My Priorities

In my design work I like to work with clean and simple designs that are interactive and playful as well. I like to use as much of natural and ecological processes as possible using a holistic approach. I realise looking back at my projects through my previous years that I also incorporate contrasting elements in most of my designs. Since my first year sustainability and ecology has had a strong presence in my work. I think the challenge can sometimes be combining these priorities with an end result that is contemporary and innovative. 

Proposal for community allotments on a back street in Waterloo.

In the last project in my second year I designed a Street scheme incorporating suds and water collecting structures and community allotments. There is a lot of talk at the moment about the housing estates and their landscapes (it was the subject of the Landscape Institute conference in November - see previous posts).  I think a good safe surrounding street will help and community allotments would transform spaces that mostly consists of short mown grass into a productive and beautiful space. 

This year when working on a canal restoration project I struggled at first to justify the restoration of something man made. After researching and looking into the subject more I realised it was a challenge to work on schemes that you might not like the look at at first. Through research I came up with the solution of growing short rotation willow coppice along the restored canal - then canal could then be utilised to transport the wood chips from the willow and machinery and staff could be shared between farmers. The willow coppice also act as a filter of the runoff from the agricultural nitrogen water and cleans it before entering the canal. 

Image showing the cycle of Short Rotation Willow Coppice.

I think this project shows that you can make a productive landscape interesting and beautiful - at the same time as being multifunctional. I like designing landscapes that use natural processes whilst responding to climate change. 

In the next project we will be given the opportunity to work with the public and other partners. This is something I am very interested in and am looking forward to. I think sometimes too many designs are thought up in the office and in the future I would like to have the opportunity to work with people and practices that work with the public and also design schemes for management of spaces and just not the space. As this is something that is very important.

I like the idea of working for a local authority or government organisation - I know that the get good and interesting projects to work on. I wrote my management report on Sutcliffe park which was designed by landscape architects working for the environment agency. 

In terms of practices I am a big fan of Latz and Partner in Germany - in the UK my favourite practice is Land Use Consultants. I would love to have the opportunity to work for a practice that has other departments as welll as landscape architects - such as ecologists. As this is something I am interested in learning more about. 

Eden Project

http://www.landuse.co.uk/portfolio/project.php?pageNum_RSpages=6&totalRows_RSpages=18&id=22

Photography

Went to a lecture held by the head of photography at Kingston, Vince Wade to inspire us to be more playful with our photography. The advice was to challenge the 'of' of a photo - to consider what you are capturing in the rectangle. To make your photos visually interesting and to represent the world in way that it really exists. To take photos in a non perspective way as well - to convey and provoke more feelings in your photos. We were introduced to some very cool photographers. My favourites were Georges Rousse and Stephen Gill.

http://www.actuphoto.com/pronews/ton_dossier/news_7308_3.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorfiot/2701695412/

Georges Rousses says that he likes the empty canvas and that it inspires him. His art is supposed to be viewed from certain viewpoints to achieve the wanted affect. He always photographs his art as well. I think his photos and art are playful, simple and great. It makes you look twice or more!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/87555150@N00/1778593498/

Stephen Gill is a photographer who has learnt to haunt the places that haunt him (quote from his website). In his collection Hackney flowers he collected flowers, berries and seeds from around hackney and then pressed and layered photos from hackney and took photographs from. The photos are beautiful and the the feeling he gets from doing his work this way is very different from what you can do in photoshop. His work is holistic and beautiful!

http://www.stephengill.co.uk/index.php?/project/portfolio/

Kew Gardens

Compost and Waste Management

I have been to Kew several times – but this time I was given the chance to see a bit of the behind the scene of the running and management. As part of our theoretical module on the course we met David Barnes, the Manager of Horticultural Support at Kew.

Kew Garden has a responsibility to protect and take care of its collections of plants and seeds. With this comes a responsibility to its surroundings and setting as well. Kew is located on flat, dry and free draining gravely and sandy soil. The soil gets very dry in the summer – with nutrients draining away. Kew is also located on the Heathrow fly path and the emissions and pollution also affects the garden and its species.

