall is the roof, below that is an acoustically transparent ceiling)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, UK

As with the Symphony Garden example I posted a while back, this hall is smaller than most of the ones I've come across in the books I checked out of the library. If anything, I've been able to find precedents of smaller performance halls in gigantic "Performing Arts Centers" that have several stages varying in seating capacity, type of stage, and primary use (drama, opera, orchestral, etc). After chatting with T-RAV a bit, I feel a bit better about my approach to the design of the "auditorium" building. The main program areas I need to consider are: stage, audience, circulation (public/private), performance service both above the audience seating and below the stage. I'm contemplating a single stage, arena style, that will be at the center of the building. Buffer areas will serve their purpose while also providing access to the various seating tiers from surrounding circulation paths.  There will also be a secondary, smaller outdoor amphitheater. This will involve part of the building actually moving. Whether or not the outdoor performance theater becomes an extension of the indoor theater has yet to be determined. It should be an exciting project....

Christchurch Town Hall, Wellington, UK

While initially chosen for its acoustical response above the seating areas, the baffles actually serve as a visual wall for the service catwalks above. 

Ground Level

Gallery Level
Cross Section
Longitudinal Section

Orange County Performing Arts Center Theater, Costa Mesa, California

This theater was chosen particularly as a precedent for tiered seating. The angles and height differentials speak to the "architecture" (ha) of the building.

Arena Theater, International Garden Festival, Liverpool, UK

I think everyone knows I'm a fan of architectural membranes and pavilions so it is no surprise I liked what was done with this traditional amphitheater...

Plan

Section

Building Diagram and Auditorium Sketches

Auditorium McSketching Bananza

Sketch a Section

The tubes are starting to take on a life of their own! The horizontals can serve as the cross bracing between the verticals and as the transition areas which are quite the focus of our concept...

A little help from the prof...

With the development of a potential concept, transmetamorph, our group made a matrix of major program areas to give us a graphic standard for labeling the many different transitions that were possible. While we will not be developing all 49 types, it was a good exercise for the group to start talking about the human experiences that we wanted to help guide us in not only our overall design of the building and site but also in the individual part of the assignment as well.
Our professor, Travis, was nice enough to sit down with our group and talk us through some of the problems we were having. We have our program organized diagrammatically and along the site but we'd had trouble translating that into floor plans since we didn't really have a formal building design (shell) yet. He advised us to start of placing the core elements in the plan: toilet rooms, elevators, stair shafts, mechanical, etc. Grouping these together he sketched out a few example schemes in relation to users being able to see out and direction of potential day light exposure.
The next problem was figuring out the structure of the building. [In the image above] top most: column grid structure, middle: grid shell structure with the floor plates hung from above, bottom: gridshell with separate column structure underneath. The middle example, was highly advised against as it brought on the most design complications.
We were then directed to the Sendai Mediateque project in Japan. The structure in the building existed as a series of seemingly random placed vertical steel lattice columns which rise from the ground floor to the roof. The tubes exist not only as structural elements but places where core pieces (stairs, elevators, mechanical, etc) could be organized, among other things (ex. shaft of light). We immediately jumped at the opportunity to take this structure and combine it with the grid shell structure. The bottom sketch on the image above portrays these structural tubes connecting, transitioning, and becoming the structural skin of the envelope. The floor plates can now be supported by both the tubes and the skin, allowing for more refined design opportunities occurring through section.

DF7A26 - thoughts, process, dynamic

A difficult task, we have been assigned. 

Our preliminary goals have been established after several discussions involving the [10x10] week long exercise in which we were all required to submit 10 "big ideas" in both two dimensional and three dimensional forms. Our group, DF7A26, coalesced in light of the fact that we all were interested in some form of bridge mechanism, a formal design that would connect lee street and the community with UNCG's campus with our Lee street site and the rail road tracks harboring the focal point of transition. 

The goals grew out of a diagramming charette initiated early on in assignment 2.1. A time limit of about an hour was given to complete as many context and goal oriented diagrams as possible. Afterwards we each discussed our ideas, sometimes sketching over each other's diagrams. There were three that stood out in my mind. 

1) The context of Greensboro's existing rail roads

2) The bridge/transition between community and education

3) The bridge/transition from ground level experiences to higher levels offering specific views

After achieving these and several others, we moved on to a conceptual sketching charette. As a group we each spent 5 minutes sketching out what we thought the building should look/feel like. After that time period we passed our drawings to the person on our right for another 15 minute sketching exercise. This continued until everyone had sketched on everyone else's initial idea. The results were fruitful. It was an enjoyable experience, as the previous goal charette had been. After the deliberation and discussion of what everyone thought the drawings represented, a decision was made on one that everyone could agree on. I feel this drawing's ability to be flexible visually was perhaps the strongest pull for most of the group. The sketch could be interpreted in plan, section, elevation, and maybe even in perspective to some extent.

Afterwards, we turned to the charette process again, this time in model form. Inspired by the above mentioned concept sketch, as a group we spent an hour constructing  parts that could be interchanged. The process was similar to the drawing exercise. Everyone had a chance to construct a model of the building out of the group of parts, taking pictures of things that sparked our minds and satisfied ideas in varying degrees. Several areas were discussed: exterior formal design, general floor plate design and placement, and the massing of programmatic areas. The creations were complex, at least in the sense that it would be difficult to translate them as a group in the limited amount of time available for this part of the project. Unfortunately, this continually challenged us throughout the rest of the project.

Moving on from the physical world and into the virtual, DF7A26 initiated another charette. Each of the group members chose a picture from the model charette and continued the modeling process in sketch-up. The collaboration process was amazing. Proving to be effective once again, we mixed and matched our 3-D models in the virtual world, establishing a gestural form we felt represented our goals.
Around this gesture we were able to complete several more diagrams including views and multiple iterations of general program placement in plan and section. With the Atlanta trip looming over us, we still have to complete a site diagram and model. Not much we can do except get done what we can in the time we have.