A reading room

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The brief asked for 'a reading room' to be placed in the Geelong Botanical Gardens. A book was selected to be read during the project. What it means to read, how we read, the validity of books and the notion of room were key issues within the design studio.

RESPONSE
The traditional domestic room consists of four walls, the roof and floor planes, providing a sense of place, security and enclosure. In Tim Winton’s ‘The Riders’, there is no home, only fleeting places and a constant sense of movement.

By breaking the elements of the room apart in the landscape, they are free from their normal perceptions of meaning. The breaking of enclosure also allowed a heightening of other sensory perceptions to occur within the landscape; sight, smell, touch and sound.

During the novel, Tim Winton talks of architecture as taking away from nature. The forms in this design have been derived using boolean commands in computer modelling [addition and subtraction from solids developed by the mathematician George Boole]. Negative space and void become more conscious processes as they are carved from existing solids rather than emerging as the result of the assembly of planes.

Places travelled during the novel; ireland, paris, greece, amsterdam, florence, london, freemantle, have been superimposed and marked onto the grounds of the botanical gardens. These markings provide a starting point for the arrangement of the elements.

The occupier is also free to place themselves in the landscape by providing the opportunity for integration of purpose among the physical elements. Environmental conditions also allow the occupier to determine their position based on how the physical elements respond to the given environmental conditions.

The design is primarily constructed from high-tensile reinforced concrete. Horizontal planes are treated with a ground, smooth finishes. Vertical surfaces are treated with a coarse finish. A faint red pigment is mixed into the concrete during prefabrication. A section of the south wall is clad in copper with brass fixing plates and bolts. Uplights are concealed in the water collection pit located in front of the south wall to highlight the materials and provide a ‘backdrop’ to the space at dusk/night. Ground lighting is also installed on the east side indicating paths of marking. Weathering of materials is expected over time as a counter to the artificial nature of the botanical gardens.