Week #13

Cities and Signs

Unfortunately I missed this weeks lecture, making it in time only for the final tutorial group, however the topic of the lecture intrigues me and I'd like to talk about what I believe cities and signs might mean.
The urban environment would be bland and confusing without the aid of signs, whether they are simple traffic lights or billboards their relevance is both equally important. Traffic lights and road directions both assist people in travelling the city, they might give directions to locations of interest for tourists, prevent accidents from occurring and assist in helping you reach your destination as easily as possible. Billboards and advertisements are just as important, they promote products and services and even shape the way buildings are designed in order to promote these products or services. Look at the images below by Gregor Graf, they have been altered in such a way as to remove all forms of signs leaving a bland, colourless cityscape behind. 

Hidden towns by Gregor Graf with signs and details digitally removed

Hidden towns by Gregor Graf with signs and details digitally removed

These places look deserted and would fall into crime such as vandalism, it is also hard to tell the buildings apart and know what they are used for. It is clear just from looking at these images that a city needs signs to identify itself and provide an informative lifestyle for its community. Below is a video clip of Skymovies idea of a world without Billboards, rather interesting video clip:

Project #3

One week left until this blog and my assignment #3 are due for submission and I still have a lot of work ahead of me. As the week started I still haven't had my model of St Johns Cathedral 3D printed, as Simon had to prioritise other students work and I happily accepted being done afterwards. The creative essay was well and truly on its way to being completed, with the rough draft done by mid week and the CRA sheet adjusted accordingly. 

As the days passed I completed the creative essay and finalised the CRA sheet with a smile on my face. 
On Friday I was hoping to pick up my cathedral model, BUT another problem has occurred and now the workshop has run out of the bonding agent they need to seal the model and make it solid. TIME TO START STRESSING! I'll have to get into J Block workshops first thing Monday morning and pray to god they had a delivery of the bonding agent so that I can atleast start painting it before COB on Monday.

Reflections

Even though i missed out on the lecture, my brief research into topics on the urban city and signs has been very interesting and somewhat exciting! To be given a topic and the will to research it alone has opened my eyes to new meanings and images that I don't think I would have seen otherwise. In this case I followed a blog about cities and signs which can be found at Kosmograd: City of Signs that discusses a world without billboards, images or basically any evidence of human contact. Some people replied to this blog saying that the images were much cleaner and visually pleasing, I however have my doubts that such a bland cityscape could hold a community effectively. How would we know what shops to go to? or that its even a shop in the first place without some kind of signage? How would we learn about various products and services if billboards weren't there to encourage us? We would be stuck in a world were everything remained the same unless you read about it or seen it on TV, I personally think that is a very boring concept. 

Week #12

Eco-Cities

This weeks lecture was split into three separate presentations that each covered the idea of an Eco-City and how it should be designed. The first presentation was done by guest lecturer Elise Robertson, the second by Magdalena Kowalik and the final presentation by Susan Loh. 

Elise discussed three main types of Eco-Cities and their positive and negative points:

The Garden City - Centres become overcrowded due to circular shape, and affordability becomes an issue. These cities are planned and always include bounding gardens and parks.

Howards Garden City Plan

Historic City Centres - These cities evolve over time and are generally walkable cities such as rome. They lack the ability to keep up with current technology such as transportation, so the use of cars is rather difficult in these places.

Utopian Green Cities - These cities have continuous landscape and try to avoid the 'urban sprawl' by creating an ideal and hygienic housing environment. This unfortunately detaches people from the streetscape causing communal problems. 


Magdalena discussed the context of sustainability, and where we are with sustainable design today considering how long we have had the knowledge to be environmentally friendly. She went on to talk about how sustainability effects everything and everyone, not just the architectural community and this can be seen in the diagram below. 

Sustainability Diagram

As architects we need to think full circle and achieve, contribute, add, enhance and change the way things are designed. Most importantly change the way we think about design and the way others see it. 


Finally Susan discussed Eco-Cities from the points of view of other architects from many years ago and how these ideas could and have influenced future urban design. One way of tackling eco-design is to analyse the surroundings, the water, agriculture, slopes, animals, land use and pollution of an area and try to reverse the damage or design to filter it. There were many radical examples of eco-cities from famous architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and many others. 

Project #3

This week I have been working on my creative essay component for the final assessment piece. I have almost completed an entire draft, however some parts I'm not entirely happy with and they will require more work later in the week. I also visited Simon this week to see how the model of my Cathedral went, and unfortunately the model cracked because the walls in the 3D model (.3ds file) were too thin to support its weight in the machine, and oddly enough part of the powder didn't attach correctly which was a fault on the machines behalf. So I've readjusted the model and thickened various parts as well as added some additional details which can be seen in the images below.

Wall thickness of Cathedral model

Front of Cathedral

Back of Cathedral

Reflections

This weeks lecture series has been a bit of an eye opener in regards to how slowly we have adjusted to the concept of sustainable design. For almost the past 90 years or so architects and artists have been thinking of sustainable design in both small and large scale projects, most of which have never come to realisation. Only now is sustainable design becoming the norm. However the damage is already done, I believe as architects we need to know how to design for the environment and how to redesign what has already been made. I think the money will be in refitting old buildings to bring them up to sustainable design standards. The idea of an Eco-City might be achievable by keeping what we already know and own but just renovating it to create a healthy lifestyle for us and our environment. 

