1) Bicycle racks and parking stations precedents around the world, especially in the Netherlands and Japan. Videos and articles.

2) Information about Ottawa’s cycling existing conditions and problems, coming mainly from a conversation with two bicycle store managers.

3) Site analysis for suggested site for a bicycle parking island – World Exchange Plaza.

So here goes.

1) Precedents around the world.

Videos:

David Byrne’s Bike Racks - Interesting take on possible aesthetics for bike racks.

EDUCATORIUM - REM KOOLHAAS - an education complex in the Netherlands with a large bicycle storange in its basement.

Amsterdam: The Bicycling Capitol of Europe - showing an exceptionally large bicycle parking station and general information about Dutch cycling culture – use of simple and cheap bikes is prefer and cyclist must pass a test to get a licance.

Free guarded bicycle storage at the railway station – Zutphen, The Netherlands - rails attached to the stairs for easy access for bicycles – 20% slope make it easy to climb out. Double tier storage. Extra security zone is available as well. Cameras record activity in the entire complex. Square outside remains “bicycle free”.

Veloglide Bicycle Storage - bicycles suspended from hooks attached to an adjustable rail on the ceiling. Doesn’t fit public lockup of bikes but may be used if designed differently.

How to store bikes and many other items - garage storage lifts items to the ceiling. Doesn’t fit public lockup and requires mechanical power. May inspire designes though.

tokyo bicycle parking tower - an automated system that drives bikes to a cylindrical storage unit. Looks likes an Anime cartoon – very cool but how much energy is being wasted?

A New Way to Park Bicycles.. Hang them in a Bike Tree! - gets bikes out of the way in an elegent way that protects the bikes and also provides shade. Concave base design may be used in non-mechanical designs as well to help lift a wheel by pushing it on the concave surface. But again – doesn’t the energy consumption in the tree kinda defeats the purpose?

Vertical Bicycle Parking - perhaps the most elegenst solution of them all. Easy to use and reduces storage space. In North America, where bikes are sometimes very expensive the rack should be fastened to the ground, but that can be easily done if screw holes are prepared in advance. This way the rack can be disassembled and put on a track without any use of crane. Also, since many women in Ottawa stated that they do not like to life their bicycle to a rack (according to the store managers I spoke to), an improved design should create an alternative solution that doesn’t involve lifting (like a ramp, similar to the concave base of the bike tree).

StreetsFilms – on Street Bike Parking Portland. OR - this is precisely what our project demands actually. The parking platform is sitting on one and a half parking spots on the street and accomodate 13 bikes. It is painted reflective yellow to caution cars. The project was very successful.

ASCOBIKE: Largest Bicycle Parking Facility in the Americas - uses hooks that bikes can be vertically hung from to save space.

Seiyu Kichijoji facade bicycle parking - another mechanized system

Transparent bicycle parking machine – Apeldoorn, Holland - a facility in holland sorrounded by windows that let the bicycles create a certain exterior aesthetic

Bicycle Parking Problems in Utrecht, Netherlands - The most inexpensive solution, using regular racks under an overhang of a building. Bicycle damage will probably occur as people remove their bikes from the crowded racks. Notice the difference between the streets of Holland and those of Ottawa.

And last but not least

bike parking - heh

Pictures:

Vertical Rack

Bike share rack (BLUE!)

Amsterdam bike complex - and this

Articles:

Two managers from Tall Tree bicycle store on Richmond:

- Ottawa has the second largest percentage of cyclists per capita in Canada, after Victoria.

- The main hubs for cyclists are Tunnies Pasture, Downtown core, and potentially the renovated Parkdale Market.

- During the winter the number of cyclists drop by 80%. Non the less, there are more than a few bikers out there.

- linear crowded racks cause damage to bicycles as users pull their vehicle and scratch other bikes. Curved or circular racks solve this problem. A good example is bike trees.

- There is a substantial number of women who state they will not lift their bikes to a vertical rack. This might be solved by creating easier devices for lifting, possibly using machinery as well.

Recycle Bicycle on Bronson

Recycle bicycle is a volunteer organization that promotes cycling and bicycle repair skills in Ottawa. Their most important resource as far as this project goes is a pile of scrap parts, mainly frames and wheel rims, lying at their basement. This scrap material is available for free and can be used to construct elements in the bike parking station.

