Thursday 29 April 2010

anonymity

this is one of the worst things about brutalist architecture and high rises in general

Tuesday 27 April 2010




basic sketch of what the final brutalist/victorian building is going to look like. it's a cluster of four corner buildings centred around a communal garden which will be kept private by four large gates that join the blocks together. it will have a harsh concrete exterior with an unexpected redbrick internal façade with balconies overlooking the garden. from the outside the building resembles any other concrete block but at a closer glance through the gates the inner beauty of the building and its landscape can be glimpsed

i feel like perhaps i've crammed too many ideas (as usual) into one here but essentially the main aim is to create a private retreat from the restless inner city, just like a victorian terraced garden square and combine it with the positive social concepts behind many brutalist housing estates

Friday 23 April 2010

brompton

below photos of victorian redbrick terraces and their private garden squares. although most of the private gardens are close to very busy streets like this one which is a stone's throw from the v&a, most look like hidden gems with hedges and trees helping to maintain privacy in the busy urban environment. quite different from a lot of cheap housing estates where there is usually little privacy or upkeep of landscaping



Wednesday 21 April 2010

beginning of a new design for a hybrid brutalist tower block/victorian terraced house

taking the best principles of both architectural styles to find a new middle-ground architecture; a balance between form, function and affordability with the aim in mind to create an imaginary type of socialist housing that redistributes the best and worst of London's architectural heritage equally amongst its residents

+ awesome illustrations atwww.evoltaste.com

Saturday 17 April 2010

lumières


light, colour, performance and architecture combined in the annual festival of lights in Lyon

Friday 16 April 2010

waste-less future



a dramatic vision of a mega-city and the stories of people adapting to large scale urbanisation in extreme circumstances by learning to recycle existing products and finding new uses for the tons of waste that the city produces

Thursday 15 April 2010

soulless

robin hood gardens

Wednesday 14 April 2010

trellick tower

another brutalist design, don't think this turned out as good as the first set of towers though

Monday 12 April 2010

Sunday 11 April 2010

map

an idea for a final piece. it's a map of old (pre-industrial revolution) London, central and greater London, the outer metropolitan area, the south east and the greater south east. the idea is to show the expansion (past, present and future) of a city into a mega-city/region in the form of a pop-up map which also illustrates the architectural changes

Friday 9 April 2010

mix

some initial tests in photoshop, not sure what i think, kind of obvious but a start

Thursday 8 April 2010

Wednesday 7 April 2010

genius i



i want to meet these guys!

Monday 5 April 2010

gothic

photo i took of the entrance to Holly Village in North London. one of the earliest examples of a gated community in the country and from what i could see of the houses inside they looked amazing with towers and turrets and ornate wooden detailing































Henry Astley Darbishire who designed this hamlet also designed houses specifically for working-class Londoners as part of a trust whose aim was to improve the lives of the poor by building better housing for them

Sunday 4 April 2010

future perfect



maybe a little over intellectualising and analogising of architecture, nonetheless a really interesting programme that explores the effects that architectural styles have on people's happiness and problems with the appearance and design of many housing developments in the country today

for this project i'm sort of focusing on the evolution of architecture in expanding cities and how shifts in priorities affect the change in style of buildings. as well as illustrating the growth of a mega-city i want to design a fantasy building that looks at some of the problems faced by large scale urbanisation