La Lizza Planning Strategy
The program entails developing the La Lizza Park site, situated adjacent to Fortezza Medicea in Siena, italy, into a home for music and music-related activities.
One proposal involves developing the original hardscape into a series of spaces that expand and contract.
The original site analysis, noting major entries into the park, neighboring program and structures.
The idea of contraction and expansion evolved from a musician’s action during a performance. He or she acts in repose, awaiting his turn to play, taking in environ of music from his peers. However, when his turn arises to play his instrument, he becomes the epicenter of the sound, and expands from there. The sketches above show preliminary planning ideas.
The final planar and sectional proposal that attempts to create feelings of expansion and contraction on the horizontal plane and vertical plane.
Ideas of hardscaping areas to create the aforementioned effect.
Corner entry that demonstrates the contraction which leads to an expansive area that form the lobby of the adjacent volumes.
Preliminary perspective sketch.
The Old & The New of Siena
We were tasked to document our path to Porta Ovile and Barriera San Lorenzo in our second week in Siena. In our journey, we discovered an interesting comparison between the two in that one shared the old medieval language with the rest of the city—Porta Ovile—while the other contrasted the old with a more modern, renaissance language. In this project we compared to the two in terms of programming, scale, rhythm, and building typologies.
The starting point: Il Campo
The path to Porta Ovile demonstrated the stereotypes of medieval typologies in the expanding and contracting of the circulation, programed for pedestrian traffic (narrow, heavy inclined streets), and elements of gothic architecture.
The path to Barriera San Lorenzo, by contrast, had a very regular street width, i.e. wide, a gradual ramp with a large radial turn—all suggesting vehicular traffic; and indeed it was as this was the main thoroughfare by which buses travel in and our of the city. A bus station is situated up the hill from the Barriera.
Small foldouts details sectional qualities of the area: paving pattern, scaled transverse section of the street, building typology (gothic, medieval, renaissance), as well as specific details pertaining to that area.
The overall presentation:
Team Members: Anthony Cosentino, Sayumi Cortes, Jon Van Ostenbridge
Sketch of Piazza Salimbeni at night. It was an attempt to capture the artificial lighting on the statue, figures, and the columns.
Medium: 8x5 Pen-Ink
Path to Porta San Marco
The assignment called for documenting and analyzing our path to Porta San Marco, one of the Medieval Gates in the oldest district of Siena, Italy.
The typical view when traversing the path to San Marco. Buildings jut in and out of the path leaving interesting pockets programmed for parking vehicles or small gatherings.
And onto the presentation:
Overlay of the path we took from Il Campo to Porta San Marco…
Dissecting the overlay, one would discover a scaled plan of the path as well as an abstraction of our “discoveries”—represented as swells along the paths. Each of these swollen nodes are represented in a perspective to show how we experience each place.
Beginning from Il Campo, we journey into tight streets of Siena.
In our travels, a break in the usual facade brings light into the dark alleys, peeking our interest. It lead to the discovery of a fountain, as well as a path from ridge to ridge.
A portal of light leads to an open piazza.
Sectional comparison of the various street conditions we experience in relationship to the elevation.
Analysis of Castelvecchio with these main ideas: Dancing roofs, relationship of typography to building height, contraction and expansion of spaces creating unusual perspectives, and buttressing of the building facades.
Field Sketches:
Team Members: Anthony Cosentino, Kamilyn Longmore, Xing Su
Il Campo Model
The model of Il Campo conceptualizes how it stands out in plan among the sea of red clay roof tiles. From this single sheet of paper, the Campo is pulled out rather than the building facade folding up to illustrate the datum that is established by the plan of the roofs.
Banca del Monte dei Paschi (Revisited)
It was interesting physically seeing one of your precedent studies, and that’s exactly what happened on this journey. I previously documented Banca del Monte dei Paschi in Colle Val D’Elsa and noted these details: Juxtaposition of contemporary architecture and its preceding architecture and the floating volumes.
Detail of a modern stair in a non-modern setting. Though the construction resembles something of old, a reveal in the stringer reveals its modern construction.
The stone facade that addresses the preceding language of Colle Val D’Elsa.
Branching columns resembling a gothic language in a modern method.
The floating volumes above the open air public ground floor.
I believe that a lot of these details are in line with my previous study. However, details of the success of such a public space contradicts my original notion. As one can see from the photographs, the only ones occupying this space is my group. The adjacent cafe no longer resides in that public space, and the only attractor point is the atm at the end of the empty plaza. Lack of programming of the ground floor lead to the dead atmosphere that feels like zombies are going to crawl over the adjacent wall (picture below) to get you.
Ironically, Michelucci makes great strides to relate to its context on the other side (the stone facade that addresses towards the town), but ignores this condition where he separates his building its direct neighbors, creating more dead space.
Unfortunately, this project seems unsuccessful as a public space.
Florence
The journey through Florence, Italy led to several landmarks that included, but not limited to Palazzo Strozzi, Piazza della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio, and Uffizi Gallery. Each of these landmarks were sketched in a manner where the perspective was exaggerated to create a certain effect.
This series of sketches attempted to evoke the feeling of one as they entered into the Palazzo Strozzi where the left, the occupant is inside the walls, experience the open-air courtyard while the right, the occupant is just outside the main entrance. The vast difference in scale between the person and the gate is perceived as an overbearing to the person entering.
The perspective intends to captture the unique L-shape piazza as well as how people congregate around nodes, i.e. the fountains. Detail of the crenelated murlons of the adjacent Palazzo Vecchio completes the composition.
In the courtyard of Palazzo Vecchio is a fountain where a small angel is composed reaching towards the void in ceiling. Skewed in the perspective that appears to be nearly directly underneath the subject, the sketch intends to capture such a feeling of reaching towards the light.
The sketch of Uffizi Gallery intends to capture the lines that seems to skew the perspective of the occupant, visually extending the space.