Ottawa Bicycle Club

- There is a strong need for bicycle parking opportunities around town due to parking meters removal.

- Parking high end bikes on the street is not safe. U locks are pretty much a must even with parking meters.

- For tube dispansers there are two types of valves being used.

3) Chosen site – World Exchange Centre

Metcalf st. and Albert st (transitway).

The site was recommended by the store managers who told me it serves as a hub for bicycle messengers. When i got there I found a couple of messengers smoking under the LCBO overhang and spoke to one of them. He told me the place acted as a meeting place for messengers in the past 10 years.

In an article in Mumentum Magazine (cyclist publication) there was an article called “Messengers Are Public Space Magnets” saying how messengers encourage the use of public space. I think that’s a good direction to base the project on.

Forevergreen Report Card of the World Exchange (statistics and information)

Ottawa’s World Exchange Plaza – a Hidden Gem

Here’re some pics of how the site looks like in the winter, day and night time:

In the past two weeks I felt that there is no way for me to present a solid project by the end of the semester. I was jealous of my friends who got to spend 7 weeks on their pavilion and also got to set their own programs for it, although I recognized the importance of having restrictions of the kind we had – a client and a function for our pavilion already defined, at least to a certain respect.

I was right, you know? My pavilion was far from perfect and I certainly do not feel happy about that. But what happened in my crit itself was worth all that stress, and although I am still a little down on myself I think this was the most effective crit out of the three I had this semester.

My first crit was a little crazy – I presented drawings rendered with water colour, graphite, and soy sauce and that threw the crits off what I was trying to present. The second crit was, as far as I’m concerned, a good pat on the back. Did I ever need that pat. I got some constructive feedback from it, for sure, but mainly I walked around feeling that I created something whole and good.

The final crit was good because it was a perfect balance between the two extremes. I was glad when I heard the guest crits are going to be Taj, Baez, and Ti, since I knew they are the kind of people who can push me to do better. My presentation went well, I had images and models to support every step I took with my design, and the product I came up with was definitely completed. No one argued against that, and Taj even complimented me after for my 1:1 model and my graphite and water on inkjet paper drawing. So almost all the feedback I got was concerned with the design, which has many faults that now seem so obvious.

The two main problems addressed were the type of connection between wooden shell elements and the sources of light. For connecting joints I used simple bolts and nuts, light came from light fixtures after dark and there was little concern for it during day light. These are things, by the way, that I was somewhat aware of – on of my friends in the studio commented on my light fixture that it could have been better design and I agreed with him – I might as well have bought it at IKEA (just kidding, making it was fun).

There was also the lack of ground line in the section drawing and no concern for foundations.

All of this can be summed to a single lesson – there is a difference between a finished building and a finished designed building. The first addresses its programs and functions, the second addresses them while holding a tight context to itself. In other words, designing a building that serves its function well is not the end of the design process – as a designer I must figure out how the elements in the building are organized, attached to each other, composed, and work with one another to let the building give a certain kind of effect – that synergy we keep talking about, where the whole is larger than its parts. Everything must work together. As Taj commented about the light fixtures – that’s a big no no.

Now stop for a second. There are two trains of thought from here. The first, the obvious, is that I need to keep pushing myself to be able to achieve this level of design. That’s why I think the crit was good – speeds up the process of learning how to design better.

But in the future when I’ll be presented with real projects I have to be careful. Requirements for most projects will include in some way a demand for an imperfect design – for lack of time or money. If this much time is needed to design a little box, I can understand why it took Louis Kahn and Alvar Aalto hundreds of drawings to design some of their houses. At some point I’ll have to stop, I guess, but that point needs to be high enough, developed enough, so no one but me will be able to find what’s wrong with the design.

First, for future records, an explanation of what was going on in the installation.

The project assigned was to build an installation in the architecture building following several programs, or requirements:

1) The installation should communicate a moment or sense found in a bus station in Ottawa, in my case Fallowfields station.

2) This moment or observation in the bus station could relate to an earlier project, in my case the Glass Block Wall house by Tadao Ando, which I determined was designed after the concept of control (of light, using a modern cave).

3) Choosing the location for the installation should be made with context of the bus station.

4) Once a spot was chosen, the installation should be designed in context with the spot.

