After a decent crit yesterday on EQ, it's no let up and right back to the drawing board for GIS and Professional studies hand in. I hope Tony likes this? We have named our Professional Studies Group...The Dark Horses, after Anna's inability to understand the concept and we are all playing the game now. This chart is the introduction to part 3 of out document which deals with our relationships and conflicts. It is beautifully diaried by Andy and just fits so well. The diary is accompanied by horsey illustrations and we all hope that everyone else knows what we are talking about?

My favourite image of Eastern Quarry. I'm going to create something very exciting with this!

Adriaan Geuze West 8 at Greenwich

West 8. Miami Beach Soundscape - phenomenal structures....and then the sun comes out!

West 8. Rio Madrid - Undulating paving and the road to Lisbon - so my street!

West 8. Madrid...Trees with personality - No lollypops here and red supports for fun!

On Tuesday 21st February, we were incredibly fortunate to have Adriaan Geuze from West 8 give the most inspirational talk. For a man so successful I expected a standard straight laced, sensible businessman, albeit a creative. How wrong was I?

When questioned, he insisted that they had actually constructed 10,000 bridges in the Garden of 10,000 Bridges for the 2011 Xian International Horticultural Exhibition in Beijing. Matthew, next to me, commented...'Is he for Real?'. I checked later; There are 5 ,but it is designed to make you feel 10,000 and thats a very special number for the Chinese.

The slides flashed through with concepts such as US truck wheel hubs - just wish I could remember it all but is was not a note taking kind of talk. Completely off the wall and just what I love! What I loved best was the humour, and the ability to post-rationalise design and the amazing ability to get thing constructed quickly and beautifully by thinking out of the box and getting right into local cultures. It's the only way to get ahead.

In the vast Rio Madrid project, where the traffic was sunk beneath a 10km+ long park , (Instructed by the Mayor in order to be re-elected), everyone loves the beautiful undulating granite set paving. It breaks up the monotony and creates a three-dimensionality. However, it was not by design. It was just because the Spanish workers couldn't build a straight tunnel below, due to the time constraints and maybe manyana! It was all designed in elevation and section with no masterplaning at all? They just made it up as they went along. They didn't have time. West 8 were employed with 3 months notice to achieve a photo of the Mayor standing in front of the Palace with a backdrop of beauty, so he would be re-elected. And West 8 did it, and so did the Mayor!

The follies created by shafts that have been turned into beautiful and functional buildings. And the, 'running out', of the right trees which necessitated a playpark every 400m. And the brown envelope contact with a granite quarry just up the road which had to be used as part of the deal! All the initial aluminum and corten detailed edges disappeared! But it works so well; and I need to go there!

As students, we all have to post -rationalise to justify designs at this stage, but I didn't expect him to and on such a grand scale. - and such a unique salesman too!

Talking of trees. I shall never specify another tree without really thinking of its personality. Adriaans' Rowan Atkinsonesque impressions of trees - hilarious; and to take so much notice if the variances within species. An enlightenment!

I was compelled to thank him after the lecture, (which was too short), I could have listened for hours.

I told him that he had blown away all my preconceptions that proper Landscapes Architects were generally a weirdy, beardy straight lot. It was something I had been worrying about in the big wide world of proper work and wondered if it was all really for me? Anyway, he agreed that fun makes the world go round and if you can have fun while doing a great job that you love...all the better! Anyway, he reckons that, being a Dutchman, he's quite lame and the British are off the scale when it come to enjoying themselves. I do hope he is right?

What I didn't tell him is that he has now been elevated to principle guest at my Hypothetical dinner party in heaven ,where I surround myself with the most talented and inspirational people. In my dreams! But even good proper male, red blooded Grant confessed to being in love with him! And we both can't stop thinking!

Last Monday

I just got settled next to Paul last Monday at Maritime, with lap-top plugged in and ready to go. We had a chat and did some work then Benz arrived and the day started.

