Week Four: HKS Presentation and Design Development

Week Four:

After traveling 190 miles south to Dallas, we were excited to show off our progress to HKS. However, the people who criticed our project focused mainly on the site and retail space more than we anticipated. This made us begin to consider our site and retail development more which took the focus away from our clinic space for awhile. Once regaining our attention on the clinic we began to consider our plan in relation to egress and code.

Architects:  Throughout our presentations at HKS we were questioned about the ways in which we were choosing to handle the site.  After hearing opinions from other professors we were forced to re-evaluate the reasons we had for knocking down the existing shopping mall.  Some of the people critiquing said the shopping mall was a landmark within the community that shouldn’t be taken down because of the emotional attachments people in Tulsa North had to the building.  This made us really start thinking about why we chose to do something different.  Our choice to knock the building down was derived from the presentations in Tulsa earlier this month.  In the presentations it was said that the hospital we are designing was meant to be an epic-center for which the Tulsa North community was to start a new development.  In our opinion to fully redevelop a community you must start by taking away anything with bad connotations within the area, and although the Tulsa north shopping center was a place in which historical events took place, the events were mostly negative and were encouraged by thoughts that people in today’s world are trying to forget.  By taking down the shopping center you have the room needed to start to create a new image to match the new identity of Tulsa North.    Therefore our plan is to create a more functional shopping mall built from the recycled materials of the old shopping mall.  We plan to rebuild placed for all the current business owners in the area, as well as add a daycare, community center, park, and wellness center.   To better unify the buildings we have added a pond / communal space to place the buildings around, and therefore allow for more public interaction within the area. 

Interiors:  After talking with several professionals about our egress plan in our building we knew that we were on the right track.  We discussed how we would solve the problem of our third floor café’s egress without impeding too much with the structure and look of the façade.  Our group talked, sketched, and stressed over how we could solve this with our holistic approach of inside-out.  We finally decided to have the egress stairs become a feature element on the main façade by the entry.  Taking a problem and using it to enhance our design in a unique and creative way is just another part of our design methodology. 

Goals:  Our group goals for this coming week are to run, build, and stay focused.  We want to run with our ideas and critiques from the past few weeks and really move forward with all aspects of our projects.  We want to start to build… getting models finalized, site sculpted, and interiors in 3D.  And most importantly, we are really going to try to stay focused this week.  Not just focused on doing work but focus on our project goals and design.  We learned a lot from the Dallas critiques but the most useful thing we took away was that we need to stay true to want we believe Tulsa North needs, wants, and will appreciate and stand by those beliefs.

Week three: Design Development

Week Three:

 

This week we prepared ourselves for the big midpoint review in Dallas this coming Monday.  We pushed ourselves to get our preliminary designs together so that we can show HKS what track we are running on.  Our philosophy this week was to get as much of our ideas on paper so that we could get as much feedback as possible from the professionals in Dallas. 

 

Architecture: Build, build, build....The architects this week worked to finalized the massing form of the overall design of the clinic.  They whipped out a few models with different elements while still keeping the overall massing of the building for feedback in D-town.  While working on the massing models they discovered some unique ideas for the design of our roof-line and atrium spaces that will really make our clinic an icon of Tulsa North.

 

Interiors:  Space planning, space planning, space planning....  Beth Ann and I worked this week on getting the overall space planning of not only the required developed 8,000 square feet but of all the wings within the clinic.  Even though we are only required to develop 8,000 square of our clinic we feel that it is necessary to have an overall understanding of the entire space so we know that the overall building form will work for the interiors. 

 

Together:  Team work...  We found this week that our teamwork was a major assets too get our holistic approach across in our designs.  As a group we solved interior space planning issues, finding it helpful to have an architects outside opinion.  Also we discussed exterior issues like parking and the retail space layout, finding that having minds from the interior and exterior perspective was very efficient.

 

Goals: Advance....  Our overall goal for the coming week is to advance our designs.  We want to take the information and feedback from the Dallas critiques to heart and apply as much as possible to our clinic, interior and exterior.  We want to take full advantage of having a professionals opinion about our designs and use it to leap forward.

Week 1 & 2

Welcome to the Holistic Design Group blog!
October 17, 2010

We are made up of 2 architecture students (Adam Edge and Meng Hua Shih) and 2 interior design students (Rachel Mosmeyer and Beth Ann Rubin) from the University of Oklahoma's College of Architecture.

Our name, Holistic Design Group, describes the methodology in which we approach our designs. Our goal as a design group is to collaborate and communicate with one another while incorporating sustainability into our designs. For the Wayman Tisdale Community Clinic in Tulsa North, our mission is to design a clinic that encompasses a healthy way of life through community and function. Our concept for this project is to design a space of healing inspired by nature that transforms and unifies the community of Tulsa North.

After analyzing the area and site where the clinic will be located, we found it beneficial to reconstruct the entire site including the existing retail space. However, we plan to redevelop the retail spaces that will include a new community center, wellness center, day care, pharmacy, and more that will be valuable to the community.

The shape of our building was directly related to the function of the clinic that allowed us to design with an inside-out approach. Through our adjacency studies, we were able to fully understand the needs of the clinic and use this for our overall design and orientation on the site. Within the clinic there are several spaces that are to be easily accessed such as the ambulatory care and urgent care and others that need as much privacy as possible (ex: chemotherapy, operation rooms, and dialysis). This separation of public and private space also influenced the overall shape and design.

The building is based around radial organization with a central entry space with separate wings that create easy way finding and separation of public and private spaces. To incorporate nature inside the building, we have created interior happy spaces where nature is prominent. These spaces not only bring nature into the building but also promote a calm and healing environment for the well-being of patients, employees, and visitors.

Within the past two weeks, the Holistic Design Group has gone through many possible layouts for the community clinic however the radial design incorporates our concept of function, community, and nature for this project the best.

Our inspiration for the design of the building and its interiors mainly comes from clinics designed in Scotland. These projects incorporated a balance of healing through nature and sustainable design. This inspired our firm to design the Wayman Tisdale Community Clinic with a local mindset, the use local materials and job opportunities for the community will boost the local economy. Other inspiration came from a dentist office in Japan that focused on clean, modern lines and separation of space.

Inspirational Images

For the upcoming week, our group goals are to create a preliminary floor plan, finalize the orientation of clinic and retail space on the site, and to have several massing models for our critic in Dallas.

-HDG