PRINCESS DIANA MEMORIAL

Last sunday I visited Diana's memorial in Hyde Park with Marie: I found it a good example of how many different textures and effects you can get with water by altering the texture of the gravel base and the angle at which the water is flowing.
I found also that the design was based on a strong concept and that the shape of the necklace together with the wide range of water effects were an effective metaphor of everybordy's life.

SWISS COTTAGE OPEN SPACE

Last week I visited Swiss Cottage Open Space by Kathryn Gustafson with Ana.
The park is organised around a main open plaza with a pool and undulating slopes and with little enclosed sitting areas on its boundaries.
I was more attracted to the small enclosed spaces I liked the patches of turf and mixed borders around the benches rather than the central space itself partly because the pool had no water at all.
Another interesting intervention was the position of the football pitch below ground level in front of the leisure centre: it did not obstruct the view of the water feature from the leisure centre and did not spoill the rest of the scheme with its fences.

SKETCH DESIGN NOV 2006

This is the third sketch design of the semester: we were asked to pick up 4 words from a list and to present a design proposal based on those words. My words were volatile, deceptive, abstract and pop art.



The garden is surrounded by a wall and is divided in two sections: the woodland garden made of 4 existing hornbeams and many poles of corteen steel which look like tree trunks. The ground is covered in moss and underground pipes pump fog into the garden to give a misty atmosphere. The second section of the garden is made of red painted iron fragments mounted on poles, the fragments form the shape of a tree which can only be seen from the main entrance of the garden.



The garden is therefore volatile because it changes suddenly atmosphere from one section to the other, it is abstract because the corteen poles and the iron fragments form abstract patterns, it is deceptive because the foggy woodland garden gives the impression to be much bigger than it really is and it is inspired to pop art because the fragmented tree is based on Lichtenstein's dotted figures.

BLENHEIM PALACE- WOODSTOCK

Last Thursday I went to Woodstock with Ana, Jose' and Patricia. The village was glowing in autunm colours and the park of Blenheim Palace next to it was stunning.





Capability Brown's design of the park is very intriguing: once you pass the main gate of the park you get a first glorious view of the bridge over the artificial lake and of the palace. Then as you walk along the route which brings you all around the lake, both disappear behind groups of beeches and slopes. The palace reappears all of a sudden as a surprise at the top of a slope near the bridge and is aligned on the same axis as the column in the middle of a long avenue planted with oaktrees.

BATTERSEA POWER STATION

Last Friday I visited the Battersea Power Station with Marie: it was the last chance to see it inside before the construction site will be opened and the building won't be accessible to the public until 2011.



The size of the building is really impressive especially from the outside.
Only certain parts of the station were accessible to the public: the main hall which will be occupied in the future by a huge red spiral and which will have a roof of glass and the upper floors of the right wing of the station.




The Station has been acquired by a society from Hong Kong called Parkview International and what they are planning to create is a multifunctional centre with offices, an auditorium, a hotel, a ballroom, a riverside ballroom and some blocks of flats.
I personally think that it is a brilliant idea to convert the power station into a space with a differnt function but I think it is a shame that it will be enclosed by other modern buildings because you loose its massive scale without the empty spae around it.

PLANTING DESIGN- HADLOW COLLEGE

These are images of a project I had one year ago at Hadlow college: we were asked to redesign an area of the department with a succession of gardens and each of them had to explore different planting types.
The solution I came up with was a series of terraced gardens with enclosed outdoor rooms along a route which led from the canteen to the design studios.

This is the overall plan of the site with five different gardens: the orchard garden, the vegetable garden, a meadow, a spiral of grasses and the woodland garden.




This is a plan of a detailed area with three different planting types: the garden of grasses, the orchard garden and the vegetable garden



This is a section of the entrance to the site and of the vegetable garden: