A day out - Fresh air - Beautiful weather

Yesterday was such a beautiful day and we got up early and headed off to Dover esplanade, the drive there from our house is wonderful, seeing the landscape change from the green hilly areas of Tunbridge wells through the, well at the moment very dry and flat areas along the M20 for it then to change significantly as you approach Dover. I was surprised by the area surrounding Dover as peoples views of Dover are that is a miserable and run down place, I think the weather helped but I thought that the approach to Dover is something special, it had a sense of industry and history that I thought would not exist. Anyway, getting there about half ten meant that the light was beautiful and people were still stirring and a relaxed atmosphere was all around. 

The promenade was a true success, People were using all aspects of the area, people seating within the alcoves of the twisting, rippling textured walls, people were skating along the resin bonded main promenade and kids were running along the lower walk ways. Before going I thought that the scale of the twisting alcoves would be much greater, and a sense of enclosure would be created, but I was wrong and  it worked just how it was. The parallel road of Edwardian town houses gives a great back drop to the scheme, whether  this was restored with the promenade Im not sure but they were fantastic. One of the main things that struck me was that  there was no shelter from the sun or the rain, It was only about 18 degrees yesterday so it was fine that there was no shade but I could imagine that during the height of summer the heat along with the glare from the white walls would be quite unbearable. This really made me think about the shelter and enclosed spaces in my scheme, which was always my first area to focus on and im glad I did. Im glad I have areas that encapsulate the elements giving people a sense of connection with the landscape but also I defiantly need  the areas I have design for people to be able to view the landscape with out being to exposed. 

Another thing that struck me was the lack of planting, I really think that with the added textures of planting this scheme would really come alive, although I truly like this scheme and the concept I found it fairly static, mainly because of the lack of movement that plants would give. The amount of trees that were planted was worrying as this would also provide some shade in the later afternoon. 

Overall I really enjoyed this space and It brought to life a sense of what Im trying to create, as in people feeling free enough to sit and relax and enjoy the landscape that surrounds them and being part of it rather than an element of scheme that is not focused on what true makes a space work, the area that it sits within. 

After Dover we took a coastal tour of Deal, Sandwich, then Canterbury and Finally Whitstable for a well earned couple of ales! 

Sun setting in Whitstable Bay 

1- 500 Model

Forgot to put this up the other evening, It took me a hell of alot longer than I thought, very time consuming, It did make me think about how it fits within the site and I wish I had made it much bigger to incorporate more of the town. Live and learn!!

Build up to interim crit !!!!

Not sure where to start really, lot has happen recently so Ill start with the absolute pain of trying to find a way to do the Structural plating plan, I really wanted to hand draw it as I always have done in the past and enjoyed doing it, but soon realised that, that approach would probably not go down well, I really didnt want to have to start using CAD as I always said there is no feeling behind a line drawing drawn in it so I thought I would try Indesign, which worked really really well, until I now need to change lots of stuff, move things about and so one. Here is the Indesign attempt,

I liked it as it didn't look as generic as cad, probably because it just wasn't as clear. The next hill was my plan, I was happy with the design but as usual my hand line work wasn't the best, much improved from what it used to be like but no where near clear and crisp enough, so you can see were this is heading,  so I drop my plan into Cad not having opened it for probably about a year, obviously had forgotten everything and spent an agonizing fair few hours tearing my hair out doing a teach yourself Cad re-fresher. With the help of a couple of phone calls to friends got my plan in and to scale. And thank god it has made my life so much easier in Photoshop for rendering and I actually quite enjoyed using Cad in the end  so here is my before and afters .

The hand draw one!

The Cad One !!!

The line on the outside are just to make filling easier in Photoshop.

I did just forget to put up my Levels plan which I did Indesign, which was easy and will probably stay with it as me and text in Cad do not go together plus Indesign prints so much better than any other programme, Tip actually any work you do put it in to Indesign to save as you print file and the resolution its so much crisper, plus dont annotate in Photoshop as text comes out hazy, also much better in Indesign. 

So here is my levels over lay, need to put the drainage on to it yet, done it in ruff so shouldnt take to long to add in, went a bit crazy with the drainage plan, I now know every single fall to every single ground plain, not needed as now I have converted some hard surfaces to timber deck, never mind.

Its got a few other things on it as I have put things on layers that they shouldn't be on.

So with the build up to the crit on its way, I descied that working the two days a week was impossible  so descided to only do one, bloody glad I did now, worked for about 18 hours a day for 7 days and still not managed to get every thing finished, which was a shame as I really wanted to, but here is what I pinned up, I was really happy with my section and the way that I rendered it, just a few tweaks and then finish the other 3, the plan needs alot more work on the rendering but I was happy with the over all content of it, and my sketches are awful and need a hell of alot of work, But here they are!

These will look like the one below and better, I like this section, but as was said I need to do summer ones, 

as with these too!!

I hope none of my sketches end up looking like these!!

Here comes the 1-50 looking forward to this bit!!!

Knole Exhibition - Better late than never!

During last term with Marian Boswell studying Historic garden conservation we produce proposals for Knole house and gardens, with help from Marian Me and 7 others were chosen to take part in a exhibition at Knole. Our work is now on show at in the orangery in Knole and will be until the 15th April. The proposals are set up on art easels and printed on canvas and mounted on foam board, which I printed at work. The overall outcome was fantastic and everyone really worked hard on this, especially having to go through this term putting this together along with everything else.

Here is the press release for the the exhibition which went in to Kent life magazine and there website, along with exposure from the National trust. Here's the link to the press release on the website which incorporates a visual put together by a fellow student Harriet Farlam and Myself.

http://www.kentnews.co.uk/news/students_show_of_their_designs_for_knole_park_1_1212426

Here are a few photos of our work -

Harriets and mine 

Mine 

Letter head and Business Card - Advanced Representation

Its ok I suppose. Ummm