[arch][687] Break Area--stair--storage/lavatory, New! Improved! Roomier!

A quick interim note:

Today's Comic [687.2,4,6] solidly locates the break area in the rear storage area. Here's my current floorplan for the area behind the sales desk.

I haven't dimensioned this drawing yet, but note that I've significantly increased the interior size of the building. The area shown, roughly the rear half of Megagamers, now has essentially the same foot print as the entire store in my previous drawing.



A few comments:

1. Interesting sheetrock job over the door: that crenelated edge, with the 'rock extending up into the joists, is a very nice little detail. On first glance, I'd've just rocked over the ceiling inside the entranceway, leaving the space between the rafters open to the warehouse. This might have been done as fire-or vermin block. Remember, the entrance has a suspended ceiling, so without the crenelations, there'd be a direct channel from the warehouse to the sales floor spaces.
2. The joists run the long way across the warehouse. Although I'd wanted them to be short, this was probably done so the ends could rest on the concrete-block outer walls at the sides. To go width-wise, though, would have meant putting a very sturdy load bearing wall partitioning off the warehouse from the sales area, like say a steel I-beam.
3. As has been noted, the TV is not against a wall; it's just built into a stack of boxes.
4. I have no idea where that drain pipe next to the couch is going to. There must be something on the second floor; perhaps another lavatory as part of the changing room. (No, it's not the 3rd floor lav, which is next to the balcony door. It's not the kitchenette, either, which is on the opposite wall.)
5. This is not where I'd've put the break area. My first [unpublished] version of this plan was behind the airlock; it would have been a nice use of a reduced-area space.
6. Accordingly, there must be a good reason that space has been left open. I think the delivery door is at that side of the building, opposite to what I've shown here. (Something else to fix later.)
7. Note the stairway/utility area behind the sales desk (The desk is not shown here). See [623.1] and [609.1] for views of the entrances to the warehouse, utility, and stair.
8. I'm not happy with the way the stair makes a left turn; that strikes me as needless complexity, and it means the first-floor landing is short of the staircase door, which contradicts [609.1]. But this is the only way to explain everything else we've seen about the under-the-stair lav (again, about which I'll post more later).
9. One of the reasons that I don't like the turn is that it opens towards the back of cosplay area. For some reason, this bothers my aesthetic sense. Among other things, there's been some talk of the warehouse being a late addition, but if the stair opens towards the back, that means that the second floor also extends over the warehouse. I don't like this, because in most views the apartment looks tiny. The only other solution is that MG has the Tardis nature.
10. Finally, this seems to contradict [470.1], which shows Ping emerging from a closet into a hallway, which I had originally taken to be the delivery/warehouse area. I believe that [470] is obsolete, a victim of one of Fred's instantaneous renovations.

Nice -

But then I'm an architecture geek.

On the subject of subtle changes in buildings there is a solution.

The MTCD rebuilds after disasters, but they are bound to get some details wrong.

Nice work so far, Refugee. I’m still impressed that you’re getting this from the comic strips.

But, why do I have this feeling that something is planning to build a real life Megagamers with these accumulating floor plans.

previous Arch thread -- perhaps we shouldn't link these to a comic number.

Ping's back room does seem to have disappeared, doesn't it, and as a consequence the stairs to the cosplay section run almost directly into the back wall. I agree this suggests the warehouse area is perhaps internal to the MG structure, strange as that seems.

question: why two closets before the lavatory? I have seen nothing to suggest that in the comics, rather the opposite, in fact ([595], for instance).

I don't understand what you mean with this, could you explain further?

That area is really hard to proportion similar to what we see in the comics, isn't it? As you adjust one area, one of the others areas goes completly wrong... I do feel the stairway (and hence the lavatory) is rather wider that you suggest in this drawing, though.

Not the first time we've come to that conclusion

• 

... still feels better to me - as we didn't see any MTCD folks inside after the plasma cannon bursts yesterday. We can disagree as to how the airlock and inner stairs work though - that's confusing a bit. Megagamers is adjacent to the textiles area of Shinjuku, the roof shows us the building is old and thus has had different uses. The warehouse area is taller than the first floor shop. And the cosplay area smells of a mezzanine arrangement. I strongly feel the warehouse is 2 stories tall. As we hardly see customers in the shop one must assume that mail order is how Yanagisawa pays rent and other bills...