Irrigation is a must for Kew. The irrigation system has recently been updated.  The water comes from the mains and fills up a 70 000 litre storage tank – from there it leads to water ring circulating the whole site and from there feeding directly to the plants. This reduces the leaks and makes it easier to control which areas you water. 

Rainwater is collected from the main buildings and fills up tanks. The rainwater collecting system is not as developed as they would like – but is something they are looking on improving for the future.

The composting system is well developed at Kew. All the plant material from the maintenance on site is broken down to compost on site. It is all a natural and organic process with only stable manoeuvre added to the other ingredients of water and CO2.  The manoeuvre comes from the stables at St John’s Wood.

The compost yard has been there for 10 years and is built on concrete with a moat surrounding and collecting the runoff water from the compost heaps. This is to protect the Thames from runoff water which has very high levels of nutrients. The runoff water is instead collected and lead into a tank where it is filtered and then used to water the compost heaps. 

The materials are sorted on the yard by heaps of: herbaceous, manoeuvre and woody materials.  The woody materials are shredded and screened. Whilst the herbaceous materials only need shredding.  The wood chips are mixed 4:1 with the manoeuvre. Water is added and the heap is turned once to further speed up the process. It takes about 8 weeks before it is ready to go back out in the gardens to be used as surface mulch.

Close up look at the wood chips mixed with manoeuvre and to the right the wood chips are completely broken down into surface mulch.

The herbaceous materials are mixed on a 1:1 with manoeuvre. No water is added to this process as the herbaceous materials already have a high level of water.  The compost is ready after 6 weeks and is used as soil conditioner which is dug down to mix with the soil on a deeper level.

Herbaceous material starting to break down into compost.

The gardens are saving half million pounds every year by producing their own compost and it is obviously the most sustainable alternative as well.

An interesting fact about the compost heaps are the high levels of energy that they generate.  David Barnes mentioned that pipes could be lead underneath the heaps to help with possible water heating for an example. This is something I am surprised that Kew has not investigated further yet.

The talk also reached a point of discussion the waste generated by the public and if this is recycled. At the moment there is no recycling in place for this. David Barnes said that most of the waste from the public is high level of low weight plastics. Which is costly and complicated to recycle and there is issues with storing that amount of waste on site. But he said that he would like to put some systems in place.

I think the clue for this may lay in the management of the visitors. Waste is something that is hard to control – cause even if the food and products sold on site are being controlled  and more sustainable – you can’t keep people from bringing in their own food and waste to the site. 

The issue of carbon footprint was also discussed and I think that David Barnes answered the questions very well. He said how do measure the carbon footprint for a site for Kew. There is obviously the energy the site uses and the carbon that it emits. There is also certain inherited carbon in the buildings and also all the people visiting Kew.

The later can be put done to trying to manage your visitors and the way you can encourage them to think about the way the travel to the site for an example. Like the Eden Project gives discounts to everyone that arrives by cycle or foot.  This could be tried at Kew by maybe give discounts to everyone that produce a travel card or people showing that they live locally and can show that they walked to the site.

The visit was interesting and it was good to see the composting process which is surprisingly simple and organic. I think I site like Kew still has a long way to go in sustainable management processes – but by listening to David Barnes you realise that the interest is there and it comes downs to costs and procedures.

Medium

Medium is a creative design studio in Sweden. They do projects related to public space, architecture, visual art and graphic design. Their work concentrate on everyday life.

They have been trying to set up an exhibition called Bouncing Buildings - where they invite architects to design bouncy buildings. I think it is a great idea! Not sure if the exhibition ever got off the ground though...

The have also curated an exhibition creating an art museum for kids. Think the art museum for kids could have been taken a lot further. A lot of 'grown up' art I think that kids will like. Interactive art mainly.

http://www.mediumism.com/happiness.html

http://www.mediumism.com/museum.html

http://www.mediumism.com/bouncy.html

Moving media

This is the the last and third year on the BA course and I wanted to try to explore new ways of presenting my work. The project that we are currently working on is all about how the landscape changes through the cycles of growing. Based on a crop that grows on a cycle of 3 years instead of a usual agricultural circle of 1 year.

