By studying the Aboriginal arts, I found that the circles
stand for meeting places, and I hence decide to develop my design based on the
circles. I made the circles my gardens, by doing so, the gardens are “wrapped
up” by the building forms and meanwhile, the building is surrounded by gardens.
Focusing on circular gardens, my concept is to create
contrast in terms of sensory, materiality, circulation etc. The coal loader
itself is creating contrast to the surrounding bushes. I made my first contrast
at the upper site; I demolished a tiny little bit of external brick walls and
wrap the external up by using white concrete or build on top of the brick
walls. Some of the internal walls were demolished for creating larger spaces
such as the internal theatre and the space for large sculptures, and these two
spaces have high ceiling with special type of openings for controlling light.
After entering the information space, people would enter to a darker internal
gallery, then they void open the space up, then they would choose to enter the
darker theatre or sculpture space; then to the outside garden. The green roof
not only provide people access to the platform, but also provide people inside
of the theatre and sculpture space with green natural elements.
I removed the central part of the coal loader as I think
people would come from every direction; and also, this makes other contrasts
such as the linear dark tunnel to the more open light courtyard in the center
of the coal loader. On top of the platform, the circulation is still around the
circular gardens. Different from the internal gallery space, I made the
external sculpture space sunken (so that people would go down) for creating
higher space.
Some of the art studio are located around the edge of the removed
coal loader, some of them located more towards the inside since I think
different artist would have different personality, some of them might like
space with ocean view, some of them might like garden view, some of them prefer
darker spaces, etc. So I created different studio spaces for different kinds of
artists.
