scale workshop (01/2008)

tutor: Max Sanjulian
students: Anastasia Fragkoudi
coordination: Institute de Arquitectura Avancada de Catalunya_Iaac

During the 2nd term of the master course we attended two workshops that were related to the research studio and the project we were assigned to develop for it. The aim of the first workshop was to realize the scale of a building constructed to accommodate 10.000 people. The subject of the first workshop was to analyze the different relationships and interactions that occur in a cruise-ship, which is the most self-sufficient context closer to the project of the research studio in terms of scale, and develop diagrams, connections and a program for a building project. The project is based on the analysis of the cruise-ship in terms of uses, human activities, accommodation, infrastructure and the relationships between them. The analysis ended up in an attempt, through proportions, to determine the square meters that each one of these elements would need for a building project of 10.000 inhabitants. The cruise-ship is like a network with nodes and connections. Human activities, accommodation and facilities are the nodes and the infrastructure and relationships between them are the connections. A cruise-ship is organized around a core that contains all human activities and facilities with the accommodation area build up around this core.


A building of 10.000 inhabitants in terms of diagrammatic form doesn’t differ much from a cruise-ship, but the key element for a project of such scale to function properly is the distribution of the core’s activities and facilities. So a first approach to the project was to organize the building around a “decentralized” core of human activities and facilities and on the periphery of this core to place the residencies. In relation to the proportions and area calculations of the cruise-ship the determination of the square meters needed to accommodate 1 person, 2 people, 3 people and 4 people was extracted. By different combinations of these volumes one can have a variety of formations. A floor of a residential core contains 20 people that occupy an accommodational space of 420 square meters and 100 square meters of infrastructure. By increasing in height a residential core can accommodate 1.000 people in 50 floors. Implementing 10 residential cores fulfill the accommodational needs of 10.000 people.



The same approach was followed for all the other human activities, infrastructure and facilities that are implemented in the building’s program always in proportion to the measurements of the cruise-ship. Human activities and facilities are also organized in cores, 4 of them, that are in close relationship between them forming the main centre of the building’s diagram. Some of them are introduced in the residential cores following the principals of the “decentralization” of the core of the volume.