I am using the cycles of the crop to design the landscape. This is my first attempt on an animation to show this. Thought it was important to show the change in the landscape that the concept is built on and that a productive landscape can bring a an interesting and playfulness to a space.



I will now try to get it a bit interesting and show a larger part of the site and maybe try to get the leaves and the 3d dimensions of the space a bit more.

Kew Garden

Went to Kew Gardens on a great autumns day. Never been during the autumn before and it was quite different. Also the opportunity to go up the tree top walkway. It was very cool, but actually when you were there my first impression was that it was quite short. I thought that it would have been a lot longer (even though I realise that it would have been quite impractical, expensive and too disturbing for surrounding trees roots).

It is still very successful. The different feeling you get when you are up there and I like the fact that the walkway is not very wide - which makes you feel apart of the surroundings a lot more. The material use is great as well. It is very rustic and I love the soft mesh on the railings. The rusty colour compliments the autumn colours on the trees great.

Marks Barfield Architects are the architects behind it. The design is based on the Fibonacci sequence- which is simple mathematical sequence that lies at the heart of the growth of many plant structures. The ratio provides a perfectly proportioned growth pattern. This sequence is used for the spacing of the connection points for the diagonals of the walkway trusses. The legs are based on a simple historical tree. I think as a designer it is fun to read and see where other designs that you see come from. Sometimes the idea is good and it is looks good - but like in this case I think that the idea doesn't really come across in the design.

When reading on Kew Gardens website it says that the walkway: "gives visitors the opportunity to journey from the fascinating root system, learning about a tree's life underground, to the top of the tree canopy to explore biodiversity from above." I think a lot more could have been done to let us investigate the roots of the trees.

When walking round the gardens I realise the importance of trees and deciduous plants and a more naturalistic landscape. It is great to see so many different colours and bare trees as well.  A lot of urban and designed landscaped have a lot of evergreen low maintenance planting. In the introduction of the 'Dynamic Landscape' by James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett they talk about ' blocks of evergreen shrubs, mechanically cut on a regular basis to maintain an artificial geometric shape'.

I usually go for a lot of evergreen species when I incorporate planting in my designs and I think I can be a bit more brave and get more interesting and good designs. Using a more a ecological process for plants to grow together and let the site be developed by the process.

Integrated River Basin Managment

- managing land and water in integrated way

There is currently a free lecture series on at Birkbeck University hosted by the Ecology and Conservation Studies Society.

As the title of the lecture says there is a close relationship between land and water and there is a lot of pressure on both of these and their environments today.

The lecture was held by Pam Gilder from the Environment Agency. She introduced the new Water Framework Directive that has been created to held the water bodies of the UK to improve.

The lecture was quite technical but still interesting. For me as a Landscape Architecture student I am very interested in improving my knowledge about the natural environment both in rural and urban areas. This to help me to combine and introduce natural processes in design and to see people interact with them.

The main thing talked about in the lecture was the importance that land use has on the adjacent water bodies and how we can create a good relationship between landuse and water. And of course the importance that management has in this. What can be positive landuse management solutions?

20% of UK's rivers are today in good ecological status according to the new document. Some of the main issues are:

- Nutrients
- Ammonia
- Abstraction (irrigation)
- Chemicals
- Morphological change
- Alien species
- Sediments

All of these are related to landuse.

Some of the big scale solutions to these are: paid landuse change, advice, farm assurance, licenses and registrations, water protection zones, NVZ areas.

The future shortage of water was also talked about. How we are going to have periods of very heavy rainfall and then periods of very dry weather and how these will not balance. How we in the UK have a very high use / capita of water. How we have maniputaled our water bodies a lot. The problem with water resevoirs - which stops water going into the groundwater. What are the solutions to this?

The answer to that is obviously not easy and at the moment I think we need to start by just consider these facts in our everyday life as well as in our designs.

On our current project I am trying to propose something that might have a positive effect - even on just a small scale.

