Major Project Semester 2

Here are (some) of the panels i presented for our finals. We we're encouraged to develop a series of drawings that could relay across a detailed, resolute proposal for an Architecture School of about 25 students as an addition to RMIT's design school. Rather than using extensive 3D rendering to present the project, I focused on using line drawings to convey an overall feeling of lightweight simplicity to the building. The facade uses an external skin of aluminium mesh which would help in reducing summer sun exposure as well as creating a translucent facade in front of the glass - a blurr between inside and outside. This mesh is also used in the floors, so that the 4 leveled studio essentially becomes one space of perforated floors and mezzanines - this is also a technique to allow the warming air to rise through the building being expelled through louvres on each floor.

random pics

random pics from the middle of the year taken with my loved lubitel

exposed

a different technique, self portrait.

scanface

luckily it wasnt danes package arriving today!!! so stoked, so this is my new film camera......



in other news i got back a roll of film today with a dirty big light leak that ran from tip to tail right through the middle... darn!!!!!!!!! to top it off my scanner doesnt handle negatives and because my scanner is also a printer copier fax machine no scanning software can isolate it as just a scanner.... oh well.. i have my new Ae-1 and i have resolved the light leak in my lubitel and uni has film scanners and the world is my chemically developed roll of film.

pick up: package

I just recieved a notice to pick up a parcel from the post office after 4 o'clock today.. i am pretty excited, but also a little bit wary. I am hoping to whoever is up there looking after me that it is this that i'll be picking up:



but i also know that dane sent down a package of film he wants me to develop at a sweet pro lab around the corner... which will suck if that is what awaits me!!! i want to shoot on my new camera this weekend!!! please dont be a package from this weirdly shaped guy:



I will be soooo off it!

making models

Sometimes i feel like Colonel Aureliano Buendía (one hundreds years of solitude). Tinkering away in my study, glueing tiny shreds of card together, scoring plastic in impossibly straight and repetitive lines... In the same way he trades his tiny gold fish for gold coins, from which he makes more goldfish from - i cut and glue cardboard, to give to tutors who in turn expect more from me, sending me back to my study to once again build a model that outdates the last.... It is a neverending cycle.. But the the cycle is therapudic.... If only someone would give me gold coins for these things. perhaps one day?

Below are some photos of my final model presentation. In the end the basic form of the Architecture studio ended up being a simple series of rectalinear boxes that are floating and suspended within eachother... by doing this i was able to create one single open space, separated by mezzanines levels. Philisophically, i decided internally the ideal studio should have no doors and no closed spaces to encourage a communal approach to design, creativity and critique.

The apparent simplicity came out of long and hard work at technical details in its construction, which enables the building to appear almost as one solid form, as well as a community of floating spaces.... details to come!

finishing school just in time for summer.

Aaagh,

the sweet self imposed rewards of sleeping in and reading for leisure are oh so sweet.. my schedule today runs like this:

sleep in untill about 9 or 10, made some breakfast, eat & cruise listening to the radio.

jump on my cycle, with a book in my bag and mosey on over to jamie's cafe on Chapel St.

After hanging out reading and coffee-ing, rode down chapel and found a sweet old shirt for $4.50.

Stop at an epic old 50's silver falcon in front of an abandoned shop... take a photo.

come home via Acland St to have a look at melbourne's equivalent of surfers paradise - it is so average!

cook some left over beans and rice and listen to Tom Waits and Bette Midler.

and its only 3'oclock!

Am about to chuck on my boardies and go for a swim out the front and try to lose my computer tan!

So yes, I am finshed my first year of Architecture (ironically i was at this same stage of my educational career 8 years ago when i completed year 1 of architecture at Newcastle Uni).... haha!..... BUT, the amount i have learnt in these 2 semesters in comparison is nothing short of astonishing. But thats what you get when you allow yourself to become fully absorbed in something you love. You actually wouldn't believe how much i am at school unless you saw it.. It is again, nothing short of astonishing. Somehow i have managed to keep up a level of commitment that Simon Jenkins and I put in on our 1st week where we basically didnt sleep untill we were fully satisfied with our project - which meant we didnt realy sleep! (refer to minus h project early post in blog).

Anyways, i am for the time being a man of leisure, untill i fly to norway where i will work (and snowboard) everyday for 2 months.... tough days!!!

This pic is part of my final Design Studio presentation for our major project where we designed an Architecture Design School Studio.. So my design studio was designing a design studio..... how do they come up with these crazy ideas!?

physicality

building as an architect is integral to understanding a design... even if it is as simple as carving a piece of foam - to physically create an idea is such a big step in the transition of drawings to the final built solution. some models from the past few weeks.

ramps

There's just something about ramps......

Go South

Driving south to the people-less national parks of southern NSW is always an adventure. The sessions are most often amazing with one or none to share with. The waves break out the end of rocky pinnacles and run along near dry shelves of reef, and the water is cold. This winter, we had to scrape thick ice off the windscreen before leaving for the pre dawn earlies. I dream of a south coast cabin in the bush.....