Architecture student in need of some advice.

You've got a point there rustbucket, I don't think any of the tutors have much of a clue about either sports. It should be possible to pull the wool over their eyes, however, the more professional my research appears the more likely they are to be impressed. These people have listened to students implement the art of bull**** for many years.

As for getting some experiece on a surfboard that's not a bad idea at all...however, it doesn't escape my attention that it is summer over there in Australia. It is just a tad chillier here in the UK! ha ha

It's even been snowing, which, for, many here, is the equivalent of the apocolypse!

OOPS! Apologies for that slip of the tongue!

Yeah it was snowing on the day of my first site visit to Crosby, it was so cold no one dared take their gloves off for more than a few seconds.

I repeat....



Yes, people do make these things, yes some rare breed of people do buy and sail these things, but lets keep it simple for the poor lad...
...if he were designing a car repair centre, would we recommend that the garage height had to be 6 metres so we could get a monster truck in?

Only if we were being particularly difficult...

Where's the wave machine going to go?

is a mirror ball like a glass eye ???

getting back to the task at hand.

it doesn't matter if the design needs to house longboards or wide boards, that will come out in the wash. just provide 2 rooms at 6mx3m for the sails and boards plus a 6mx6m room for landsailors and work out the detail later in the day.

then plug in your bar / decks / amenities / enty point / outdoor spaces / tractor-boat ... etc.

getting too hung up on exact room sizes just limits the design.

what's important is the spacial relationship of the rooms and their function. gotta start at the planning phase and work your way up.

work out the best aspects and view lines.
get some site sections happening and look at topography
explore the volumetric outcomes of your building once the plans are happening

remember, if the planning is no good no amount of tarting up is going to help.

Depends where you are; where I sail, it's almost all longboards and the numbers are pretty strong, and in these areas they often work better for beginners too. And in the regular racing scene across Oz, the USA, UK, France, Germany and most other big windsurfing nations, longboards and hybrids outnumber shortboards 2:1.

No one said a centre should be designed around any one type of board, but if you are going to run a windsurfing centre in Liverpool, you'd be better off encouraging a strong weekly racing scene to ensure you get people turning routinely up whether it's light wind or strong, and that pretty much means longboards or hybrids.

That's twee Richie. What you should have is authentic barrow mounds. Yep, hide all the gubbins away from the miserable weather under a turf roof - not unlike the teletubbies home. What could be more conducive to a happy frame of mind than a row of green lumps with the occasional drunk passed out and a few voluble windsurfers in a rigging frenzy frenetically fussing by the water.

The ca-chunk machine goes side shore from the fans.

Here's my club; you could do a lot worse than just copying this:

www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=39829

Bar and restaurant, two seperate large washing areas, changerooms, a classroom, plenty of covered area for when it rains, pro shop, 2 zodiacs, 2 tractors for pulling said zodiacs, plenty of grass and shade, racks for hundreds of boards and rigged sails, weight training equipment, picnic tables, all in the name of windsurfing!! Now all we need is wind...



Also there's no car park...

Here's my brief if any of you would like to read it for yourselves:

Windsurfing/land yachting centre
Task

Design a centre for windsurfing and land yachting on a site at Crosby marina
Windsurfing and land yachting are sports which give the user a sense of freedom, speed and exhilaration whilst requiring skill and experience to exploit fully. The task is to produce a design that reflects these qualities and enhances the urban environment. As with all design, the key to achieving a solution which is both architecturally exciting/dynamic and answers the functional brief is to fully understand and appreciate the nature of the activity involved together with a full
appreciation of the site and the context.

Site
Crosby is a town to the north and effectively now a suburb of Liverpool. It is home to Antony Gormleys another place and the Liverpool Freeport container dock, both of which are adjacent to the site. The marina is a long established part of the area and is currently undergoing a refurbishment. The existing sailing club has a new watersports centre currently on site which will cater for dinghy sailing and canoeing.

You may use a maximum building footprint of 20% of the site area. This means that you should design car parking/landscaping for the area of the site not taken with the building.

