high res exp4 on file front

http://files.filefront.com/VNExp4bmov/;10805823;/fileinfo.html

Exp4 Video

Hospital for the City
How does one measure the health of the city? Does it have symptoms? How do we detect them? And how do we treat them?

The notion of a hospital to treat the city presents opportunities to explore the way in which architecture has a capacity to resolve issues which extend wider than its immediate boundary. This not only expands awareness by bringing problems and their solutions into view; but also aims to treat problems before they become problems.

Air treatment plant
The location of our site, being adjacent to the stack that expels gases from the Eastern Distributor, is an ideal place to intercept and detoxify gases before they are injected into the atmosphere above our city. This function has been developed as a parallel to water treatment plants which already exist around our city. It explicitly acknowledges environmental health (air, water, light, temperature) as significant aspects of a city’s health. However it omits aspects such as social, political and economic health. The integration of these ones may be possible, but will not be dealt with in this proposal due to the limited size of the site.

A program in question
The conceptual notion of this hospital seeks to be paired with a program that is connected to the social and urban fabric. This may be an apartment block, a commercial and retail program, a civic space, a farming facility, bio-fuel station etc. But what it seeks to eliminate is the development of a factory that only allows “personnel” the opportunity to interact with and inhabit the space. This is aimed at developing a connection with people to ensure that it is valued and utilised.

Science and Architecture
In the same way an understanding of acoustics is required to design an amphitheatre, it is necessary to understand the treatment processes to design architecture that treats the city. The word “filter” in this case, is actually by principle an undesirable process, since it suggests simply collecting and displacing something unwanted. A better word is “converter”, which suggests transforming something unwanted into something we can use. So the gas that is being treated is post-catalytic-converter, which is largely CO2 mixed with air. It is suspected that processes from one or both of the Sabatier Reaction (converting CO2, hydrogen and a catalyst, into, water and carbon) and Photosynthesis (converting CO2 and sunlight, into, oxygen and carbon) may be employed.

Impact on city and as an example
Consequently, by treating the city, we also treat the people within the city. When considering the notion of centralisation against decentralisation, it is expected that there will be a need to have a large scale centralised treatment process for this particular site that can be reproduced at different smaller scales without losing its effectiveness (Similar to the dam and water tank relationship). This will be aimed at developing an architecture that is perhaps modular and can be used to explore a model for small domestic use.

References:
http://www.greenfuelonline.com/press_av_video1.html
http://www.greenfuelonline.com/press_av_sciam.html
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19225725.600-biofuel-made-from-power-plant-cosub2sub.html

Starting the Palace

I'll edit and add to this as it progresses, check back soon.

Added 13th June:
http://files.filefront.com/PalaceMasszip/;10617234;/fileinfo.html

Added 14th June:
http://files.filefront.com/PalaceDetail3zip/;10636