Conduit?

I sat in the park today during studio; I don’t know that there could have been anything more productive. Things are either winding up or winding down on this project and I am in need of some serious decision-making (anyone interested in the job?).
I have been having trouble figuring out how to proceed with the design, or at least how to pick back up after having been gone. When I sat down to make this list, I was able to see a little clearer what I need to do:

- Re-develop interior space to meet the following characteristics in the variety of spaces: some for relaxing and some for intense work, some for sitting and some for standing, some for groups to meet and some for individuals.
- Re-design the exterior to: work with this new interior configuration, not overwhelm the little old trading floor building, but not treat it with extreme reverence (“ignore it in a way that speaks to it”- J.H.).
- Find a new way to justify building up and over the existing building. Since making the trading floor vertical, the excuse of needing the horizontal square footage is no longer valid enough.
- Re-establish my attitude about things. This is especially important to how old and new buildings relate. Similar size and scale but different expression, like the I.M. Pei addition to the Louvre? The interior space must relate to this… What is my opinion about how hi-tech trading creates interior space? How is the tension between old and new conveyed in the space? How is the building reminiscent of, and conducive to, “new” trading?
- Decide: will I keep the crazy structural scheme I had before, the one that only exists in my mind and in one axonometric sketch because it is too difficult to model?

So the way I have chosen to proceed is to do some sketches of various interior spaces in the trading area, connect them into a whole idea about the trading room configuration, and then address the façade again. Somewhere in there I also have to build a model of the crazy structural thing I came up with, and re-state my design approach/attitude.
Also, I probably have to consider designing all the way through the design cycle at least twice more; it’s a good way to get ideas out and test them too. And work on the thesis document. And a schedule and a layout. And the other two classes I am taking and this live that I am living…

Regarding the approach/attitude/opinion/ point of view thing, I realized today in the park how much an attitude about the world can be informed by architecture- it doesn’t just go the other way. Communication technology in the trading floor space does not mean freedom of movement because we are still bound by gravity and our own physicality. The space I am designing has informed me that technology does not free us up in every way, just in some ways… food for thought.

Conduit, Fountain:
The word conduit can mean “a tube or duct for enclosing electric wires or cable”, “a means by which something is transmitted”, or in an archaic usage, “a fountain”.
(Ironically, I put a fountain in the new trading floor before having read this definition)
The word fountain, by the way, can mean either a point of origin or a reservoir, both of which are ways to describe the behavior of this place in the realm of trading…
(Dictionary.com)