Reginald Parade - Behind the Bike Sheds

Reginald Parade - Before And After

A design review of my thesis project at work brought up some concerns about the treatment of Reginald Parade. I had removed the shops leaving the colonnaded facade as an entrance to the site with railings between the bays. This was felt to be too incongruous with no architectural connection to the building.

I have since tried to strengthen that connection by bringing some of the architectural language of the building to the parade. I have also tried to make the scheme interact more with its context by incorporating and developing the existing bus stop and adding a new cycle store.

Elevations

East Elevation South Elevation

West Elevation
North Elevation

Final Design?

A quick render of the scheme in context.

Volumes and Elevations

Further amendments to the plans resulted in the addition of the second floor. This tied in with site sections forming a stronger relationship with the site and raised interesting opportunities for the internal volumes and the elevations.

Materials

Earlier sketched explorations of potential building forms looked at contemporising the traditional building typology. This sketch sees the combination of these ideas with an initial attempt at rationalising the elevations with the general arrangements.

Visual / Physical Connections

Once a decision on the position of the building had been made the idea of how to connect the road and the urban context to the park was considered. The sketch shown exhibits the idea of integrating the building and park and flowing the landscape through.

Posistion Within the Site

The size of the site posed the question of where to site the building. Depending upon its position within the park the building took on differing relationships with the local and wider community. Siting the building to the front of the park on Chapeltown Road increased its relationship with the wider urban context whilst still retaining ties with the immediate community.
This advanced position also allows the scheme to make maximum use of the remaining parkland. It offers the potential to connect the building and its uses to the landscape and provide further facilities for the community.

Response to the Site

The sloping nature of the site raised a number of possibilities. One of the first steps was to investigate options for the building’s relationship with the landscape.

Retrospective Design Process

The next few posts will hopefully explain the design process a little more clearly. Ideally these should have been posted earlier and in some cases come before some that have already been posted.



The order that things should have gone is as follows:

• Response to the Site


• Position Within the Site


• Spatial Hierarchy (previously posted)


• Visual / Physical Connections


• Earthships (previously posted)


• Activity Boxes (previously posted as 'Block Model')


• Materials


• Volumes and Elevations

Earthship Concept

The conceptual approach to the design of the scheme is based upon the theory of Earthships. This small scale residential concept produces an autonomous building that provides its own energy, water and heating and manages its own waste disposal.

One of the main techniques that the system uses is the regulation of internal temperatures by the use of passive solar gains and thermal mass.

The aim is to take as many of the Earthship techniques as possible that are appropriate and adapt them to a larger scale public building.