Just half an hour in.......Bloody fire alarm! All the sensible fire brigade rules went out of the window. Our work has to be saved and external hard drives shut down. Then we need to pack away all our valuables. Benz told us too and I never let anything out of my sight, especially my hard drive and lap-top. I would rather lose my phone!

Anyway, the practice alarm all resulted in good fun with Tom Turner taking the Design students down to the Beach at Greenwich for an impromptu Masterplanning session. It's a shame we are not here in the Summer when we could make more use of the shoreline!

The photos capture Grant, mainly, masterplanning his North Woolwich site. I hope Tom didn't get cold toes in his sandles!..it wasn't a warm day.

Inspirations

Peter Latz. Landschaftspark. Duisberg Nord, 1991-99. Careful when searching Peter Latz in Google images. He shares his name with a Gay porn star.... uncomfortable!

The Works swimming pool. Zollverein.

Treasure Hill, Taipei. Sustainable community living

Igualada Cemetery , Barcellona- Enric Miralles and Carme Pinos, 'Exploring ideas regarding the cycle of life and thus enabling a link between the past, the present and the future'

La Tonnelle Wine Tasting Room, Lavaux Switzerland. Built into terrace cliffs.

Edward Francoise, Montpellier, France. 64 apartments with gabion facings. Cantilevered rustic timber balconies that resemble tree houses. The homes blend into the landscape and vegetation is encouraged to penetrate the walls.

More on Sophie's Shoes

The shoes are the first image as inspiration for topology for Eastern Quarry. I do have much better precedent designers to research but, for the moment, Russell and Bromley will have to do! Hopefully Benz will understand?

I have been so held up on staffing issues for Professional studies and as for GIS course where study buddy Ben neglected me yesterday for Grant after he discovered I had downloaded my maps in the wrong format! Not my fault since Shelly gave us the wrong information in wk 1 and I'm not the only one to get it wrong!

Anyway, Ben did seem genuinely upset that I'm not on the Lille trip next week. I would so love to go but why does the University always book it when it is February half term week for schools? We have so many students with families and it is just not possible. It's always the Men that get away with it since Ben is a father of 3, I think? Good luck to everyone who is going away. Have fun and learn loads. One day?

Next blog will be precedent architects/installations in a sensible format. Meanwhile, Sophie's glass slippers and my latest favourite inspirational music while I am working on Eastern Quarry will have to suffice. This is classed as Electronica...not usually my style and doesn't sound like. It is a cover of 1971 Minnie Riperton song and I re-discovered on Jo Whiley show whilst driving on the A21 a couple of weeks ago. (It was used for a Baileys Ad).

My husband thinks it sounds like a Lloyd Webber/Rice Musical hit, but so what! I am a confessed fan of Radio 2 's Friday Night is Music Night. It's one of those songs that I had forgotton about and is now re-kindled. The video is interesting. Twenty one years ago in 1991 and 4Hero were doing an Ecology thing with their Album, Patterns. It's silly cartoons but there is a message about creating nature out of concrete. The lyrics are beautiful and so is the voice.

Julia Fogg says that I was always good at concepts. Some people get embarrassed by them, but what have I got to lose? I'm terrible for just blurting what comes into my head, but sometimes that can be a bonus, especially in this game.

As for Sophie...her shoes will get a proper look in very soon. They might even make my public hanging in June!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nXK60prBI_w

Sophie's Shoes

Having a Rant!

Just spent about half an hour trying to fill in 'Young Person's Railcard' application on line. I am entitled as a mature student. It says so at the top of the form. Just before you put your date of birth you press an option to descibe you status and you press 'Mature Student'. However, it will not allow you to put in any year of birth earlier than 1986. So I left it at 1986 and filled in all my passport details. Then it tells me I can't go any further becuase my details and passport do not match up! Waste of time.

I now know have to fill in another form and can't do the application on line. Let's get those tickets to Wales booked ASAP!

