Beyond Isolation:
Senior Housing

The presentation is clearly sophisticated and complete with a range of high-quality renderings and thoughtful line drawings and diagrams that include hand sketches. There are two primary suggestions we can offer: First, the project would benefit from a final layer of annotation. Read more Several of the renderings would appear more complete and be able to communicate more information if design concepts, dimensions, spatial labels or materials were placed directly on the images, including the primary image on the introductory page as well as the urban-scale elevation. Second, the text would benefit from the use of key bold words both for visual hierarchy and to more clearly communicate the ideas they describe. The text blocks are lengthy and appear to float on the sheets without a clear logic to their layout. 

The project makes use of an intelligent layout with a supportive vertical band on the left hand side of each sheet describing key ideas with descriptive text and diagrams, balanced with a larger primary image or set of drawings on the right hand side. This organization makes it very simple for a reviewer or reader to find information and to connect concepts with imagery. Read more The linework included in the presentation is quite advanced and illustrative, though would benefit from heavier lines and more variation within the lines. As drawn, the linework is very light on the sheet, in some cases nearly disappearing altogether, and it is at times difficult to understand much of the information without zooming in and studying the drawings in detail. While not all information needs to be understood at the scale of the sheet, a reader should be able to understand all key concepts, much like the way a magazine or newspaper conveys information with select images and texts. 

The project is complete with an array of excellent renderings, drawings and diagrams. The renderings are especially rich and full of detail to convey an amazing amount of information that also gives one a very clear sense of the aesthetic and architectural ambitions of its author. The drawings and diagrams are equally excellently detailed leaving little doubt or question to the reader as to the project’s intentions. Read more The texts would benefit from being broken into smaller blocks, distilled to the very fundamental concepts. At the same time the renderings would benefit from additional information and the author is advised to pull text from the paragraphs and onto the drawings as annotation. The plans would benefit from the use of human figures for scale. Finally the large section would benefit from dimensional annotation, additional labels, and more emphasis or darker linework used for the animated human figures. At the moment these become lost in the drawing and highlighting these could provide additional richness and sense of scale.

The presentation does well to begin at the urban level and use each sheet to describe the project incrementally in more detail, zooming in to illustrate the architecture of each residential unit. It would benefit from an additional constructive detail, for example of the envelope and thatched roof, to ‘complete’ the project and communicate it as a work of architecture. Read more The introductory text is far too lengthy for easy comprehension as is necessary in a competition of this type. While the background and proposition is unique and complex, the author is suggested to find a way to communicate these ideas more succinctly and perhaps mixing text with diagrams, or simply removing the text that is already described in drawings. The overall plan drawing on the second sheet is superb and unique, though would be strengthened with additional annotation as well as human figures to communicate both a sense of scale as well as to describe spaces of communal activity.