A Bakery : in search of appropriate form

Abstract

During the process of designing a building there occurs the continuous task of finding the forms, materials and structure that are fit to the particular building or situation at hand. It is the intent to combine these different elements that make a building and organize them in such as way to reflect a whole, expressive of its meaning. the task is to search for building form or forms that are responsive to the reasons for which they are built and to the people who live in or use them. this thesis is an exploration toward the search for appropriate form. Forms are found and subsequently assembled to fit the situation of a specific building, mapping appropriate design decisions from cues given by the various activities of life the building holds. The design of a medium scale bakery was chose for this exploration. Though the various activities and baking process that occur within a bakery are well documented, the primary intent of this thesis is to design this building as one example to reflect the search for appropriate form. The understanding of the nature of a bakery and how it works combined with the awareness of its users' needs serves as fuel toward this search for a formal morphology fit to this singular building. The actual design exploration or process will be preceded by three chapters. the first chapter is an introduction to appropriate form clarifying or possibly hinting at its meaning. The second chapter documents some built and written references selected to support the meaning as introduces as well as chosen as some building/form examples that have influenced my thinking toward this search for appropriate form. In chapter 3 a particular bakery is used as a prototype because of its unique baking process. This chapter includes the comparison of this particular small scale bakery to larger industrial form examples. the final chapter of this thesis exploration represents the documentation of appropriate form takes place in five phases. the first covers the stronger, more basic reasons and formal definitions toward the design of the bakers. the 5th or final phase documents the overall "unfolding of forms" that make the final building. We are to consider our building, say Ruskin, "as a kind of organized creature." Perhaps this is what I'm trying to do.