There was a long conceptual process, mainly trying to choose which moment in the station I’d like to focus on. Generally, Fallowfields was depressing for me because it was (in my opinion) imposed on the landscape, ignoring the end of the Greenbelt, a field behind the ViaRail station, and planned the way most suburbs are planned – determining different zones for different types of buildings (transportation, commercial, and residential), separating the houses from the surrounding environment with a wall erected around the neighborhood.

I finally decided to concentrate on the idea that people designing and living in the suburbs need a sense of control over what they own. I focused on a very common element in suburbs – the front lawn. I found that grass, if you think about it, doesn’t necessarily makes sense from a certain point of view. It’s basically a weed, has to be cut to make it look “nice”, the road adjacent to the lawn then has to be cleaned (blowing the cut grass back to the lawn), these actions take fuel and creates pollution and noise. Grass is pretty irritating when it comes in contact with bare skin, and on some occasions people will put signs saying “don’t step on the grass” – they choose not to walk on their own land.

But there is, of course, a reason for lawns. Beside their aesthetic appeal (which can be achieved with other kinds of front yards such as paved gardens or potted plants) lawns are important to home owners exactly because they require maintenance: when a person puts effort into something, he feels more connected to it – a sense of ownership. I think it’s ironic that this sense of ownership is still achieved even if the homeowner pays for somebody else to put in that effort, but still – it works.

I set out to create an installation that mimics this sense of ownership. I wanted to create something (that I find) aesthetically pleasing, requires some sort of maintenance, and at the same time observes that this maintenance is a little ridiculous.

I chose gravel as my substitute for grass. I shaped it in a familiar shape – creating a symmetrical steel mesh cage that turned out to follow the curves of the female body. 

I hung a whiskey bottle above this podium and made a circle of gravel beneath it, also encased in steel mesh. Water from the bottle flowed through a rope suspended from it and dropped into a small fish pond excavated in the podium. Excess water went below the podium and flowed with the slope of the floor under the circle of gravel. A person could interact with the installation by rubbing his shoes on the gravel bed, rolling the dry stones in the water running beneath them, changing their colour to a darker shade.

Excess water, full of dirt from the gravel, should be collected at the edge of the circle with a sponge. Since this interaction results in an aesthetic change (the colour of the stones), it is similar to the maintenance of grass.

I bought the gold fish the night before the crit presentation. Unfortunately, the cheap fish at the store were sick, so I bought 5 of them hoping that at least one survives. When the crit started there were 3 live fish in the gravel pond and a dead one that I couldn’t reach since it refused to float in the vase I kept the fish in before the presentation.

The crit was held by Sarah, my instructor; Taj, another instructor; and a curator/director of an art school in Vancouver. Here are some of my favourate moments:

Taj: So your installation kills fish.

me: They’re dying anyways!

Taj: So your installation kills half dead fish.

-

Curator: Ah, do you suggest to put this at the bus stop?

me: I don’t think the people in Fallowfields would appreciate the whiskey bottle.

-

Sarah (in a bay session two days later): Please, no more dead animals in your projects!

- and my most favourate one

Taj: I did not expect this

- I had so much fun!

Now seriously, what does this all mean? I was able to meet all the demands of the assignments – the “programs” – and once that was done I could go as crazy as I wished. Like I said in the middle of the crit, “everything I just told you is the excuse I came up with to build this”. The strength of the installation for Taj, for example, wasn’t the theory behind it, but the element of surprise. This was my own condition to the installation – make something that will make people stop where they usually would not. I used that as the connection between the installation and the bus station, but really, I could have used 10 different other reasons and that would have been fine.

I then spoke about the installation with people outside the school. Of course, they had a hard time understanding what I’m talking about, but eventually came up with this response: people will keep using lawns Rotem, it’s just gonna keep happening, and 20 years from now, you might have one too.” I actually see the sense in that, and I now look at my installation as an observation rather than a critique.

In the end none of this is going to matter unless I manage to make something useful out of the things I learned in this process. This installation, thus, is merely the conclusion of an investigation I conducted on various issues. I could see the response I might get from suburbans if I installed something like it in their neighborhood in the shocked expression of the curator from Vancouver, but I didn’t intend to put it in Fallowfield anyways. The answer to the question, what do I intend to put there, will have to wait to another project, perhaps only after graduation.

