Below are works from my undergraduate Bachelor of arts (architecture) course at university of Greenwich, London. The projects include my second and third year projects, both are sustainability focused, and tailored to use the surrounding resources to their advantage – Sustainably of course!
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The Tea House Botanical Kitchen
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A tea house in the historic vauxhall pleasure gardens needed a larger kitchen so it could better serve their growing customer base & be able to bake their cakes in-house. I explored the site, interviewed the tea house staff and a concept was born to combine the nearby allotments with the kitchen – the tea house had a heavy focus on fresh ingredients.
Kitchen Design
After studying similar kitchen layouts and ‘flows’ I applied this to the above kitchen design. Using bespoke curved countertops I created predetermined ‘paths’ that maximised efficiency of the kitchen staff. The new kitchen attached onto the back of the existing tea house kitchen. Partly kitchen, partly growing areas.
Sustainability
Above is an A0 sized section I drew using autocad overlaid over a 3d model of the building, to create a ‘sectional perspective’ drawing. The sustainability aspect of the buildings comes in a few forms. Firstly, It has community sustainability as it features a classroom above the working kitchen for students from local schools. It also has its own dedicated growing chambers aswell as a greenhouse attachment enabling the sourcing of locally grown produce.
Water sustainability
Commercial kitchens use very large amounts of water, to try to mitigate this issue, I used the local city scape to collect as much water as possible and filter it using a natural soil & carbon filter that is within the walls of the building. I calculated how much water would need to be used per day on average (taps, toilets etc) and how much I could collect over the year according to catchment area and annual average rainfall.
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Wool & Wolves Loom
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(above) Early concept model
The Loom
Built on an existing urban farm, it uses the wool from the grazing sheep and combines it with kevlar to form a super-strong, super-lightweight armour, crafted into protective gear for cyclists, which is then subsequently sold on the ground floor to passing cyclists. The entire process is completed on-site with local materials, only the kevlar needs to be imported. The design featured pivoting roof timbers that would open during windy days to reveal fans that would turn wind into electricity for a passive electrical gain.
The design was built around a full scale working loom that took wool from one part of the building, across into the upper level (shown in yellow) to be combined with kevlar.
Gytis Bickus 