LI conference

The subject of the conference this year was 'housing, land use and community'. It was a lot of talk about the role of a Landscape Architect and the recognition of the role of the Landscape Architect. Or the lack of recognition of the Landscape Architect. How small amount of landscape architects are involved in housing and street design. Partly down to the developer - but also down to Landscape Architecture. Housing is not a good interesting project for a lot Landscape Architects.

For me personally I am not bothered about recognition for the Landscape Architect, as long as what we do affects people and places in a positive way. I do agree with the fact that we need new innovative landscape around housing in this country and landscape that works with housing and not against it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good housing that has been around for while - The Lane, Blackheath.

Swedish cool housing in Stockholm - Hammarby Sjostad (Go Sweden - it has been around for years!)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Below is list of challenges and questions that came up in the conference or things that I think might relate to it.)

Challenges and Questions to consider

Can good landscape help the life time costs of estates?

Promoting trees in urban landscape - see them as an asset and not a liability

Community spirit linked to good proud landscape

Density - Intensity and landscape

Space before architecture and landscape

Giving residents confidence in managing / taking charge of their space - challenges of jealousy, increase of costs?

Gated developments - good or bad?

Pushing the boundary of the estate

View onto the landscape from the buildings instead of looking in - can create a new angle of landscape

Managing a housing landscape - increase in costs, giving tenants a share - promoting a proudness in the surroundings

Food growing - allotments - keeping chickens etc.

Importance of infrastructure relating to landscape

Importance of landforms and natural environment to be considered more in landscape

The importance of playing fields for kids to play

Opportunities to promote and teach kids about local biodiversity in the landscape

The importance of bringing the natural environment back into peoples life

Housing and the natural environment

Natural estates??

Link between an increase in green space and a decrease in vandalism and violence

Active - Natural - Interacting Landscapes

What if food growing

I think a lot of people have heard of the what if - project. Where food is grown in big grow bags on a vacant lot in Shoreditch. This is new way of bringing a housing estate together and helping to bring a sense of community. It is interesting to compare to the well established allotments at the Crown estate.

A good way of temporally testing out the idea of food growing without large scale investment in allotments. It would be interesting to see if anyone dares to give hens a go as well?

Crown estate

As part of the LI conference I went on a site visit to the Crown Estate allotments by Regents Park. In terms of estates it was quite a posh one (if there are posh estates?). The allotments were sunken down in the middle of of a courtyard with apartment blocks on the sides. It was fenced off, but still looked ok on a sunny, bright autumn day. Underneath the allotments is a disused basin and it also has got an underground river running below it.

The allotments have been there since 1940's and are very well established. There are no problems with vandalism on the allotments (there are minor problems on the estate landscape).

It was interesting to hear that the allotments are managed by the RHS - the land given over by the housing association. Since management is something that I think a lot of housing associations are concerned about when starting to consider allotments and urban food growing on their estates. Basically the RHS rents out the allotments and a few RHS members with allotments on the estate manages it for free. This is an option more housing association could consider.

There is no water collecting on the site and no promotion of Eco friendly running of the allotments - this is something that should be promoted.

I thought the allotments were great - but this was on an estate that is well managed and secure. With relatively good landscaping. It is more interesting to see how allotments and good landscaping can provide a sense of community on a run down estate? Then the challenge would be on.

serpentine pavillion

The temporary pavilions in Hyde Park have been very cool the last summers and I was really looking forward to seeing the one done by Frank Gehry. I like the materials and the way timber was used in different combinations. The positioning and the angling of the materials. The pavilion works well in the sunlight casting shadows and providing shade or sun - depending on what you feel like.

It would have been interesting to see how it worked in the rain. How the rain flows on the planes on the roofs.

It was busy with people relaxing - steps and balconies done and positioned to where people feel comfortable sitting. I think the balconies were less successful - I wouldn't feel relaxed sitting there and I felt like I disturbed the girl sitting on one of them when I went to have a look at the view from one.

Overall I thought it was cool - quite natural and organic in a sharp way.

