I'm back! Did you miss me? Oh.

After a prolonged absence from blogging, the time mainly spent working, working and working, I'm finally posting my 1:200 plans sans rendered offerings - that's not even on the agenda until May ... which is a mere three days away ... aagghh!!

Anyway, although I've also been working on my 1:50s, sequential sketches, sections, etc, they are all currently "in progress" - i.e. a mixture of odd line drawings in AutoCAD and hand squiggled stuff on the drawing board ... fingers crossed that I can post some more drawings up during the next week.

Just need to stop choosing the hard (or occasionally unworkable) option for everything and remain focussed on the bigger picture and hopefully this week I won't be left unofficially running the company I work for again ...

1:200 Sketchplan

1:200 Hardworks Layout

1:200 Drainage Layout

1:200 Lighting Layout

1:200 Softworks Structure Layout

Despite initial impressions, the above plans are all different!

Exciting calcs

Just had a quick look at the blogstream (is that a real word?) and been impressed / depressed (by comparison with my own works) by the quality of the sketches and rendering that's appearing, so I thought I'd show what I've been up to over the past couple of days (in between staring out of the window at my neighbours' cats, drinking coffee, drinking tea and, oh, going to work) ... 

ta-dah!  Full marks to me for fun

Admittedly, distinctly unthrilling to anyone else but I think I've managed to work out some acceptable (please, please God let these be ok) gradients for the humungous terrace I foolishly drew for Calverley Grounds.  It just goes to show that panicking and ploncking features in 'cos you're running out of time really isn't good design practice (and it builds extra work in).  Not much of a revelation but very important to remember.

It's like chocolate

You can't just blog once ... go on, have another.

Despite arranging to take another day off work during the week to cope with the courseworkload, I'm still working on tomorrow's submission.  Had another mad moment on Tuesday (freedom day!!!) when I tried to check / regrade my paths for Calverley Grounds.  Despite trying all the usual tactics of doing something else or actually rereading my notes(!), for some reason I just couldn't work out how to begin.

Foolishly, failed to contact anyone until the evening (thanks again Grant - such a simple, straightforward ... yes, logical approach) and wasted a lot of the day.  Seem to have spent an awful lot of the week twiddling about with the circulation and having messed up with Sketchup (how is that possible?) am now struggling with the sequence sketches.  I'm also having incredible difficulty getting my plan past a very diagrammatic / conceptual look.  I know, roughly, what it is that I want to achieve but am finding it hard to put it down on paper / Photoshop / whatever.  Consequently, I'm just going to go with what I've done, just for the sake of having something to pin up on the wall.  Hopefully.  Still need to print and as last time I tried to print at uni it failed - presumably 'cos the file size was too big - I'm trekking into work tomorrow and plotting out there.  Unfortunately it's not the most convenient location but fingers crossed for the traffic.  On a Monday morning after half term.  Hmm ... optimistic.

Things weren't helped yesterday by the discovery that my highest-capacity memory stick (the one with the important files on) is infected with a trojan.  One that attacked my PC at work on Thursday/Friday and then spread to the network.  Oops.  Apparently that's now fixed (cheers Sanjay) but unfortunately, despite two hours of chat with Symantec and much downloading/updating of antivirus, etc software the memory stick still appears to be infected ... or at least suffering from post-traumatic stress.  Out of sheer desperation, copied two files over onto my PC last night (too much work to redo) and now it's definitely a case of 'fingers crossed'.  Oh well, back to it ...

Before anything else ...

It's been ages since I last posted, mainly due to time and falling behind.

So I'd like to issue belated thanks to all those who attended the Lille trip and helped me get through it, with especial thanks to Sue, Adele and Susan and their now soggy shoulders.  Apologies to Mark and the rest of the final group for being so rubbish toward the end and zero thanks to my sister who laughed very loudly and squeakily when I told her about 'treegate' and being a miserable moo; some people are simply born unsympathetic.

Oh, and nearly forgot, thanks to Jamie for both the words of encouragement in Lille and back at Avery Hill.

Anyway, not sure what happened in Lille, or indeed quite how I've managed to fall behind this year but I'm determined to try ... even if I don't succeed (heaven forbid!).  Having said that, having serious doubts about being able to hang any sequential sketches tomorrow ... was aiming to use Sketchup as a starting point but I've even managed to muck that up!

Precedent?

Does this count as precedent or simply inspiration for my 'connective' design?

Alethiometer (from Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy)