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. 

Also I forgot to add yesterday afternoon we started to be shown how to use photoshop. I have used photoshop before but very briefly, to crop images and smudge. But yesterday I learnt how to paint in small spaces, to change the brightness, colours and contrast, burn and even learnt how to make my work neater and clearer to see by deleting dull spaces off of my drawings. 

You can clearly see that I was having a bit too much fun with re-styling Johnny Depp's look! I think out of all the tools on photoshop, my favourite has to be the smudge tool, it just makes everything from straight and boring to really abstract and wacky. 

An image from the internet of Johnny Depp

A page from a book I was reading on different architects (can't remember the name)

One of my pieces of work tracing over Herzog & De Meuron's famous buildings 

So yesterday morning, I had my feedback from my tutor and colleagues and they told me a various amount of things wrong with my blog. They told me that my blog was very Beige looking. So later that afternoon I had one of my colleagues Patti to help me change the way my blog is shown such as the background. I finally changed the bamboo in the background for something more simpler and easier for the public to read. Also one of the comments was, why the bamboo? Well I said I didn't really know but as I couldn't really work the settings on this blog I couldn't use any of my own photos because there size was too large. Another way too improve my writing I need to reflect more on my work, however I thought I had but in fact I hadn't at all really. So from now on I'll start to reflect more. 

If you like the changes on my blog do not hesitate to comment and say why or tell me what I could improve on. 

Tomorrow I have a formative assessment for this blog. So hopefully I will have some feedback on to how to improve it. At the moment I am steadily posting my experiences from Writtle college such as technical drawings and sketches on to this blog. I will have to start putting different experiences and visits in the future. I think my blog is going well, I know I don't post something everyday because I don't want to over complicate it. I am putting the things that I want to put on here. Also, another reason why is because I have other projects on the go. 

I know that I can still improve the layout of my blog by changing the way the posts are shown and I want to change the background maybe to building or that relates more to what I'm posting on the blog, instead of bamboo. However, I do quite like the bamboo. 

 Technical Drawings 

So yesterday I finished off two site survey drawings of a room called C10 on campus to a 1:50 scale. I started them on Thursday, and we were just told to get on with it but I didn't know how long it would take. I knew these drawings would take along time but I underestimated how long it took to actually finish them. I was supposed to have started them before, but I hadn't had the time to fit it in.   

I also started to draw a plan view of a section of the National Theatre. If you have ever been to the National Theatre in London recently you would have noticed a big red structure in front, however I was told that is a temporary structure so thats why I haven't drawn it on. To finish this drawing I have a plan to draw onto it in a different colour to mark out where the possible places to put a kiosk. However I need to start thinking about costs and materials. I think that my idea is to design a kiosk for under the over hang, (I mean the hexagon shape in the top left.) But I need to do more research in able to make that decision. 

These drawings are for one of my projects in designing a kiosk for the National Theatre, London. I just wanted to expand my research instead of just photos from the London visit a few weeks back.

These are two quick sketches of the area where I could put a kiosk.  Such as the drawing below indicates there is a space in front of the building. And the photo at the bottom, is supposed to be showing and over hang at the front of the building. Initially where I could possibly put a kiosk, in fitting with the over hang.

 Tuesday Morning, 30 minute drawing session. Today's session was taught by Abbie and firstly we were told to draw 5 x 4 grid roughly 2 inch squares. I chose pink felt tip pen to work with, however I had no idea what I was drawing so ironic to have a pink elephant. The task was to copy from the presentation each sqaure at a time. I actually really enjoyed the drawing. Such a different way of working, it felt like it was releaving stress from my course and to relax.

 

Frankly, I wasn't looking forward to the afternoon session on technical drawing because I was so tired, but I was wrong again I really enjoyed drawing a few obvious shapes at one point perspective with a Vanishing Point. Today I felt like I was being challenged to work at a different scale such as 1:50

 So this morning, I took a trip to Langford, Essex, where the Muesum of Power is. And actually this village hall was just opposite the museum so I could find it easily. The exhibition consisted of a photography and graphic design. The works were very inspiring, especially the graphic drawings of the food and drink, I liked them very much because of there attention to detail, I was even tempted to buy one.  

The hall, was a good idea to hold an exhibition in there because it had a lot of light coming in and plenty of ceiling space to put tall walls up.

