Research Retreat Review

My review didnt really go too well, BUT i really really was unhappy with what i had so i was kinda hoping that my building would have strips torn off it by the tutors. They really didnt like it, except my own tutor did, well he liked my fundamental idea so i had something to go forward with. The main thing they said was i didnt interact with the landscape, i kinda agreed! i guess when i explained to them what i was trying to do they kinda rolled with it and gave a lotta constructive criticism. Back to the drawing board me thinks!

Hospitalfield Site Analysis

Im not gonna write about the things on the site, like views and crap, cos somebody else will, there are no views anyway, unless you like a big huge mc donalds sign in the middle of your seascape, i was intrigued as you may have guessed from my blog by rabbits, i really cant explain why, i just got hung up on it, anyway. I went out to arbroath twice and the second time, well it was a much nicer day firstly, and it was a bit springy, nice snowdrops dotted around the place, and loadsa rabbit holes.

So i thought, its a retreat, and what better retreat than a rabbit hole, they go there for protection, utter removal from the world, the mystery of whats going on down there, sort of an alice in wonderland idea!

So i decided that my building would be literally a retreat, literally removed from the world. I had the idea in my head of burying it, and i was looking at these kinda precedents.

The last precedent is skara brae ancient colony on the orkney isles, that got me thinking about the sense of community that i could create within "the burrow"

Tower Project

For our tower project we were inspired by organic forms, responding to tentsmuir forest we decided to base the form and structure on organic elements like plant stalks and shells. We decided on trees, we basically just started paper macheing a tree one day on the courtyard, the weather was very nice for it, bit nippy! We looked at a structure which emulated the rings of a tree and which the paper mache would act as a rainscreen and be hung off, eventually we just decided on a massive concrete structure with the mache acting as a rainscreen which would represent some sort of rusted steel facade. The form created from the tree mould would create intricate intresting spaces and viewpoints as you circulate up around the tower......Best to just look at it, the sketchup model probably shows best what we were tryin to do.

a lil comic which i wrote, inspired by hospitalfield and watchin too many tim burton movies