Swiss Cottage Park, London

For the Streetlife module I chose Swiss Cottage park in North London as the site for my Theoretical & Technical report. The park was designed by Gustafson Porter, in 2006, to create a tranquil & playful area within the contrast of a busy city scene. I visited the site when it was not at its peak aesthetically. During the winter months the park is not as vibrant as in the summer, when people sit on the surrounding grass banks & children play in the fountain. Although the site was not looking its best, I still really appreciated it. Having seen photographs of what it looks like in the summer months I think it is a place I would enjoy very much. My analysis of the site looked in the concepts behind the design, analysis of the site & its surroundings, a look into the detail of the project, including the hard & soft landscaping features & the functionality of the main focal point of the park - the rectangular granite water feature.

The images below are some of the pages & images I produced for my Streetlife Module report

Plan of the soft landscaping on site

Plan of hard landscaping on site

Access & movement on site

Life After The Flood - Studio Lindfors

The threat of global warming & rising sea levels is a constant fear for the planet. New York architects Studio Lindfors have created a series of images showing how the worst case scenario, according to scientists, would affect two of the world's largest cities; Tokyo & New York. They have named it Aqualta, a play on the words acqua alta, which are the high tides flooding Venice. The images show how the cities would cope with the vast quantities of water flooding into them, using wharfs, raised pedestrain walkways, bridges, & navigable canals to replace the road & rail networks. Gondolas & barges are the primary mode of transport, with cable cars hovering overhead. People have migrated upwards in apartment blocks to get away from the rising water levels, recreating rooftops into farms & greenhouses.
All of this seems very idillic & hopeful, when the reality of it would most likely be very different to this. The photoshopped images show a very beautiful & functional city, in the mass panic of a real onset of worldwide flooding I think that beauty is certainly not going to be one of the top priorities.

Mysterious Shadows

Artist Kumi Yamashita's work explores two truths: things are not always as they seem, & sometimes people need to view things in a different light to discover a new meaning or truth. Simple wall-mounted cut-outs reveal unexpected, life-like shadows.

"Origami" - Each of the coloured pieces of card mounted on the wall, lit up from the right, project a silhoutte of a profile onto the wall.

Yamashita uses simple materials; slim pieces of wood, squares of paper, & aluminium letters & numbers. All of her installations have meaning behind them, for exampe the use of letters & numbers creating a profile to symbolize the thoughts & words that may be going through his head.

Gap Year Work at IronsideFarrar

Courtyard Proposal


Planting Plan

Stobhill Hospital employed IronsideFarrar to redesign the courtyard in the centre of their Adolescent Unit. I was given the job to take the architects rough layout plan & improve the aesthetic qualities of the design. It was necessary to make as direct as possible routes from all entrances to avoid people cutting across the grass. The area was to be used by adolescent patients with various forms of physical & mental illness, so the design had to provide a welcoming & comfortable atmosphere. The design went through several stages of development, & the above image shows the final design plan that was to be constructed. The drawing above was originally an outline plan without colour, drawn by hand, then imported into Photoshop & colour was added.

Douglas brownfield site

Douglas is a small village in Lanarkshire, Scotland. The village had an area of brownfield that previously had derelict buildings on it, IronsideFarrar were commissioned to turn the site into a town car park. My job was to design a simple but efficient car park, fitting as many parking spaces in as possible. The hard surfacing was asphalt with an area of 434.2 metre squared, & the car parking spaces used a Type 1 surface with an area of 212.5 metre squared (17 bays). Surrounding the hard surfacing was a low Beech hedge (Fagus Sylvatica) which was 97.8 linear metres long. Behind the hedge was a simply landscaped area (457 metre squared) which was planted with wildflower seeding. The car park was a simple & effective way to utilise the brownfield site, & provided off road parking for residents & visitors to the village.

Selkirk Riverside Mapping

Dundee City Centre Spatial Analysis

Douglas Heritage Trail

Greenpeace Airplot

In 2009 the Government announced that there were to be plans to build a thrid runway at Heathrow airport. Just two days before this, Greenpeace had bought a plot of land right in the middle of the proposed runway site. The airport expansion means the destruction of the entire village of Sipson, which lies just north of the current runways at Heathrow, along with many more losses & environmental issues.
Greenpeace have released an open ideas competition to architects, landscape architects, engineers, artists & architectural students to help fortify the Airplot site & aim to prevent expansion of the airport.

As our Semester 2 project we are complying to the Greenpeace brief to create a 'fortress' on the Airplot site. You must design a structure, or landscape, or anything really that will withstand pressure from airport security, police & anyone else that tries to stop Greenpeace from protesting against the expansion, & that allows dozens of protesters to live on site for a series of weeks. I have looked into the defensive systems that occur in nature; from animals nests/habitats to carnivorous plants. Below are some images of natures defenses that gave me inspiration for this project.

'Strange Worlds' by Matthew Albanese

From looking at the photography Matthew Albanese produces you have to think what a lucky guy he is; always being in the right place at the right time. His photos have captured such things as volcanic eruptions, raging tornados, a burning room & many more. But how does he know when he will be able to catch these incredible rare occurances on film???.....


.....He doesn't, all of the photos above are fake. He is not only a photographer but a very detailed model maker. He creates small-scale miniature landscapes, which he calls his 'Strange Worlds', & then he photographs them.

Landscape Photographer Of The Year 2009

Here are a selection of the winning & runner up entries for the Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards, held at the Royal National Theatre on Southbank, London. There were some very interesting entries, the following photos are the ones that particularly grabbed my attention. It was apparent that the majority of the photographs had been edited using photoshop, mainly using the curves tool. The top image is my favourite, it reminds me of a runaway train. Sadly the photo quality is not 100% so it may not convey as well as it did at the exhibition

Pier disappearing into fog

Straight road curving off lens??

The River Thames, clearing skies after a storm

Driftwood

Abandoned in the Thames

Sheep after being colour sprayed

Snowy track at sunset

I love the images that capture two different, contrasting elements, such as this one; the sheep grazing in a field, backed by a 100 foot wind turbine

Stranded sailing boats

Underneath the Millenium Bridge

Mountainous landscape with strange blackened circles

Deep rocky crevases