COMPETITION

I entered the Janine Stone 'Young Interior Designer of the Year' 2011. The brief was to design a space measuring 6m x 12m x 4m (high) with the inspiration coming from the view out of the window. I was shortlisted out of 100 entries into the top 10 finalists and attended an award ceremony in London. My submission is illustrated below with design synopsis.

The View

The view from the window looks down onto the late 18^th and 19^th century brick dockside warehousing (some already converted to shops, galleries, apartments and offices) and the late 20^th century redevelopment of vacant sites into high rise office, apartments and hotels in steel and reinforced concrete.  The river is on the other side of these buildings and there is still some maritime traffic. This could be any of the dockside redevelopment areas in European or American cities.

Design Synopsis

The design is a challenge to the viewer; is it a redevelopment in one of the 19^th century warehouses incorporating 21^st century concepts or is it a redevelopment in one of the late 20^th century buildings reflecting the 19^th century industrial architecture outside?

The design has changes in floor level to create visual interest.  Lighting is used to enhance the definition of the divisions of the living space.  Mirrors at either end make the c1850 “industrial” train line inset under a glass floor appear to run to infinity.

Conversely, the window openings with the vertical stainless steels reflect the late 20^th century reinforced concrete buildings outside with the concrete removed.

Around the edge of the floors and ceilings and where the internal wall meets the external a 200 mm mirror strip has been inset.  Visually the reflected walls appear to continue into infinity and the floors, ceilings and internal wall float, disconnected from the main structure.

The materials used are both cutting edge 21^st century (the glass wall to the bathroom becomes opaque with an electrical current) or reclaimed c 1850 oak floor boards/bricks in the living area.  The highest level of insulation is to be used using sustainable natural insulation materials and sustainable concrete. All windows are to achieve a BFRC rating of C or above.  The area under the raised floor provides for a heat sink and heat storage.

The cost of the fitting out is likely to be about £50,000 and the design could be applied to either a suite in a small boutique hotel or to a luxury apartment development.

http://www.yida-award.co.uk/victoria_crawcor.html

CONSERVATION

THE SPACE

A versatile space designed to adapt to the community needs. 

Hire this space to transform it for your individual requirements.   

The ground floor atrium houses a nursery. The organic simple white exterior with flashes of colour through the glass window tempt you to explore the magical wonderland inside. The nursery bursts through the Florrie’s exterior wall to reveal an enchanting play garden for the children to explore. 

The large open void of the first floor atrium is the heart of the building. Manually sliding ‘ribs’ run on a concealed track reflecting the structure of the original building above. The white steel framed ribs are lit by LEDs at the seams creating a rhythm of changeable colour. The ‘ribs’ can be moved into different arrangements to produce individual meeting room pods, extended to create individual spaces or closed to create intimate surroundings. The structure can also be used as a gallery/exhibition space.  

OFFICE MEETING ROOMS

CONFERENCE FACILITY

A number of different arrangements can be set up to suit the end user. 

   

GALLERY

ART HOUSE CINEMA

CREATE CINEMA

The developer proposed a new venue for moving pictures, multimedia performance and other presentation. It must distinguish itself from the city’s existing offer of cinematic experience, offering a program committed to revelation. This will be a picture house that links Liverpool to the world in ways only marginally explored in the city’s other cinema venues. 

The cinema has been designed to visualize the debate between creationism and evolution, both through the programs and films it features and also through the design of the building and interior forms.

I looked at 3 main aspects of the debate, along with a few others smaller ideas when designing this cinema; Scale, Time and Change. The ideas of light and dark, soft and ridged and, ebb and flow also came into the design process. 


Creationism, particularly in America, is now called "intelligent design" on the basis that the creation had to be planned by something that knew what it wanted to create.  The exterior of the building is illustrative of "intelligent design" - precise, organised, structured, planned, whereas the interior is illustrative of evolution - darker, curved, organic, changing reflections, wandering pathways.


The exterior of the building is predominately glass. The structure of which is exposed reinforcing steel bars. However, these bars have been designed to visualize the feeling of tension within the debate/argument between creationism and evolution. Extra bars have been placed at angles, always leaning in the same direction, this has to be done to create the idea of rhythm and time (as the sun changes throughout the day, creating different shapes and shadows). The bars also create shapes and holes through the glass, illustrating holes in the theories behind both evolution and creationism. I wanted to look at ‘deconstructing’ the debate/argument and rebuilding it as a (w)hole.