The evening before the Masterplan tutorial… working hard 26.2.14

26 Feb 2014: It is the night before we have our first major design tutorial: we are expecting Twenty-One master plan ideas from our 21 students. The tutorial day will stretch to a couple of weeks as we work over the alternatives, and zone down to just 8, or fewer. Students are hard at work in the studio with polystyrene, foamboard and coloured pens!

DTM workshops 21.2.14

21.2.14: We are making sure that the students get plenty of input. There is a lot more than when we started a few years back, when we would see them on Thursdays. We now have a team meeting on Tuesday mornings, some of them on Wednesdays mornings, a day of tutorials on Thursdays, and we have the DTM workshops on Fridays - a full 2 hours of activities from 2-4pm. Phil and DNC are sharing the lecturing. It's like a re-run of the HRI course, a bit shortened, but with the same pattern of lectures and student presented case studies.

Site Analysis presentations, and Lecture on Permaculture 20.2.14

20 Feb 2014: The two studios have spent two weeks doing site analysis, including history, climate, context and culture of London. They showed some early intuitive response ideas for master planning on the site. We had two 90-minute presentations, followed by a lecture about Permaculture.


Group A04 presenting their London analysis powerpoint


Group A04 presenting some examples of very early thinking about what could go on our site in London, in the form of hand drawn sketches on paper (no CAD!) Next week, we will invite some 3D models.


Group A04


Group B05 presenting their London analysis powerpoint. Everybody in the group of 11 has to say something, showing their contribution.


Group B05 presenting their London analysis powerpoint


Group B05 presenting their London analysis powerpoint


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In the afternoon, Jay Abrahams of Biologic delivered a talk to our Tall Buildings group and to Wang Qi's China water garden group about Permaculture.


Although we will have to be ingenious to make direct use of it in our scheme, the China group will find it wonderfully useful. It has sharpened student minds to thinking about the Water Cycle, about rain water, grey water, irrigation of planting etc. With our 3 storey deep basement, we could also find space for the tanks and plant for sewage biodigesting.

London Eye model is nearly complete, with 3D printing

19 Feb 2014: Harsh and Khushboo have done a marvellous job of making the London Eye in 3D. The best I expected was a lasercut silhouette, but this 3D printed version is fully 3D with a correct lattice. The spoke are hand laid white thread with superglue.

Ian Staples visits for talk on Master Planning and retail 13.2.14

13 Feb 2014: Ian Staples is one of our alumni from the nineties, and visited us from Leonard Design to talk about master planning and retail.

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Tall Building Field Trip to London 6.2.14

6th Feb 2014: We took the Tall Building group to London for a day, but it was during the part of February that seemed to have rain all the time. By a stroke of bad luck, the Tube drivers also chose to have a 2 day strike, so we had to do more walking, as had a million Londoners! After 6 hours, it worked out well, reaching the final rendezvous half an hour early.


We usually start at the Building Centre in Store St, to view the model of London.

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We reached the Tate Modern and walked through, noting the exhibition of the new extension by Herzog and de Meuron. In the background is the Neo Bankside housing by Rogers Stirk Harbour.	The extension to the Tate Modern is still under construction, proving that reinforced concrete is very versatile.

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DNC delivers the briefing

Advanced Tall building kicks off for 2014

3rd Feb 2014: We have started the new semester, and had an introduction to the project brief and the site. We have two studios, so the 21 students will split approximately half and half between the two rooms, and each room will develop a master plan and 4-5 designs on each master plan.