I have began the project by visiting Fallowfields Station and observing that although the Greenbelt is bordering the train station there, it is hidden from view and ignored. That kinda pissed me off and I was depressed for around two days.

I decided I’d like to bring some of that lost nature back into the suburban environment, but do it in a way that is practical and does not conflict with the people living nearby. I noticed there is no connection between the bus station and the train and decided I’d like to build some sort of a covered walkway, at least as an innitial idea for something people can actually use. With this physical connection between stations, I wanted to create another connection, a sensory one, between the suburbs and the Greenbelt.

So the installation in the architecture building, which I treat as a conceptual investigation for what I will do at the bus station, should achieve the following goals:

1) be a physical connection between two spaces that are close to each other and also a sensory connection between two distinct areas that are farther away from each other – since at the fields at Fallowfields cannot even be seen from the bus stop and barely noticable from the road going to the train station because of all the parking lots, so the sensory connection connects a space in the architecture building with a space that cannot even be seen from the architecture building.

2)  incorporate the inhabitants of the site in the design process since I believe that a structure should be made to the liking of the people using it, no matter how much I don’t agree with them.

Up until yesterday, I was investigating a construction site adjacent to the architecture building. Since I now realized that the space I’d like to connect to shouldn’t be visible from the architecture building, I moved farther away to parking lot 7 on campus.

It was there that I finally got my aha moment, when I saw these guys

I should have slapped myself in the head. The reason why I was so frustrated with my project was because up till the moment I saw these geese, it bored the hell out of me. But these birds, and the sounds they make (recorded), and the sounds they make when they fly away because I scared them, and the feathers they leave all over the place, and also other biological substance, now that’s something I can work with.

So I need a physical connection inside the building. That’s easy, can be the bridge connecting architecture and meckanzie but that’s taken by Bill. Can be the elevator but that’s a little small. I think a corner staircase will be most suitable, since people have to move through it and I can use that to make a more dynamic experience.

Now to the harder part – making a sensory connection with the field behind lot 7. Well, with my previous thought process I have been thinking of creating sounds and touches that will make that connection. I cannot think of a way to immitate the sounds geese make so I think I’m simply going to play a recording of it (in a decent volume, I don’t want it to be disturbing). I do believe I will be able to immitate the sound of flapping wings – I’m thinking of pieces of paper or card in a long corrogated tube. I’d like to connect that device to the doors in the stairway so when people open them they will hear that sound. I’m also thinking of putting pieces of paper on the floors and steps since that will make sounds similar to those made when one steps on grass or leaves. It will also feel softer to step on.

At this point I don’t think I’d like to use any images. I realize that for this installation I should concentrate on the conceptual and not the literal. In other words, for this installation, people do not need to understand what they are listening to or why – the experience in itself is the goal of the project. When I get to the second part, at Fallowfields, I can make it more literal.

Which I didn’t, of course. That’s one lesson on to itself.

I can’t say I wasn’t shocked after the crit. Same as last year – shock. Not the shock of hearing negative reviews about my work. I can live with that. After sleeping in the studio for three weeks almost in a raw, rehersing my presentation around 10 times before, and actually getting everything I wanted to get done (first time in the program) – there was the shock of realizing that my work is not complete. I was not insulted by any of the comments. When I argue it is mostly because I wish to understand the comments better, and I pretty much agree with everything said: there is a large gap between what I wanted my drawings to represent, and what they actually represent.

This control over representation is what I’m striving to acheive, not only with this project, but in general – an understanding that will allow me to look at my beloved work and say - this doesn’t work the way I wanted it to, I need to fix this, I need to do this again from the start. That is where this shock comes from – I realized I need to render my drawings again from the start.

I have been writing short stories for years. Today I have the ability (to a certain respect) to look at a text I wrote the day after I wrote it and figure out what’s obviously wrong with it. Sometimes it takes more than a day, and I never determined any of my stories as final or complete – I love coming back to them years after and make them even better.

I want to treat architecture projects the same way. I’d like to step out of this sealed time frame, the semester or half semester, and go back to something I started in 1st year when I’m in the end of my 3rd. I’d like to see how much of my crits I remember and what turns out when I try it again, two years later. And then leave it for another two years, and go back.

