Kingston Gateway - 1st project semester 1

Our first project in the course - to design a gateway for one of three sites within Kingston, the station, Kingston bridge or College roundabout.

My proposal was to enlarge the existing roundabout and create an area for people to stroll around the small central pond or lay under the trees planted on the banks. Around the edge is a photovoltaic ring, there to generate enough power to light the central installation. This installation is poropsed to be constructed from ageing recycled watermain pipes which, strategically postioned and viewed from a certain point encircling the roundabout, make out the letter 'K'. Lit from inside and powered with the green voltaic energy, they diffuse a twinkling light through the degraded and holey surface.

Here is a short quicktime animation of my proposal for the roundabout, constructed in 3ds max. Malibu comes to Kingston.

Dancing kitty

Animation in Photoshop??......Yep, interesting.....

Stop frame animation. I've attempted a really basic little quicktime, of our gorgeous kitten as the subject matter. Very short, very silly, and I am afraid not very good.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Leia....dancing princess.

The magic box

As a young girl (living in a country where houses have a real gardens) I was consumed with creating a little cosy hideout where I could dream, create and escape into my own 'magic' world. Sadly a few blankets, rainy days and a big brother who's sole existence was to bug me in my little fairyland meant they didn't last longer than a few hours.


I recently saw an article for a prefabricated 'box' for the garden, courtyard or rooftop. So much more interesting open than your average garden shed, 'The Magic Box is an extension room that can be used as an office, studio or serve any purpose that the user imagines.'







'The designer calls it “a versatile ‘box’ that changes the stereotypes of prefabricated houses and extension rooms by having qualities such as transparency and simplistic form with high versatility. The Magic Box also creates innovative life styles and business environment. You are free to drive your imagination into transforming this box into your own working space or space for your hobbies.”'



Magic Box design team estimate it takes about one month to produce the components followed by an installation week. Initial foundation work, electricity installation and water supply/drainage will also need to be carried out.


From the website, it seems as if these great boxes are only available in the US and Tokyo for now. Will stick to my sustainable timber shed for now.



http://www.magicboxincusa.com/

Sustainable living?

Something for my next letter to Santa....a treehouse in a Costa Rican Eco-Community. I will probably regret putting this up as it deserves to be hidden but alas, has already featured in the likes of Outside magazine, Inhabitat.com, Travel Gear (online) as well as other US publications.

Located on the base of an almost 6,000 foot primary rainforest mountain on the South Pacific Coast of Costa Rica and is bordered on the North by Rio Piedras Blancas and Rio Bellavista to the South, Finca Bella Vista is exactly as the name states, Beautiful Forest Home.

Treehouses are built in the canopies with land below starting at 2-3 acres. A small price to pay for land and a beautiful unique home in comparison to expensive, polluted city living.

Here you can literally sleep amongst the trees with trunks snaking through your floor boards and up through the ceiling - almost unsure of which came first, the tree or the treehouse, and dine alfresco with neighbours on a deck 50feet above the forest floor.

My ultimate dream of living in a tree on a beautiful remote spot somewhere where the air is clean and nature creeps into every possible area of life, may finally be realised. If no sight or word from me you know where I have disappeared to.

Foliage covered building by Mass Studies

Seoul, South Korea

Belgian Fashion Designer Ann Demeulemeester's store is absoluelt covered in plants and foliage in a living wall that takes it to the extreme!! External and internal walls are living which creates a feeling that the building is 'growing up from underneath the greenery'.

The building is 3 floors tall, with Ann Demeulemeester's store on the first floor, restaurant on the third and a 'multi-shop' in the basement. Seoul-based designers, Mass Studies Architects wanted to incorporate as much nature into the building, considering the building's low-elevation, high density urban environment.

Visit their site at: http://www.massstudies.com/

google earth pollution

Something that should help some of us landscape architects - google earth is now showing air pollution -





''Google Earth has always been a very cool way to see the world, and recently they have added some very green features including green buildings, and now the ability to visualize air pollution! Thanks to the US EPA, it is now easy to find out exactly how air pollution is affecting your neighborhoods and neighborhoods around the world.

With the new Google Earth features, you will be able to find out the sources of pollution from the major point sources in the United States. These include cement facilities, manufacturing plants, refineries and electric generating units. Each of these will provide information on the carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen oxide, VOCs, particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. The data is displayed in graph form, and you can also visually compare each emitter to the next, thanks to the location of the height of each marker.''


http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/12/26/google-earth-shows-the-air-pollution-of-where-you-live/#more-7727

Ham House

On a brisk morning in December, I cycled to Strawberry Hill to visit Ham House - the topic of our year one first assesment essay for History and Cultural studies.

A thick coating of mud and a 45 minute wrong turn into the common eventually delivered me to the fantastic wonders of this 17 Century house. Ok in all honesty it is rather dull, since the house is closed for visits during Winter. The gardens however are lovely and rather grandeur....

Green living

All things green and wonderful.....I'm loving French botanist Patrick Blanc. He gives life to walls and facades worldwide and has created some incredibly impressive work since around 1994. Have a look at his site - you'll understand the public interest and with so many projects on the go (Tenerife, NY, Germany, Kuwait to name a few...) he is definitely man of the moment....for me at least.

practice profile...

Landscape architects are busying themselves with work in and around the city, with very exciting projects happening elsewhere in the UK.

To build upon our growing awareness of the industry, we are investigating practices who's work we find inspirational and influential. With so many practices specialising in some awesome projects, the decision to chose one hasn't been an easy one.

I've been looking at the likes of Patel Taylor, and architect/landscape practice in east London, Mark Laurence, a garden designer/landscaper focussing a lot of his work in sustainability,and Martha Schwartz, a US landscape architect with offices in Massachusetts and London.

Of these three, Martha Schwartz Partners got my vote. The practice realises the ecological levels at which projects must be solved and so goes beyond each site's technical requirements to search for aesthetic solutions that in turn create value, a sense of identity, and determine the sustainability of a landscape.

MSP brings this balance between environmental practice and aesthetics to national and international projects ranging in scale and scope from public plazas, parks, master plans, urban redevelopment, reclamation, and mixed-use developments to art commissions and private residences.

Their website can be found at http://www.marthaschwartz.com/

Probably the most impressive UK project is the Grand Canal Square in Dublin Docklands. The design for “a major new public space, has been unveiled by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority. At 10,000 sq metres, the Square, located at the west end of Grand Canal Dock facing on to the water, will be one of the largest paved public spaces in the city.”

An interesting project I've recently come across, a West Yorkshire community redevelopment scheme can be found at this link:

http://www.ety2004.co.uk/Wakefield%202005/034-35.html

first sights...

so part of all things first sight, we visited Kew Gardens on Tuesday 30th October, and a walking tour around east London on Thursday 1st November.

I couldn't make Kew on the Tuesday so visited on the following weekend.....Thursday's east London experience was a good eye-opener for a west London girl who rarely makes it that side of town in daylight hours! We started off at The Barbican,The Centre had a long development period, only opening long after the surrounding Barbican Estate housing complex had been built. It is sited on an area which was badly bombed during WW11. I'd only been there once for the Future Cities Architecture exhibition so didn't take in much of the exterior which is beautifully ugly...




A good brisk walk through the city boys in their pinstripes...


...led us to 30 St Mary's axe,



Leaderhall, Lord Rogers' Lloyds building, industrial and sci-fi,



through to Liverpool st, Spitalfields,



the City Farm @ Spitalfields..



and finally conforming to my traditions of east London adventures, ending off with a Brick Lane salt beef beigel....mmm

testing testing....

blog post number one.....all for me, not you.