Saturday, 29 January 2011

Kingston University, 24th to 29th Jan 2011

I decided to call this post Kingston University because was our tutors merit to arrange some very interesting events and presentations.

24th January 2011

The week started with Graphic communication and techniques in Landscape Architecture by Colum O'Keeffe. Colum is a Landscape Architect working for Bernard Seymour Landscape Architects, a practice owned by Level 6 tutor in Landscape Architecture at Kingston University. It was very nice to see some good work examples from Colum, (www.bslarch.com) and learning some good techniques in autocad and photoshop. We worked from a base plan at scale 1:100 in autocad, the file was saved and other details such as trees were added in at right scale in autocad and textures of paving and vegetation was added in photoshop.

25th January 2011

The Tuesday afternoon was arranged with some interesting Landscape Lectures. All gests were young and enthusiastic with their work.

1. Heather Ring, Wayward Plants (www.waywardplants.org)

Heather was working for a practice for approx 4 years when she decided to run her own practice. She has worked hard and achieved a lot. Her approach was connected a lot with local communities in London and dealing with local government. Some of her interesting projects include a new orchard in community. Supported by local council she managed to hire a shop for free for one week to collect plants and Christmas trees with roots from local community. Another project designed from Heather is Algae garden designed for its ornamental look and as a potential for bio-fuel.
Algae garden


2. Christian Spencer Davies, AModels (www.amodels.co.uk)

Chris was the founder and director of AModels, a well known company on model making for Landscape Architects, Architects and Town Planners. He is a well trained and experienced model maker. Amodels have over 20 full time staff and during the years made models for so many different practices, including Diana Memorial designed by Gustafson Porter and some buildings designed by Zaha Hadid and many more. AModels has made so many extreme and challenging models such as masterplan for Croydon. At the end of his presentation his advice for us was to work for a practice to get as much experience as possible before thinking on running our own practice.

Ordrupgaard extension, Zaha Hadid Architects

3. Maria Smith, Studio Weave (www.studioweave.com)

Maria and Studio were previous students studying Landscape Architecture at Kingston. With so little experience they made a very challenging decision on running their own practice. Their portfolio was small but very interesting. The projects presented included a temporary structure (2 weeks) that was part of their degree project which was was built and the materials, (mainly timber) was redesigned and used to make street furniture. Other challenging project included a landscape area in Blackburn and a structure called Freya and Robin in Kielder Water.

Freya's Cabin

Freya and Robin

Blackburn's secret landscape garden


27th January 2011

On Thursday were some interesting lectures from Sam, Will and Trenton.
Sam from Gustafson Porter has been so many times in Kingston and we were so familiar with his presentation and approach to new Landscape projects.

1. Sam Johnston, Gustafson Porter (www.gustafson-porter.com)

2. Will Sandy, Three Green Dots

3. Trenton Oldfield, This is Not A Gateway (www.thisisnotagateway.net)


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