About Me
Projects
Pier Project
Lighthouse Concept
Northgate
Suburban Homes
Portcullis House Public Facilities
The Futurists Club
Think-Tank
Theory
Contact
I chose to create a lighthouse, a building which is familiar to the coastal typology yet is rarely seen on a pier. It was felt that the proximity to an urban area would enable people to visit the building and gain a greater understanding of the lifestyle and challenges faced by a lighthouse keeper.
The building's style is derived from observations of ice formations as well as some experiments I undertook of layered ice with embedded objects (other ice shapes with ink in them) which, when chipped with a screwdriver, coincidentally resembled the forms of famous buildings such as the Flatiron building in New York, or the more recent CCTV HQ under construction in Beijing designed by OMA. I used image editing to put these forms into the place to see how this would affect the surroundings, would it be positive or negative? Humans have conquered the arctic regions, how would the arctic launch an assault on mankind's habitat?
I then took this as a design cue and looked at the jagged forms of icebergs, then combining this form with a circulation method that would maximise the usable floorspace within the building based on the space usage of the Pier Project building. This would enable me to open up the possibility of the buildnig becoming a public/private one that could accept visitors but be closed off from the outside world at the owner's will. Lighthouse keepers often endured long periods of solitude so this wold be important should the keeper wish to return to that calm. The addition of a roof terrace with public access gave the buiding a unique quality since viewing platforms of any description are unusual on piers.
The light elements as well as the windows are coasted the same colour as the aluminium cladding to give the look of a sheer inpenetrable iceberg. The light element itself is made of clulsters of bright LED's and focusing lenses arranged to give an even spread, yet focused and intense light path out to passing ships. This not only saves space and engery consumption but also discards the need for heavy machinery to turn the regularly used lens.
The cubist example at the top was discarded due to strucutural uncertainty.
Click an image to enlarge it.
