20/05/15       The Wind House

One of my last projects in my first year was to design an exhibition space, between two warehouses. In Bermondsey, London. Inspired by Haworth Tompkins architects.

The individual task was to pick a letter of the alphabet at random and construct some research in order to select a design of an object which relates to the alphabet, the way we had to produce our task was on the orthographic drawing on a 420x420 scale layout.
I was given the letter K, so there was many words popping into my head like kettle, kit-kat, kitchen, kiosk and after a lot of researching I found the brand Knoll and discovered this table that looks like a K, I know that's an obvious reason but that is my reason.

I had a deadline yesterday to complete two tasks a individual and group task.

The group task was to create a 10 minute verbal and visual presentation in anyway you want so we decided in our group after a number of meetings to create a powerpoint presentation about the Bauhaus, Modernist Movement and Mass Production and then linked them all together.
As one of my tasks I decided to help my group by making a model at 1:4 of a Red and Blue chair, by Gerrit Rietveld.  

So this week has been quite an adventure...

I had two deadlines this week, my staircase and kiosk project. I felt like this would be an easy hand in, however apparently not. These photos show my work produced for these two briefs.

So for the staircase brief I had thought up of a few designs and came to a decision, to create this design. I had some feedback back from it and my tutor said it was bloody brilliant, so that made me smile.

This my information kiosk that I had designed for under the overhang of the front of the National Theatre. And I had successfully finished all my technical drawings, google sketchup drawings and photo shop illustration until the day before the deadline I had realised I made a massive mistake. By making the kiosk somehow twice the size, okay I am still learning the scale in which to make the kiosk but I just felt so bad leaving it like that.

And I came to the conclusion to re-do the kiosk model and designs in one night, and I did it but never again I'm going to make sure next time I double check that I have made everything to the right scale.

 

 

So I wanted to produce a creative CV on photoshop, right! I thought it would be quite easy as I have had some tutorials in using photoshop at college. However, I have found out that I need to increase my knowledge because its taken me ages just to produce this. Definitely not what I was thinking, I asked around and they told me what to do but I think I actually need to be shown how to do it as my laptop was having none of it. Well in the time it took to create that I found out myself how to crop in perspective, for example the photo i got from google images I managed to crop at an angle, I feel quite proud to achieve something that I wanted. Of course my unterstanding of photoshop, will get better throughout the year as I will try and make this creative CV at a later date to a much better standard. 

 

I have been given a task to ask myself how design can change the world, for the past week I have been stressing out about this task because I couldn’t think where to start. However, I tried my best this is probably wrong but this what I think about sustainable design and ideas relevant to my learning.

How Design Can Change the World

Changing the world by design. Its happening now but more needs to be done. Through research I have found a lot about how design can change the world and save it. I am not an expert but there are many people out there waiting to get their chance to decide what could be life-changing ideas.

“it’s a superpower, and with it you can change the world” we are still currently in a world of design where we dig the materials up from Africa, make them in Asia and about six months later they’ve been stuck in a hole in the ground. Recycling first came about thousands of years ago as the ancient cultures melted down old broken tools and swords and making new ones.  But became most popular in the 1970’s, as mass production took over in the industrial age you could buy items more cheaply and when they broke throw the old items away and purchase brand new ones.

Recycling suffered for many years, and as the years went by the public acceptance and the market for recycled goods were not growing. So the improved economics and laws requiring recycled public collections or enforcing content in certain manufacturing processes.

To improve the economy, “essential aspect of widening efforts to conceive an ecologically responsible world.”  In other words a sustainable building must, by nature, be constructed using locally sustainable materials, such as materials that can be used sourced without harming the environment. There are other key elements to achieve this by sourcing local and reducing the need to import and export. A good example of local sourcing when you visit another county you realize that the building materials are different, for example in the typical Cotswolds village made with Cotswolds stone constructed homes and the difference from Essex you would come across weather board.

If material is locally sourced and can be found locally travelling can be kept to a minimum, reducing the harmful fuel emissions. Travel, through the use of electricity sourced by solar panels. The carbon dioxide emissions can be cut down from the decrease of the gas fuelled diesel and petrol engines.

My conclusion is there are many more possibilities in design to change the world; we just need the public to support who design. The way that people are now creating, designing and producing sustainable design in cars and houses and other appliances. The world can be changed. Could there be a mass production in looking into the old design of ships where they could have sails and electric motors powering the propellers? And also the design of more buildings making use of the sun, not just pretty rays that light up the earth. Be positively eco friendly where you can sit in the natural sunlight, and generate your own electricity from the solar panels on your roof replacing the oil/gas boiler. 

Bibliography

Websites:

http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2014/jun/19/design-innovation

http://inhabitat.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_in_the_United_Kingdom

  

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070718110536AAztC2u

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science

http://www.sustainablebuild.co.uk/locallysustainablematerials.html

Books:

McCloud, K., 2012. THE BEST OF GRAND DESIGNS. London: Collins

A Catch Up 

Last week we had a drawing session, showing what we thought different emotions feel like visually. Such as, I drew a tree to symbolise happiness because the outdoors makes me feel that way. You can obviously tell what confusion looks like its all the colours clumped together, not knowing which way to turn. I'm quite proud of the way that I expressed what I thought creativity looked like, that makes me smile. All those squiggly lines coming out of a doorway. Perfect! 

The trip to V & A 

On Thursday last week, we went to the Victoria and Albert in London, to look at different styles of staircases. I didn't realise that there were different terminologies for staircases such as a dogleg, the nose, the going and so on. There was a task involved to pick three staircases. When we had picked three staircases we had to take a few photographs of them and measure all the specific areas such as the rises, goings, stringer, width of the handrail and height of the handrail. 

To finish the three tasks we had to record them to a certain standard, where you could clearly see how the staircase is made. This drawing shows the initial measurements of the different areas of the steps, however I purposely haven't finished any of the drawings because i want to check which my tutor if they are correct.