Either that or he really is Bruce Wayne and Erika is his Barbara Gordon, Sparky

Look at [594.6]:
.
Note the very short shelf to the left.

Now, at [595.1]:

note the square doorway just beyond the slanted edge of the pocket door.

My second tiny closet between the main storage area and the WC is the best solution I was able to find to account for these details.

On the other hand, Kimiko seems to be coming from our left, not straight on, as the plan posted previously indicates. Instead, we get something like this:


This should also answer your question about the stair landing. Note how in this detail, the stairs come right to the edge of the of the opening, which is what the comic indicates, rather then being set in a few feet, as it must be if it turns. (This is actually my preferred layout, but that extra little closet is so blatant...)

stsparky:
Regretably, your plan falls down on a couple of counts:

1. The slant of the stair over the WC goes the wrong way.
2. [609.1]Shows the entrances for both the storeroom/WC and the stair being to the left of the salesdesk.
3. At one time I searched diligently for a stair opening on the right, as you have it. I never could find one, and several people crowed about various views that pretty clearly show it's not there.
4. There's no evidence for the warehouse entrance having the arrangement you show.

[Minor niggle] You haven't shown the second floor door to the warehouse. Oh, wait, are you one of the people that thinks the warehouse is two stories tall? I'd say [687.2] kills that--look at the entrance door again. The ceiling is a few feet taller than the door, but not an entire second floor's worth.

What makes the warehouse look tall is that it doesn't have a false ceiling, like the rest of the shop does. There'e probably two to three feet of space between the ceiling tiles and the joists of the next floor. So, instead of the accustomed 8 feet, you've got 10 or 11 foot ceilings.

Oops, gotta run. I'll be updating this later with further supporting comic excerpts.

This post has been edited by Refugee on Mar 16 2005, 02:00 PM

@ Refugee, regarding two closets:

Ah, I see your reasoning as a solution to the depth of the closet.

In my interpretation, the area we see beyond the square door is the hallway in each case. This does indeed mean the closet is depicted as far shorter than the required dimensions of the stairs would suggest, but looking at Fred's... 'flexibility in proportions' to date, I would rather put that down to rubber construction than adding something we do not explicitly see. Basically I believe the various proportions as Fred has drawn them at the moment are simply irreconcilable. The stairs+landing, WC+closet, and wall-behind-salesdesk dimensions and proportions just do not seem to agree with each other.


I'm not quite sure what you mean regarding [595.1]:



yay, AutoCAD colours

I see there's a door, surely it's the one we see in [609.1]? Beyond that door we see the ceiling tiles and light strip of the corridor. Between that door and the sliding door of the lavatory, I don't see any further indications of a crosswise wall with opening (which should be visible if there was one).


@ Refugee, regarding the landing:

oops, I misinterpreted your 'first floor' as, er, the first floor, or second floor, if you see what I mean . Silly of me.

Regarding that point, incidentally, the railing in [609.1] does suggest to me that the stairs don't start until some 600mm or so from the opening. I'd say that's pretty normal practice, too, you don't normally start the rise immediately.



Here's an extract from a post of mine some [arch] threads ago, which AVS kindly linked in the previous one:

Reposting my current view, though Ping's back room and the empty bit below right are of course replaced by the warehouse, as seen in Refugee's plan. The removal of Ping's back room also means the 'bump' is no longer necessary, though that in turn leads to relative depth problems between closet and lavatory returning, as explained above.

That bookcase is evil, I tell you! Evil!!!

This post has been edited by JeroenB on Mar 16 2005, 02:55 PM

That bookcase is evil, I tell you! Evil!!!

Yes, yes indeed.

It oviously swings aside to reveal:
The Oddly-Beautiful-But-Utterly-Chaotic-Portal-of-Evil!

(shown here with emerging bloodthirsty Goyle:



As an added bonus, now we know where Yanagisawa goes when he's not around.

