Spring is springing

Lots of things starting to happen in the garden now and colour is at last peeking through. It almost happened a few weeks ago and then the temperatures plummeted and the plants arrested, but now with the warmer temperatures they are growing quite fast. The crocus are gorgeous - I planted white and purple, good Catholic Lent colours as my Mother would say - it was less for that reason and more about me liking them!

The daffodils are full of bud and I'm pretty sure they'll break into flower by the weekend, especially if the days are as beautiful as today.

I adore Hellebores and lost a few last year because it was so dry, however those that remain don't let me down. Their nodding heads are full of intrigue and when you look into them they are quite beautiful; I often think of them as a shy plant in the way they keep their head down.

And in complete contrast, this red and yellow Camelia just shouts out "Hello, I'm here". It's the only bit of red in the garden but on a dull day it does make me smile.

So all of this is really getting me into the planting for the Masterplan, not that Hellebore and Camelia will work in a harsh coastal environment!

Knole Exhibition

Went along to Knole this afternoon to help set up for the exhibition which starts this weekend in The Orangery. It didn't take long and just involved setting up the easels and shifting the plinths. The rest of the team go in on Thursday to put up the design ideas, the models and the documents. It's going to look really good when all the work is displayed together.

The Orangery at Knole, with the easels and plinths set up ready
for the design boards and models

Advanced Rep

First hand in for this module done, Curate the Exhibition. We had to choose an object that meant something to us and then write about it and then make a short 3 minute presentation. I chose my Pandora Bracelet and called the exhibition 'Love, Friendship and Memories' as they are all encapsulated in my bracelet.

My Pandora Bracelet

Planting Palette

Started some work on the planting palette, ideas about how each area should look, some quick sketches too show ideas on height and form.

Central oval shaped border with central specimen tree

Edge of sculpture park border with hedge backdrop

My colour theme is yellow, purple/blue (at the moment). Need to sort a few more plants for the palette and then I'll start to design the borders.

Hard Materials Overlay

Not quite finished on this design although resolved, just need to get the final details on. I've put colour to highlight the different areas, they won't be the final colours. It is an overlay and so I took some of the levels detail off as it was looking very crowded.

Hard Materials overlay - not quite finished

Levels Overlay

I think this is resolved, I keep going back and looking, other things may come up as I progress and I'll amend it. Not sure if it should remain as black and white or if a little colour is needed.

Levels Overlay

Model Making

Got there in the end! Too much wallpaper paste on the papier mache meant it curled up a bit, but other than that it captures the idea of the levels and how the area might look.

Plan view

I'll paint over the newspaper as those 2 faces are a bit offputting

An idea of what goes on where, relax, play, water etc.

Large trees, small trees, hedges

The sustainable wood boardwalks over the SNCI

The sculpture park, flower beds just flat at the moment - will be raised for the 1:200

Another view

Now the challenge is to get it into Uni tomorrow sans damage...

Sunny Sovereign

Beautiful on a calm, sunny day!

Looking west past the Martello Tower

Looking east towards the Marina

This site definitely needs a good design to attract lots more people

Back to reality

Another good day in the studio yesterday working out the hard landscaping which I now need to draw up. I need to make a model of the 1:500 so a trip to Hobbycraft this morning and I'm all set to get on with it this afternoon. I have a south facing studio in the garden and this morning it was lovely and sunny, now I'm ready to go out there and the sun has disappeared!

My studio, no-one's allowed to call it a shed

It's great for painting, drawing, model making. I have a radio, kettle and a heater - what could be better?

A good lecture on planting which we're looking at in more detail now, need to get a planting palette together for next Monday, I do have some ideas that I included in the A3 but it needs developing and expanding.

Social Lille

As well as being hard work the Lille trip was also a lot of fun. I stayed in a hotel in the centre of Lille which is a really pretty town, old cobbled streets, quirky buildings as well as magnificent buildings such as the Opera House. It was a 10 minute walk from the metro Gare Lille Flandres and not much further to Rihour where we spent a few late nights eating and drinking.

Enjoying a few beers l-r Julia, Phil, Paul, Inca, me, Dom, Lissy

Lissy, Inca, Paul and Dom had hired an apartment and invited us for dinner on the Wednesday night, Paul cooked a delicious vegetable sauce and pasta and Lissy made a great salad, real team effort.

Dom entertaining the ladies while....

Paul is busy in the kitchen

Friday night was great fun, that feeling of achievement and relief mixed with real tiredness. We spent a few hours in the Irish Bar - no photos for some reason - thanks to Robert and Jamie for the drinks, well for the week really. Overall a brilliant week, would recommend it to anyone for next year.

Thai meal to finish the evening off l-r Russell, Lissy, Julia, Dom, Paul and Alex

Lille

What an amazing week!

A group of Landscape Architects and Garden Design students from University of Greenwich joined a team of Landscape Architects from Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Architecture et de Paysage de Lille for a Charette to put forward design ideas for Lille Porte d'Ypres.

We arrived on Sunday in the snow, dumped our bags and then set off to walk around the site. A large area cut in half by the River Deule which is a working canal. Very useful in advance of Monday's presentation about Lille's intentions of how they would like to use the space in the future which formed the brief for our design ideas. After another site visit on the Monday we were put into groups of 4/5 made up of Lille and Greenwich students.