Schedule of accommodation

In this scheme, the accommodation listed below is definitive and must be provided. Your presentation should demonstrate how the facilities work and each of the accommodation requirements is satisfied.

•Entrance and retail area
Provide an entrance and reception area for course enquiries and a small retail area for items ofwindsurfing boards and accessories, wet suits plus books/videos.
•Equipment store
Provide sufficient storage, drying and maintenance for 15 windsurfing boards and sails, 5 land yachts plus sails. There should also be storage for 20 wetsuits and an adjacent external area for washing down equipment should be provided.
•Class room
Space for 5 students plus instructor to work comfortably at desks (or tables) plus TV/video, bookshelves and wall space.
•Changing/shower facilities
Separate male and female changing area – provide changing space for a maximum of ten people each sex, 2 showers each sex, 2 toilets each sex.
•Small café area
To seat for a maximum of 20. Do not let this grow out of control. You should visit the Library Café in the Sydney Jones library for a guide to the maximum size that you should provide.

Security
You should consider the security aspect of the building which contains an amount of expensive equipment and will be unattended for periods.

External Spaces
Observation area for friends and relatives (internal and/or external), drop-off point for people and equipment including windsurf boards, land yachts and other heavy equipment, loading area. Parking for a minimum of 25 cars laid out to Metric Handbook dimensions.

Research and Precedent study
You are to investigate and communicate detailed information about the functions carried out in the building and find/document an appropriate contemporary building that occupies a similar site (urban/) and proble (sport/activity/maritime/education).

Educational objectives
This scheme builds on the work of the first semester. You should apply the methods from the conceptual workshop and the skill building exercises (drawing/modelling/CAAD) in this scheme. In addition to needing a full understanding of the functional requirements of the building, you will be introduced to site analysis, a key component of a design formulation. You should pay full
regard to the location and the context(physical/historical/metaphoric/social/cultural) in conjunction with the functional requirements in formulating the form and the silting of your design.
you will need to address (amongst others):

•Site analysis leading to design strategies for an urban/seaside context
•Functional analysis of the requirements of the building
•Materiality – appropriate materials for use/site/conceptual basis
•Consideration of environment - a diagram showing the environmental strategy
•Efficient and spatially accurate space planning

Computing
You will be introduced to more computing skills as part of this project. As an integral part of your presentation, you are required to produce a minimum of 4 page Desktop Published document of your precedent study to be presented at the final review. The emphasis is on how well the report is designed as much as what it contains. You should use well-designed books and magazines as a basis for generating your own design. You may use any DTP package, but you may not use a wordprocessing programme such as Word. The Universities managed Network has CorelDraw and Corel PhotoPaint which may also be used. Introductory sessions will be arranged and online tutorials can be accessed from the School’s
web site. You are encouraged to continue using SketchUp for design development.

Site Visit
The site visit will take place on Monday 2nd immediately following the project introduction. Details at project introduction.

Presentation
You presentation may not occupy a wall area greater equivalent to 5 A1 sheets (not including any models/sketchbook etc). You should plan your presentation clearly and concisely to demonstrate/explain the conceptual basis and design process that lead to the presented scheme.

•Site analysis diagram (max 1xA1 sheet)
•site plan at 1:200 showing surrounding area
•plans, section and elevations @ an appropriate scale
•contextual section @ 1:200 (showing adjacent buildings and Marine Lake)
•axonometric @ 1:100
•environmental and structural strategy/diagram
•developmental models and sketchbook
•DTP precedent study
•final physical model of building

Thanks once again, that is yet another useful link! I may be able to create a viewing area for both sides, I won't really know until the initial planning stage gets under way, which should be this week.

That's a nice esquisse Richie. Suck and blow in the right place and if it blows a bit harder than it sucks that will hold the roof up. Ridiculously utopian though. How do you deal with the politics of excluding the kiters?

Hmmmm....windsurfing on Gilligan's Island. I didn't see that episode. Did the professor invent the windsurfer?

Richiefish your cute