SITE MAPPINGS
KANSAS TRIP DOCUMENTRYVisiting Kansas was a wonderful experience and I loved every second of my trip. In this article I will write my own experiences and relate the buildings that we examined with the cote measures.
Day 1 : From the day that I set foot in American soil I have never been to a big city. When we arrived at Missouri the scale of the buildings and their style was the first thing that caught my attention. Everything was enormous. We started our trip from KCDC. It was my first experience in an architectural firm in the U.S and I the focus toward resiliency and sustainability was remarkable. After spending some quality time there we went to BNIM headquarters. their studio was much bigger and more professional than KCDC. Their new headquarter which they showed us was a showcase for resiliency. It had cross ventilation to use the breeze, it had a pumping system to control the water management and reduce the waste of the water, a façade to control the natural light and a green roof but these complex engineering difficulties didn't harm the design at all. In fact, the building looked super nice. |
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SketchesDay 3:
In our way back to Norman we visited Moushe Safdi discovery center. The combination of concrete glass and the rivers water was really amazing and the cylinder shape of the units and their placement in the water was pretty cool but the real looker was inside. The combination of the wooden roof and the concrete structure was really amazing and there was a really cool wall inside which reacted when faced to wind. It changed color and contrast. |
Day 2:
We started our day with Kaufman center of performing arts. The building had a really weird shape. and the two sides of the building were so much different. the back of the building was made with concrete and slices of different cylinder and it felt strong and rough but the other part of the building was cover wholly with glass. this contrast made the building really stand out. When we were inside the first thing I noticed were the many cables used to hold up the place together and thinking about how the cables functioned almost felt like a miracle to me. The whole glass facade and roof was hold together by cables. The way the cables behaved kind of reminded me of how marines hold the sail in the old ships at its place. This building was meant to be a looker so efficiency and sustainability was not the focus of the Moshe Safdi Architects. After that we went to the Ballet school. In fact, it was a coal making factory but it was renovated to serve as a ballet school. This building was my favorite of all the buildings we visited. It had history, it looked futuristic, it was meticulously designed and all of the details were such a looker. the light which came through the old brick windows to the newly re-imagined spaces were really nice and the old painted facilities of the old factory which were colored in orange were giving a really futuristic feel to the spaces. The acoustic of the ballet classes were breathtaking. When we were examining one of the classes a train just went by and you couldn't feel any sound. After our visit here we visited the DRAW architecture firm and then went to the BNIM discovery center. From an engineering aspect the building was great due to its solar panels and cross ventilation systems but I didn't like the design itself. Overall, the trip to Kansas was filled with great moments and memories and I learned many lessons toward sustainability and resiliency in design. |