Domus brief

2009 SRD 264
A+B: Deakin University School of Architecture and Building
Architecture 2B
SRD 264
Project 2: Domus (40%)
The second major 2B project is an exercise in collaborative architectural design and
requires team-work and representation at the level of orthographic architectural
projection and model making. In this project, student teams apply the knowledge and
learning of Minima to enhance design synthesis in Domus.
Domus: Design teams of three students (there will also be one team of four in each
tutorial group) are asked to demonstrate a new concept for a sustainable live-work
environment in one of the major climate zones of Australia. The three major climate
zones are hot-humid (tropical, Northern Australia), hot-dry (desert, Central Australia)
and temperate (Southern Australia). In Domus, students extend their Minima project to
design a shared live-work environment that can accommodate the three to four people
of their design team, plus one guest, in one of the three climate zones. Each house
must be fully autonomous – i.e. it cannot rely on power or water from the national grid,
for it may be that for lengthy periods there is no grid power or water. The project should
be approached through an understanding of the relationships between individual
(private) and collective (shared) spaces within a living environment. This understanding
is arrived at through the exploration of: the relationships between buildings and their
environment (landscape, climate and culture); the impact of energy (passive),
materiality and external site constraints (shadow, breeze, topography) from the
environment on making architectural space; and how notions of ordering,
organisational principles, repetition and composition shape architectural form making.
Task
Domus: Extend your minima project to design an autonomous and environmentally
sustainable shared live-work environment that can accommodate three to five people
in a specific climate zone.
Objectives
 Understand the relationships between individual (private) and collective (shared)
spaces within a living environment;
 Explore the relationships between buildings and their environment (landscape,
climate and culture);

 Explore the impact of energy use (using passive systems), materiality and external
site constraints (shadow, breeze, topography) from the environment on making
architectural space;
 Introduce the notions of ordering, organisational principles, repetition and composition
in architectural form making;
Requirements
Your client wishes to demonstrate a new concept for an autonomous environmentally
sustainable live-work environment in a major climate zone of Australia. Domus
requires that you respond to the climate zone assigned to your group.
Site Allocation
During Minima reviews, a sign-up sheet will be pinned up to allocate climate zones to
student teams.
Your project must address the local climate with an emphasis on environmental
sustainability and passive low-energy architecture. You are required to develop a
prototype for your climate zone. Specifically, your prototype must show how the
external physical environment (temperature, humidity, breeze, heating, cooling, light
and precipitation) can be addressed through architecture.
The live-work envelope must cater for two types of spaces, individual private spaces,
and shared collective spaces. Within these, you can define how a sleeping space,
study or work space, a living and dining space, and services (wet areas, food
preparation, storage) are allocated.
Process
Lectures each week will touch upon and/or clarify the objectives outlined above.
Articulate your concept of Domus following the weekly tutorial guidelines. Each week,
design teams must present thumbnails representing every weekly stage of their
design. The tutorial guidelines are as follows.
Week 5, Analysis of Climate and Site design
You will not be involved in tutorials this week because of teamwork workshops. But
outside of these workshops you should achieve the following prior to Week 8 tutorials.
Analyse your climate zone. What are the major environmental factors (sun, wind,
light, heating, cooling, materials, vegetation, precipitation, humidity)? How can you
respond to the challenges, constraints and opportunities presented by these
parameters? How can you expand your concept for one person to include five people
as well as the possibility of sharing functional spaces?
The site is a real one. It is located in a natural setting within the climate zone
allocated to your group. There are two constraints: First, the site is a rectangle, 12
metres wide x 36 meters long. Second, the long section of the site (36 metres) faces
North. Create a measured drawing (hard-line) of the site at 1:50 (plan and 2 sections)
for your climate zone. Make copies of the site drawings and distribute to all team
members.
Week 6, Concept development: The building envelope as a bio-climatic skin
Each team member must develop the abstraction, idea or concept of their minima into
a concept for a Domus plan & building envelope. The building envelope (floor, walls,
and roof) must respond to the specific climatic requirements of the site (designed
above). Explore your building envelope concept through sketches, drawings and
discussions with your tutorial groups and in consultation with your tutors. At the end
of this week, the team must be able to articulate their concepts for Domus as a plan
and bio-climatic skin.
Investigate dissection or sectioning as a tool for representing architectural ideas.
Cutting and slicing through space allows you to see "inside" and "in-between" objects.
Explore your concept of the Domus by creating massing models, dissections of the
model and drawings that reveal the spatial qualities of your concept in horizontal

