Modelo Fantastico.

I know wish for you to be enjoying images of my model for the major assignment, i am amazed that it stands at all let alone looks as fabulous as it does.

Warehouse Site and Plan Ideas.

Here are a few of the original images and forms I drew when exploring the layout of the site given to us for the major assignment.

After redrawing the site and building form by hand i realised that warehouse and adjoining offices formed a simple square which could easily be outline with a single circle.
This new circle passed through three corners of the buildings and revealed a hidden geometry which i had to use.
In an ideal world the portions of this new circle not belonging to the building would probably denote the edge of a garden bed or other structure which would give the warehouse and adjoining offices a closed and whole composition.

Polished and Referenced.

Please find below, for your viewing pleasure, polished CAD reconstructions of the drawings created in the tutorials. These images were created by Marcel Barakat, one of the better students in my year, for his blog hit the jump to Marcel's Construction Blog.

Retum of The Tute Sketches

Here are the remainder of the original sketches done, in tutorials, for various framing and wall cladding techniques covered in SRT251.

Skyfarming: Ironic, Impressive, Impossible?

Written by Lisa Chamberlain, posted on Building Design + Construction but sourced from The New Yorker is an inspiring article about developing technologies that may one day transform our cities from a centre of consumption to a heart of production.

The New Yorker: Skyfarming

This may not be a watershed article on construction or structural techinques but raises the question; What do we design for and what is a building's purpose? Should we merely design to meet the brief we are given? How can technologies and ever increasing structural options privide us with a space, so multi-purposed, that it can provide much more than shelter?

Takin' it Wheezy in California.

Posted only a few days ago on AZoBuild, is an (unfortunately uncredited) article on the environmental impact of construction in California. Titled Thousand of Lives, Billions of Dollars Could be Saved with the Clean Construction Rule, this article discusses the push by many to create a standard for reducing the polluting effect construction process and machinery is having on the area of California.

A startling "...20 percent of the state's diesel particulate matter pollution" is apparently created by California's construction equipment, which prompts one to think of the environmental effect construction has in our own backyard. Being so utilitarian and apparently 'necessary' one rarely thinks of the enourmous amount of resources used by our construction equipment. So much emphasis is put on the Grass Roots level of resource usage that I feel we are winning the battle but losing the war on climate change. We feel so positive when we see a hybrid car drive by or use the water from boiling our rice to water our plants that we are losing sight of the excesses that industry and the commercial world take.

Thousand of Lives, Billions of Dollars Could be Saved with the Clean Construction Rule, follows a smart stuggle for a better tomorrow. The design and construction world have generally accepted the principles of ESD, Environmentally Sustainable Design, perhaps it is time that we start to think 'ERC' Environmentally Responsible Construction?

A Late Hand.

For anyone may wish to peruse some articles on the world of construction and design,
please find attached: a link to the Building Design + Construction Network website.