For Lojean’s schematic design, her concept dealt with playing with the use of light and the curves of the structure. This was clearly evident in her concept model where she played with almost “ribbons” of paper to create different forms and frame all kinds of different volumes within this model. Her precedents for her concept were the Hagia Sophia by Isidore of Miletus and the Wolfsberg Science Museum by Zaha Hadid.

I believe her conceptual exploration was very much, not evident in her schematic design. During the weeks of conceptual design she presented this very beautiful paper model. When the person were to hold the model, you could tell that the placement of each paper ribbon was intentionally placed and not as spontaneous as it initially seemed. There were great moments found within that paper model. There were moments of great light by allowing numerous openings within the mesh of ribbons were as other places were smaller and allowed for less lighting. Her building design however was very much out of the blue. Her building appears as just one large rectangular building on the site and her rooms are all rectangular. The placement of the rooms is just simply one right after another in a continuous room with no distinction between the next.

I don’t believe her building should be rectangular. Actually far from it. It would be great if her building offered no straight walls at all. and I don’t think the material for her building should be made of curved concrete walls or maybe she could work with steel sheets. The wall from one room should shoot across the site into another space and provide a barrier for another space. Her current walls seem stiff and heavy, which was not all express in her concept model. But again this issue could be fixed in some of the ways I stated just before.

Maybe the different training rooms can be set apart from one another by their structural form. Possibly, if the idea of this ribbon like barriers were elected into your building, then the way the walls come together to enclose the space could be entirely different. What if you possibly made the training space all one large space and the flooring, more specifically the leveling, is what is  distinguishing one program’s training space from the next.

Her site plans appears have it’s main entrance leading into one of the training spaces. That seems like it would be really inconvenient to the students that will be designated to work there. Absolutely anyone entering the building would have to cut through their training space, which ultimately would cut off some of the room for them to work. Then those entering would have to cut across diagonally to enter the large corridor off to the side. The main entrance needs it’s own room so that when people first step in, they are is no one’s way. I would consider moving the main entrance to the right so it is directly connected to the main corridor to avoid this awkward situation. Also, the rooms are all lined up, one right next to the other and each one looks not different to the other in dimension. I’m unclear as to why thesis the case. If all the training spaces are lined up to one another, you could make the argument that you were aiming for one unified program. However in the this case I would question the use of the walls. Having walls around each one of the training spaces defeats this purpose. Maybe she intentionally wanted these spaces to be isolated from one another. In that case, I would consider playing around with the placement of each training space. In addition she could play around with their location in relation to the side of the corridor that they’re on. Now what is she had a unit that she worked with? Maybe a unit that holds the dimensions of the current training spaces. In a diagram she could also show the one of the units was placed across the corridor but the corridor split the unit in two, creating two individual spaces, the classrooms perhaps? Just throwing ideas out there.

Considering your conference room, something seems wrong with the scale. The room is much much larger than it should be. I strongly consider once again that you break away from the rectangular shape especially for the conference room because it’s not doing her any favors here. She consider different forms for this space, and I would recommend an almost cone shape for this space. At the most narrow end of this shape is where the presenter could stand and the audience would all be facing this end.

As I think about your precedents, I think it’s very important for her to look back at what exactly her precedents did to solve the issue of lighting. In the case of the Hagia Sophia, a dome was incorporated to allow for great lighting to enter the space. I could see how her entire building could itself be a series of overlapping domes. In the case where we look at the Wolfsberg Science Museum by Zaha Hadid, there are a series of windows located, what appears to be placed sporadically along it’s facade but of course it was all intentional. Which all just brings me back to her original paper concept model. This model possess both of these qualities found in her precedents but failed to carry over onto her schematic design.

Critique on Critique:

I agreed with the overall concerns of the critiques. The critics were going down a more inspired path and desired that her building form be much more related to the light and curves studies that she had initially done. Also they were concerned that her building doesn’t much of a relationship to the site. I don’t even see how this building actually sits on the ground. It needs to be more clear if the building is cutting into the ground or floating above.