AARHUS SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE - MASTER'S DEGREE IN ARCHITECTURE
// Completion Date: September - December, 2023
// Project Location: Badstuegade, Aarhus
// Aarhus School of Architecture: (Tutor) Jonathan Foote
I have mistakenly directed my animation reference into the wrong project, so animation is not correlated to the project, sorry!
Located in the heart of the vibrant area Midbyen, the site is anchored by a cycling and a vehicle street - Klostergade and Badstuegade. With heavy amenities around the area and traffic, the site gives the opportunity to provide a public program. With the small and irregular site footprint, the program needs to be placed strategically, therefore a basement plan is proposed to fit all the programs from the brief, as well as maintaining a similar building height with the surrounding urban fabric.
in respect to the climate analysis. The annual radiation exposure analysis shows the optimal passive strategies for the massing design. Southern sun allows the right angle to heat up the building and courtyard, whereas the northern side does not have access to solar heat gain during the winter. With all this under consideration the massing can adapt to achieve optimal thermal performance throughout the year.
The complexity of the different architectural elemetns are actually holded up by a relatively simple strcutural system. A column grid and holds up the public terrace and aligning with the beams on the basment level it holds up the changing room and the water feature with a thin layer of water and a triple glazed glass skylight, the idea is to allow some natural light penetrate through into the basement level, with water ripple effect to create a more dynamic experience.
The glass blocks are holding up themselves with double glazed properties, allowing suitable thermal comfort inside the interior, but also providing natural light into the spaces. The proposal is to use typical prefabricated glass blocks which is dimensioned 300mm x 300mm x 100mm in size.
The facade consists of modular and prefabricated glass blocks. The translucent properties of the glass blocks provide natural light into the interior spaces as well as privacy for some programs. The northern facade has a building height of roughly 10 metres. As a way to express the architectural mechanical systems, all mechanical systems and ducts are placed on that facade, exposing the systems of the building to convey an expression of a modern object in a historical urban fabric area. The glass blocks apply a translucent effect, to blur out the harsh outlook of the mechanical systems like heat pumps and machines.
The changing room strategy is to create a flow that is intuitive and easy to access all programs in order. Arrival with the order of shoe cabinet, lockers, changing room stalls, toilets, wash basins, and showers. After bath house experience you come back up to the changing room with showers access before entering back to your lockers and changing room stalls. This configuration also allows minimising wet floor, separating the dry and wet zones with clear barriers and circulations.
The changing room have close proximity towards the arrival lobby, where after it goes through the changing room configuration - to create a flow that is intuitive and easy to access all programs in order. Arrival with the order of shoe cabinet, lockers, changing room stalls, toilets, wash basins, and showers. After bath house experience you come back up to the changing room with showers access before entering back to your lockers and changing room stalls. This configuration also allows minimising wet floor, separating the dry and wet zones with clear barriers and circulations.
After going through the changing room experience, it directly lands downwards to the bathing experience. The concept of the bathhouse experience is to flood that entire basement with water. Almost like an archipelago, having decks and little islands for people to sit and submerge into the water. There are also sauna room and aroma spaces for people to pause and transit to different temperatures of water.
