Priyansha Kamdar – WSA On Display 2020

WSA City Core

This project seeks to weave together the vacuum that exists between the community and the buildings in Cardiff City Center, by proposing a satellite WSA lab, one that encourages public involvement, explores radical pedagogy, and breaks the horizontality that exists around the site.

The conceptual forefront of this project was to propose a multifunctional, easy to build, sustainable structure, which would adapt to the ever-developing Cardiff City center. It is meant to be customisable for the user with time, with its primary timber structure remaining the same, and thus becoming a link to the past.

Mapping the movement of the site, to understand routes through scheme based on personal site analysis. This later forms out to be an essential concept of the scheme.

Mapping Movement

Understanding form based on context by placing the sketch models in a site model.

Progress models experimenting with form, size and structure in nine different sketch models, each unique from the other.

Roof progress page, analysis of the surrounding context to decide upon roof form and structure

Exploring Roof forms

The city lab aims to provide all of the amenities present in an architecture school, but by balancing the public hierarchy, and encouraging community engagement through weaving studios and a central axis, it brings to Cardiff city center a sense of community, etherealism, and honesty.

The form, structure, and spatial planning were inspired through personal analysis of the surrounding context. Locally sourced timber from Welsh forests encouraged an exposed timber frame construction, thus allowing the project to break the monotonous concrete horizontality that exists around the site, bringing in a sense of freshness but still allowing the scheme to feel warm and fitting.

North Elevation showing scheme in context

East Elevation showing scheme in context.

Providing to the context

An attempt to bring back the community not only into the structure but involving them in the process was a key aim throughout the project. The exposed timber structure, through its honesty, attempts to break the monotonous nature of the site, but the chainlink mesh facade creates a sense of intrigue, encouraging the public to walk in, interact with the architecture and experience it.