Gelitin

Link to the hamster wheel exhibition.

Looks cool. I like artists who doesn't take themselves to serious. And I like the concept of us moving at the spot a lot and not getting anywhere. Seems like the world today in some aspects.

Psycho Buildings at the Hayward Gallery

The exhibition at the Hayward gallery shows works of artists who combine habitat like structures with architecture. It is all about big installations which can you can walk in, smell, see and interact with. They are atmospehric, spatial and ulitmatley want people to experience.

My favorite is the boating lake at the top by artist group Gelitin.

The lake contrasts against the surrounding concrete building and creates a different view of the Southbank. It is meant to be fun and playful.

I am all for art to interact with.

My goal for Landscape as well. Interacting Landscape.

Manufactured Landscapes

Active granite quarry in Vermont, Canada (http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.html)

Abounded marble quarry, Vermont, Canada (http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.html)

Went to see Manufactured Landscapes at the BFI. It is the documentary about Edward Burtynsky's work from the last 10 years when he has been photographing the way industrialisation has changed the natural landscapes and the environment.

The photos above is how he started by looking at quarries in his native Canada, photographing how our life and industries are changing the landscape for good. The why he photographs it making it beautiful, until you actually start looking closer and realising what the photo is showing.

In the film he travels to China and is looking at the how industrialisation has changed the landscapes and nature in China. I like the why the documentary is made, not blaming China for the industries and the change in the landscape, but recognising our role in west as a major part in this. The industries in China are supporting our lifestyle in the west and ultimately it is our fault for the why China now are trying to cope with industries and the results and backlashes of this.

Showing an electronical factory in China. (http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.htm)

Some of the parts in the film is like another world. There are these images of what should be a green landscape and you can't see any plants or texture anywhere... It is incredible.

The Three Gorges dam (http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.htm)

The film shows the making of the Three Gorges dam along the Yangtze river. It is the largest engineering and construction site in the world, which has caused displacement of 1.2 million people and destroyed 11 cities. What is incredible is the the people in the villages are being paid to take down their own houses and the way it is done by hand is unbelievable.

(http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.htm)


(http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.htm)

But they are building the dam to cope with the huge amounts of energy that the industries take. The say that the dam will take 17 years in total to build and should be finished in 2009.

The film also shows us about recycling and ewaste. A large amount of our waste in the west end up in China where it is recycled and the process for this is mostly done by hand and especially the ewaste recycling is not good for people and it is whole images of ewaste villages and it is a terrible site of what of world might be like if we don't stop with the way we live now. It is like some kind of Scifi film! Scary stuff...

We also see photos from Shanghai and ship breaking down in Bangladesh. You come out from watching the film feeling a bit scared and ashamed of yourselves that we are the cause of those images that at first seem very beautiful - because of the why they are photographed by Edward Burtynski, then draw you in and then you are starting to see the details and start thinking and wondering. Edward Burtynski has said that he thought of making his photos political , but then thought that showing then without a messages, will cause an element of surprise and the viewer has to find out about the details in the photo himself and in the end he thought this was far more effective.

I love his photos and the message. I think it is very inspiring and also very scary. It tears you apart a bit, case we all want to keep living the way we do, but at the same time we realise that we can't.

Shipbreaking in Bangladesh (http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.htm)

Veggie patch

Thought I should update on how my veggie patch is doing. The potatoes are coming on great, can't see much of the carrots yet, which is a bit disappointing - since I love eating home grown carrots they taste much better than carrots bought in the supermarket. The peas are also coming on well and I need to put up some sticks for them to climb on. I love having a veggie patch, it makes you feel like a little kid again and there is no question that home grown vegetables taste a lot better than supermarket ones! I am gonna get some tomatoe plants during the weekend as well.

I obviously know that my veggie patch is far too small to even make a difference in the amount of vegetables that I buy at the supermarket. But it is a start. I also think that large communal allotments could be a great solution to large estates and work as a social and environmental benefits and at the same time give a forgotten neighborhood a great sense of place. This is something I am investigating and suggesting for a back street in Waterloo.

