Inspiration

This week has been a week off Uni, dedicated to go out an learn and look at things. Wasn't quite sure at the beginning of the week what I wanted to do. I wanted to some inspiration for my project at the moment, which I had come to a bit of a stand still on, but I also wanted to take the time to go out and do something more practical.

In the end I am pretty happy with what I have done this week. The climate change lecture on Monday was interesting, even though it left me feel a bit like the small sustainable things I do in my projects are small and insignificant.

I found the geometry and playfulness of the Serpentine Pavilion interesting and inspirational.

The vertical elements and the playing with views that the birch trees do outside the Tate Modern made me feel more confident about my proposal for Paddington Basin. Where I use vertical elements and views. I never noticed that the birch trees outside the Tate do that in a way before.

It felt good to go out and do something practical with the BTCV and I look forward to doing some more.

The Matthew Barney exhibition was good for me to see, since I am not that great at drawing. It was inspirational to see good simple drawings and looked really good. It made me want to practice my drawing a lot more.

It has been nice to have a week without lectures and studio to give you time to go out and do and learn things that it sometimes is hard to have time for otherwise. I think during the focus weeks this semester I kind just want to see different things to help me realise what I think are important things to me in my design. Hopefully next semester I can then concentrate on a few things and learn them properly.

BTCV Lewisham

Went out for the day today to do some volunteer conservation work with BTCV in Lewisham. We met up in Hilly fields in Ladywell in south London. The task for the day was clearing out bramble in the entrance bit to the park and the wildlife area of the park. It was great to be doing some practical work and get some fresh air. I really enjoyed getting stung by the needles of the brambles. It was the first time I have done any work with the BTCV and it was a good experience. I was the only one under 50 I think, but everyone were really nice and very enthusiastic.

My intention is to do some more days before Christmas and try to get involved. They work across a lot of different parks in south London and it will be a good chance to see the difference in landscape and parks and space. In terms of maintenance, bad and good examples and what kind of values BTCV have. Hopefully I will learn some about trees and planting as I do along. I think it will benefit my aim in becoming a landscape architect.

Tate Modern

Outside Tate Modern at the moment stands Louise Bourgeois's monumental spider sculpture Maman from 1999. It is quite a scary sculpture when you get closer and think of what it really is and it gives you a very different feeling standing underneath the spider's legs. A different feeling of space and nature.


Inside in the Turbine Hall you can see Doris Salcedo's work Shibboleth. It is a huge crack in the floor reaching the length of the hall. It is the first installation in the turbine hall to intervene directly with the floor in the space.


When I was looking around in the hall, I didn't know what Doris Salcedo's aim and thought with the installation was. I was thinking it had to do with fragility of society, space and built world. Maybe to make people experience the space differently. When I got home I decided to find out what her intentions with the work was. The crack according to her asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and its values ans symbolises the ideological foundations on which western modernity are built. It draws our eye to the floor and shifting our perception of the turbine hall. For me the crack made the hall feel bigger and was fun to see everyone looking and interacting with it in the hall. It was a bit weird to see the amount of people trying to get their feet and hands in the crack!

What I didn't know is that Doris Salcedo also is trying to address the issue of racism and colonism with the crack. Which I have a harder time to see and maybe not connecting so much to that idea. But in general it is an alright installation, it takes great photos, but maybe not so much more.

Matthew Barney

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/MB283_L3_small%20NO%20CAPTION.jpg

At the serpentine gallery there is a exhibition on at the moment of Matthew Barney. I didn't quite know what to expect when I walked in. The exhibition has films, drawings and sculptures. I didn't really like the films (but I have to admit I didn't really give them a chance) . I did like some of the drawings, they reminded me of landforms and some were really simple. The sculptures were made from industrial materials such as petroleum jelly, expanded polystyrene and poly - carproactone thermoplastic. The 'Holographic Entry Point' (the photo above) reminded me of oil covered beach and the forms and shape made it interesting. I guess everyone experiences the exhibition differently and I went away feeling inspired in terms of drawing and landforms.

Climate change lecture - The Royal Society

Went to the Royal Society on Monday evening to listen to a public lecture. The title was Climate Change on Living Earth by Professor James Lovelock. I remember hearing about James Lovelock in the Sustainability lectures and about he created the Gaia concept. He also created the theory of thinking about Earth as living system and how this should be the way you see earth to research and respond to climate change.

