research retreat

The brief: To design a retreat for artists to stay and work. The scheme must provide private accommodation for the artists to live and work as well as public spaces for a gallery, events room, kitchen, public toilets and storage.

My first move was to look at site analysis and precedent buildings to transfer philosophies into my design of the building.

Trip to Edinburgh

as well as visiting the parliament building, we had a wee jaunt round edinburgh!




Found out the perks that come from batting you lashes and saying you study architecture, when we managed to get access to the Tun building. We were shown to the veranda and got a great view of Arthur's Seat as well as a little background info on the building and its uses.

Also enjoyed a trip around the Scottish Poetry Library...

Scottish Parliament

I had never been to the Scottish Parliament building before but knew of some of the controversy behind it. I deliberately tried to avoid reading to much about it prior to our trip as I was determined to have an unclouded vision of the building and wanted to assess it purely on a subjective level of how the spaces made me feel and whether or not i felt it was successful architecture.

The opening entrance has a heavy conrete overhang which i felt added a huge density to the space establishing the building as a formal place with a sense of importance and security. This is nicely complimented by the warmth of the natural Scottish oak timber which creates a comfortable yet formal environment. The public area where people can peruse the models of the building and take photographs was, I felt, a comfortable space to move around in and enjoy the shape of the smooth ceiling and abstract shaped windows. The lightwells allowed for a nicely lit space creating an ambient, whilst intimate atmosphere that is enjoyed by the public.

When we started the tour and were shown other parts of the building that are kept secure and not for public use, my perseptions changed slightly. I feel that parts of the building were over-laden with symbolism which weighed down the purity of the space inside. For example; the criss-crossing lines, the panelling on the windows that are shaped like curtains, the saltires, the people shapes painted onto windows. All this imagery became over-consuming and i felt detracted from the beauty of the space, it was trying to be all too 'deep' in my opinion and irritated me more as we went on. The layout of the building in itself was difficult to understand and i felt it to be all too chaotic.

HOWEVER!! I didn't let this completely cloud my vision. I particularly enjoyed the feeling of transparency and felt that Miralles took great advantage of the light to create feeling in spaces. The spectacular views of Arthur's Seat couldn't fail to impress anyone and the fact that the architect had optimised this sight was a real asset to the building.

i particularly enjoyed and respected the auditorium area in the parliament building, admiring the way the seats are positioned so as not to oppose one another. The lighting in the room is successful the honest roof structure is a real feature of the auditorium. the oak timber also creates a real warmth. It makes you proud of your country to think that that wood is from our land...loved it! we sat in there quite happily for at least half an hour just enjoying the space.

Best photographs and sketches of the Hospitalfield site in Arbroath

Week-long tower project

the brief: a week to build a 20m high tower, scale 1:10 and make it 'poetic'


this caused a lot of frenzied...chin-scratching what's a poetic tower?


so first port of call was the library and a bit of researching. During this week I did a lot of reading
on Santiago Calatrava









Although Calatrava leans towards engineering, i found his design technique to be refreshingly simple. He employs methods of displacement to create dynamically shaped whilst structurally sound pieces of work. This tower for example, is based upon the idea of a human man swinging from the post. The dimensions are the same as are the angles etc so as well as functioning correctly this tower is a beautiful object.




Brainstorming amongst our group and looking closely at the site, our group came up with the idea of our tower mimicking the motions of a falling tree. Perhaps to represent the transience of nature whilst giving an animated element to our work...hopefully poetic enough!




we made a papier mache model of the shape we wanted our tower to be with curves and, until our crit with jim changed our perspective slightly and pushed us more in the direction of a geometric form.






the idea was to have a timber shell conical shaped sturcture tilting backwards - simple, see through (for the views), conceptual (falling tree) and the maths worked out!!










THE FINAL RESULT - the final model couldn't be made entirely from timber as planned - purely down to time unfortunately. However this representation showed our structure to stand on its own with little tortion and clearly demonstrated the areas of tension and compression. The crit went well and i felt that I learned more in that week than I had in the entire first semester - was pretty knackered but it was worth the effort.