Circles and tunnel vision

Well I lasted 3 straight days haha... There's alot to catch up on!

Our major project for architecture this semester is an art gallery with a theme of our choice. Many people have at this stage chosen just to design a gallery for paintings, digital art, theatrical etc. I've chosen to do an Aboriginal art gallery.


Personally I feel that aboriginies are undervalued in Brisbane, and as far as I know there are no permanent galleries, or even temporary ones at the moment, exhibiting their well known and unique style. Just flicking through a bit of the history of Fortitude Valley and Brisbane, it's pretty clear they have always been a significant part of our history, often in negative ways. I'm quite excited about designing a space for them. This is also one of the hardest stages of a project as well, as you start to consider how to go about designing the thing. There are so many things to consider: context, space arranging, the form of the building, the list goes on.
If I'm organized enough this week I hope to start exploring building shapes by making lots of quick models from cardboard and sticky tape. It's so much fun and lots of original ideas can be generated through this.

As all Brisbanites should know, last night the Clem7 tunnel was opened! There seems to be a fair bit of controversy over things such as the toll, but hopefully that will settle down soon enough. Tonight I drove through it myself, and I gotta say it was exciting! North to south was a smooth run, and I took in every moment of the trip. There's lots of flashing lights and signs and it was hard to imagine we were so far underground, pretty cool! On the way back however, even though it was 9.30 at night, we probably did about 40km/hr most of the way, there was so much traffic! Clearly everyone was out to have a look, lots of sports cars were around cruising through. I can't work out why it was congested north bound and not south bound, because at the end of the tunnel things were all clear. Another cool thing is that in the tunnel they hack your radio!!! No matter what station you're on, every 2 mins on the way back a lady would come on and say 'this is the Clem7 control room, there is currently congestion in the tunnel. Please reduce your speed and keep a safe distance from the car in front'. Well it was along those lines anyway. It was cool to start with, then after about 10 mins got really annoying as it kept interrupting our songs on the radio.

Can a building get any more literal than this? I think they would fail my course... but I love it

Sleeeep

Is all I can think of right now so I'll try and be short and sweet tonight. Today was very productive uni wise, I wish everyday were like that. I've almost finished doing some mass modelling of part of the valley to help show the context of the project in 3D as shown in the picture on the right >>>

Another subject I'm doing this semester is called design and research, and the topic I'm leaning towards at the moment is the importance of the aesthetics of a house to its occupants (no suprise there) but I found some very interesting articles today which helped me think more about the meaning of aesthetics to people. Once I've analysed it a little more I'll post some points.

This morning I woke up to find myself dressed in different clothes to what I'd gone to bed in last night, and have pretty much no idea how it happened. Has this happened to anyone else? I've never sleep walked in my life as far as I know until now!

P.S This is my favourite building of all time, in terms of exterior mind blowingness at least. There are of course a million other buildings I love too, but this will always be special. It's a shame more clients don't give their architects more freedom to experiment like this (clients with money that is). It is the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao by Frank Gehry.

Smells and atheists

So today I did my first site visit for our valley project, the first of many. I took with me my handy dandy camera, and because my bag was so heavy and it was so hot I decided not to pull out my sketch book for this first round, but instead use my mp3 player to record observations as I wandered around. What can I say, the valley is such a fascinating place! The location for our project is a massive vacant block on Wickham St, in the China town part of the valley, with the site backing onto the train line.
There wasn't as much graffiti around as I'd expected, however the places I walked around certainly lived up to the valley's reputation of being dirty. It's almost like one giant rubbish bin with a few interesting bits to pick through.
The most striking thing I noticed today however, was the multitude of smells that I came across. Sadly I only noticed this towards the end of my journey, but it was enough to record some very interesting smells. There is of course the always present lingering of cigarettes smoked by workers and homeless alike, but the more interesting smells I encountered were these: The amazing waft of asian cooking along Wickham St, the putrid dump like smells of the back alleys, some very strange smells (but disgusting) coming from the closed Indie Temple, a sniff of incense from I'm not sure where... however there do seem to be alot of Indians in the valley, and finally, an old man stinking of sweat.

That's enough on the valley for now, I briefly wanted to mention an interesting debate I went to tonight. I'm not sure about other christians but for me this is increasingly becoming a passion, that is exploring people's beliefs and how mine measure up to them, tonight focusing on science and atheism. At UQ we watched a dvd of a debate between well known atheist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and a gentleman previously unknown to me by the name of John Lennox (no not that one). Mr. Lennox presenting a christian scientists side of the argument. I won't go into details tonight of what was talked about, but I hope to get a copy of the DVD and think about the issues raised more. I guess the main issues raised were broadly evolution and evidence for a creator, and personally my beliefs were confirmed all the more by the discussion. Both were brilliant speakers, very smart men, and I learnt alot.
I'm reading a great book at the moment too called The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, which investigates the evidence for christianity by an atheist journalist, whom by the end of this investigation was convinced by the evidence and now calls himself a christian. It answers many of the big questions people have about the bible, I highly recommend it.

I'll start posting some pictures of the valley soon, and the experimenting I will begin doing for this valley project. Looking forward to it! until next time...

The Journey Begins...

Following a request by my design tutor (and motivated by Julie & Julia which I'm half watching at work right now) I've decided to join the blogging world.
If you hadn't guessed by the title, I am studying architecture. I am fascinated by all things to do with architecture, floor plans, materials, construction. But primarily I am fascinated by the aesthetic nature of architecture and the arrangement of space. What are effective spaces? Do people appreciate the beauty or despise the ugliness of the built environment? As I think about it, I haven't really investigated this much yet for myself, so maybe this blog will help me explore these things more.
I'm also highly enthusiastic about digital architecture, probably because I've grown up with a background in computers, and though I wish I were great at it, I tend to avoid using a pencil. This semester my design course is focussed on digital design, so I'm really excited about this and looking forward to getting stuck into playing with computers!

Though the aim for this blog is primarily my experience of design, it will not be limited to this. I'll sometimes write about random interesting things I come across, or general experiences. I hope you enjoy it!

Tahnee