Bus Shelter

It all started out for me with a simple site analysis. At first i wished I had the location on UNCG campus rather than the A&T location. However, after going there and seeing the campus and all the things they had going on, I was very happy to get the site I did. A&T has a great campus with so much to pull from when designing such an installation. A big lesson I learned with this project is to make sure you go way beyond anything you will possibly need with the site analysis. I had to go back a couple of times to get more information and it was a pain. Make a GOOD site analysis! Also double check that the information you gather is accurate, I found out midway through the project that my sun exposure diagram wasn't correct and it pretty much turned my project on it's head... not cool. So get lots of accurate data from the getgo and things go much smoother later on.

I began with my new favorite technique of using a very very large piece of paper and listing aspects and qualities of the design problem, things that needed to be addressed, bubble diagrams for adjacency and the like. This also is when I started working on the concept which became a little process of it's own. One of the fifth years was helping me with the concept and pretty much gave me an idea that fit so well I had no choice but to run with it. Though for integrity sake I couldn't use it directly; thus began the development of my concept alongside the bus shelter design itself. It started as a rainforest: the closer you are to the ground, the less sunlight permeates through the canopy. As you progress through vertical strata of protection, you get more and more exposure. Gradient of protection was a prominent idea in my design so this was highly appealing. Also the natural references fit well with the university's agricultural background. This concept morphed into a simple tree analogy; the closer to the trunk, the more shelter, moving the dynamic horizontal rather than vertical. After abstracting these basic ideas, as well as using input taken from personal interviews with A&T students I arrived at something I hadn't expected in the beginning but that I felt was highly appropriate for the location and project. My concept is to create an architecturally abstracted, man made tree limb incorporating the ideas of gradient and progression into the future. Below is my response to this concept.

Sketchbook Assignments

Shelter Bus Charette

When I was in lifeguard training, we were always told that our number one priority when entering the water to make a rescue, was our own personal safety; putting one more person in a desperate situation doesn't help anyone. This is the approach I used with this design. In order to be of the most help to disaster victims. My clients, four construction workers, should place their own welfare as top priority. If they ensure that they get adequate rest, hygiene, and mental rejuvenation, they will in turn be of greater help to the people they are supporting. My design allows for these necessities by making use of specific zones, complete separation of work and relaxation areas, as well as soft and neutral blue and grey tones, to help my clients feel at ease and peaceful while inside this bus. This quality and approach allows the clients to be higher impact factors on the community they are aiding, and thus increasing the function of the shelter bus design.

As a precedent I used the Exaltis Tower in Paris France, designed by Arquitectonica Interiors. The curvy shapes and lines really pull you into the space and lead you from one zone to the next. This is a quality I incorporated in my design. The entrance way has flooring of heavy duty tile to serve as a "mud room" of sorts. The curved lines sprout from the seams in the tile work, unifying the space and leading occupants to the far end of the bus, and through the steps of rejuvenation; Cleansing, Relaxation, Eating, and Sleeping.

This is my bubble adjacency diagram for the main zones associated with the bus, following the important tasks of daily activity.


Scheme diagram showing volume of traffic in specific areas, as well as use of these areas whether public or private.
The bathroom wall is curved allowing it to follow the curvilinear lines of the walls and floor. This marries form with color scheme. It also allows for the sliding door pictured here.
Cross sections showing layout of various views of the interior.

Sections of each side of the bus. The curvilinear patter on the walls is notable from these images.


The finished project board.

Postcard

Weekly Sketchbook Assignment

Our first sketchbook assignment for Visual Communications Class. It is a fancy chaise designed with a student in mind. It looks pretty expensive to me, so I don't know how exactly that works, but that was their concept.

Negative Space Bicycle

A warm up exercise for the first year drawing class. As notated I had to take a couple of good breaths to slow down and concentrate. It worked pretty well, I think I will start doing that more often. I drew it in 4H which explains why it looks so washed out. I will photo shop it later

Weekly Sketchbook Assignment

A bed in water color. I really dislike this, and water color doesn't work too well for me. I give mad props to those who can use this medium effectively. So consider this a starting point I suppose.

Precis

What Defines My Drawing Style?

