Many people think of luxurious as being a experience in which you only experience when your on holiday or  have to spend money on, but my idea of luxuriating in everyday life is simply socializing with friends, travelling through new places and spaces  and enjoying whats already there.

A particularly luxurious experience was whilst sipping on a freshly made rum punch cocktail in the middle of the Bahamas, with friends , it was all about having something freshly made for us to share, colorful  exciting and bespoke. it was the personal touch that made it for me – this specificity cannot be experienced with friends when drinking something commercially mass produced such as a bottle of beer. The fact that it was made for me as an individual person made me feel special and I therefore felt the specialness of the friends in my company.

Therefore I want to propose a health resort where people can meet, socialize and experience the custom made personalized luxury of being together and feeling special amongst others.

The healthy luxurious experiences of life are rare and usually only experienced once a year in exotic far away places whilst on holiday. Similarly more people shop out of town today or online so the high street is becoming increasingly unused; its potential for civic spaces and public interaction more often ignored. With this in mind we shall be luxuriating in the design of an URBAN HEALTH RESORT along a high street; with a series and sequence of landscapes, pavilions and hotels that work together holistically to create a holiday high street; a zone of well being.

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Unit Brief

- The Experience

- Programme

- The Proposal

Because my luxurious experience was all about sipping on a freshly made bespoke cocktail with friends and i have proposed  the idea of introducing a new luxury health resort. I decided that I needed to look further into  the idea of proccesion of groups of people and how I could incorporate and record this movement along the high street. I focused my research on the different types of fruit produce which can be grown in England- the seasons in which the fruit can be grown and the different types of bespoke cocktails which can be made form them.

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The pub crawl seemed relevant as a programme as it offers encounters and resists the drunken slumping at the bar and desperation of sitting alone in pubs. The current problem with drunken bad behaviour is often down to not being used to being free outside. The progress of the pub crawl is lively and offers chance encounters, changing environments and the chance to be in amongst others and the elements. The pub and club environment on the other hand is restrictive and pressurises the visitors; causing an emotive expansion at closing time. Alternatively, Pub crawls are often more about meeting new people, going into new spaces and the enjoyment of procession from one place to another.

My proposal therefore is to link or connect various bar pavilions together and create and record movement from one pavilion through to  another. To engage the visitor with the environment drinkers are encouraged to hand pick their own fruit and have a freshly bespoke made cocktail made in one of these pavilions,

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The  fruit picking  along the highstreet occurs without disrupting the pub crawl because the paths are separated between pavilions. The planters which sandwich these fruit plants are used along the highstreet to help glide people through the site to the proposed pavilions and allow ledges to lean (slump) on. These “procession paths” take you from pavilion to pavilion, either for those whos intrest is to meet new people or others who want to access the pavilions the quickest and possible way. This fast paced atmosphere in the paths has been slowed down by placing of the fruit trees and planting walls along the way which diffuse the movement around these procession paths. Each Path has had its material selected carefully as movement accross the site is recorded in tracks in the path.

We were given the task to propose a design for a health hostel which is to be situated along Deptford highstreet, the design had to interact with the highstreet and  earlier proposals from the first projects (procession, pub crawls and pyo. )In order to get a bespoke design for the hostel that i relish, i started to create a mixture of cornucopia collages using images of fruit which derived from the earlier fruit still life project.

Whilst designing my own cornucopia collage i referenced the works of Frank Stella who is known for his nested compositons and this idea of spilling out of the frame. (the frame being the site) These collages explored the idea of breaking out of the frame creating great oppurtunities for unusual spaces and voids within the site.

Using my model as inspiration and guidance i then went on to start desiging  x-ray sections which are made up of 3 or more plan or elevation layers which have then paired together to create more complex drawings noting junctions and joinging methods between the materials. These drawings then became the origin to designing the hostel.

Looking at my section drawings i noticed the resemblance between the curved lines and the works of Frank Ghery. These curved lines became important as they offered a great opportunity for use of forcing intimate meeting points between the intoxicated people and the sober.

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This became the origin into researching fast –slow and intimate spaces. As my first proposal was to create a programme of 5 bespoke cocktail bars aslong the highstreet which would be used for pub crawls and this idea of procession and being able to pick your own fruit, i noticed that the hostel programme needed some sort of connection with the highstreet other than just 'pyo'. This is were the separation from ‘personal’ became a degree of personal connection between more than one person.

The  need for private individual spaces were outweighed by those of gathering interaction spaces which could be enjoyed with the company of your friends and newly met companions. This meant i had to create spaces within the hostels interior which would force these intimate meeting points aswell create a central meeting point  between those that are intoxicated and those that are sober.This gave me a great opportunity into referencing mediation walls and range of different types of materials which are used create different sensual experiences

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By Spilling the pyo fruit into the hostels site you I was able to create a more prestine landcape bringing the natural colours and cents inside creating a more contemporary relationship between the interior and exterior. This is when i started to research into clinics and rehab centers and researched further into why salons became so well known in the 19th centuary. This reason i done this was because i wanted to find out wether there was a connection or strict dividing point between the intoxicated conversation and the sober conversation.
 

The sanatoriums of the 19th-20th centuary were based on the dualistic set of values, they embody the belief in the healing power of nature.

A salon seemed a reasonable research topic as salans are a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation.

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Research & Ideas

Elevation/ Section/ Plan drawings