As to the rest of your post, I'm heartened by your bold acceptance of the rubber-sheet nature of the MG plans. I'm going to declare, then, that the store room is long, the stairs are straight, and the WC is under the stairs, so that after you walk down the storeroom, you must turn right to enter the WC. That is the most satisfying solution to me. (I might consider making the shelves along the stair be, say, 2 feet (600mm) deep, with an endcap. That would give us pretty much the view in [594.6]



Floors:
Yah, I make the "first floor" to be the "street-level" floor--the one with the games showroom.

Stair landing:
My folded stair sits back about three feet (914mm). If you put two or three feet of landing at the base of the straight stair, I don't think it's long enough to get to Cosplay.

All bookcases in MG are evil: they're never in the same place twice (see AVS's first - or was it his second - thread with his MG quake model for discussion of the moving bookcases on the display floor, and that bookcase next to the breakroom couch seems to get deeper and shallower as needed to hide the wallspace between it and the door.)

I had always assumed [567] showed a mid-floor landing, but if we add in the rubber walls theory, it may well be the entrance to the corridor on the ground floor. (And thus, a straight staircase after all.)

Again, it's difficult to tell from Fred's varying perspectives, but I wonder if the ground floor isn't significantly taller than the second floor (with the attic living space at perhaps only 6 feet at the side walls).

[570.2] appears to show the ceiling tiles not much taller than the stepladder. Stepladders typically (in the US) come in 2-ft increments. A 6-ft. stepladder would make the ceiling not much more than 6 1/2ft. About what I have in my house, but it seems too cramped even for a store (especially if Sparky is correct about the original warehouse use). An 8-ft ladder makes it about 8 1/2 ft. - a much more likely ceiling height in my opinion. Thus it is possible that the ground floor of MG could be 10-12 high. This would allow plenty of space for those hanging flourescent fixtures that probably drop down 1 1/2-2 ft. from the ceiling. Of course, this means that our stairway needs to span that height plus the "thickness" of the ceiling/floor (at least another 1 1/2-2 feet - probably more like 2 if it is a drop-ceiling on the ground floor). Someone have the formula to figure out what the minimum run is for, lets say, a 12 ft. and 14 ft. rise?

Riffster
Come see the world's strongest man! Able to bend whole staircases with his bare hands!

regarding rubber construction: it's clear the relative proportions of elements are flexible, but I'd say it's going a bit far to consider the relative positions free as well; then you can even validate Sparky's plan .

Going by what is in the comics, I would say the plan must be according to the examples Refugee and I both posted in this thread, with the turning staircase. Which says nothing about precise proportions, let alone dimensions.

At least, until Fred draws something that contradicts what he's drawn before, as with [470]. In another couple of hundred episodes, MG might have morphed into a single-storey building, or a steel & glass tower. Or a blue police box, of course.

This post has been edited by JeroenB on Mar 16 2005, 06:31 PM

What I'm tried to say is the "whole inner stairs airlock rec room" situation is moot in my drawings; But, it is somewhat as I've drawn due to knowledge of similar structures in Japan.

The cosplay section is on a faux 2nd floor, observable only in the front of MegaGamers, called a mezzanine... I'm sure from this image 623.3:

that the sofa and drain pipe aren't attached to the brick wall -- as the game console's left hand stack of boxes and the book shelf implies a traffic corridor of sorts ...

okay? and 623.4 shows show real height unless my sense of scale is freaking off — :


If the doors and corridors needs working out - I'm cool with it.

Be well, Sparky

Not to mention that [567.5] would give the impression that there is a landing of some sort.

Then again, I've only read the architecture threads sporadically and this may have been brought up.

Yes, yes it has...in this very thread, in fact.

Don't worry about it. We are dealing directly here with the Central Mystery of Megatokyo: the location and configuration of the fabled Lost Staircase. It's very difficult to keep track of what, exactly, has been said, and where the supporting frames are.

Welcome aboard.

===

I tend to agree that this frame argues persuasively for a turn in the stair. I don't want it; as I said up thread, I prefer a straight stair. But you folks are slowly bringing me around.