He started the lecture about talking about he has an apocalyptic view of the future and how we are already running out of time to respond to the increasing problem of climate change. We are not acting fast enough at the moment. He also said that implementing the Kyoto protocol is not going to be enough. I guess these are things we might have already known or started to realise. He went on to say that the most important thing at the moment is to find ways to extend the time we have to act to climate change. This could be by finding technological solutions to help slowing up climate change.

He spoke of the division in the scientific field and how this has a negative effect on research. He discussed the IPPC report which has just come out and called it conservative. He doesn't think it has a realistic view on climate change and that the targets are not enough.

The next thing which can up was the concept of global dimming and how this actually cools the earth and the fact that if reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere goes too fast this might raise the temperature of the earth instead. If this is done to quickly the temperature might increase by that crucial 2 - 3 degrees which would wipe out big parts of wildlife and ecosystems. James Lovelock said: 'We are damned if we keep burning fossil fuels and damned if we stop too fast'.

Other things mentioned were the fact that most climate change models only account for atmospheric changes and not on the living earth system and the fact that even if the level of CO2 goes down, it might already be too late.

So, what is James Lovelock's solution to this? He talked about what has already been mentioned the importance of thinking of earth as a living system. About stimulating the earth to cure itself and restoring the balance in nature. About reducing emissions and protecting natural forest (instead of planting new).

But the real thing that he said was the world needs a climate catastrophe to wake up. (I thought that there already have been a lot of them over the past years.) He mentioned climate refugees and mass migration and that the northern countries need to start to prepare for this and said that a similar response as in wartime is needed. Human rights require human obligations.

I learned a few new things in the lecture, but what mostly surprised me was how kind of negative James Lovelock's view of the future and the climate change is. It was good to hear in a way, cause it does seem realistic at this point, changes are not coming fast enough, even though climate change will affect all of us in our daily lives. You need to be prepared for big changes and be prepared to commit to them . Starting with increasing with what you might already be doing. And it is a fact that no one really knows what the effects of climate change will have on our lives, but I think everyone will admit that it is happening and you can't ignore research, even though it might be a lot more negative and scary even than you would like. So, I agree we need to wake up. Not just Europe but the whole world. Climate changes is a global issue.

Serpentine Pavilion

Took a last chance to see the Serpentine Pavilion in Hyde Park - designed by Olafur Eliasson (the guy who did the weather project at Tate Modern in 2003) and architect Kjetil Thorsen. The two has collaborated on a few projects in the past few years - the National Opera House in Oslo and they have recently submitted a competition proposal for the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw.

Olafur Eliasson has a laboratory for spatial research in Berlin, his work deals with the relationship between people and their surroundings. Kjetil Thorsen is co funder of architectural practice Snohetta.



At first I didn't think it looked that great seeing from a distance, but as I got closer I started to really like it. It was just before 5 o'clock and it was starting to get dark, it was a beautiful light to see the pavilion in between daylight and nighttime. The yellowness of the leaves contrasted the bronzy colour of the pavilion.

The pavilion is a timberclad structure with levels in contrast traditional single level pavilions. You can walk up and around the building and then view the surrounding park and into the dome. When I was there there were some kids running up and down the pavilion and it was interesting to see how they responded to the building, bouncing off the walls and loving to run up to the top and down again. Also fascinated by the lights and the views, which are slightly interrupted by the vertical elements. On the way up they are the shape as in the photos below and on the way down they look like on the last photo below. It was interesting to see and I didn't realise it until I was walking back down again.

The Serpentine Pavilion is a beautiful building and it is a bit if shame it is going to be taken down. It plays with views, geometry and shapes. I really liked how it appealed to both adults and kids and I liked the fact that they let the kids run around it. It makes you realise things about the building that you might not have otherwise. If you got a chance to go and see it before the it is taken down on the 5th, I can highly recommend it.

Rolling Bridge

ROLLING BRIDGE by Thomas Heatherwick

At the moment we are working on a site in Paddington Basin in front of the Marks and Spencer building. It is a challenging and interesting site. The landscape and the rolling bridge design was carried out in 2005.

The Bridge is very cool. It is a beautiful, steel and timber structure, who in its normal conventional condition still is just a bridge, but a very nice one. When you see it being rolled up it becomes more. It is a kind of organic structure and the finished oxtagon fits perfectecly on site. As it curls up the hydraulics rams makes the process very quite and smooth and actually very fast.

If anyone wants to go see it curl up, this happens every Friday at noon (unless it is too windy). I can recommend it! If not just to get some cool photos and I think it helps you take your design concept a bit further.