What does a mixed-use design involve?
Mixed-use building designs combine multiple uses such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment into one area. It could be a single vertical design: typically, a multistorey unit with repetitive space allocations or a horizontal development that stretches several linked uses into a neighbourhood: channelled at community building.
As a student, what is it to take note of?
The Stakeholders in projects like these are mostly town planners, private developers, business owners, and community organisations. It is important for students to research into providing a solid project base, in terms of solidifying the viability of who may be the project clients and stakeholders. It may seem a lot as typically one would want to just combine a few shapes and make up the “paperwork” as they go along: but it is worth knowing who are the potential forces likely to take up your design project you intend to introduce on your crit day.
What to do once you decide it is going to be a mixed-use, design?
Once you decide to take on a mixed-use project in any of your submissions, initially identify what your best site options are for what you are considering. Be it a fusion of residential, educational, and entertainment or just a combination of two uses: make sure your site choice is fully justified in terms of transportation control to and from the site, public health and safety considerations, architectural suitability for the scope of your design (initial design idea) and knowledge of governmental town building and planning policies for the sites you are considering. These will take the exercise of researching, consultations, site visits, and the ability to sketch with annotations. Once your site is picked, you now need to identify which elements in your building which you deem as priorities and others not so important.
Space proximity
You have to make the proximity of spaces you have chosen to include in your project reasonable enough in your design process. It is important to adopt the technique of sketching and model-making to test and try your spatial links and record the results in images and annotations as these will aid in your understanding of your project journey and help you in defending your design to your tutors and colleagues.
Access control Options
You also need to explore access control options at different phases of your project. By this, I mean, consider how transport links will affect the construction of your project: identify the challenges with it and the potential solutions or alternatives. Then consider transport control to and from your project when it is completed. Then to the interior and exterior of your design, evaluate what access control mechanisms will be suitable for the uses you have chosen to combine and how they impact the safety and security of the building for the users. Some projects require several access parameter restrictions and techniques and it is the designer’s sole responsibility to find out what works best initially.
Read around and Observe
Research and precedent studies into existing similar projects is always a good idea. As students, we may be tempted to focus mainly on just what we see visually in our precedent. But it is equally very important to consider evaluating the thought process the designers have gone through to come out with their design solution. Don’t just make notes, but use your note every step of the way in your own design process as this helps you to make an informed design decision.
The design Selling point
It is equally important to have a centrepiece or to say a “focal” point in your design. Be creative as this could be the use of clever technology as a part of your building or an element to include in the aesthetics of your project to give it that final touch of finesse and selling point.
Present in Style
From the first design review to the very last, presentation plays a key role in aiding your critics in understanding your journey, what you have looked at, researched, and how you have attempted to solve your design questions. Make your annotations clear enough, don’t be shy to redo some initial sketches if need be, and add colour where necessary. The effective use of perspective drawings, colour, and a sense of scale will also help you communicate to your audience far more visually than needing to say much.
Conclusion
One has to understand that a mixed-use design is not that simple to come up with in less time and preparation. It is therefore important to pace one's self and go through things methodologically in order to come out successful at it. All shortcuts will be exposed in one way or the other on a crit day so read more, practice, and get sketching.
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