This second masterplan model for Ecotricity depicts their concept Ecopark business and technology hub, scaled up to a higher level of detail. The site includes the home stadium of Forest Green Rovers football team, a sports campus, and a range of generic mixed use developments, following a loose style guide.
This style guide was a collection of images giving broad overviews of the style of building, surface finish and design features the client wanted to see in the scheme. There were no set designs as such, but a list of surface treatments by percentage, for example ‘25% timber cladding, 30% stone,’ etc. The only other specification was that the buildings have broad faces of curtain glazing, and a mix of sedum and solar roof styles. Taking these guidelines, we built each building as a stack of acrylic floorplates, and created a set of multipurpose vinyl ‘kits’ of surface finishes and design features. When combined with flocked sedum roofs and dressed with PV units and lasercut brise soleil details, these methods achieved a level of depth, detail and construction speed that belied the relatively small budget.
The rest of the baseboard was packed with details such as road treatments, street lamps and traffic lights. These features demonstrated how the developers manage pedestrian and flowthrough traffic, since the site connects to a motorway junction. Other key features include the new stadium, and a concept footbridge designed by Zahah Hadid Architects, both 3D printed.
The first masterplan model for Ecotricity, below, was made to a far simpler level of detail, with magnetic block buildings as part of a public interaction and outreach program. This model was built over an aerial photograph of the site, smoothed over the contours of a CNC machined baseboard.
