'Landscape is .. telling the story' _ Studito Weave.

'Landscape is .. telling the story' _ Studito Weave.

Before I attended their lecture, I had already known Studito Weave through their famous work 'The Longest Bench' in littlehampton. Maria and Je who are founded Studio Weave presented their creative, young and energetic works. They are working diverse set of projects across the country. Maria and Je defined 'landscape' as 'story', becuase when they start to develop their project, they focus on researching its historic background character and use the narrative of spaces for their design concept. Most of their architectural, landscape architectural works have some story, therefore understanding their project is like listening a story. They believe strong historic background gives reasonable link and concept to new proposal and I was inspired by this interesting way that Studio Weave approaching to project sites.



Here is their website: http://www.studioweave.com/

'Landscape is .. Experimenting' _ A Models

'Landscape is .. Experimenting' _ A Models

Christian Spencer Davies introduced 'A-models' which is his beautiful model making practice. He presented the series of his models pictures, and it showed how models represent real architectural projects. I like his sophisticated choice of matching colours and materials for models. My favourite is particularly Black & Gold. Beautiful models can support architectural design and could make it as a winning design for competitions. He also described how he get inspirations for his model. It was from various kinds of art works and coming accidentally. I did not really know well about model making practice, however after joining his lecture, I have realised making model is also one of the strong and independent part of the whole architectural design. I became really really big fan of his works!

Here is his website: http://www.amodels.co.uk

What is Landscape?

As a student who is studying landscape architecture, I am always asking the question 'what is landscape?' during my entire academic years in University. The idea of landscape is always chainging and we need to make our own definition for landscape. As a final year student, in order to go further to my next step, I am trying to describe 'landscape' in my way. During over two days in this focus week, The Landscape Interface Studio in Kingston University made a great opportunity to explore many diverse and challenging ideas of landscape through presentations and conversations. Six individuals discussed their work in the context of “What is landscape?” and they tried to make their description of landscape.

the programme and six individuals were:
***** Tuesday 25 / 2:00 – 5:00pm *****
Heather Ring, Wayward Plants (www.waywardplants.org)
Christian Spencer Davies, AModels (www.amodels.co.uk)
Maria Smith, Studio Weave (www.studioweave.com)

***** Thursday 27 / 2:00 – 5:00pm *****
Sam Johnston, Gustafson Porter (www.gustafson-porter.com)
Will Sandy, Three Green Dots
Trenton Oldfield, This is Not A Gateway (www.thisisnotagateway.net)

I attended both two days presentations and conversations and it allowed me to observe other peoples way of thinking, getting inspirations, and solving problems and to share their concerns.

[Film Review]How much does your building weigh, Mr. Foster?

This 78mins film tracks the success of the world's leading architects, Norman Foster, and his continuing quest to improve the quality of life through design. It includes interview not only with Norman himself but also from colleagues, friends and other colleagues ranging from artists such as Anish kappor, architects including former partner Richard Rogers to U2 musician Bono.

For me, there were two interesting aspects that was covered by the film. The first thing was his journey from design student to pioneering architect and second thing was Normans ecological and sustainabillity ethos. Indeed, his buildings have provided revolutionary ideas about sustainability issues. Most importantly and ground breaking though is his work on Masdar City, the world’s first and only self-sustainable city in Abu Dhabi, relying completely on its own resources and renewable energy.

The film is so beautiful and captivate to watch that I felt the run time is too short.

After watching the film, I wanted to meet his work in real world and visited British Museum to see and feel his masterpiece in modern world.

Graphic communication and techniques in landscape architecture

Graphic techniques for masterplanning
24.01.11 11am–2pm, Colum O’Keeffe, Group A Studio 167

In order to improve communication of design intent through graphics and further understand graphical standards in professional practice, third focus week is mainly focused on improving Graphic techniques.

I attended one day special class offered by my university studio. Colum made a session to teach graphic skill especially for masterplan. Our group learned advanced level of photoshop and Autocad skills. Above image is what I made during his 3 hours class. It was a great short masterclass!!

Ecological Landscape Project Case Studies

New urban culture must be created in which untouched natural areas and human density are developed conjointly so that they respond to real human needs and values... The city of the future will be denser, and nature will have greater presence there. The relation between 'architecture and city' will give way to new relation between 'architecture and nature'.