Readings

I have always been interested in sustainable design and decided to try to read up a bit more about the subject. I come across a book called 'Residential Landscape Sustainability - a checklist tool' by Carl Smith, Andy Clayden and Nigel Dunnett. As in the title it talks mainly about residential design, but the principles can be applied across different projects.

The issue with hard materials and landscape architecture is obviously a main concern when talking about sustainability. It is hard to be sustainable with hard landscaping material. Both if you combine sustainable methods with local materials this can be done. When choosing your material you should look at the embedded energy a material has, the process where it is made, the transport length and the life length and the maintenance of the material. For an example timber has low embedded energy, is a renewable material and is grown properly a very good hard material with a lot longer lifespan than clay and brick. The issue with timber is that only a small part of timber production can be described as sustainable. With a large part causing large scale clear felling, the introduction of fast-growing mono culture and removal of mixed old-growth forests.

To be sustainable timber production must consider the preservation of biological resources of the forest, conserve and manage watershed and soils, recognise people's rights and be economically viable. As designers we need to make sure that the wood we use have been produced in these processes. FSC is an international, independent, nongovernmental orrgnaistation which provides certification to forest owners who require authenticity for their timber production. This common knowledge to most people.

I also come across a few points that I hadn't considered before when I was reading the book. The book suggests using crushed waste from a site to provide hardcore for a new project. Which is reusing material already on site and reduces impacts of removing waste from site. I dound this simple and interesting. Other more obvious things are to make sure that if you use concrete, reduce the transport of the concrete and make sure that recycled aggregates are used in the process.

It also talks about simple solutions, like green roofs, brown and grey waste water collection, trees and their positioning to help energy efficiency of buildings, suds and much more. I can recommend reading the book. I will definitely get a copy to keep and use when I am thinking about materials I use in my projects.

The TCPA- the town and country planning association have a lot of interesting publications all download able on their website. The Climate change design by adaption is a good document. One of the most interesting points in there are talking about vernacular design. Which is a design that suits local climates and is a reflection of the customs and surrounding natural landscapes. Since a vernacular design has evolved to suit local conditions in place it is not entirely transferable to other places. But it provides a useful look at how other places and cultures have evolved to deal with the challenges of the current climate. And design in the UK can definitely benefit from this.

The document also talks about the adaptations that we are going to have start to design for immediately and not just in the future. It is good just to remind you what we always need to keep in the back of minds when designing and looking at new places.

Tree Lecture

We are just about to start to work on open spaces around Waterloo and I thought as a preparation for my site which is a street and will almost certainly involve trees it would be good to try to learn more about what you need to consider when designing with trees.
Trees are the new black

Went to one of the breakfast talks at the NLA. The subject was trees and held by Martin Kelly from Lovejoy and Jim Smith from the Forestry commission. Both are involved in the Trees and Design Action Group TDAG. The main points they emphasized were:

Trees need space and need to be managed right.

Right Tree Right Location - to ensure future tree planting in London is appropriate, sustainable, considered and permits the long term survival of those trees planted so that they fulfill their growth potential and make the maximum contribution possible without causing many of the problems traditionally associated with planting trees in urban areas.

The importance of putting an actual value to a tree, to make other professions understand their value

Promoting an understanding of trees

The cost of manging the tree in relation to the value of the tree. A high value tree might cost more to maintain, but there are solutions to avoid and help management issues for the future.

At the moment there are more trees being planted in London than ever before. The problem is that it is not always the right kind of trees and the way and space where they are planted are not right.

Trees are identified as playing a major part in the climate change scenario. Trees can help to decrease the Urban heat island effect. They are also important to health and wellbeing. They provide shade, but you also need to consider where trees are planted in relation to buildings, not to shade too much sun, that is valuable for the building to absorb heat from the sun to heat the buildings. But at the same time you would want the tree to provide shade in the summer to keep the building from getting too hot.

Trees also absorb CO2 from the atmosphere (but CO2 are also released during deforestation). There is also research supporting trees role in absorbing NO2 from the atmosphere to reduce pollution.

