It has now come the time that I need to start looking for a Part I placement for my year out in Industry. So the logical step was to update my portfolio. I have compiled the best bits of work from my second year and my first design module this year. I looked to experiment with making a portfolio that had its own identity and wasn't just a combination of various different projects, but instead had the resemblance of a single planed out document.
A collection of all of my Submissions from the last two years can be found here.
I have embedded my Portfolio from another website I use, which allows me to create a document with double page spreads. Click above to view the page portfolio, if you click again it will zoom in.
Its taken me a while to upload this as I took some time off working over Christmas as you should do. With the new year comes the ever increasing urgency to get that Part I Placement organised, so its time to get updating again.
This is the Final presentation I gave for my critique for this years first design module MODULAR. We Initially had to work within a Master-plan group to create a scheme for an area of used land in Canterbury, which would house a new student area. The link to the presentation we gave and my Intercrit Presentation can be found below. The brief was based around the topic of Modular. I chose to develop the Education Building which possessed a key element of "Flexibility", in order to allow multiple users to easily adapt the internal spaces. I decided to go down the route of a more component based interpretation of the idea of Modular construction. This was due to thinking that a Volumetric (room by room) approach would not work with the building and plot I was given. I also since visiting the Richard Rogers Inside Out exhibition over the summer finally clocked that I've got a great interest in understanding how structures stand up. Due to this I was interested in designing an external structural envelope which would allow the interior spaces to be as free as possible from load bearing elements.
That's all for now I hope you Enjoy.
Links for related Developement below
Last Friday we had an Intercrit for Part II of the Modular module. This was a bit of a shock as we at that point had had only one design tutorial on our individual schemes. So it is safe to say everyone was a bit rushed at getting a completed design out in only two weeks. Below is the presentation I gave.
The main feedback I received was about the design of facade being inconsistent with the internal layout. This was a very fair point as I had no idea what the exterior was going to accurately look like until I finished my basic 3DSMAX model of it. Needless to say I didn't like it. So I was happy to take on any ideas that were presented to me by the critiquing tutors and students. The look the building has from the outside really is surprisingly different from what you'd expect when looking at the plans.
Its now a week on (nearly) from the Intercrit and I've been working on reducing the negatives of the facade. The primary faults of it lie in the over dramatic external structure. There are many reason for using the external structure as it has allowed me to design the interior with none of the walls being load bearing. This has made it possible for the interior layout to be flexible, as that was one of the criteria laid out in the brief. So the aim was to still keep it but to reduce its impact on the buildings image. As the external walls behind it actually represent various interesting shapes due to the internal space configuration.
Anyway that's all for now, need to be getting on with some more work for my tutorial tomorrow.
On the 1/11/2013 I gave a presentation, which was the concluding aspect of part I of our group work for Modular (this terms design module). He have been working on this scheme for some time, it has been hard going as group work often is. It started out with a day long Charette (as I mention on a previous post). Then we had a few weeks to finalise the design, taking into account the feedback from the Charette viewers (which weren't great). After the Charette we had to quite drastically rethink our scheme, as although there were aspects that they did like, there were a few which they really didn't. The initial idea of a 1st floor boardwalk spread over the site thinking all the buildings together with a pedestrianized area was seen as an excessive design feature. So with our tutor we rethought the scheme. Below is the final scheme we arrived on.
The beginning of my third year of studying required the creation of yet another site model for our design module. The project (which is still underway) is to design a master plan within a group of 5, then to individually design one of the separate buildings in greater detail, taking into account the master plan. We were required to create a model at a scale of 1:500, which would be used for the charette and for our own work. When we started planning the group model we decided we wanted to do something different from the normal. Lets get rid of the foam board, cardboard and the lazer floor plans of the buildings stacked on top of each other.
Above is what we created. We decided within our group that we wanted to go down the route of an industrial pallet of materials. We started out with lazer cutting the base board. This is pretty standard, but it allows you to accurately layout the surrounding buildings, so it was necessary. For the water, which is one of the key elements of the site, we decided upon using metal. This was something new to all of us. We went for a tarnished plate of 2 mm steel, and used a large clamp to cut out a piece to sit below the lazer cut layer. Next for the trees, the idea of using just nails was our first idea. However on talking to the workshop technicians he suggested that we use screws and vary the types of nails. This created an effect that echoed the spread of various types of trees. The buildings were created from a bunch of scraps of a high density modeling material (not entirely sure what is was called), this allowed us to create the required intricate shapes which would indicate the surrounding buildings.
Placed on the model was the scheme we created during a day long charette, which forced us to design a scheme for the entire master from scratch and then present it at the end of the day. A great exercise even if it did take its toll within the group as it got the project started, something which can often be hard in group work.
That's all for now,...
