For today I updated many of my diagrams in my thesis book, even adding some new ones. After speaking with my thesis adviser about them, I am going to make them even clearer. I also am going to update the environmental diagrams that I have, remake them so they go better with the rest of the diagrams, and create more diagrams relating to what I mentioned last time. Overall I think I am going in the right direction with my diagrams, right now it is just producing more of them and redoing the awkward looking ones. On Wednesday, November 6th is my second thesis review, so for my Monday post I will have a majority of all my diagrams done.

Another thing that I am going to be trying to do for Wednesday is to work on my layout more, make it relate to biomimicry and make it flow more. The most recent idea that I've had about the layout is to use the Fibonacci Sequence/Golden Ratio in some way, since it is found in many place in nature. For now, though, I am open to suggestions on making the layout even better.

This is gong to be a short post because I haven't done much over the weekend with my diagrams due to other classes. Currently I am in the process of cleaning up the diagrams I already have for Thursday. Like always I will link the updates to that post. One thing that I did find while doing research for another class is how plants move water and nutrients through them. The phloem, is essentially a layer between the bark and the wood itself. It is incredibly fortunate that I found this, because it will definitely help with the diagrams that I am going to be doing for a week from Thursday.  

Today I had a meeting with my adviser about my thesis book draft. Overall the critique was good, but one thing I do need to work on is my diagrams, I need to really clean up the ones I already have and I need to do more diagrams. For next week I am going to clean up my existing diagrams and for the following week I am going to work on my natural process diagrams. I already have a basic diagram of how a tree gets nutrients, aside from cleaning that up, I am going to do a diagram of a complete food chain diagram and relate that to how energy is distributed in an office environment, I am also going to look at the layers of a temperate broadleaf forest and apply that to the spatial organization of an office. I am going to relate the tree diagram to how during the changing of the seasons, solar shading devices can also change and collect energy.

Over the weekend, I didn't do too much in the terms of research; I was focused on starting my thesis book. For this draft I mainly focused on layout and the placement of the diagrams that I already have, because then it will be easier for me to see what else I need in order to make my idea clearer. I didn't focus so much on the text (most of it is filler text), but for next time I will have text that relates to each of the pages.

Of the research that I did do, it was mostly about natural processes, such as how a tree collects nutrients, and how a tree can survive the winter. I diagrammed these and included them into my book draft.

For next time I plan on having more complete diagrams, more relevant diagrams, and text that adds to the diagrams and explains them.

For today I came up with several diagrams that states my exact location in the Willis Tower and the exact type of office that I am going to look at. As stated before, I am going to be looking at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning on the eighth floor of the Willis Tower. Because I couldn't find very many plans or sections of the building, I had to use the plan for Suite 710 as a surrogate for the area that the planning agency uses. Over the summer I interned at the Nashville Civic Design Center, and I diagrammed out the basic layout of that office to get an idea of how the CMAP could be laid out. I diagrammed the precedents that I found last time, (the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture office in Doha Qatar, Skygrove in New York, NY, and NOAA's Pacific Regional Center in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.)

Next week I have my thesis book draft due, and in order to get that ready, I have to do more diagrams on the Willis Tower such as entry conditions, energy usage, wind flow around the building, I have to do more diagrams of the precedents and see how they function while improving the ones that I already have, and diagram the environment, such as how a tree can survive the changing of the seasons, or how a tree collects and uses resources.

Since last time, I have done quite a bit of research to narrow down my location and program. I decided to locate my office to be a planning commission firm in Willis Tower (Sears Tower) on the 7th floor, based on the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning which is located on the 8th floor of Willis Tower. I have made a basic plan of an available suite in Willis Tower, and a basic plan of the Nashville Civic Design Center to get a basic layout of how planning commission firms were organized.

