Danesgate Site-Study

The humble-looking car park in the photograph below has been the focus of my attention for several weeks now. Not for its current purpose, but because it stands on the site where I have been briefed to design an art-house cinema as part of a contextual project. The site is in Lincoln in the centre of the cultural hub in Danesgate (just off Steep Hill), and was one of three options students could individually choose for the project.

The site visit was an early part of the project and there was no protocol for how we should go about it. I decided to work in a group with two others also working with this site and we started planning how to make the best assessment of the space. This is a crucial part of a contextual project as it is important for any building to fit into its surroundings with harmony and avoid any 'international style'. The key aspects we considered (and should always be considered), were- history, climate, geometry, materials, views, surrounding buildings, local culture, local people and function for a building in this location. We carried out research and tests into all these and then had to go through the awkward task of measuring out the site by hand. All stressful work but its amazing how much information can be gathered for such small, quiet bit of land.

Above: Fellow site-visitors with the neighbouring Collection Museum in the background.

Mini-Max - Perspective drawings

A few drawings I put towards my presentation for the building I designed in a 'mini-max' project. Mini-max is short for minimum space, maximum desirability. The building I have drawn below had to be designed by scratch as part of a solo project. (by the way it is built into a cave if it isn't immediately obvious).

Lincoln Cathedral at night

I took the chance to walk up the hill and take some photographs of Lincoln's medieval cathedral. Its lit-up at night and dominates the skyline of the city alongside the castle tower next door. Its just as impressive two miles down the hill of Lincoln, to have the chance to walk round it close-up was an even greater experience.

Aberdeen University Library

I was shown this by a project partner whilst looking at designing multiple tiers in a building. I love the contrast given between the curved overlapping cavities of each floor and the sharp, box-shaped exterior they lie in. It gives the interior a great sense of light and space and gives the building as a whole unity.

Biomimicry

A great video on biomimicry and environmental design:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/en//id/1072

Chaos to Cosmos- Final Composition

As mentioned in earlier posts, my current project has been to invent an element, mass produce it and arrange it in a composition ready for presentation. Below are photos of part of this final composition which I built earlier from our teams design. The brief was quite flexible, so my team decided to work in timber as it would be a higher quality than cardboard. Although this meant spending two afternoons in a workshop trying to build around 100 identical wooden shapes from scratch.

Creating an Element

One of my current projects is based around inventing a 3D shape that could be used as an element of a larger pattern, based either on cosmos or chaos. I am working as part of a 3 man group, developing and constructing these elements for a presentation at the end of the week. I thought I would share some of the development composition ideas that I created for our element because I was fascinated by the variation of compositions that the shape could create.

The first thing I started looking at was a centralised, flower-like design that could be used to highlight the variation in angles and layers the shape has whilst lying on its base. These compositions were inspired by natural patterns I found in plants and flowers. I quite like the patterns below because it is a fully universal and versatile design that is fully symmetrical.

When balancing the atom on its side, its possible to make more interesting circular compositions that are more flowing and structural than the patterns above. Below are some examples of these, using the same shape as used for the designs above.