Terminal Madness

Further group discussions this week lead to the thought that perhaps as well as designing for a particular region, we could each look at a unique existing host transport in conjunction with our terminal design. 

Mitch expressed his interest in looking at ships – due to his design for coastal regions.

Beau expressed interest in looking at flying mobile architecture and airport infrastructure. 

We decided that Rosabella will design for road-train/truck adaption.

I will look at train mobility and thus train terminals. 

While we decided to divide the host transport systems between us, it is still important to consider that each region (and terminal) will more than likely utilise combinations of these transport systems.  Eg – coastal regions may use all four, desert may only use plane and road train, rural may use plane train and truck, bushland may only use train and truck.  This decision is up to each of us as to what we incorporate in our own terminal and how we justify this is again an individual choice, unless this evolves further n class discussions.

Before looking at train terminals, stations, I wanted to look at ways of dealing with temporary/mobile/replaceable services.  I looked at the work of Richard Rogers, and his forward thinking ways and machine-like aesthetic for providing external building services, capable of easy maintenance and plug-in capability:

This form of aesthetic, expressive of its mechanical capabilities, I thought might give users of the terminal and mobile architecture a unique experience, allowing them to see the building organising its components.  Each mobile unit may of course have its own unique style/identity, so the stacking or organising of these units may provide a collage of function, colour, regional identity etc.  This expressed, ever-changing “wall of mobile units” will provide not only an interesting dynamic over time, but may also aid terminal officers in controlling what mobile units are in/out for speed of coordination and efficiency of the building.  This area should also act as the service, vertical transportation core.  As in Richard Roger’s work, this allows for greater unobstructed floor areas and thus more flexibility in how these spaces can be transformed when required.

I have been researching train station design in an effort to discover the elements that make this typology special/unique (other than trains) and how I may incorporate some of these elements/spaces into my design for the mobile unit shipping terminal.  Below are a handful of images covering several different train stations which caught my eye. 

The reason I found these exemplars so appealing after looking at a plethora of stations is both in the wonderful presentation drawing styles which I may try to re-create in my design to effectively sell the building, but also their instant visual appeal.  I also looked at airports, port terminals etc and the majority of these also had this element of iconic distinction.  Apart from the inherent infrastructural requirements such as tracks, platforms etc, there is also an element of freedom in terms of how the sevice and public spaces are layed out.  While transport architecture can be rather mundane at times, these architects have created functional buildings, overloaded with delight.  All of them feature expressive form elements, namely the roof structures, as this is often the element that is freed from the infrastructural limitations.  Large sweeping curves, glass domes, undulating sheets etc. are used, either over the platforms or over the retail/customer waiting areas to reduce that feeling of mundane…..the feeling of waiting to be transferred, while enhancing sense of place and the excitement of journey and destination.  This element may be the area that I will look at for the iconic/wayfinding expression of regional Australia’s identity, with particular focus on my nominated landscape type of bushland.

This terminal will have to balance extreme infrastructural functionality (to be a living machine) with human scale activity, while remaining sensitive to its regional identity, in material, form and context. I personally believe it should be not so over-materialised and completely pointless that it becomes unsustainable, but should be designed to be large and robust enough to last and service regional Australia well into the future.

Mobile uniformity = flexibility + adaptability + sustainability

In order to maintain this uniformity across all mobile units and terminal designs, the mobile architecture units will need to be standardised, but only in terms of supportive infrastructural connections.  While we have agreed that these mobile units will utilise as many existing transport systems as possible, it is important to have a standardised size/system that could work across all platforms.  While shuddering at the thought of using shipping containers as it is a concept a tad overdone, there is still a lot of merit in the basic principle.  Containers can be used on trucks, trains, trailers, boats etc.  While available in various sizes, there is still a uniformity, and they utilise the same cranes/lifts/chains/brackets/forklifts/tie-downs etc. to be mobilised.  Our principle for individual design direction is to look at how they are used and come up with a mobile unit that may look or be nothing like a shipping container in its final use, but will be transported within the same dimensions and using the same infrastructural connections.  This has great sustainable merit in that our mobile units will not require new, expensive, material intensive infrastructural support to function.

The following are images from my research (not my own design) into containers, their limits, their possibilities:

The majority of these examples are of fixed infrastructure, more likely to be used at the terminals, rather than with the mobile units.

Here are a few examples of containers/compact mobile units showing conversion of limited space or how to deal with limited space through connection of multiple units:

The most puzzling part of the mobility system has been how a mobile architectural unit may disembark from its host transport at any time while travelling between terminals (of course this would not be possible with ships…mainly trucks/trains/trailers).  This would either require some sort of lifting system built into the host transport (such as a crane) or a lifting device at the required location (eg. crane or forklift).  The only problem with this is……how many of these lifting infrastructures would we need, and where exactly should they be located, this idea greatly reduces the flexibility of the distribution system for these units.  The most flexible and sustainable way is for the individual units to have a simple inbuilt system that allows them disembark anywhere, not requiring a platform or specialised support.  I came up with the idea to use a system like that of ambulance gurneys:

This system would allow the design to unlock from the host transport and slide off the side, it’s legs dropping/being lowered as it begins to cantilever (via perhaps scissor hoist gas struts or .  Once separated from the host, it may stay elevated or can be lowered closer to ground level (as it sat on the host transport).  From here it can be towed by car/ute/small truck into any township to perform its required service.  This process is then reversed to return it to a host transport system on its way back to a terminal.

An interesting video I came across in my research, showing a walking mobile dwelling using gas strut legs, probably not what I will use (due to its speed and over technicality) but worth a view nonetheless:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkb6jfEwe0g

Defining the design direction

Following our in-class group discussion, we have decided to proceed in somewhat the same direction for the design component, while still maintaining our own goals and ideas.  We have decided that in order to maximise the output of content which we presented as possible outcomes, we will divide the task evenly amongst the 4 of us.  We will each design a mobile responsive unit, the function of which can be specific, or left as flexible as we desire.  We will also each design the “node” (or terminal as I see it) where these mobile units will converge/meet/deploy/coordinate etc.  Due to the mobile unit being…..well…….mobile, it is less likely to be more efficient as single region site response, as it may need to be moved to other regions.  The Node however, the static architecture which we will also focus on, will be permanent and as such should have a more particular focus on site specific response.  Our presentation identified 4 key landscape identities which make up regional Australia, these are ;

Coastal – to be designed by Mitchell Young

Desert – to be designed by Beau Davis

Rural – to be designed by Rosabella Borsellino

Bushland – to be designed by myself.

While we each want to be able to explore our own ideas, it is important to us that to realise a whole mobile system across regional Australia, our mobile units and terminals will need to ”talk” to each other through identity, technology, infrastructure and mobile architecture.