Over the last decades, the importance of relationship between city and nature has been higly emphasised. I believe that many of recent landscape projects are in responsible for approaching sustainable landscape design. I reaserched some case studies of ecologically designed parks which have the clear objectives to encourage visitors to connect and enjoy nature. The Parks that I chosen was:

1. Beijing Olympic Forest Park in China
2. Landscape Park Duisburg Nord in Germany
3. The Red Ribbon Tanghe River Park in China

Eclogical Park Study 1: Beijing Olympic Forest Park

Beijing Olympic Forest Park: "Axis to Nature”

Landscape Architects: Sasaki Associates, Hu Jie
Location: Beijing, China
Year of Completion: 2008

Titled the “Axis to Nature”, the Olympic Forest Park is the “green lung” of the Beijing Olympic Venue. The goal of the park design is to create an ecologically sound, publicly accessible open space. The local biodiversity was carefully studied for planting concept. The Wetlands provide recreational areas and establish a diverse ecosystem for insects, aquatic plants and other wildlife. The many educational facilities will encourage city dwellers to develop a better relationship with nature. Educational themes include the understanding of plants as part of nature, the cultural context of landscape, and ecological technology such as the collection and re-use of storm water.

Eclogical Park Study 2: Landscape Park Duisburg Nord

Landscape Park Duisburg Nord,
Landscape Adventure park formed by industry

Landscape Architects: Latz + Partner
Location: Duisburg Nord, Germany
Year of Completion: 1991

The existing patterns and fragments formed by industrial use were taken, developed and re-interpreted with a new syntax, existing fragments were interlaced into a new "landscape". The whole park is a big adventure playground. Old industrial structures are transformed by adaptation and new interpretation: Fantasy allows to use them in new ways, to deal with them and to play with them.

Eclogical Park Study 3: The Red Ribbon Tanghe River Park

The Red Ribbon Tanghe River Park, Reconciling Water Management, Landscape Design and Ecology

Landscape Architects: Turenscape
Location: Qinhuangdao, China
Year of Completion: 2005

The Minimum Intervention Approach to Urban Greenway
Against a background of natural terrain and vegetation, is a “red ribbon” spanning five hundred meters, which integrates the functions of lighting, seating, environmental interpretation, and orientation. While preserving as much of the natural river corridor as possible during the process of urbanization, this project demonstrates how a minimal design solution can achieve a dramatic improvement to the landscape.The major design objective was how to preserve the natural habitats along the river while creating the new urban uses of recreation and education.

Graphic Communication for Landscape Architecture: Learning Auto CAD 2011

Landscape architecture must be able to convey their ideas to other professionals and clients. Good communication skills are essential and digital representation of plans and proposals are an important skill in landscape architecture in order to develop their presentations, proposals, and studies. Therefore many employers require excellent design, CAD skills, and preferably 2d and 3d rendering skills.

During the third week of this year’s focus weeks, I will have a self learning week for improving my ability for using Auto CAD.

I have found some great on-line tutorials for learnign CAD and decided to follow it's curriculums. The schedule is:

Day 1: Introduction of AotoCAD 2011, NEW, OPEN, SAVE, SAVEAS, LINE, ERASE
Day 2: OSNAP (Editing Line)
Day 3: CIRCLE, ARC
Day 4: OFFSET ,TRIM, EXTEND
Day 5: COPY ,MOVE, PAN,MIRROR, LIMITS, ZOOM
Day 6: ARRAY, FILLET,CHAMFER
Day 7: ELLIPSE,RECTANG,POLYGON
Day 8: UNITS,REGEN,LIST,DIST
Day 9: BREAK,STRETCH,LENGTHEN,JOIN
Day 10: Practice 1

Day 11: SCALE,ROTATE,AREA,BOUNDARY
Day 12: PLINE,PLEDIT,SPLINE,XLINE,RAY,EXPLODE
Day 13: POINT, DDPTYPE,DIVIDE,MEASURE,NODE
Day 14: LINETYPE,COLOR,LTSCALE,CHANGE,MATCHPROP
Day 15: LAYER
Day 16: Practice 2

Day 17: SOLID,TRACE,DONUT,FILL
Day 18: STYLE, TEXT, MTEXT, DDEDIT
Day 19: MLSTYLE, MLINE, MLEDIT
Day 20: BLOCK, WBLOCK, INSERT
Day 21: HATCH, GRADIENT, HATCHEDIT

The running time of each individual tutorial takes about 20~25 minutes. Therefore my plan is taking 2~3 tutorials everyday. I am really looking foward to that I could master CAD skills during this focus week!