But the real world doesn’t work like that, and a building has to be designed in a specific time frame. Yet in real life I might also convince my client that if he gives me two more weeks, I will give him a much better building. In the meantime I need to develop a more sophisticated way of self critic, since at the moment I am criticising myself enough but I’m not always able to pick up on my mistakes.

This is why I am happy about what happened with my project. I was jumping around yesterday, telling my friends about the crit, sometimes saying it was horrible and sometimes that it was very informing. Eventually I settled down a bit (after a good night sleep) and came to the conclusion that what I made with the soy sauce was a mistake, but that it was a wonderful mistake. It was a mistake because I didn’t have enough time to develop it to be crit-worthy, but if I had used a safer method of rendering – man what a missed opportunity. I needed that error, and I’m almost satisfied with the fact that I got an imperfect technique to the presentation (almost).

And now lets see what happens, because (and I told this to my friends as well) – this craziness is going to keep happening all through the program. I’m too curious about things to let opportunities go by unchecked.

Unfortunately, I’m too good with Mikael’s Nikon still/video camera, but I’m getting better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVEWgxHCExs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UWBTL0_gFc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp27iMUAlHg

Here are some conclusions (I still need to do more research regarding some qualities)

Rice:

white, modular (grains), sticks to itself when boiled in water (dense) , hard and semi transparent before cooking; soft and opaque after, porous (lets water run through it, which also weakens it), can be shaped and molded (if pressed against a sushi matt, will be shaped by the bamboo sticks forming the matt, resulting in parallel lines running across the finished bulk of rice, reminds of concrete formwork), squashes under pressure (gains width and loses height) – this can be avoided by wrapping sea weed around it, can be baked to get moisture out and gain more strength (curing).

Sea Weed:

Black, comes in thin sheets, opaque, brittle when dry; soft and flexible when wet – will eventually decompose (into small particles) under water pressure – several layers will take longer to decompose, impervious to water (before decomposing) and may allow the construction of temporal waterways, shrinks when wet (wraps itself around an object if the object is moist and takes the object’s shape), folds into a random organic form when baked and stays in this form when removed from the oven.

Water:

Liquid, separates into drops, when calm transparent (refractive) from most angles, reflective from others, may carry waves, top surface will always be horizontal when undisturbed, will run from high locations to lower ones, turns to steam when heated, turns to ice when frozen, can mix with other materials to form different liquids.

Pictures and videos will follow (maybe tomorrow)

Tadao Ando mentioned in an introduction to a book that he sees the roots of architecture coming from caves. I used that when I wrote my concept summery and Sarah suggested I read about the allegory of the cave, a philosophical story by Plato.

In the story, a bunch of prisoners are sitting in a cave with their faces fixed against the rock wall. They cannot move. They have been chained like this since birth. Behind them there is a fire (BBQ!) and the movement of other people (whom the prisoners are not aware of) is casting shadows on the wall. So the only thing the prisoners can see is those shadows and for them, those shadows are all there is in the real world. Plato suggests that if one of the prisoners is freed, he will assume the shadows are more real than the people who make them (since he never knew such people existed). This free man, according to Plato, is the philosopher. Just as the freed prisoner (after a period of time in which he understand what is real) tries to go back to his friends and explain to them that the shadows are only a reflection of reality, so does the philosopher tries to teach the rest of humanity about the true nature of the world, whatever he thinks it is. The prisoners will see the free man as insane. Society will grant him a scholarship and let him write books 90% of the public can’t really understand. Then Monty Python will write a song about him. (watch it till they sing)

Cool story in any case. I was thinking about it a while trying to figure out how it might be related to architecture.

Well, truth is it doesn’t really. Not quite. Architecture is grounded in nature as most people see it. If there is some true reality all of us non-philosophers can’t percieve, building a house according to that reality might make a bloody mess and we don’t want that. We want a house that serves our non-observant needs.

But if Glass Block Wall takes normal light and turns it into something different, then anyone living in the house, while staying there, percieves reality a little differently. In this case there is no “true” reality and “shadows”, with no going back once one finds the “real” source of light; there is instead an alternative experience and once a person leaves the house he goes back to “normal life”. In essance, a person has the control to be in one of two states of perceptions – one regular and one through glass blocks.

(I’m gonna stop editing these posts for now, it’s taking me a long time to write first drafts as is. I will go over all of them later and edit what I need for the final assignment).