I did this diagram for the first year drawing class. It is essentially a distillation of a bunch of ideas and lessons I picked up along the way in the program. It is strange the things you wind up enjoying so much when you draw them. This cube, while it is absolutely non-engaging, was one of the most fun drawings I can remember.

Bubble Diagram Work

These are the bubble diagrams I did for my group presentation of the shelter bus community. They represent the first time I have really done something like this in such a polished form to present. Normally they are much sketchier and are used solely for process and personal reasons. This is much trickier to get right than one would think at first glance.
Self Critique and Ideas:

- The lettering should be much bolder, use a black marker and not a pen
- Use non-bleeding, alcohol proof pens and markers so the colors don't smear your lettering or borders
- Use hierarchy of line widths and segment lengths to show relationships and connections on different levels
- Group similarly colored bubbles closer together and not so spread out
- Possibly use paler colors so the lettering stands out more.
- Work on getting just the right values of color for each color group to show hierarchy
- Experiment with using a background to ground the composition, or try different paper [possibly gray]

This all is just me copying other individual's style in doing this. Copy others until you find/develop your own. All in all, not a bad start I would say.

Guerilla Marketing

These are two of the ideas for my groups guerilla marketing scheme.

This one involves acquiring a bunch of those yellow envelopes the parking people use for tickets, and putting them on everyone's car, only with a fake ticket inside. Make it so that people think they have received a parking ticket, and thwart that with a humorous, or catchy card which we design inside.
A fake arrest... pretty self explanatory. This one would be great especially if used in conjunction with other marketing tactics. Use this to really shake the campus up and draw attention, maybe people will think it's for real, but throw in certain elements to make it seem just a little skewed, such as what the police say, what is written on the car, etc... There could even be several arrests made in different places on campus. The main thing is that it is loud and dramatic: lights, sirens, footchase, calls for backup... the works. Also a great way to get the campus police involved with what the studio is doing this year. The other marketing strategies can be viewed here. Kevin Lahti, Lily Glover, Katie

Tiki Lamp [neptune] artifact

The tiki lamp in this instance, is a relatively small cylindrical object. It's form mimics that of a totem pole or of an ancient polynesian tiki god idol. Their culture was polytheistic and highly permeated with ideas about each god and their place. Tiki figurines and statues were thus adapted and made as religious icons. In polynesian mythology Tiki was the name of the first man to exist. He was the originator of proceeding generations, thus the way that the tiki face, and styling is fashioned into a lamp, is a very appropriate adaptation.
This artifact is formed into a lamp of sorts. It is constructed of hand carved tropical mango wood, and polished with an antique, dark stain. The center is hollowed out by hand to allow a small lamp to be inserted in it and provide a small amount of light that passes through the mouth and eyes. This use of the design of the exterior of the object really marries the form with the function in this instance; the shape of the face, dictates the amount or quality of light being emitted, and also the mood which the lighting sets in the space being occupied by this artifact.
The composition of the carving is arranged in a symmetrical fashion across the vertical axis and is predominantly shallow relief sculpture. This gives the entire piece as a whole a subtractive nature, one can almost picture the piece of wood before the artist cut into it; it's shape and form are retained. All the decorative flourishes and carvings follow the features of the exaggerated face, this directs the eye to the center of the composition and it's subject: the face, and ultimately the light inside.

Better Late Than Never

This is a design idea that came to me about how to rectify this issue of personal space and people not using a shelter to its capacity. If there were a pad of concrete or some base, with bar stool-like seats sunken into the ground in seemingly sporadic arrangement, more seats would be occupied than with a traditional bench. The stool pedestals would eliminate the idea of someone sitting next to you and create the feeling of a personal bench, personal space. Thus more people would make use of the space and wheelchair accessibility would be made much simpler. This represents a shift of thinking with traditional bus shelters however; It is not a place you stop and take a load off, sit and wait, but more of an active rest area. The previous precedent studies have shown that most people stand at bus stops anyway regardless of what shelter is available, this taps into that, and creates a semi-standing rest position which may be more comfortable and appropriate for the situation.