I'd like to have a good rise-over-run estimate, but frankly I don't think we need it. Turned or not, the length of the stair itself is the same.

On the other hand, it would tell us how far up the wall the stair breaks into the WC.

I think this doesn't fit the direction Kimiko is looking in in [595.3] and [602.4]. Also compare [602.3] and [602.4], Kimiko doesn't look like she moves or turns a lot in between these panels, but she has the door to the bathroom in front of her, another door behind her. Therefore your first plan (in this thread) looks better to me.

On another note, the door to the employee breakroom does not open into that room, as the recent strips clearly show. I guess you based your drawing on [623.1]? If that does indeed show the door to the breakroom, it is in conflict with the newer drawings.

Uh, ref, your first one, at the top of this thread, was pretty close. The only detail goofed is that there is only one space between the main store and the toilet (for some bizarre reason you are showing two) The angle in the ceiling of the toilet is from the 2nd flight of stairs as it turns the corner (as shown) so you have it correct.

or something like that. I ahve no floorplan for this, i just have a vauge idea in my brain about it all

fredrin

Folks, it's been lovely knowing you, goodbye, I can die happily fulfilled now.

Thanks, Fred.

That detail was put there because the storage room seemed too long for the short shelf we see next to Kimiko. But at this point, I'll just pass it off as a perspective/rubber yardstick problem, delete the inner chamber, and call it done. Finally.

[Holds razor poised over wrist...lower...lower...]

Oh. Wait a minute. There's still almost the whole second floor...can't die yet...damn.

Seriously, solving the first floor and the apt has just been a blast. Thanks for doing such a fabulous job detailing the strip that I was able to extract the plans from it.

scale? compare the various frames in [567]. In .4 Erika is 'clearly' a substantial distance below the first floor level, and in .5 she is 'clearly' quite a bit short of the bottom of that flight, which is only about half of the total distance, as it continues around the corner. Consequently, the floor-to-floor height of the ground floor is 'clearly' over three times Erika's height.

Since we started figuring the floorplan out, it's been clear Fred sets the proportions of things anew each time in order to achieve a desired composition within a frame. Adding to that, whole elements are added or removed over time -- Ping's back room from [470], for example, or the openings to the stairs and closet/WC (compare [272.1]). As Fred just confirmed, he only has a vague idea of the plan.

This keeps things interesting for us, if occasionally a little frustrating . So, Ref, don't die yet -- we'll need to start all over again in two months time

Folks, it's been lovely knowing you, goodbye, I can die happily fulfilled now. Thanks, Fred.

That detail was put there because the storage room seemed too long for the short shelf we see next to Kimiko. But at this point, I'll just pass it off as a perspective/rubber yardstick problem, delete the inner chamber, and call it done. Finally. [Holds razor poised over wrist...lower...lower...] Oh. Wait a minute. There's still almost the whole second floor...can't die yet...damn. Seriously, solving the first floor and the apt has just been a blast. Thanks for doing such a fabulous job detailing the strip that I was able to extract the plans from it.

Ref must live! We so need him. I'll create a Tardis Architecture Analysis Award for him circa Tom Baker's Doctor Who of course.

Jeroen - yes scale. One has to judge it by Largo not Erika. Thanks, Sparky
-
Linky

This post has been edited by stsparky on Mar 17 2005, 02:07 PM

[688]: Oh look, MG has changed again

The side-area by the stairs and closet definitely wasn't two aisles wide before ([602.5,.6], [609.1]).

Did Fred to this on purpose following this thread, one wonders?

This post has been edited by JeroenB on Mar 18 2005, 11:11 AM

any chance that level 1 might be translated into the quake model?

AVagueSomething has already done a first pass, and has posted a few renderings from it.

Here.
Here.

Holy crap, somehow I seem to have missed this entire thread.

Which contains this charming image of Ping-chan.

I can't speak for any one instance, but I'm pretty sure Fred has occasionally done things just to tweak us. I think I mentioned a particular instance a while back, but damned if I can find it.