At this stage it was anything goes, however radical, which was exciting and fun - everyone contributed and  our theme was FlowTime which referred to the flow of time, the flow of water and the flow of new people into the area. We had the evening and Tuesday morning to get our ideas on paper in the way of an outline plan, sketches and sections ready for the first presentation on Tuesday afternoon. This deadline meant decisions had to be made so work could be progressed. No time for faffing around. It was a pace that was maintained throughout the whole week.

After presentations time for a beer while the tutors decided which groups to pair up. We paired up with 'Un-lock the City' which was about unlocking the historical values - the old city wall, the waterways and the marshes and thus bringing the area back to life with new housing and leisure activity. The ideas of the 2 teams generally knitted together really well, although there were moments of disagreement which is hard, I guess none of us like too much compromise, but in a group and on a short deadline it has to happen, otherwise we can't move forward. We managed to iron out the differences, and thankfully there was no major falling out.

Team E from left to right back row: me, Zannah, Gaedon, Jean-Charles, Christina, Scheherazade, Maudez
front row Laura, Lissy, Pierre
Picture taken on the final day at the presentation

Wednesday was spent developing the plan for another presentation where we were given feedback on ideas and which areas we should look at in more detail so we could resolve and refine the proposals. We then progressed onto work on the final presentation which included conceptual diagrams, sections, sketches, a plan at 1:1000 and a consolidation of all this into an A3 document, oh - and a model at 1:1000. We split the tasks among the group, having worked together for 3 days we had a feel for where peoples strengths were and this was the basis for task allocation. 

Thursday was getting on with it. I was assigned team leader and there were moments on thursday e.g. after asking 10 times for an area plan to be printed so we could lay out the context for the model and being told no, we had to wait for the 1:1000 design plan to be finished, that my diplomacy went out the window and it wasn't 'please will you' but 'you will'. Not a style I like but we had a project to finish and a model to make.

Our model, Unlock the City was the final theme as it was easily understood in both languages.

Don't do them like this - they take hours and when time is short a ridiculous waste!

View into the marshlands and the recycling factory, check it out in Copenhagen, Pierre's idea and one that received a lot of interest

Thursday evening a buffet was laid on for us all, cheese, meats, salad, fresh bread and free drinks at the bar, a great atmosphere and at just the right moment, we were getting tired and for some there was an all-nighter ahead! I left just before midnight as I was presenting the next day with Gaedon - but he's way younger than me and can survive and look reasonable after only 3 hours sleep.

Back in at 7am to let the night shift go home. the structure of the model was in place but not the visual impact - a lot to do - so we got stuck in and ended up with a model that could be displayed - thank goodness. Lissy and Pierre  worked on the 1:1000 plan all night and it looked really good. They have a very good scanner in the french school, so it was rendered on trace and copied, put into photoshop for the annotation and then printed out on paper at A0 size.

Just about to start the presentation with the model on the table and the work pinned up on the wall behind

In full flow 

Pierre giving the detail on the recycling plant

A real sense of satisfaction and achievement, what we achieved as a group was really worthwhile and a lot learnt along the way. For me I've realised that I want to do Landscape Architecture, work in a practice on big projects as part of a team, I don't want to work on my own on small scale projects. Is it too late for me to realise this? I need to think about what I do next, more education or get a job for experience, I'm in an Education mode so part of me thinks I should carry on. I will take advice.

Next blog will be a bit about the social side, it was hard work but we also played quite hard too!

Masterplanning 6 - Levels

I've been working on the detail of the levels and doing sections to try to resolve the plan. Almost there now (I think). There's a lot of detail on the plan and so I've kept it black and white and will print it as a trace overlay. It's not fully annotated either. I will take some advice as to how much of this detail to put on the overlay and how much on the final rendered plan.

1:200 showing levels data. The area on the right is not finally drawn in Vectorworks, so not a completely finished design.

I've kept more than the actual area and put opacity on it, may just need a bit more opacity. I've been researching materials for the hard landscaping and am starting to narrow down the options. Good tutorial on Friday and through discussion resolved the too wide hedge, so feel a lot happier about that.

Need to do more sketches to show how the walls and ramps work, and continue with the sections, not sure if mini sketches are welcome on the plan or not - need to find out.

It's been a really busy week with a visit to Knole to make a presentation to Lord Sackville; 9 of us went along, he was very welcoming and then very interested in lots of the ideas. He sent Marian a very complimentary e mail about the work which was great. There'll be an Exhibition in March at Knole.

Off to Lille tomorrow which I'm really looking forward to now I've sorted the levels; need to pack my bag with lots of warm stuff, -9 there at the moment.

au revoir

Sketching

After poor planting graphics on my elevations and sequential sketches I knew I needed to keep sketching and try to improve the visuals so have been doing extra drawing the last few days - starting to improve, a way to go yet though. Need to combine it with some sketch up to get distances and perspectives right.

Border planting sketch practise

It won't be long before the next lot of visuals are due so I don't want to leave them to the last minute.

Masterplanning 5

The A3 document finished and handed in, I was concerned that I wouldn't make it in time because the snow and ice was pretty bad round here but it was all fine once I got onto the motorway.

Another really good day in the studio yesterday, resolving the issues that still exist or the ones that came to light as a result of the detail we were adding on levels. I'm going to work on the 1:200 and redraw with the refinements and then redraw the sections, which I'll do on Vectorworks, I struggle to see the small detail and draw it by hand, the lines blur a bit.

I will do this before I set off to Lille next Sunday and hopefully have a visual to post as a record of where I'm at.

History and Historic Garden Conservation

Had the grades back for these two modules and am very happy!