I think, given the freedom of the gaming environment, what would benefit the building whilst not necessarily feasible in the real world would be adding multiple floors to make use of the massive Z space that the building has.
Looking at suggestions adam made over the weekend as well as referencing from a few books i have lying around I've came up with some simple sketches of exploring this...
I haven't got access to a scanner now but I'll show you guys the sketches tomorrow morning.
I have however been working on a simple model because I find that I can (hopefully) quickly illustrate my ideas easier.
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| sketchup |
Essentially, I love the old sand coloured brick that faces out over the station, and the arches so I tried to keep this intact. To my knowledge, the offices that make up most of the first and second floors of this section are derelict. I've explored the idea of extending out these floors to create extra walkable space within the void of the building. Not relevant at this stage, but an idea is that these derelict offices, now broken up more defintively could become shops/cafes/bars etc, or perhaps even reused as their original specs.
The idea is that ideally, the pitched roofs would be more or less completely glazed over to create an abundance of light, which will be needed through the addition of these extra floors. Provisional escalators have been added to show possible routes up to and down the floors but can be subject to change. The addition of "tunnels" to make travelling through the 2nd floor feasible is again a temporary idea but one I kept revisiting in my doodles.
The long pitched roof I can imagine being a long restaurant/bar complete with tables, chairs and whatnot that look over the station as well as the city. With two walkways that lead over the train tracks to the larger sections. Perhaps a chance to rappel down to a moving/static train?
the first floor also joins up with the platform that leads to the MEN, and hopefully this can serve as an additionaly function.
Lastly, I would like to iterate that I am far from precious of this idea, and it is still in its infancy so more aesthetic qualities that you guys would like to see would be greatly appreciated and needed! I would love for you guys to pick it apart completely, tell me about certain aspects you like or dislike, from both a design standpoint and a gaming one. Rework it or use it as a stepping stone. For example, do the roofs HAVE to be pitched or can we come up with something more Zaha Hadid-like? And would more interesting walkways be possible? using interesting staircases instead of simple escalators...
Cheers!
Ben
I think that we should definitely use stairs instead of escalators for the simple fact that the feasability of getting ingame escalators working on time is awkward; we should avoid glass overkill as adam said, if you were to shoot it, surely it would shatter, therefore lose its purpose; i think the roof will be fine as predominately glass though as we are talking more light here. The form of the roof I think would be nice to change to something like Zaha Hadid (nice ref btw :) ) since we are changing pretty much everything but the old building wall. I like the idea of the tunnel walkways but I think that the curve of the roof could be altered to create these if we wanted to do so. I'm starting to envision this now as a futuristic mall and re-purposed offices as shops is a nice touch. I was thinking about the trafford centre fountain recently (if its still there) and how it shoots up to the second floor, maybe we could have something similar and curve the walkways around the fountain on all floors; not sure if we could do it with the udk then again, it's just an idea. I'll discuss my thoughts further during the meeting.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be going alongthe right road now, i'd rather let you develop these sound ideas into your own path now, great thought processes going on and reasoning as to why you are doing these things
ReplyDeleteoh and just make the escalators broken ;-), same reason why a lot of games have levels where "station closed or under repair"
ReplyDeleteDont get tied down by what tech you dont have, call it out and reference it and move on to what you can show, it's perfectly acceptable to do that.
ReplyDeletegreat attitude too Ben, this is all very excting, im currently like a sponge soaking up ideas myself, (im delayed at manchester airport) :-(
ReplyDelete