Life Drawing.

Work Placement

Throughout the summer I have been working at Machin Associates a firm of Architects in Alloa. It has been very beneficial for me and has given me a whole new set of skills. I now understand how to use auto cad much better and have learned how to render in auto cad whereas before I would have done it in Photoshop. I have also improved my speed in creating visuals. I have learned new tools in Sketch up and now know how to use a rendering package called Atlantis. Furthermore I have been able to see the relationship between the architect and client. Whilst at my placement I have realised it is about speed as well as quality. Time is money within a business!

Dissertaion

I am currently working through my dissertation research. My working title is: How sustainable and eco friendly trends link with consumerism especially in connection with the home and lifestyle? The idea is to show how buy shopping (consuming) we are ruining our planet and being unsustainable. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.


Some questions that I am looking to be answered are:

If the option was available to buy more sustainable products would you take that choice?

Are people buying less and reusing more to be more sustainable?

Would swapping furniture between friends and family be an option instead of buying new?

What do you believe to be the best way to approach sustainable shopping for the home?

Lugano - GIDE

Portrayed below are a collection of photographs from our trip to Lugano. It was part of GIDE, an educational group. It was really good to and work with other students and come across issues such as language boundaries etc. We were all put into different groups were we each had to design something to do with the topic allocated. For my group we were to watch all the other groups and tell the story. It was really interesting and extremely beneficial.  

Hotel Design

Hotel design





This project was to design a 5* hotel room located in Westminster, London. With the 5* being a main priority of the client’s. I chose to design something around this, the main point being cleanliness. Within a hotel room it is very difficult to see how dirty it actually is as germs and bacteria are invisible. The room I have designed is very reflective, the main materials being glass and mirror. this helps to indicate how clean the room is and means you can see the whole room at once. To add to this I have designed parts of the bathroom walls to pivot, this also makes the space feel larger. To enhance the cleanliness factor I have proposed that everything has sensory pads so that nothing needs to be touched i.e. the toilet flushes by simply moving your hand over the sensor. This helps to reduce the amount of bacteria and germs within the room. The chosen colour scheme from the room are deep purples and dark silvers, with highly reflective dark gray rubber flooring. This is to give the idea of luxury and add colour to the room since the furniture is all glass.

Free Range - London

Well not long back from London now. It was a really good trip. Good to see and take part in Free Range. I think we definitely realised how much work we still have to do. For those who don’t know anything about Free Range it is an Old Truman Brewery special project set up by Tamsin O'Hanlon in 2001 to support new creative talent. The Free Range graduate art and design show takes place every June and July at the Old Truman Brewery. The show provides the best platform for graduate art and design students to showcase their work to both public and industry. Free Range is a one stop shop featuring more than 100 university courses from across the UK providing visitors with a unique opportunity to meet the hottest new creative talent all under one roof . An exhibition for lots of different design courses, mostly graduates.
Whilst down there we went to see the sights. We visited the V&A, which had a really good architecture exhibition called Small Buildings. We also went to the Design Museum (took a bit of a wrong turning on the way there) and it had an excellent sustainability exhibition on. Like true tourists we visited Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Dungeons, Zoo, Covent Gardens and Big Ben also. One of the highlights of the trip was going to see Wicked at the Apollo Theatre, We got the tickets half price and we were sitting right at the front.
Overall it was a brilliant trip and I am definitely considering moving there. Watch out London here I come!

The Canteen Project

The canteen project was at the beginning of my third year. The brief stated that we were to redesign the Duncan of Jordanstone Art College Canteen as part of a competition set up by the DUSA organisation. The aim was to make it more inviting for other students not just art students. To make it a more welcoming and interesting space that people would want to eat and socialise in.

The canteen space at present is long and narrow. The only natural daylight comes from the skylights. There is a small shop which sells beverages and the main canteen food point is a long counter to the right hand side. The seating is very dated, the tables and chairs and the walls are painted a very bland white colour. Within the canteen space there is also a tired pool table.

After having being given the brief I began by looking into the problems the canteen faces. The cold sterile atmosphere, the lack of colour, uncomfortable seating and the whole horrible feel of the space.

To combat the lighting I started putting in large windows and changing the sklights slightly. To create more seating I looked at using the outside available space. The space outside is a sun trap and is ideal in warmer weather for outdoor eating. Therefore I designed sheltered areas and suggested outdoor furniture. With regards to the interior I decided to keep the original layout. I came up with the idea of filling the space with cubed seating. The idea being that customers would be able to move the furniture around and sit in groups as large or as small as they please. There would be chunky wooden tables for the cubes to gather around but also tables hanging from the skylights. The tables provide storage for the cubes during cleaning time and when the space is being used for other functions. I realised that people may not always be in the canteen in groups so to allow for individuals to feel comfortable. I created little pocket spaces by pulling cubes from the wall at differnt lengths this also allows provides other places where people can sit or lean. The cubes and the comfort pockets would be red, orange and black.

The whole design I feel solves the problems that the Canteen has before and encourages people to interact with each other un knowingly. I think that my design gives the Canteen a unique quality and feel to the space that people will enjoy.