Architecture - Year 2 - First project reflection

Much revaluating and reflection has occurred in the first year of my architecture course... Ideally I should have kept up a blog throughout the year, but I am afraid all of those thoughts are just scattered on paper and in my design projects.

I am going to bring my foundation blog back to life as it did help me very much during that year, in terms of, prodding out the ideas from myself and gaining clarity of my intentions through the blog.

This is not necessarily a blog for people to read or even skim over, but as people say its just another creative outlet for myself and gaining clarity over the ideas in my mind.
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I am now entering my first project of the year, which is to design a cookery and gardening school. I believe this project has been a lot more forced and does not feel as natural to start working on the design. However, I have attempted to work around this and found that the feeling and connection with site was something I gained through photography. From this I was able to be selective about the details that really struck me about the site.

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These are the elements that should be at the forefront of the experience: 

• Seeing pits of shale
• Seeing recesses and alcoves of darker spaces 
• Using the patches in the ground as a pattern in the landscape
• Accentuating the 'gravellyness', the scattered pieces of the shale

Consolidating my further ideas from the observations and research.

• Mark making
• Struggle (of growth of vegetation)
• Compressions
• Glorify the berries
• Dry
• Desert
• Illumination 

These words translated into small models that were trying to communicate the basis of my concept. I began with the observation that intrigued me the most which was the hollows and patches of shale; as well as the variety of ground textures that ranged from very dry ground to quite moist mud.  

In order to kickstart my concept model, I became engrossed in the mark making aspect. I began mark making from the DNA of the site, which is coal. I began with compressing it into the foam as I felt that the spoil has literally been supressed right into the ground. Additionally, I mark maked with drawing and soaking the coal and then using it as a medium to work with. I also broke up a piece of flint because I felt that it was an alien object amongst all the spoil. The crumbliness of the coal, I believe, emulates one of the main essences of the site.

(insert drawing of coal, pressed foam)

So I then combined the flint merging away from the coal and soaked coal, showing that they don’t exactly flow harmoniously. The treatment used for the site seems alien to the colliery.

As I was in the process, I realised that the coal itself has had a greater mark and impact on the people it provided a life for.

I questioned what kind of mark (impact) the coal had on people’s lives. This led me to research that it was a very negative and permanent impact that they have not forgotten. I began to use foam to recreate these pits and I then began to pick and scratch at the foam, similar to the action of digging into the colliery. I was creating a permanent negative impact on the foam.

I was scarring the foam. Betteshanger has a huge scar in the landscape, which has also scarred the miners. It was then when I realised I should try healing the scar just as humans do in a variety of ways. Usually it is ointments and remedies that attempt to heal scars, and eventually the scars disappear or they stay. I will try healing the site with working with the topography, vegetation and ecology. Healing the site will be harmonious only when I work with understanding the impact of time.

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