Drawing Analysis Echo House

Echo House by KLC (elevations) Sourced from: ArchDaily

The Echo House (chosen as my second project for FMP submission) is another project for which I have no direct contact with a client or architect. Due to Covid and its location in Beijing is not somewhere I can personally visit to take pictures of the site. Therefore, further pushing me to advance and rely on my research skills to source secondary resources, information and technical drawings from architectural databases. In particular 'ArchDaily' to produce an accurate presentation model for submission.

Time and space restrictions at university continue to encourage the use rapid prototyping (CAD/CAM process'). Laser cutting continues to be a valuable asset for model construction on this project. With the aid of workshop and hand crafting skills to produce base boards and clean up components in preparation for spraying.

Working on the CAD model for the Heydar Aliyev Centre has greatly developed my Rhino construction massing skills. Demonstrating the best way to construct a 3D representation of the intended model, from which measurements can be taken and components retrieved.

Placing the two-dimensional technical drawings in their corresponding locations at my desired scale of 1:15, allows me to draw construction lines from which the design can be broken down into less complex geometry to be extruded ('ExtrudeCrv') and organised by material thickness in preparation for laser cutting.

Technical drawings assembled for construction

Example of simplified geometry extruded into components for laser cutting

Extrude curve command extrudes polylines into a three - dimensional solid these can then be removed from the construction mass and organised. The Make2D command can be used to turn them back into polylines

This method has allowed for efficient and accurate 3D models of the building, however, I have discovered small discrepancies between aspects of the technical drawings. This was easily resolved by rescaling certain drawings by a tiny factor, thus solving the problem. However, had I not checked this, it could have resulted in large scale misalignment of components and edges that aren't square, potentially compromising the buildings integrity, durability, aesthetic and time plan for construction.

A secondary issue I have encountered is the lacking or unclear representation of certain features such as the building entrance from the technical drawings that are visible in the collection of site images taken of the finished building. This assets will be reproduced by myself to best reflect a presentation model of the building post design and construction.

Building entrance seen in the image on the right (middle - bottom)