Final Design - How my journals have influenced my design

I have finished my office design. My office is mainly constructed from wood because I was inspired from an article from the “international journal of environment and sustainable development”. It informed me about the advantages of using wood to our environment and living. Architects generally recognise the advantages of using wood, but utilisation of wood in housing is still low. In the article, it said that Germany was aiming to increase wood productions in houses by 20% by 2014, I think this is a step in the right direction to our future.

Preserving the green life in our land is very important if we want to keep our planet healthy. When a building is built, the land is usually stripped of its natural green life in order to make room for the new man-made structure. In my design, I aimed to achieve an environmentally beneficial building by having green grass and plants on my roof. When you build on land, you are “taking away” the green, and by including green life on your roof, you are “giving back” the green to the land.


Most people are aware of our environmental situation, we are slowly moving into our next ice age as global warming continues to affect us. People want to save the planet, but little action is taken as we continue to pollute our planet. In the “Australian property journal” there was an article that made me become aware that pollution also effects architecture. When toxic waste is not properly disposed of, it can result in the land nearby to became hazardous and unable to redevelop the land to build on. From this article, I continued to think about pollution on our land. If most of our planet’s land becomes polluted and unable to redevelop. Then imagine our world with buildings above the land or water. A new space away from the pollution. This is what I tried to achieve in my design. My office is built above the lake, barely supported with poles and walls (which shows the instability of our environment if we don’t look after it). The pathways connected to my office are above the water, and the surface is covered with grass.
[To the left the pathway into my office, my neighbour has added a ramp because her design idea is about connections and linkage.]

My office has three rooms, these three rooms have different wall heights, and these rooms “overlap” with each other. The office does not have solid walls covering all sides. There are sides with no walls, which interact with the outside.

Social spaces can be physical and virtual. In my office I have lounging spaces with chairs, this is my physical social space. I then have a computer table where you can read my blog, this is my virtual social space.


When my visitors go up the elevator to Floor one, they will see a moving slide that displays photos that I have been inspired from to create my office design.
When my visitors walk though the door into the next room, they will find a wall of moving words. The words are the titles of my journals,and when you click on them, you will be navigated to the blogging of my journals.

Entering and Exiting my Office

Entrance

For the entrance to my office, I have used a script to create an elevator that takes my avatar to "Floor 1" when you click on the object named "Entrance-Lift"

Exit

For my exit, I added a teleport hub. The teleport hub transfers my avatar from Floor 1 to the outdoors downstairs. To activate my teleport, you have to click on the moving horizontal "EXIT" texts, and your avatar will automatically sit on the slab and be teleported out of the office. From then, move your avatar to follow the pathway out of the lake.

Development of my Office design.

I found this wood bitmap texture on http://dit.perm.ru/articles/3DMAX/Tutorial2/Images/Modeling/WoodBoard.jpg.
I prefer this texture to the previous texture that i used because the tone of the wood is more rich and this texture is more detailed compared to my previous texture. This texture also shows a series of individual planks which gives a more realistic quality to my design.

I used the wood bitmap texture that I found online and photoshopped it into my tree branch floor design. I think this is more successful compared to my first experiment, because you can see the individual wood planks and the wood planks are more detailed, which makes my floor look more realistic.

I wanted my floor design to be mostly made of glass so that it will give an "unstable" feeling for people who walk on it, I want this to portray the idea of the instability of our environment if humans don't look after it.

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Most of my walls have large "windows" or transparent areas that allow people to see into my office, or to see outside the office. This creates more interaction between the inside and outside of my office.






I kept developing the design of my walls, so that there is more change in my office design.

With this first wall I overlapped my texture to create a more ambiguous form. The viewer can see recognise the tree branch shape, but it is harder to identify top and bottom of the tree.

With the second wall, I intersected a thinner white wall into the existing wall, this makes my wall stand out more against the interior walls. It also blocks the interaction with the outside from that side of the office because I want people to be directed toward the other side.

First concepts and ideas

In my first experiment with my idea, I used separate prims to create the design of my floor. I used a total of 25 prims to make this floor, but through this process, I found that this was a waste of time and a waste of prims.
I will use photoshop to create a new floor slab, that will create a similar effect but only use one prim. I hope that using photoshop will be more successful and less time consuming.

I think the glass is not realistic enough, the tone of the blue in the glass is too vivid and makes the glass look "cartoonish" and amateur. I think using a texture of fragmented glass would create a more interesting effect.

The texture I used for the wood is too common and the tone is too light. I would prefer using a wood texture that is not in my second life inventory.

Journals

Australian property journal

The "Australian property journal" not only discusses topics such as property prices,property law and finance, but also the protection of our property. There was a interesting article that captured my attention; "The original toxic asset: contaminated land" which was about finding dangerous substances in the soil of the land caused by inadequate disposal of chemicals on these sites. The existence of these dangerous waste stops the land from being redeveloped and will lead to serious human/animal health and environment problems.

After reading this article, I started to think about a distant (or not so distant) future where waste covers all the land on earth. If hazardous waste prevents us from redeveloping the land and constructing commercial and residential buildings, then how will our society live? The only way for people to live would be above the land. Perhaps buildings which are supported from poles that separate it from the toxic land and water.



International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development

The "International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development" mainly covers topics about :
-Environmental Education and Pollution
-Sustainable Development and Poverty
-Recycling and Regeneration

There was an article that interested me; "Consumer affinity to wooden frame houses", which was about a plan to increase the utilisation of timber as a construction material for houses in Germany. Architects are aware of the advantages of using timber and they show a general positive attitude towards timber, but there still seems to be a low usage of timber as a construction material. Timber is a renewable resource that provides a healthy and quality living environment for people. It also reduces the amount of green house gas that we produce. Overall, timber is a environmentally beneficial resource that architects should use more in their designs.




Space and Culture

The "Space and Culture" journal mainly educates and informs readers of social spaces. This includes many subtopics such as architecture, communications, mapping, urban studies and technology, which all relate to social spaces that people interact with.

This journal made me think about the linking and overlapping of architecture with environment, with technology, with people, with culture and with other areas in our life. Interaction is a big part of our life, and social spaces are everywhere. Social spaces can be physical and virtual. A cafe or lounge is a social space, as well as blogging and online social networking (e.g. facebook, twitter)

Take and Give back

When an architect builds on the land, the architect is taking away the natural green of the land and replacing it with man made and artificial constructional materials. In these two photos, we can see that the architect is giving back the green to the land that he/she took away. The architect is giving back by planting grass on the roof top and planting plants in between the levels of the building.