Tendopoli_design of SESAM workshop sleeping area

In this new series of posts,  I’m going to describe the  project for the SESAM2009 sleeping area. Small European Students of Architecture Meeting (SESAM) is a meeting point for students of architecture. This year, this workshop will be host by Roma, and I’m one of the organizers.

www.sesam2009.it

I’m directly designing the area with my friend PasqualePaolo Murmura, a brilliant student of civil engineering here in Roma.

1_preliminary design:purpose

The aim of our project (in this phase) is to design the area using a certain amount and kind of structures, which will be borrowed us by both Roma city council and Protezione Civile, main supporters of the event. Tendopoli means City of Tents, because Protezione Civile will give us pneumatic tents, the ones that are used during emergencies. In this very first phase we have therefore to identify our needs and study a project which shall be easily feasible and secure.

In this preliminary design, I’ve decided to use parametric softwares because we need to produce data, which essentially are: 1. A scheme of the area (which shall be read by people who are not architect) 2. A schedule of needs. Revit is perfectly suitable for this.

The Area will be host in Villa Borgese, a gorgeous park in the heart of Roma. The location is close to the zoo and to Piazza di Siena. It’s a sandy and plan site, a sort of training camp for horses.

2_producing data

I’ve therefore produced a series of Families. Each family is an object we need.

These have two important proprieties: 1.they’re easy drawn, nothing more than a few signs (identifiers or entrances) 2.they have a number of parameters, which essentially are either objects I want to schedule without drawing, or information (about the use or the supplier or cost).

For instance, here we see a tent: INFO parameters are instances, such us number and name of occupiers. Moreover I’ve set parameters like number of fire-extinguishers or number and kind of posters for each tent (type parameters). This is the structure of all families (bath for instance are male-female…and so on).

3_structure of the area

The site has just one entrance, for cars as well. We’ve imagined the project as a sequence of functional areas with different potentials of being used “without instructions” by participants (one of the most amazing thing will be to see how p. react to the spaces!). Close to the street we have a common and representative area, with a tense structure for common activities, a first-aid tent and some chemical sanitary. When we move into the camp, there is a big free-area, to be used by participants; this area is a meeting point for emergencies as well and distances sleeping tents from noisy spaces (we expect  common areas to be used until late). After that, tents camp has a carthesian plan, with some “holes” functional to the make something unexpected happen and wide enough to allow movements to rescue vehicles . At the very end of the site (close to water and sewer) there are all the sanitary and other electric instruments.

Thus I think this plan is good.Tents disposition is orthogonal and rigid, but somehow has different zones of potentials. In this other hypothesis, for instance, this potential I’m talking about is reduced by far. 

Using revit mean that we have at the same time a 3d model with all the necessary information about the use of each objects and data.

6_exporting data

We need to export the plan and a schedule

It is quite easy to produce the schedule. Once exported as a .txt it contains only data, not formulas (revit export to .txt because it does not have the logic of excel, like in SolidWorks). These data are used in a document that Paolo is writing. Revit schedule is therefore used as a preliminary source of information, it is not definitive.

Usig tags and quotes the drawing is complete. Signs are simples, because it has to be read by people who are not architects.