Sunday, April 4, 2010

End of term Review 1 Apr

1 April 2010: It was the last day of term, but also a review of the Tall Buildings unit. We were honoured to have Ken Shuttleworth (Make) and Dirk Krolikowski (Rogers Stirk Harbour) as our special guests for the day.
   Phil and Paul and DNc were amazed and delighted at the advancement since the week earlier. Every group had a new 1/500 model, and had managed to get printed posters with all buildings computer modelled, rendered and printed out. These all had to  be done earlier in the week for the MAD group, so there was time on Weds evening to assemble a video.
  The day's review started with the videos, which is a good way to get a quick glimpse of what each building is about, especially for the visitors who are unfamiliar with the site as well as the details of the brief, and the agendas of each group.
  We continued through the day at half hour intervals, with every group getting two crits. The guests enjoyed their day and gave plenty of helpful advice throughout the day, concluding with a group photograph and a talk back after Ken's taxi had gone to the station. Everybody was urged to have an enjoyable easter weekend (and relax!) and we look forward to a 5 week period before the next main meeting on May 6th. That will be a tutorial day with the next interim crit on the 13th May.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Tutorials 25 March 2010

The Tower designs have been advancing, but the master planning group are also keeping a close eye on progress of the overall plan, including the skybridge pattern.

The previous week (18 Mar) was a decisive moment, with an almost final skybridge arrangement being agreed on, and modelled live during the day, connecting the tower models with foamboard slabs.



The emphasis for 25th was to advance the tower designs, including Structure (we had Simon Palmer attending), Agenda (this is the time to decide finally), Organisation (planning, section, connection to ground and skybridges etc).... so that they would be ready to present as a design good enough to show Ken Shuttleworth, and to launch the students into the 5-week long Easter vacation.

So far, we have urged the unit to work mostly through Models and Hand drawn scale drawings. Now they are urged to go to computer for the next week.