section (plan) and vertical sections. By the Friday pin-up the team must be able to
visually present their 3 individual concepts using horizontal and vertical dissections.
Week 7, Concept development
The team should use their three design ideas to generate a set of design principles
that will inform one design. To do this, the team should record the design principles
revealed in each team member’s design idea as thumbnails and phrases. Record the
principles that are common to all your designs and alongside these record other
principles that all team members agree should inform your team-design. From these
defining team design principles each team member should propose a new team
design. At the beginning of your tutorial pin-up these three alternative team designs.
Week 8, Detailed design and Representation of Domus
Repeat the idea selection exercise of week 7 to arrive at a new set of design
principles. Use these principles to generate one team design. Present this as a
sketch/thumbnail in your tutorial. This design idea will be further developed in the
remaining two weeks of the project. The major component of this phase is the
development of a wall-section through Domus. The wall section is a section that runs
from the ground up, through your building envelope showing how your internal
environment is related to the external environment.
Week 9, Presentation
The representation of your team design for Domus must comprise orthographic
projections of your scheme in 6 A2 (594mm x 420mm) sheets in portrait format
and a physical model of Domus and its site at 1:50. A well-presented and
thoughtfully composed presentation is required, addressing the following:
 Site plan @ 1:50 showing major features (landscape, vegetation,
contours) and the scheme (floor plan, openings, level changes etc.)
The site being 12 x 36 meters, 2 A2 sheets in portrait format can clearly express this
requirement @ 1:50 scale (bottom half of sheets). North orientation must be shown
facing vertically up the sheet. Circulation, ordering principles and spatial organization
must be clear from reading the plan. Text is to be used sparingly. Colour is
recommended. Digital prints, in colour may be made in the Resource Centre (contact
Marj Timberlake, for details : marj@deakin.edu.au, ph.: 52278338).
 Long Section @ 1:50, Short section and/or Elevations
In the top half of the two sheets described above, draw a detailed long section
through the site. Clearly show the distinction between ground and your scheme. Pay
particular attention to the details that are necessary to bring out your section. Use
photomontage and other techniques, to develop the section. All drawings must have
elements of the site present.
 Wall Section @ 1:20
Incorporate a 1:20 Wall Section through the external envelope of your Domus,
indicating the scale, size and composition of material usage, openings, connections.
The wall section need not indicate how your Domus will be constructed, so
construction details are not necessary.
 Physical Model @ 1:50
Card and balsawood are examples of materials you may wish to use. The model
must clearly show the site as well as your scheme. You may use the sectional model
technique or any other means of model presentation. The only requirement for the
model is that it be made of to a high quality. Des Walters is the Technical Officer in
charge of the model workshop. (dwalt@deakin.edu.au). He will be available as a
resource for SRD263 for help with model-making queries and advise during
workshop hours.
 Design Process

On 1 A2 sheet present your thumbnails from every week. There should be 3 from
Week 7, 3 from Week 1, and 1 from each of the remaining Weeks 9, 10 and 11. So
you should present 9 thumb-nails in total. These thumbnails will provide a ‘storey-
board’ of the team’s design process. This may not be a linear storey-board for it may
have dead-ends and about-turns. Do not merely mount old thumbnails if they are not
now of a quality appropriate for presentation - in which case they may need
redrawing.
Submission process
On the morning of the Week 9 studio, submit your work between 10:00 and 10:45 am in
studio where either Marj Timberlake or a Studio tutor will note that you have completed
your project, and add a submission stamp on the back of each of your A2 sheets. You
must have pinned up your submission in Studio by 11:30 am. If your work is not
stamped on time, pinned up by 11:30 or you are late for your review you will be
penalised for late submission. Any student who does not present for review will be
penalised 30% of the project marks.
Review Programme
Details of review programme will be posted on DSO. The broad outline of Review is
as follows on the next page:
Time Location: A+B Studio Location A+B Studio Location: A+B Studio Location A+B Studio Location A+B Studio
Tute Group 1
Taliesen
Matt Baird
Tute Group 2
Copacabana
Lana van Galen
Tute Group 3
Sangath
Ron Golany
Tute Group 4
Battersea
Guenter Lehmann
Tute Group 5
Mosman
Richard Tucker
1100--1155 Teams T1 & T8 Teams C1 & C8 Teams S1 & S8 Teams S1 & S8 Teams M1 & M8
Contact Richard Tucker via the DSO Domus discussion thread if you need further
clarifications.
Fair Assessment of Team-members Contribution
Team/Individual assessment - In order to make sure that each individual within a
team receives a grade that reflects their contribution to the project we will be using an
on-line self-and-peer-assessment (SAPA) tool that has been developed over the
course of the last three years. Every week, each team-member must log in to the
SAPA to rate the contribution of themselves and their teammates. This register uses
two quantitative measures and one qualitative measure. The first measure asks you
to award yourself and your peers a percentage of a team grade. This first measure is
backed up by a second that asks you to rate one another on a five-point multiple-
response Likert scale. Self-assessment in this process has been shown to encourage
learners to take responsibility for their own learning through the making of reflective
judgments. The further purpose of the third qualitative measure, which asks you to
comment on your own performance and that of your peers, is to elucidate anomalies
or unexpected final evaluations.
At the end of the project, an assessment matrix will be generated that awards each
team member a multiplier of a final team grade that had been assessed by the unit
coordinator, tutors and moderators. As the SAPA is an integral part of team-working
process, for each week that you log in to the register and satisfactorily fill in each of
the three measures (the process takes only about 5-10 minutes), 2 marks (2%) will be
added to your individualised project grade. When you fail to complete the register, it
defaults to award everyone in the team an equal share of the marks. The register will

be open each week from Thursday morning to midnight on Monday. Eighty-five
percent of students in 2006 were awarded multipliers within the range of 0.85 – 1.15,
for the only students heavily penalised were those who were consistently rated by all
their team-mates as under-performing. The assessment register will be demonstrated
in the lecture introducing the Into Energy Efficient Design project. Full instructions for
its use can be found on the SRD264 contents page of DSO.

Domus brief

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