New Parish Hall SS Peter and Paul Mitcham

A brief walkthrough of our initial proposal for the new Parish Hall at SS Peter and Paul RC Church. Taking the site conditions, typologies of the Roman villa and early basilicas, and timber trabeated structure, the plan is organised around an atrium at its centre providing light and ventilation and planted with shrubs and lavender and   the Parish Pastoral Council meeting room forming a new public front to the (sub) urban space adjacent to the existing Presbytery and Church. The multi-use hall is situated to the rear, opening up to the garden. The slides from the initial presentation can be downloaded here.

Its all very preliminary and unrefined, proportions, sizes of rooms, materials and details will be developed along with a more detailed analysis of the programme and liaison with the client and statutory bodies. (all work copyright Satmoko Ball Ltd. Jan 2012)

Kitchen process

Strategy

Refinement

As built in a recent project

Lateralisms Volume III: The Recovery of Meaning

Above work by Jay Mistry and below by Madeline Pope, students of our final year diploma unit at the University of Nottingham.

The book showing the work of the unit put together by the students, is now available for download here.

Hammersmith House Phase 2 Development

We're reworking an earlier project in line with changes to our client's brief. These are initial plan sketches we ran through in a recent meeting together with a rough 3d computer model.

Now linking 3 flats to form one dwelling, earlier thematics related to the Balinese compound as a microcosm of urban space, figure/ground and layered threshold are maintained. A top lit atrium/internal garden has been added as a link between buildings.

Looking forward to working up the drawings.

Its Christmas!

Icicles from our garden.

Happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year

Iteration

When developing a design, ideas are set up and then tested through drawing and modelling. In this instance, a new shopfront for an existing club, the constraints are the existing structure, existing entrance doors and immediate context. The design goes through a series of iterations, developing combinations of the simple design elements of articulated panels, trabeated form, club identity, hardwearing reflective surfaces and threshold, before arriving at the preferred proposal:

Which is then tested in context:

Next stop testing against planning law and budget.

Workplace design, our office refurbishment of TBG in May issue of On Office

We got "pretty seriously involved with laminated plywood" at our refurbishment of Kentish Town offices of TBG according to Elizabeth Chopin, editor of monthly workplace design magazine On Office.

The project's major achievement not only lies in stretching a tight budget, but also keeping our client, TBG London trading throughout the construction phases.

Good design with lots of money and time is easy, take away those factors and it gets more tricky.

Sketches from Bali

We're developing a project for a small new urban building in Sanur in Bali. It will create a new frontage to a busy mixed use street and a small public space in the form of an open courtyard around a large mature tree. It will house a mix of retail/office, bar/restaurant, gym and housing. The sketches are from a recent train journey where I was attempting to consolidate a number of the design intentions through quick vignettes of key moments in the building.

We're currently working up models and scale drawings.

Collaboration

We're always interested in the work of others and look for ways that we can incorporate their excellent ideas into our designs. In this instance, we met Trent at Blue Marmalade at 100% Design and were intrigued by the way they had put together a range of furniture and objects made totally from recycled plastic which packs flat to minimise packaging and you assemble yourself to minimise production energy requirements. We were taken by this approach and liked the simple origami designs so we bought a Stealth Light.

We were working with colour change LEDs at the time and decided to experiment with the light to see if we could incorporate a more dynamic element to add to the compact fluorescent lamp of the standard design. The chip in the tip can be programmed to any colour and as fully dimmable.

This got us thinking about broader applications and in a particular project, we had a requirement for several large light fittings to hang in a tall space, so we started to investigate combinations of the Stealth Light as a possible cost effective and interesting solution. We worked up some sketches on the computer and contacted Blue Marmalade:

They were interested and reworked our crude sketch model using the correct geometry and produced this more accurate and sophisticated image which we where able to show our client:

There was an element of R&D which was undertaken regarding fixings and suspension, orders were placed and then it was a simple matter of getting a load of fittings to site and assembling them:

During the day, simple white geometric forms; at night the installation comes to life with the tips changing colour to preset programmes. They could easily be upgraded to a music to light installation - an interesting alternative to the ubiquitous crystal chandelier.

Batak Toba Houses

Whenever we travel to Indonesia, we make a point of checking out the local vernacular. Here we've got updated Batak Toba houses in Toba, Sumatra complete with TV room extension! Indonesia has extraordinary variations in house types and village planning depending on region, local climate, topography, locally available materials and cultural background. Crinkly tin is replacing traditional materials but the formal language and cosmological ordering of layout and orientation of these buildings remain the same.



Traditional building types are modified to accommodate changing lifestyles and different technologies.



The traditional version with a roof made of ijuk (palm fibre) which is being slowly reappropriated by nature.


More pics here and here