Week 9

Tuesday:
Seminar with Keith, not many people turned up and the lecture was cut short, advised to check the 'AJ details' series for the building construction details (i did it wasnt in there), told how to approch the construction section of the brief.

Lecture: Digital Architecture, possibly the worst lecture i've ever attended. Lesley hadnt read up on any of the subject or checked anything to do with the lecture, she stated that she did really have any knowledge of the subject. most of the lecture was taken up with exploring dead links to videos or watching irrelevant videos.
I was disappointed because if this lecture had been researched it may have helped with my dissertation.


Thursday:
Crit- Simon Warren and Gary, i was not well prepared and the crit went terribly if gary hadnt been there i doubt i would have got any results, the drawings did not convey any of what i was doing and many of them were unfinished (plano didnt show the schools) or missing (anchor plans/section). Was advised to record and show all my experiments with materials that relate to the project. and mainly to model as much of the project as possible so that the mirrored and curved nature is clear to people viewing the project.

week 8

Tuesday:
Seminar with Keith, information about the building was hard to find for everyone, therefore this seminar was almost exactly the same as the previous week.

Lecture:
Zero Carbon Architecture with Gregg Keefe
covers 2 of his papers:
Bio-fueled heritage:
- A total solution to carbon neutrality in historic neighborhoods
a study of Nelson, lancs.
lecture covered the difficulties of trying to get anything done when the prince's trust and heritage gets involved.
more importantly it covered integrating bio fuel and heat storage systems into historic settings without compromising their heritage.

Synergetic City:
- Urban algae production as a regenerative tool for a post-industrial city.
A study of making liverpool a free energy city.
uses algae as a biofuel to run glass production system in order to provide energy and industry to a city that is in decline. the algae production uses the unused docks, and the glass production uses the derelict parts of the city

was interesting and refreshing approach to zero carbon, using technology and techniques that are not usually considered. really great insight into the technical as well as political aspects of these projects.


Thursday:
Three tutorials in one day, first with Bridget who told me to start over with a new approach, followed by a tutorial with Gary an hour later in which he told me to start again using a different approach to Bridget's. Two hours later was another tutorial with Gary in which he stated i wasnt approaching his approach correctly and should start over.

this was good to have a lot of feedback and new approaches to briefs however being told to start over 3 times in a day was rather disheartening and by the end of the day i was knackered. But i do know how to proceed, until next week atleast

Also Pechakucha night
- was really interesting lecture series, seemed a fun way to present work, fast, however the speed of it meant i didnt get to write notes, alot of great ideas were conveyed. however i feel the set up of these lectures is really to let you know more about the presenter and less about the subject matter. although this is probably because i can not write short hand to take notes and therefore alot of it has not been remembered.





Email recieved

Dear All. Hope that you are working hard. Just a reminder for next Thursday 26th Nov Crit:

This will be a formal interim pin up crit where you will need to pin up all your work from this semester - research/analysis/precedent/development/anchor/chord and event and anything else you have produced.

For the Event, your building, you should aim to present a developed sketch scheme within the site/ landscape development and in relation to your exploration of the anchor.

For this you will look at various scales to put your event in the developed landscape and then zoom in to larger scales which explore your building in more detail with the immediate context.

Aim to show strategic site planning diagrams which illustrate your thinking for site use - issues to show include relationship decision making to adjacent buildings and spaces; routes, environment, scale and massing.

Working in plan and section - show all to scale in context - be clear about your brief.

Look at contextual massing diagrams/ sketch models - volumetric development to understand how your building works

FINISHED MODELS AND DRAWINGS ARE NOT REQUIRED BUT DO TRY AND PRESENT SKETCH WORK IN AN ORDERLY /COHERENT WAY.

Just to put your progression in this unit in context of the semester, you should be aiming to achieve a finished design by the Christmas break so that you have time to refine decision making and present your work for the final semester assessment on the 14th January 2010.

Whatever stage you are at on Thursday, please aim to attend and participate through the day. Any questions - I will be in on Monday or do email me. Best wishes, Bridget

Bridget Hansford BA(Hons) Dip Arch RIBA
Senior Lecturer
Joint BA(Hons) Degree Course Leader Architecture
The Leeds School of Architecture, Landscape & Design
Arts Building, Broadcasting Place, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9EN
Leeds Metropolitan University

week 7

tuesday:
Vernon lecture on 'Starchitecture'.
- wasnt brilliant or overly interesting lecture, the point of which is that architects sell their name and their association with a style to clients rather than projects which are site specific.
Also often large areas of detail are overlooked to maintain the over all style this is to meet clients expectations.



seminar with Keith for AT3.1 - given building (De Montfort Uni, school of engineering and manufacture, 'Queens building') and was advised to check the library, journals and the internet (obvious really)in preparation for next weeks, main aims are to get plans for the building.





