Kent Show 2011

Hadlow Show Garden


I went along to see the Show Garden that my good friend Whitney designed for Hadlow College.


Outstanding design and followed the brief to perfection. A 'Top Gold' (read best in show) was awarded, and rightly so....


So why was it so good? 


Well these are just my humble observations


1) Balance, the ratio between soft/hard/water and the building was perfect


2) No Full stops, meaning that the viewer tended to look at the whole picture rather than just hot spots of design. Thus leading them in to explore further and notice the detail.


3) Journeys, plenty of them each leading to a destination, very hard to do in a small space.


4) Space, or the use of in the sense that the seating tended to be in the furthest corner thus back to the wall and more impression of space.


5) Tones, of the planting flowed interspersed with neutral whites to lift the strong orange/burnt yellows out.


6) Humour and idea's, well we are British and we love a quirky idea.

Design and Whits blog

http://reinventrecreaterenew.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html

A few photo's


As usual got a bit involved trying to do the art picture and forgot to take any overall pictures, hopefully Whit will put some up on her blog about the process of the site

Well done Whitney!

Done, Dusted and back to reality....Bump

Time......

Been a while due to doing stupid hours to get it all done, got to the point were sleeping seemed like a guilty pleasure!

Everyone really pulled something special out of the bag in the last two weeks well done to all my class mates.

As usual looking around at everybody else's work see big gaps in mine, but came to the conclusion that we will always be better off following our own cue. 

Regrets, still think my sequential's are a bit heavy, whereas my 1;50 seemed to hit the spot, with movement and a light touch.

Would've liked to have done a seasonal page as i played around with colours earlier on, no time. Would've liked the model to be better, seeing the rest of the class picked up some good idea's, and well done some really nice models.

I think i managed to get the point across with this one, room for improvement on the trees though.

Obama visits Park life for inspiration and too meet an old Mexican friend

Distance and our friendly monks take a stroll.

A particular fave, really thought about the issues as i designed this in particular hidden fixings, but with accessibility for maintenance.

This one seemed popular in the sense 'ooh i would like to go there' so managed to sell the festival idea with the ravine.

Just need £20million to build it..... offers welcome

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz

Home Straight of the Marathon.....

But who put all those Hurdles in the way?


Well thats how it feels, but we all occupy the same boat, though Adele seems to be swimming at the mo.


Well working like the proverbial on the planting scheme lost count how may days, keep changing my mind, then visualise and think....... too many ,too few, too busy not exciting enough..then i run out of steam and have to go to bed, only to wake up stupid early and start working and go through the same thing again. So put it to one side for a mo and finished a couple.


Levels and Spot Heights

Had to do spot heights and levels on their own sheet as they are important and if they can't be read combined then there is no point. So many redraws, did the steps three times kept forgetting something. eventually worked out with 400mm treads (jamie will be pleased) and a decent mid point landing. Spent a while making sure gradients worked with 1;200, and they do with some juggling (thus the step drama's).Spent some time on the seating area's thinking about the interaction of people within the spaces.Changed my retaining walls along with stair details.

Also spent some time looking successful parks and the atmosphere that one is left with and whether the design is successful or not. Top of the list is the High Line in New York, ticks all the community boxes, visitor, seating, planting, people watching all within an atmosphere of relative serenity (well as much as one can expect in the middle of a busy city). A must visit next time.

Hard works Key plan

Made sure the rendering stands out and is clear in black and white. So many construction drawings off the back of this. Went into too much detail on the key i think, plenty of time for that on the details. Thanks Sue for the Gradient calculator, saved so much time and grief, got the decimal place in the wrong place a few times was that 30mm or 30m?

Silly stuff

Found this while reading a report on the high Line. let it read your blog and it picks out the most used words in size, surprised to see the word shit and bollocks missing, i am obviously losing my site manners with all this white collar education stuff or that could be a load bollocks!

                            

Or 10 words.

Bed ZZZZzzzzzz

Distance is a bricklayers best friend

But not trees


Struggling to get a technique to do distant trees quickly, hey ho.