I've looked at different precedents to see how they create office spaces that integrate the building facade and space to improve employee productivity, health, job satisfaction, and collaboration. In this research I've found the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture office (located in Doha, Qatar) which uses biomimicry to make the integration of facade and space more responsive to the environment and to the employees.

(from http://www.designboom.com/architecture/aesthetics-architects-go-group-minister-of-municipal-affairs-agriculture-building-doha-qatar/)

Skygrove (New York, NY) focuses on how each floor can be responsive and self-sufficient.

(from http://ny.curbed.com/tags/skygrove)

NOAA's Pacific Regional Center (Pearl Harbor, Hawaii) focuses on how a space can be responsive and more productive for the employees.

(from http://www.hok.com/design/type/government/national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration-noaa/)

Next I will look at the different systems and processes in the ecosystem around the north United States/Illinois area.

Sorry for the late post, I've been busy with my thesis research. Last time I had decided that I was going to do an office space in Chicago. Now I've put the office space in a specific location: Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower). In preparation for today's thesis meeting, I prepared several boards showing the different spaces required for an office space, the environment information specific to Chicago, information relating to a deciduous temperate forest, and precedents that show both typical and biomimetic office spaces.

For my next thesis review I am going to create the specifics of the office (what kind of office it is, the energy consumption of that kind of office), I am going to use the sears tower as the control for my project (the ceiling heights, the different programs inside the building, the energy use, the water use, the occupant satisfaction), I'm going to delve into the biology aspect, and critically diagram the specific precedents that I find.

Since last time I've been looking at getting specific with a program and a site. I've decided that doing a prototype office floor. I decided on this because there are a lot of problems with offices, the employees don't really enjoys working in an office environment, they are they are pretty unsustainable. With this program it gives me an opportunity to focus on making a dynamic space and responsive facade that can be sustainable environmentally, economically, and socially. I started off by looking at a "typical" office space and seeing what spaces are needed for an office to function, then I looked at what people thought of the office that they work in and what improvements they would like to see made. Lastly I looked at an article comparing different office configurations and how they rank with job satisfaction and overall health, overall open offices of medium size ranked the worst while flexible offices ranked the best. Afterward I started looking for a site to begin with. The two parameters that I began with are that the site had to be a city and it had to have the same climate as Syracuse, with these two parameters I chose Chicago as my beginning site.

I now see myself beginning an analysis of the environment of Chicago, such as sun patterns, wind patterns, indigenous species, and different process of the natural world. After this I will apply these systems and process to the prototype office, then to make it more comprehensive I will choose another site of a different climate and tweak the prototype office to fit within those systems. Once I have these biomimetic offices, it will be easy to compare to a conventional office.

Yesterday was my first thesis review of the semester. I met with both my primary and secondary advisers; both of them had generally the same comments about my project so far. Some comments were that because the subject of biomimicry is very broad, it is a good thing that I distinguished between biomorphism (just copying the shape of something in nature) and biomimicry (copying the function of something in nature). The precedents that I had, the Industrial Eco-park, Eastgate, and the Esplanade, weren't at the scale that I seem to be going which is possibly a prototype space. I should find more relevant precedents that are closer to the scale that I want and diagram how they work so that I can glean an insight from them. My primary and secondary advisers gave me different but related ways of thinking of thesis: as a science experiment, where I set up the hypothesis, the givens, the test, and the predicted outcome, and as three questions: What is your specific topic that you are interested in engaging? Why is it relevant? How can you contribute to the topic and through what means?

My trajectory that I am going to work toward for the next review is to:
1) define a specific location, determine the site constraints and research natural processes that are specific to that location,
2) define a specific program, determining the criteria relevant to the program that I choose,
3) contrast the processes and systems of the site and program,
4) find specific precedents that are relevant to my program and scale
As of now, I am considering my program to be an office space, though I am not sure of the location as of yet. Michael Pawlyn has done some analysis of a typical office space and how to make them more sustainable, and I am going to look through his analysis and see if an office space is the program I want to stick with.