Summary of my Refine project

Firstly, congrats to everyone on getting through the semester. While this has certainly been a difficult semester, I can definitely say it has been a rewarding one, for me anyway. I took the opportunity to develop ideas that I was really happy with, particularly my organic shaped nightclub which I developed for Refine. At times I thought this was quite a stupid idea, in that I really bit off more than I could chew, given my lack of familiarity with organic structure and the complex engineering that must go into it, as well as the huge task of transferring something so freeform to the constraints of paper and models. It all started though with one very complicated drawing, which I didn't get a lot of opportunity to explain to most people.

It started off as the door to the Wool Exchange, which I used the door panels as a site retention plan, the arch as the Eastern and Western Beach Rds and Corio Bay. That was then extruded to be an abstract map of the DDI site with a variety of possible treatments of the area and the shape and skin of our proposals (in short anyway).

We looked at our proposal as being an organic break from the harsh rigidity of Geelong for our masterplan. Of course this was lost largely after the blender option was chosen, but I tried to keep as much of that idea as I could.

Skipping ahead a lot, having been given the odds and ends of the whole DDI project, our group split up the bits and pieces and I chose to do a nightclub/restaurant. Being so close to the waterfront, I wanted it to resemble a fish, and I chose the weedy scorpionfish as a starting point.

The whole thing was quite a nightmare to design, as ive never tried to make something so organic that had to evolve past the conceptual stage. I tried to standardise the shape of the panels/windows, which evolved into ovals. Due to the fact that structure needed to be considered, I had to compromise on the overall look of the building for the sake of being able to build the Refine model, and so the facade evolved into the panelised system seen on the final sketch. Below are my final posters and model.