Thursday:
tutorial with Bridget, i turned up with no work and no real idea for how to proceed and rightly Bridget told me in no uncertain terms to sort myself out and then advised me to try to set my own deadlines for each week, she also asked me to email her my work, for feedback but mainly as proof im doing some




email following tutorial

RE: York Project development‏
From: Hansford, Bridget (B.Hansford@leedsmet.ac.uk)
This message may be dangerous. Learn more
Sent: 14 November 2009 17:36:21
To: James Judge (j.judge6493@student.leedsmet.ac.uk)
Well done James! good to see you getting organised. The preliminary work looks ok - You should try to do the relationship diagram on the site which relates to the space usage and analysis so that you get a good sense of how it works with you urban strategy and link onto/through the wall, sunlight/views/private/public etc. This way you will be working with all that you know on the site. You are showing all at single storey - consider volumes of space - eg the games room will be much higher than the toilets - how is it going to work with the scale of adjacent buildings?

For next Thursday you need to develop the scheme to your first sketch scheme on the site and also in 3D to understand the massing in relationship to its context and landscape. Hope this helps. Regards Bridget

Bridget Hansford BA(Hons) Dip Arch RIBA
Senior Lecturer
Joint BA(Hons) Degree Course Leader Architecture
The Leeds School of Architecture, Landscape & Design
Arts Building, Broadcasting Place, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9EN
Leeds Metropolitan University

Book Review
Envisioning Cyberspace - Peter Anders
Architecture- the construction of Multi-User Domains (MUD)
-MUD's with high numbers of builders have lowest density populations
-MUD about social interaction not setting?
- Architects trained in: spatial design, community planning, aesthetics, graphic communications.
- will be needed to develop MUD's into more spatial forms



Terminal Velocities: the computer in the design studio by Stan Allen

- the computer in the design studio provokes both extravagant claims and high levels of anxiety
- it there a window of oppertunity between dismay or confusion and the endgame?
- digital technology is currently judged by how well it can render the real
-current architectural rendering techniques only give a narrow perceptual experience and ignore the fluidity of eye movement , peripheral vision, distance interposed between the thing and its representation
-computer simultaneously collapses and increases the distance between archs. 2d representations and buildings 3d reality
-possible to work on 2d and 3d at the same time
- new process of design
- new type of abstraction; not the result of operations of idealisation or reduction but the indifferent order of bits.
one of modern architectures failings has been inability to address the complexity of urban context
- programs dissolving the opposition between order and randomness
-architecture needs to learn to manafe this complexity, which can only be done by giving up some measure of control.

Week 6

Germany-

Day 1-
Monchengladbach - town/city stuck in the 80's

Abteiberg Museum by Hans Hollein 1972 -1982



night spent getting sorted at hostel then a quick look around the city at night. (note- never go in a German goth club)

Day 2-

tour of Frankfurt then exploration of museums.

really interesting shopping centre by Massimiliano Fuksas.











Halloween night - underwhelming, almost no germans were celebrating contrary to what i had been told. got massively drunk on 'mass' and meter beer.

Day 3 -

The Weissenhof Estate: International style of modern architecture houses by Mies van der Rohe, corbusier & others. The Mercedes Benz Museum by UN Studio was really good. The porsche museum Delugan Meissl Associates was less interesting.







Quick visit into the centre of stuttgart; nothing was open but the city was nice and seemed very well laid out, would like to go back and explore further.
Night was spent exploring Frankfurt and getting more night pictures, then hitting the pubs.

Day 4 -

Darmstadt: Art Nouveau park. look at the uni's award winning eco house. talk at the Passive Haus Institute was interesting but the room made it hard to stay awake.
talk at a co housing project - being green as a community achievement.




Day 5 -

The Zollverein Pit: extremely large restoration project of bauhaus buildings the majority of which hasnt been started yet we got lost on the site however some very interesting landscaping. The Essen Aalto Theatre is a very nice, interesting building.





travel back to rotterdam for the ferry home.

Week 5

Monday - Submission of 1000 words,


Wednesday – Construction of Presentation including site overview, measured drawings inc anchor, planometric of scheme and precedent.
Started to construct model, did not get finished.
Also preparation for germany including money exchange, purchasing longlife batteries, clearing SD cards, buying adpaters and chargers. And then packing.

Thursday – Crit






- depart for germany