Stegrief

Some examples of the Stegrief (workshop) projects we do here most weekends. Due to the short timescale of the projects I didnt make photographs of my drawings/models etc before handup (clever, I know) and found that some of them were very difficult to get back so unfortunately some of the work (including my favourite one) has become lost.

Firstly was a small site In a little Village on the Rhine. In germany they seem to have a strict sense of planning. They seem to prefer things to melt into the existing historical buildings with certain traditional aspects being key points. The very typical steep pitched roof is one along with the exposed timber construction. I initially had an Idea for a very cubic building of brick which broke up the line of the street and incorporated an Interior garden as the site is currently a nice garden. In hinesight I should have stuck to my guns and went with my instinctual Idea, I cowardly took the route of appeasment and made a building which looked monotonously traditional. In plan It wouldnt have been much different. In section with the pitched roof and size/shape of the windows its not.

The building is a community home for old folks, with private seperate flats mixed with common areas. All fully wheelchair accesible except for the carers flat which is in the roof. I organised all the spaces around a central atrium for light and passive thermal controls. I tried to keep the circulation spaces to a minimum.

Second was a day long project, it involved designing a small residential area on the outskirts of a rural village. I tried to create quite a varied area with a good mixture of different housing stock and a good mixture, of private/ semi private outdoor areas. I also tried to use the outside area to tie it back into the surrounding woodlands and farmland areas. Once again some students gave us the tip of sticking with a pitched roof for that particular tutor.



Lastly was my favourite of these stegrief projects, an outdoor swimming pool in another small village on the rhine. The swimming pool had an L shaped building of dressing rooms and required a restaurant with amenities and small outdoor kiosk on the end of the L shape and facing the Rhine. Due to this beautiful aspect of the rhine I designed the restaurant as a glazed box with a canopy like roof inspired by a wave with a good overhang to avoid overheating and provide some shading. The kitchen and toilets are in a concrete box and help define a little outdoor square facing the pool and incorporating the kiosk.

One problem and one defining factor was the steep slope down to the river as well as the fact that the flood line of the river reaches right up to the building. Therefore I kept the restaraunt elevated with concrete or stone steps leading up to the restaurant with an outside balcony area.




Along with these 3 examples other projects also Included designing the Interior of a youth centre, An more obscure project where we had to choose a building of Irregular grid or form and give it a more structured regularity, and designing a beach house.