Professional Studies

I really don't have time for this project but it has to be done. However, Andy and I managed to get all the facts under control for Broadgate today after trawing through Avery Hill Library, the librarians there ordering scripts from Guild Hall where we had to go and pick up. Then back to Greenwich Campus for more journals. This is all just Broadgate Development project material for the Professional Studies presentation. I managed Car, DLR and Tube and Taxi and despite delays and after a huge run across Maritime Campus, I didn't get a parking ticket despite being 20 mins late. And then, was home by 5 to cook Roast Chicken for the family. Not Bad!

I'm just read so much and my eyes were so tired I popped into Boots at Moorgate and have succumbed to shiny new reading glasses. I look look like a proper student now and also join the ranks of the other group of mature students here but will be able to see my screen better for all this GIS and Autocad over the next few weeks.

Unfortunately, I don't think I have got any further in getting Andy to dress up as Maggie Thatcher for the presentation. He says his legs are not good enough!

Kent History Forum. Blue Circle Cement Works

So how come I have suddenly become fascinated with post industrial landscapes?
I need to understand the genius loci of this place and forums like this give me the information to get creative on. Thanks to Tom Turner for inspiration. I read some of this last week but wasn't getting it! Think I might have to go and be a people person and interview some of these workers from BC.

FROM TEAPOT CHARLIE> KENT HISTORY FORUM

Blue Circle cement, NorthfleetI worked at BC, Northfleet from 1976 to 1987, firstly as an electrical apprentice, the as a qualified electrician and then I retrained as a instrument technician. The factory originally had 6 kilns which were very long steel tubes that rotated slowly and sloped down away from the river. Slurry was pumped from the quarry just outside Bean into round tanks at Northfleet. From there it was pumped into the back end of the kiln (the river end) where it turned into clinker by the time it got to the hot end. The clinker was then passed to the grinding mill building, where 2 small and 4 big grinding mills which were effectively large steel drums full of ball bearings crushed the clinker and mixed it with gypsum. The inside was split into sections with holes that were smaller than the balls that section contained. The racket they made would probably fail Health & Safety these days. In the early 80's kilns 3 & 4 were removed to make way for a press plant. It takes a lot of energy to heat slurry into rock so the press plant squeezed water out of the slurry in between large plates. Kilns 2 & 5 used this 'cake' instead of slurry. Not long after that kiln 1 was commissioned followed by kiln 6.The large building you can see from Northfleet high street was the back of the kiln front end or clinker block. It contained large fans that blew crushed coal into the kilns using a long tubular gun. Below the fans housed the conveyor system that transported the clinker. It was very hot and dusty down there. To the west of the clinker block was the workshops of the fitters, welders and electricians plus the stores and further towards the river was the grinding mill building. Between the grinding mill building and the main office block/ river front was the 6 slurry tanks. You can get a feel of the layout of Blue Circle cement, Northfleet works from multimap.com and using this postcode: da11 9haThe railway line came into the factory through a tunnel to the east, dropped the coal into an automated conveyor system on the east side of the clinker building, went around the factory and exited through a tunnel on the west side. Shift workers were allowed to park their cars on the factory side of the rail line but occasionally the train would arrive at shift changeover and block you in. The trains were very long and there was only one car crossing point and they moved very slowly when unloading. I could more or less tell what was going on by the output from the chimneys, during startup more than usual 'steam' would come out of the chimney and when only kilns 2 & 5 were running you could tell if one was down. The chimneys served as a landmark for miles around.They were happy days and I was told "Lad, you have a job for life, we've been making cement around here for years". Nobody counted on MP's opposition to quarrying and the fact globalisation would enable other countries to make it cheaper. The first shipment of Greek cement was tested in the lab at Northfleet and found to be as good as ours but no one admitted as much.All the best Clive

Up to Speed

Back into February 2012 now and well into Landscape Assessment and Design project with Benz on Eastern Quarry in Ebbsfleet. I am really inspired by this site and am really looking forward to creating a plan for an innovative city for the future. Having watched Bluewater spring-up and the rest the whole regeneration around here over the past decade or so the area feels quite close to me and it's refreshing to have the chance to play with something that I am beginning to feel that I really understand.