Annotation for A-A and B-B cross section, 
tried to work my planting choices in to justify them.

Annotated referring to the planting and material plans. And Oh the Sun is shining outside.

Trees improving by copying the tree off a photograph, all good practice. Distance a bit naff.

This one i am the least pleased with need to work on the planting area's,but time and all that. Still took ages on the distant trees grrrr.

Annotate these two tomorrow and then Sequential s

Now a long hot bath and some food other than toast.

Light Fantastic (ish)

Re-visit


Like many in the group i have been revisiting my 1;200 stuff and working my way through,


so far materials, tree planting, shrub and climber planting, lighting, festival lighting (had to do it, very kitsch,but when you are a kid and its Christmas being high brow is not as important a visual overload for a memory, that includes 47 year old children).


Planting trees

Well worked hard on this, the trees are large on purchase to get an effect while everything else is taking hold, a risk, but it also shows the intention of getting an effect to get the park up and running quickly.

Shrubs and Climbers

Felt like this took forever (about a week). Trying to get reasonable flowering through the year with out to many holes. It may be better to go for a spectacular short flowering season or not (ie Augusta Masters Golf, hate the game but love the tournament, and the blowsy Rhododendrons remind me of Mrs Bucket for some reason)?

Lighting

  Enjoyed playing with PS trying to get the lighting in the dark effect, as usual stumbled on a couple of things.

1) In the layers pallet click on the drop down and use luminosity once your blue fill layer has been placed over the colour image. It will turn the blue black ,don't worry, just mask the main picture and create another colour fill when you have finished. It seems to lift out of the screen a bit more.

2)Brush and brush presets are were its at, once you have mastered layers and masks this is the next most important (in my humble opinion), brushes effect erasers, so the brush pre sets can act as a eraser brush. Worth playing with.

Lighting Festival

The chance of using extra lights for festivals with the ravine seemed a no brainer. The effect is a bit chinsey with these colours but everyone has a bit of chinse hidden away in the back of their head. After all this is a park for everyone not just your average judgmental 'Garden Designer' No Baa humbug here!

Drainage

Hopefully finish this one tomorrow and update the 1;200 MP. Thought a lot about catchment and water harvesting, so i will be putting in tanks and irrigation ect. Along with sediment tanks for the collection of silt. Used different arrows to show the speed of water, ie slower on soil that rock/hardstanding along with gradient.

One all the drawings then cross section update, sequential's, precedents and finally model pics.

Then 1;50. Hopefully have a few drawings for the 4th May.

And Oh, my achilles has gone again, fan bloody tastic.

Can't see the wood for the Tree's

Focussed on the point.


A bizarre saying, never really understood it for years, but at the moment its crystal clear and i am sure for most of us it has a chime of truth. 
Looking at your own work for hours/days/months, doubt creeps in until you have no idea whether its good, inspirational and ground breaking or tired, predictable and safe.
Then the trap of adding more 'stuff' and losing the less is more simplicity ,which we all know is so hard to achieve. It comes back to the would i like to spend a day in the Park? As an 8 year old or 70?


This so has to become a 'place' again. It must become a point of reference to what a park could and should be the local and wider community. Otherwise leave it as it is and spend the money else were, were it would be beneficial.


Enough rambling,


Drawings 


Sunday Morning, this is were i am at

1:200 plan. Updated and tightened the annotation. Added trees to correspond to planting plan. Lightened the South bank. Cross section markers. Reduced the size of the scale bar. I am sure i have missed stuff

Boy, did i spend some time on this little puppy. There can never be enough information for a contractor. So site visits would still have to happen though the idea of leaving a drawing that the informed contractor could refer to and not be phoning up every five minutes is the challenge.

Flattened the textures for the different materials to reduce any confusion. Though i am sure a specification book could go with each drawing, as i seem to have a lot of questions for the designer, oh shit thats me!

I can easily see how a year of designing as a team with hundreds of drawings and specification documents could easily happen , and then have a major F/Up

because somebody has missed the 'bleedin obvious'!

Sunday have loads to still do, given up on getting the model done, but you never know!!!