This bothered me a bit, so I threw your design into MS Paint and started experimenting. Yellow is dedicated warehouse space, red is breakroom/must-be-kept-clear-to-get-to-breakroom space. Just as a note, I'm assuming that the cardboard box wall is part of the stuff stored in the warehouse area as well as a makeshift wall, so I'm counting it as warehouse space.

Here's what we have as things stand:


Assuming your figure is precisely right on the proportions of the length to the width and how far the airlock as you call it extends, that gives us a 52125 pixels of dedicated warehouse space.

Here's moving the breakroom to the area you suggested without moving any walls:


The walking space is based on the width of the doorway as the minimum reasonable to let a person walk and assuming we don't want employees needing to wander through dedicated warehouse area to get to the break room. Based on the same assumptions about area proportions as the last, we drop to a 49521 pixels of dedicated warehouse space. Not cool.

And now let's grab a sledgehammer:


Now here we have the ideal, 55185 pixels of dedicated warehouse space, nice rectangular areas, no wasted walkway space.. So why don't we see this design? Possibilities range from that wall being important for holding something up (unlikely) to MegaGamers not needing that extra 3060 pixels of storage space badly enough to pay for someone to come in and move the doorway. Also, taking into account that your proportions may not be exactly correct, moving the back wall out more increases the space for the option in use a lot faster than for the last option, to the point that moving the wall a mere 10 pixels gives the current arrangement a benefit of 2060 pixels over the last.

Hopefully this all makes sense to people other than me..

@Tanetris:

I wonder if my uni teachers will accept pixels as a measure of area...

one comment on your experiments: I would suggest colouring traffic space a third colour, as both rest area and storage area are served by that space, so it is somewhat misleading to allocate to the one or the other.

The first option might turn out to be best in that case, because it minimises traffic space (you only need one little square) while maximising useful space (storage + rest).

Nooo! don't die!

We still need you to figure out the COE!

and Kimiko & Erika's apartment...

and Miho's apartment...

and the home of the Sonada's...

Excuse me if this might seem a little close to necromancy, but I thought I'd keep these things together. Besides, Architecture is never truly dead... it just might smell a little strange occasionally.

Well done Refugee, on the floorplan and getting confirmation for it from the man himself. But no dying on the job. We need your updated plan for the top floor, and then that mysterious middle floor. And agree with reblekid2003 that there are so many more buildings to go. The next I figured would be the school - we have Largo's classroom, the infirmary, the girl's toilet and a bunch of exterior shots. We also have some nice cross-sections showing the wall construction, thanks to plasma cannons and Ping using Ed's face. Oh! Hang on. They are going to rebuilding the school, so it could all change again.

See! With this amount of change happening all the time, our jobs will never truly end!... speaking of which.....

Re: Comic [688]

Oh poop! That bloody aisle bookcase is back! I have modeled that thing into my map and then removed it, then put it back to only remove it again. The thing is, that bookcase made that little section of the interior incredibly tight for space. Ah well. At least it is confirmed now. And it is only half the length I'd orginally thought.

Interesting details. The wall bookcases step down in height, and the stairwell has handrails on both sides. Panel 6 also give us a relative thickness for the wall behind the counter, and the sloping bookcase and bench that sits next to the counter. Also there is no false sloping ceiling above the staircase. Agree with Sabyr (that closet architecture freak in the [688] MDT thread ), the false ceiling is very shallow. Those bearers at least should be deeper, consider the length of ceiling they run. And what about the joists?

Could be. Piro didn't have to stop on the staircase. That brain-pause could of happened anywhere on his journey. I think Fred like to teases us with his sly revealing of the architecture. Look at what he does with the whole middle floor. Panel 7 could easy be made to reveal a lot of the "cosplay" level, but instead Fred point the camera up, and covers what detail there is with word balloons. He's a sly one, this Fredrin. But still, very nice of him to confirm Refugee's plan, I must say.

Ah. You missed it. I had been wondering where you had gotten to. An Archtecture thread doesn't feel like it's really going until it is started or visited by the Ref. Figured you'd like the Ping images. I suppose I should get back to that level soonish, and incorporate all of this new discoveries.
But meanwhile I have to get back to my weekend of class prep...