Monday 22 December 2008

Young buck

Now that the term is over i have returned to Milton Keynes for some rest and relaxation before i return too Glasgow for a new term. Although last week i spent some time in London with my flatmates family and one of my good friends. It was pretty good to spend time there again but i was exhausted by the end of the week. 2 weeks straight of celebrating the end of term and birthdays is never really a good recipe for energy.

So I'm claiming this week, especially because its the week for Christmas, for some much needed tim
e too myself although i have been filling it with msn....that's a dirty habit i must try and kick DESPERATLY. Yesterday i went food shopping with my parents for Christmas, i kind of regretted it as soon as we got into the car park, It was packed! Everyone inside was so stressed...go figure but i thought it was pretty funny some woman was shouting "IF YOU LEAVE ME WITH THE LIST HOW WILL YOU KNOW WHAT TO GET?" i don't understand why you would get stressed over shopping for food like that. £200 and something or other later the house was so filled with so much food there was no room too put things. I'm in snacky heaven.

Too try and stem my urdges too 'go online' i went into the city (The center of Mk)
today to pick up latest issue of ICON and guess what, they didn't have it anywhere. So instead i settled for this:



Actually this was not a settlement at all, i had been keeping an eye out for this magazine for a while now after discovering the buckstyle website. Ive only really flicked through it so far, but at a glance it looks like i have discovered a male orientated version of Frankie...that's, wait for it...PRODUCED IN THE UK. Maybe i will try to get an internship there....hmmm hmmmm interesting.

Today i also bought a book from the 'Radical thinkers' series called "Aesthetics and politics"...this is in line with my recent information binge. Its all Derrida's fault, damn him! I also found 3 essays online through Athens, an account linked with my university's library for finding journals and other similar things. 2 are based on space and the other is based on the creation of the walker art gallery in Liverpool, should be interesting...well i presume my head will hurt after 2 paragraphs but i owe it too myself too learn.

Saturday 6 December 2008

CLOSED

The final crit for the cube house was a very informal, so how did you get here too this point sort of thing. Which too be honest was a big relief because i was dreading getting my stitches taken out. As well as this we were given another brief another puzzle type project.

Breaking it down very literally i have to fit a stair and a ramp into a 20x20m space. The space isn't big enough to fit a ramp in because of the radiant ratio so, you have to be inventive on how both pieces fit into the space individually and on there own. There are some other rules, the stair and the ramp must cross at least once so someone using the ramp could decide to use the stairs or visa versa.

My first few ideas were all very boring and predictable and because this was a 2 week project i didn't want to get stuck in a rut generating ideas even though its pretty fun. My favourite idea was one with stairs similar to the acropolis or the pyramids but i just couldn't figure out how to fit the stair and the ramp together or how they would cross over. As well as this i thought about ideas of playing around with illusions of perspective, creating a tapered corridor to make it appear twice its length therefore making an already huge space seem even larger in size. Unfortunately the space wasn't big enough to do that so i went back to the acropolis idea.

In the mid project crit Drew pointed out that the ramp seemed too separate from the stairs and kind of peripheral too the whole design. He wanted me too improve my layout and combine the stair and the ramp more, i thought the easiest way to do this would be to combine the stair and ramp completely (just like the acropolis). As well as this think about the layout of the stairs is it possible to put more than one landing into the flight?

Ive just noticed that i have to make the top two stairs a little wider on the left side so that it lines up with all of the other stairs (and it might make the way the ramp collides with that level a little more tidy. But in all im pretty happy with the design. I like the brutal geometry of it all...its as if an ancient monument has crashed into the space and then was even further desecrated by the snaking ramp. Materials wise its obvious to me that too make a definition between the stair and the ramp might be the best idea, i don't think we have to think about materials too much. just give a hint as too which materials we were considering.

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Cutting it fine

Its that time of year again where deadlines are creeping towards me, new projects are being sprung apon all of us at the last moment and well...lets just say i have quite a bit of work to do and not much time to do it. As well as this i had an accident involving a scalpol just before the deadline of my Cube house to project, i won't explain what happened because i have done so too many times now too different people. Needless to say it was a character building experience that i wont forget and using a scalpol will never be the same.

Day 3

One thing it did make me remember is my fascination with biology, probably going back to my high school days. Watching a wound heal is so interesting, the different stages it goes through. New skin, old skin. I only wish that i wasn't so squimish and organs/muscles didnt make me feel so dizzy. My hand modeling dreams are ruined! haha

Day 11