Week #11

Architecture + Architecture

This week we had the privilege of having a lecture presented by Peter Richards from Deicke Richards, an architecture firm in Brisbane. Peter discussed urban planning and how to create a memorable place by considering walkability, diversity, proximity, connectivity, accessibility, legibility and community. 
The first quality that is noticed when looking at a place is its setting or location, the geographical and typographical features create a place by altering its appearance naturally. The next important quality is an identifiable centre or edge such as a main street or shopping district and so forth. A town becomes memorable from the experiences a person obtains in city centres or entering the city from the countryside. Streets are also important in creating a memorable experience, they create mobility in a city for cars, bicycles and people who use them for a variety of purposes. Parks and Squares reveal the collective personality of a community, they usually host events such as markets, meetings places and areas of play. The architecture is another important element in creating a memorable place, urban facilities assist locals with everyday tasks and heritage structures give the city a rich historical diversity. Lastly, the activities and the people in the area contribute to the experience of place by providing something unique to the area or culture. 
All of these elements are what create a place and more importantly make a place a memorable experience.

Project #3

This week I worked on completing a 3D version of my Cathedral model which can be seen below. I'm hoping when I go into University on Friday I'll be able to book myself in to use the 3D printer in the J-Block workshops. I think the 3D Printer is the best way to make such an intricate model and it will be a new learning experience for myself, as this is the first time using Google Sketchup and the 3D printer.

St Johns Cathedral

St Johns Cathedral

Reflections

This week has been productive on a number of different levels, I have learnt how to use new programs and create amazing objects with them and I have had the opportunity to look at a city from the perspective of a well known architect. Peters views however are very much in line with Mirko's idea of memorable places and it's nice to see that these ideas are considered and carried throughout the professional practice. 

The topics covered in the lecture this week can all be applied to Brisbane city, even though I have limited experiences with different cities, I believe that Brisbane is a good example of a memorable city. Brisbane has a good public transportation system that allows you to access almost any part of the city as well as great walkability and proximity. However as a community Brisbane seems to lack a cultural identity due to mass diversity of people, we aren't as rich in community as most other places. As for legibility, Brisbane can at times be rather confusing unless your local and well adjusted to the area. Overall I believe that even if a city is missing some of these key elements or doesn't cover them sufficiently, the place may still have a chance of becoming memorable, just maybe not in a good way.

Week #10

Cities and Memory

This weeks lecture discussed the concept of memory and place and how we create a sense of place from our own personal experiences. An interesting concept was mentioned about sense of place about if you've never been somewhere where the culture and lifestyle is different you'll take a long time to regain a sense of place. However if you move from Brisbane to Hobart for example, your sense of place won't take as long to develop as your already adjusted to the culture.

Another important topic covered in this weeks lecture was history and how every place has its own historical background. Since architecture is a four-dimensional element (with time being the fourth dimension), all structures carry a sense of time with them and time can age them badly if they aren't correctly cared for. In an attempt to preserve our history cities use the following methods:

- Reproduce damaged structures

- Copy the previous morphology 

- Maintain or preserve the existing structure

- Relocate nearby and keep the original structures

An example of preservation is the Coliseum in Rome as shown in the image below. The coliseum has been restored in various ways after being destroyed in order to create other structures. A part of the coliseum has been reproduced as can be seen below, while on the other side a part of the structure was reinforced in order to preserve it. 

Rome - Coliseum

Project #3

This week in our tutorial group we had the chance to look at the 1:500 Brisbane City Model in D-block and choose a building that we would like to model and discuss in our final piece of assessment. I chose to do the St Johns Cathedral, a 100 year old piece of Brisbane City heritage. Below shows the Brisbane City Model and the Cathedrals location and surroundings.

Over the weekend I took a trip into the city to analyse the context of the city around the St Johns Cathedral. Catching the train to Central Station and walking to the Cathedral allowed me to take in the rich context that surrounds the site. A lot of old churches and buildings are found along this route, making it rich in historical context which will be excellent for my creative essay. Below is an image of the St Johns Cathedral.

St Johns Cathedral

Reflections

The idea of preserving our heritage is something that young architects today will have to embrace as time goes on. Brisbane is a good example of this, as we continue to expand our infrastructure we consume land at an alarming rate. Today it is becoming more important to reuse previously neglected spaces, such as old buildings and refit them to be more sustainable and modern. As an architecture student I'm very focused on sustainable design and believe that it will be more important in the future to reuse rather then rebuild, saving both our heritage and our land from being consumed. 

Week #9

Considering Project #3

Over the semester break I've given consideration to what I would like to do in the next project for DAB525. We were given the opportunity to continue working on our current city (mine was Kabul) or start again on the city of Brisbane. Today I emailed Mirko asking to be placed in the Brisbane group since Kabul's infrastructure is severely damaged and provides hardly any interest for me.


The Brisbane City model looks amazing, and I can't wait to get started working on a section! Hopefully I can select somewhere close by or easy to access via public transport so that research the site won't be too time consuming. 

Brisbane City Model

Reflections


Over the break I have been considering this new project and the history of the city of Brisbane and how I'll tackle the next research component. Fortunately we have various historical maps available to us on Architecture and the City's BlackBoard site as well as a 1:500 scale model of the entire central area of Brisbane, showing a rough (uncompleted) context of the city and various areas. It is good to see the scale of structures compared to others and how they've influenced the various spaces in the city.