 

The exhibition was held by Hannah Woods.

 

So yesterday we had our first site survey, basically measuring and recording data about this room on the college campus. I worked with two other members of my class who struggle to work out different measurements so I helped them out in recording the information. After a while I realised that, I had to measure everything. As I later found out that day I hadn't got all the measurements. The photo above shows the information recorded in my own way, showing a quick sketch and the measurements in millimeters. And the photo below shows a view of the room.

At the end of the day my collegue suggested that we share our measurements but that didn't work because everybody had slightly different measurements! Hopefully some time next week I will have time to create an Orthographic Projection of this room, with my measurements.

Drawing Tuesday's

 

 

This morning, I produced a massive drawing of a light bulb on the table in blue and yellow chalk. The blue chalk representing darker tones and the yellow introducing lighter spots. This drawing shows how I saw the light bulb, however when I saw other peoples work some of them tended to draw what they thought they saw.

 

 

This photo might be hard to make out, but it's a Orthographic Projection of the model I made a few weeks back. As this afternoon I was learning about Sectioning drawings. So hypothetically the client could see the inside of the building through an elevation view.

I enjoy drawing so these techniques I can practise more and enjoy while doing them, so I can progress.  



London Visit

One of my newest briefs is to design a Information Kiosk inside or outside one of these six galleries in London. These include, Tate Modern, The Barbican, National Theatre, Victoria & Albert Museum, Serpentine Gallery and The British Museum. I don't know which place I'm going to pick yet but the visit yesterday gave me some clue on what the areas looked like.

 

 

Deadline

I've got to admit this week has gone so fast and I've been so busy in handing in my latest project called the Architect A4. I had to make a model that had to fit in an A4 sized parameters, if not I think I might of failed the project. I picked the architects Herzog and De Meuron to copy parts of their architecture style and I had to make the minimum of six forms in order to create a abstract artifact.

Thoughout the project I experimented with different materials such as plastics, metals, wood, cardboard, paper and MDF. I used my phone to take photos of the techniques I used to cut and shape these materials into different shapes and forms.   

I tried to produce many similar silhouttes of their design not by actually pin pointing their forms, as you can see in the photo above that is my final model, obviously showing that I experimented with certain materials to get those shapes. In that model I was representing seven buildings.

On the other hand, the feedback I had from the tutor was positive and negative. However, they liked my processes and the work produced up to the model. They thought that they couldn't really tell what architect the model is representing, but that didn't faze me because I had researched and enjoyed the project.

Yesterday I brought a book called Archi-Doodle, because it looked a pretty good book to learn better drawing and shading techniques. I brought it from a quaint shop in Alriston, as I was away for the weekend to go see the London to Brighton veteran car run, in Brighton.
I have been to Alfriston many times and stayed at The Star Inn.

 As I was searching for techniques in this book I came across a drawing I did in pencil of The Minories, Colchester and I started to try out different tonal and shading techniques. For a first try I think the tree came out well and I will improve on the house textures later on.

 

Model Making

 

 

Last week we were shown a 1:50 scale drawing of a studio that we had to make out of foam and grey card. This photo above shows it nearly finished I just need to stick it all together and finish it off by designing a little courtyard with a tree out side of the studio.

 

 



So that's what I did I made a little courtyard, with a plastic tree and the acetate is to represent little ponds. I think for my first attempt at a scale model it came out quite well, I need to improve because all the corners aren't quite even.  

 

Today I did some research into my Herzog & De Meuron’s work and looking into their main buildings and tracing over the main recognisable shapes. And I’ve started experimenting with these shapes in different materials such as foam, MDF, plastic and string.

Third Attempt I think I'm getting better!

 

Second Attempt

Drawings from todays session

Without looking at the paper!

First attempt

A visit to Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport

Visited 9th October 2014

I drew a view of the massive metal sculpture outside the Arrival Lounge and inside the terminal

First Time

So today I created a blog and I havent used one before so this is all new to me, however today I was continuing on with my project on the architects A4, looking at three main architects such as Zaha Hadid, Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe and Herzog & De Meuron.

So far I've researched into Zaha Hadid in a really interesting book called

The Phaidon Atlas, of Contemporary Architecture.

16/10/14