Thesis Design Progress

Writing and theoretical research has been sidelined temporarily to allow for some intensive designing. I have come up with a second draft for my boat building workshop.

This is an older version of the existing site plan of the fort, above. There is string pasted on the board and now covered with vellum to pick up the topography lines as I draw. Choosing the point of entry was in question for a while because of the fort's geometrical regularity, but I soon realized that it was only a matter of convenience.

On my second panel, I have my proposal. It's still schematic; red represents walls that I'm adding, and yellow indicates existing work. The red + yellow square in the lower left marks the main entrance through the powder magazine whose enormous walls still stand. You then circulate east towards the existing defensive wall (the red saw-tooth form). The path then splits in two, with large boats for repairs to the north and small boat construction to the south. The yellow kite-like space at the top is where sails are sewn or repaired, and on the other side of the sawtooth wall, the eastern-most part of the building, are storage and lofting floors for drafting the boats.

In the earthworks of the fort can be found row upon row of gabions which are ancestral sandbags. They are made of small sticks weaved into a basket to contain rocks. The gabions are then stacked upon one another and backfilled to form a rampart. For my proposal I want to use the gabion as the building block for my proposal. My material palette for the whole building will be stone, wood and rope.



I found some interesting images from a boat workshop in the States somewhere, about how they transport the boats within their facility. I'm hoping I can do something along these lines where the boats are brought in by a short rail and distributed with this kind of mechanism.


Dr. Frascari and I discussed water-proofing; a building doesn't have to be water-proof but instead water-resistant. In the past century, buildings have become utterly dependent on vapour barriers rather than finding inventive ways of dealing with moisture. If the building is properly designed it can be ventilated without causing damage to the interior structure. The Querini Stampalia is a gallery by Carlo Scarpa in Venice which allows water to flood in and drain without causing any damage to the structure or material at all. Put in the context of a boat building workshop, it could truly animate the building's use.