Simon's project is great - looking at East Croydon Station and Paul Hadley has a challenge with the New Thames Estuary Airport. He showed me an intriguing sketch shape yesterday. I think he should read A Week at the Airport by Alain De Botton. It's all to easy to get hung up on the airport design without thinking about the people that pass through it and why? I'm not saying the Paul won't think about the people, it's just that I am people obsessed. By the same Author, The Architecture of Happiness which I have lined up ready to read when I create my new housing typology for the quarry.

Grant is people obsessed. I loved his film he made last week and the fact that everytime he gets a new site, he goes down there and hangs out with the locals in the pub, (Silvertown), and asks them what they want in life. Ralley did this too on her Thameside area and hung out with all the houseboat dwellers for an afternoon! I can't do this with mine, although I'm sure there could be some opinions if I hung around in Swanscombe but don't know where to start. Anyway, if I turn up in a pub, there usually trouble!

I'm sorting Scoping and Issues so far and a bit of re-jigging from the crit last week. Actually, an awful lot of work so I'll be glued here for a few days. Less partying for me from now until the end of June. What can I do? - I have 5 x friends with 50th birthday parties between now and then and I hate to miss out!

Cad and Visualisation

Nearly up to speed with past stuff. I'm a bit worried about the Cad and Visualisation course. The Verified Photomontage seemed to go OK and I love this anal stuff, (To quote Deon). ZVI was fine but I really didn't spend as much time on the Wood Wharf design project as I should have. I'm so awaiting the results and a bit concerned. Don't ask me where the upsidedown trees came from? I was trying to answer the brief and the need for flexibility in the space and thought that suspending trees on rollers might fit! I was also looking at a vertigo concept and how you can feel disorientated around tall buildings and was going to add curved mirrors to turn them the right way up again but the photoshop layers and my time were getting a bit out of control!

The images show that rendering sketch-up models is not as good for me as straightforward photoshop. But, I think it proves that I need to be careful with my choice of materials in sketch-up and need to spend more time rendering with care. It's all about the fact that the colours need to fade to grey as they move back on the perspective - mine looks a bit flat. I probably could have done 3d Autocad, but as usual - never enough time for the big challenge. I did start off making a 3D cad model, then gave up since it was taking too long and looked crap! Andy made a fantastic fly through film. He needs to post it up somewhere for everyone. I felt so guilty when I saw it. It must have taken days!

Advanced Planting Design

So while all this fun and games is going on we have an Urban Design Project. I don't really have any images for that. It was a group project and we did OK but it was quite hard to manage. And, the dreaded Advanced Planting Design. I actually really enjoyed it but there was so much work and so time consuming, especially just before Christmas when us busy Mothers seem to have more than enough to do and husbands are out having dinners and Xmas parties every night. I sometimes can't quite believe how I produced it all. The site was at Avery Hill and I had to design with James Van Sweden and Wolfgang Oehme (New American Prairie Style), as my design precedents.

I got to really like their bold style and will no doubt be taking some of that away with me. A few visual sketchbook bits which I literally produce in 5 minutes plus the final masterplan. So much of this was on the technical element so I decided to concentrate on getting this right. Lots of people put some lovely careful visuals on their presentations. Since it was not part of the brief, I decided that time was not on my side and didn't. I don't think it made any difference, but I did master doing all the planting plans in Autocad with specific linetypes and weights and annotating. Never thought I'd see the day and Kim Price at Groundwork will be terribly impressed with me. Given upon trying to upload the masterplan and planting plan. The file size is small but don't know whats wrong.

Urban Food Production

I was generally feeling a little more confident by this time. Just how much had I learnt? For urban food production I decided to use Buckingham Palace and have a little laugh telling the story of Wills and Kate at the Palace having to grow much more of their own food due to food shortages in the 2050's. There is already quite a bit of food at the Palace - I've been: but that's another story - but I do worry about that huge expanse of lawn which is only really used for garden parties. Also thought it would be good to see Perfect Princess Kate looking a bit more mucky and down to earth. She has since decided to join the Scouts!