Bus Shelter/Shelter Bus Codes and Details

These diagrams illustrate one of the conundrums of bus shelters, using our precedent shelter as an example. Individuals who are waiting for a bus generally do not use the shelter. A few individuals will use the benches inside the shelter, but most gravitate in clusters around the trees. This is true even during inclement weather, most people will stand outside with their jackets or umbrellas. Due to the proximetrics and space comfort levels of average individuals, very few get to use the structure, because nobody wants to get close to each other. Also is it that trees represent an iconic symbol of shelter with which humans subconsciously identify? Are there other lurking variables associated with this site or with any bus stop site that are influencing this pattern of activity? It seems by examining this detail during our code exercises, more questions were raised than were answered. This is my portion of the codes diagrams, the others as well as the essay outlining our findings produced by my group, the Jacks, can be viewed by visiting my group mate's blogs. Jennifer Cochran or Jessica Crews

Bush Shelter Charette

These are my preliminary sketch models for the bus shelter assignment. They borrowed heavily from principles used in some of my earlier projects. The bottom image shows the model that we ran with adding a few modifications but keeping it in tact for the most part.



It was decided that the open end of the shelter is to face Spring Garden Street, because that is the direction from which the bus approaches. The vertical opening in the opposite wall of the shelter serves as a window of sorts for occupants to look down Tate Street in the opposite direction of the bus' approach.

The shape of the structure was implemented in order to connect visually with the sculpture garden recently completed outside the art museum. It has a natural area that is wavy, changing height in a radio wave-like fashion. Thus the curves of the bus shelter are an extension of this visual element.

Bus Charette

These are my initial design drawings for the bus, exploring several ideas. Each drawing shows a feature that was incorporated in the final design. The top drawing shows the expandable side panel much the way campers or RV's work. The second drawing was where I began toying with the idea to use an articulated bus (a bus with a center joint) to make use of the longer body and more interior space. Finally the bottom sketch was an exploration of how the inside might be ordered.

Circulation bubble chart diagramming the relationship between public and private spaces, to both the bus' communications/survey and stress counseling roles.

A specific diagram of elements and operation associated with the counseling function of the vehicle.
The communications element was important to the design and incorporated several aspects: networking and communication with other buses to integrate aid operations, surveying and site control to coordinate following logistics, and database services to document survivors and ultimately locate separated family members for them. This diagram represents the integration of all these functions.

Ride Heat and Be Green!

Jenny,
I thought it was very interesting to learn that so many students at UNCG would choose alternate transportation to and from classes if it were more readily available. This was opposite to what I would have thought and provides a great opportunity to make our campus a leader in sustainability. Increasing public transportation would also build and make our campus community much stronger and integrative. So Ride Heat and Be Green! It's what all the cool kids are doing! Thanks for the insights!

The Three R's

I thought the text was highly revealing about what the desegregation years must have been like for minority individuals, particularly students. I also had no idea that Greensboro has such a vivid history during this time period. I did the bus ride before reading and frankly the experience did not affect what I got from the text at all. It seemed to me like they were unrelated. While the connection with desegregation and public transportation is undeniable, the connection between then and the present day experience of riding the bus is questionable to me. Much of what went on then still happens, though not in the organized way it was in the past. For example, People naturally separate themselves out based on race and gender. Look around the Caf and you can notice that mostly people sit with others of the same race. A&T is still a predominantly African American school, and UNCG is still predominantly female. Some things have not changed but then again nobody is forcing minority students to sit with others like them when they eat or ride the bus in this case.

I did have a very interesting conversation with the guy I sat next to and the driver. The man I was with taught me how to speak ghetto, which was the riot of the whole bus "yo man wat da binnes is?" The driver got a good laugh from that one. I think it's funny to note that everyone was worried about the people they would meet on the bus. Yet the first thing the man next to me asked when I sat down was if I had a "nine" in my bag. It seems that everyone was frosty on the bus, all on the lookout for what other people were doing.

It was funny to see how out of place we all were on the bus. Nobody knew how to act or to pull the cord to get the bus driver to stop for example. It's strange how there exist several layers of the same world right under our noses that we never experience in our daily routine.

I did not really learn anything new on this bus ride, but the text was interesting, even for the late hour that I read it.

The First Week

The first week for me really was not any big deal. It just kinda came and went. I am glad summer is over but starting back was much less dramatic than I was expecting. For me thus far second year, this first week in particular, feels pretty much like last year. That's why I chose to do the design sketch above. This was one of the biggest things I learned from last year was being able to generate ideas on paper this way.