Analysis of precedent

Flatz Haus-Baumschlager & Eberle

Ive never heard of Baumschlager or Eberle before, but i liked the building i was assigned. I don't usually like concrete (i'm more of a timber guy) but the way they used the concrete was very cool. Its a really neat and tidy building with kind of very crisp lines or something, its cool. Its set in Lichtenstein at the very foot of the alps. It looks like an amazing setting, somewhere nice to visit maybe.

The building reminded me a little of Mies van Der Rohe at first, it had a very intimate use of materials, the concrete is board marked which is quite a skill to pour and all the finishes are perfect. The internal spaces seem to be broken up with planes suggesting passages to the occupant, similarly to van Der Rohe's pavilion. As i studied it more i found it less like van Der Rohe's and more something of its own.

I also found in this project that i love making models, doing models all day is great fun, except plaster models, they're nothing but a hassle and a pain. we decided to do one to simulate the structure for the huge cantilever but it needed to be quite large scale and was just not feasible to do a model of so we took a smaller section and it kinda didn't really work either, we got some results like some nice patterns of the timber and i guess we know now how difficult and how much of a skill it is to pour the concrete in this way.

I am a door

The door project was really good for getting to know more people in the class. I suppose that if you make new friends while working on a project it means that your working very well as a team. We did work very efficiently, i have done some building surveys before so it was nothing new to me but we measured and drew up the door very quick, we all split into teams of three. One group measured the actual door, another the stonework and another measured the stairs while another group did a photo survey so it was very efficient. We worked individually on rendering the door, we each did two a1 sheets. It was pretty good fun to just be able to colour and pencil draw all day. The finished product then was a great success, all the pieces matched, the patchwork effect of individual renderings looked quite well and we were done on time, happy owvih!!!

Inspiring place

I chose an electrical power station as my inspiring place mainly because i was looking for something a little different. The first thing that drew me to it was the fungal formations of the generators sitting in the middle of a housing estate. I found it strange that something which was used for a purpose which seems so un-natural and fabricated could have forms which seemed derived from nature. The most intruguing aspect i found was the emmense sense of power which was contained there. If there had not been any danger signs the place would have seemed no more intimidating than the residential area that surrounded it, however there was a sense of potential destruction about the silent beacons.

From the crit i learned that my presentation should have been bolder to denote the theme of power, i also should have used more expressive images.

Beach Party

At home in Wexford we live near the beach, we spend all of our summer on the beach. I found the beach in Dundee incredibly beautiful and a little homely. I think this tied in well with the brief of designing a shelter. We all have an inherent instinct to find a place of safety, comfort and shelter no matter where we are.

As a group we made a decision to remain in the forest and build some sort of wigwam structure in a suitable location. The location we chose was a circle of trees surrounding a dip in the landscape, this gave some natural shelter and the circular formation of the trees would provide a natural plan which we could use to wall off an area of shelter. We tried to put up a wigwam but we really should have brought a shovel because there was no way that three large logs were going to stand up by just being propped against each other! Anyway, we did manage to wall off the circle and create quite a sheltered space using branches with foliage still on them, ferns and grasses etc. I think we judged its success by the fact that we were able to have a nice sheltered picnic in our area at the end of the day.