The average value of a tree in London is £8000 - £10 000. The total value of all street trees in London are £2.9 billion. And that is not including the parks. The value of a tree is done by the CAVAT system which can be read more about on the London tree officer website.

For me this has left me with a lot of reading and a better understanding of trees and some of the things that you need to consider when consider planting trees in designs especially in an urban site. I think it will be really important to provide management plans for trees in your designs, so that councils know how to look after the trees and to avoid future problems that the trees could occur. But also trying to sort out existing problems and provide solutions, for example root pruning and extension of existing tree grills. Even though you will probably work with a tree officer on your schemes in the real world I think a good understanding of the basics is very important.

Also promoting new developments to include trees in their schemes and to work with architects to change the building foundations to work with trees.

At another level there is also the opportunities of promoting fruit tree orchards to come to the UK, since a lot have disappeared over past years. I would love to have the opportunity to promote an urban orchard to highlight the issue of the future importance of local food production.

London Open City exhibition

View of the courtyard at Somerset House

Somerset House is beautiful and the courtyard is as well. I have been to a concert here during the summer and it is a great place for an outside concert. Next year I am hoping to get to the ice rink which is here during the Christmas period. Since we have been talking a lot about paving and drainage lately in University I couldn't help to look at it. The stone setts are beautiful and probably been here for a long time. I am guessing they are granite, since most of the paving in London is. The drainage is a little bit special. The high point is in the middle of the courtyard. Draining off to the sides, where there is a slot drain placed in an oval. Then there is another slot drain going in another oval between the buildings and the first slot drain. With the levels draining down to it. I think it is good solution to the drainage here. As it keeps the courtyard clean. The middle point is quite high though and possibly there might have been a better solution to the middle.

The proposed new city to sea path

The reason I went to Somerset house was to see the London Open City Exhibition. The exhibition does what the name says, it looks at London and its open spaces. Green and hard spaces. It talks about the challenges London faces as a city at the moment and in the future. The growing population of London and how do you accommodate this growth within the boundaries of London. Talking about the careful planning that this will take, to keep existing open spaces and to create new ones. One solution being higher density developments. Of course all this needs to done at the same time as tackling the issue of Climate change. Making transport efficient and public space a pleasure to use, well managed and easily accessible.

The points about making public space accessible I think is very important. Cause there a lot of areas across London which are missing an important close open space to them.

Design for London who has curated the exhibition also talks about blending new and old, respecting London's heritage and creating places for a diverse population. This is also very important since London is a very multi cultural city and spaces need to support this.

The exhibtion looks at some of the spaces that are either going through a change at the moment or have designs planned for the space. It is concentrating on 4 big ones, the Victoria Embankment - the potential of a great promenade along the waterfront, with less traffic and more pedestrian space - Bankside Urban Forest proposal - by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, the proposal aims to highlight the relationship between the less intensively developed urban interior and its active, increasingly corporate, edges - Barking and the Riverside - Potters Field Park by Gross Maxx - which has been done so you can go and check it out.

Some of the people and organisations that shape London's urban fabric.

In the three rooms of the exhibition there are tear off 1 page A3 essays by Alan Powers, Gillian Darley and Edwin Heathcote. Which is a great idea. Sometimes you like to read more around the subject of the exhibition, but no necessarily when you are there and this essays you can take away with you and read on your way home. The essays talk about how London has changed over the years, about greening the grey and a city of surprises. They are all good and worth reading. Some things you will agree with and some not.

I like the greening the grey, talking about simple little things we can do to improve ecology, habitats and local food productions. About blending private and public responsibilities in terms of these areas. Which I think is a very exciting and new possibility, that I might try to investigate in my next project.

The other thing I really take from the exhibition are a few words and sentences. Don't dictate use. Which I find interesting and definitively worth investigating in your designs. It also talks a lot about security streetscape and the need to find other ways to achieve the security that bollards, anti climb paint, skate boards stoppers on street furniture and much more.

It leaves you thinking and it is both exciting and scary to think about the challenges ahead.