This is a classic before and after fairytale. The caption for the first image was...2011, The fairytale begins. Ending with...And they Lived Happily Ever After... a bit taking the mick out of Robert for his obsession with before and after visuals, but I got away with it. In fact, Robert surpassed himself and stated that my photoshop skills had come on a really long way. I didn't feel the need to correct him.

Vauxhall Spring Gardens

These are sketches I created using photoshop (After having made the models in Sketch-up) for redesigning Vauxhall Spring Gardens using Concept Theory, the concept being to identify with the formal pleasure park on the site in the 18-1900's, but I added a softer, more naturalistic element. The shadows in the leafy visual were easy to create, however - spot the leaves amongst the branches! The snow ones were more problematic. That's because I'm always in a hurry and hate to have to stay up all night to get it right. Maybe nobody else notices but imagine what it would like like if Paul Hadley had created the same image?

Theme Project

I'm not going to publish my submissions for Urban Trees. The first presentation I did was so awful. I got a D and was asked to resubmit. I had completely misinterpreted the brief and thought that so long as I used Sketch-up, (I had never used it before!) and stuck in a few photoshop trees that would do. Oh dear. The thing is that they just didn't really like the concept of planting trees in front of St. Pauls Covent Garden. When I represented, Grant, Simon and Ben had to crit me and gave me a really hard time. It was deserved and left me feeling like I would never get anything right! However, nice Benz put me in for a pass for trying.

The next was Noise Pollution. The above shows one of the before and after sketch designs. Although there isn't really room at Blackfriars embankment for this installation I got a pass. The funny thing is through, that although I used Sketch-up in all 4 Urban Theme presentations, my best illustrations were when I just stuck to good old photoshop. You find a style that works and stick.

However, I think my visual looks like an illustration from an 1960's Ladybird factual book and not at all contemporary.

September 2011 Wood Wharf

Talk about backtracking with this, but I need to get up to speed. The first task for the MA/Diploma students was to create a design for Wood Wharf and come up with a quick concept. We all seemed to be flummoxed. I presented the following a week later which Tom Turner quite rightly said,' Looks like Skegness!', It was such rubbish!

The competition, run by the Landscape Institute for all UK students was eventually won by Aleck and Danny on our course. Quite rightly so, brilliant work and look forward to seeing something a bit like their final design on the Wharf this Summer. I never actually entered the real competition but probably should have found the time to send something in. I must remember to enter all competitions from now on. Although, when I told my husband about the prize being an internship for a few weeks, (Plus the cash and prestige), he said I wouldn't have had time to do that anyway. Also, have remembered how to deal with the picture quality now. Must remember to chose the size and position before I upload.

Last Term

Just to update on where I got to at the end of my degree in summer 2010. I was so exhausted and that's when the Blog got neglected. Here's some of Farindons Estate.

The main problem with all this is the quality of these sections. I have condensed the file sizes for upload speed but you can barely see them. Feels like years ago that I did these now, but that's cos it was. ......Later.....I know why I didn't like this blogg stuff before. I thought that everything that went in couldn't be edited. Has it changed? I thought it was a bit like sending those drunken e-mails or texts which you regret in the morning. There's an app for that now. It's called 'The morning after'. So long as your messages haven't been opened they can be deleted forever. Might have to get it in case I need it one day!

Back on the Blogg!

I can't believe I completely let this one go at the end of Summer 2010. Now well into the second semester of my Diploma Course at Greenwich, (The course that I thought I would never have the guts to do) - a what a great time we are having? Despite the hard work, still managaging to fit in family/ running home and a very healthy social life! I do think that maybe not for long. We are always being encouraged to blog and I always think that I don't have the time. Well, with a shiny new smart phone I have no excuses.
The amount of time I waste texting and mailing friends while I'm working, just to get a bit of love and support and I should be doing this instead.
A big thank you to truely inspirational Grant with whom we have a bit of a mutual appreciation society - however, I know I'm not the only one! Last evening, he just told me that he uses his just to vent is spleen, so to speak. This is what I shall be doing and it's great to see a live record of how the work has improved across the months. It won't be all about landscape, but other things too - but in my mind, they are all connected anyway.