Review 1 - The Crash of The Hindenburg...

Hi Sam,

You're right I am gutted with how badly I presented my work yesterday, I'll be honest I think the work its self deserved higher than a D but my presentation was absolutely horrific, I knew it and it was written over everyone's face who was watching me. But I can't change that now, I will however ask if we can have the option of using the screen in future? I know I didn't use it to its fully potential, I knew that going into my presentation having watched James' before mine, maybe if I had utilised it better I would have felt more comfortable...

I have no idea why I couldn't articulate what my brief was yesterday... I just crumbled... your e-mail laid it out so clearly, I don't know why I couldn't of just said that yesterday...

"- A small transport and maintenance terminal. This is relatively straightforward in 'brief'; but has scope for being very beautiful / extraordinary / delightful / practical.. etc.

- An adaptation of existing buildings to becoming docking stations
- And perhaps an airship itself. This part is optional, as is the 'docking station' adaptations, to a degree." 



With that a side I would like to just go through the feasibility that I have done for the small airship terminal and maintenance hangar, as I probably should have done yesterday. It essentially gives my reasoning for how I have broken down the site.

With the programme of a transport terminal interchange this would no doubt create a large amount of load on the local infrastructure. This is addressed in my town plan which highlights the wealth of existing transport infrastructure for what is essentially a medium sized town. Farnborough has two junctions onto the M3 both equidistant from the site, as well as four train stations (Farnborough Main, Farnbrough North, Frimley & Aldershot) within ten minutes drive of the site; each station serving a different train line. This combined with the area around my site where the road infrastructure has been put in place prior to the business park being completed, again placing the site is in a good position again to deal with additional traffic loads generated by the proposal. Based upon this I think it would be fair to suggest that the local infrastructure would be able to cope with an additional small transport terminal, although there would need to be minimal investment, shuttle buses etc.

Town Plan, showing Farnborough's existing transport infrastructure.

For the site itself I began with the blank site and my first consideration was where the airships would be arriving and leaving from. The main runway for the airport is located directly to the south of the site meaning airships will need to approach the terminal from the North of the site.

An assumed no fly zone during the operational hours of the airfield means that Airship will have to approach and depart the north side of the site.

Next I looked at how the public would access the site. due tot he large element of the hanger this needs to not break up the site

Aware of the fact that the largest part of this program is the maintenance hangar which when taking into consideration the need for an airship to land next to it and be towed in so this was placed on the site next. To begin with I just placed it on the site to get an idea of it's ground coverage and how it could relate to the terminal element.

The hangar element placed centrally on the site showing the additional space required to land and tow an airship into the hangar.

Tom seemed to dismiss the hangar as a token part of the project in the review, he said that I would "design it in a day" and that would be it kind of thing that was there. I don't agree with this I think that although the hangar is a large expansive space its relationship with the terminal building has the potential to really take this project to the next level. To give this the most opportunity at this stage of the project, I pushed the hanger towards the north of the site and wrapped the terminal element around the south and eastern side of the hangar. The eastern side was chosen so that commuters/ business travelers would disembark straight into the heart of Farnborough business park and immediately be struck by the old Grade II listed hangar, this also provides the preferred route for other travellers to take advantage of the existing infrastructure shown on the city plan.

Final image showing the placement of the hangar and terminal in relationship to the airship circulation and public access. 

Using this layout I began to look at how arrivals and departures would be separated in section, the site and access routes lend the building to have a quite linear process starting with outgoing passengers on the western edge, which are the processed as you go through the site with and although this image is quite crude and doesn't include all the smaller more detailed elements it sums up well what my intentions are for my first proposal.

Sectional exploration of the separation of departures and arrivals.

Finally, despite what happened yesterday I am still very happy with my project and the direction it is heading. I have a clear vision of how each element of the project could be. For next week I think the most important part is to really begin nailing down the brief, I'll produce an initial proposal, largely based upon the way I have broken down the site above, through which we can look at any spaces which are largely redundant and any additional spaces needed in order to make the programme work.

Thanks,
Andrew