Breaking the Rules at the British Library

Breaking the Rules at the British Library was a great exhibition. It certainly tested my knowledge of history! There were a lot of interesting articles and text about specific items and dates between 1900 and 1937.

The parts i enjoyed the most were the Visual Poetry...



...The Total Work of Art (Gesarvthunstwerk), New Vision...



...and the Photography and Film, 'Film und Foto'


These are short quotes from some of the exhibits to see more go to the British Library before the 30th March 2008!

Out of the Ordinary- Naomi Filmer

This video shows a set of images created by Naomi Filmer titled 'Lenticulars'. Towards the end of the video you can see the effect of the images and how they change.

Out of the Ordinary, Spectacular Craft

Out of the Ordinary at the V and A click here for the home page. This is a great exhibition to see how some artists take on the theme of 'Everyday' and each using their own materials and style to show the theme.

Below show some images from the exhibtion.

The image above is 'The Book of Humanity: The Empty Book'. The Book of Humanity is supposed to red but somehow uploaded blue! So this is what it would look like if it was blue! The image below shows the whole of Lu Shengzhong's exhibit. On the right is the 'Human Walls and Bricks' and on the left is the 'The Book of Humanity' in its true colour, both are made up of frog shaped cut outs. Both the templates and the cut out shapes.

This is Annie Cattrell's exhibit made from glass. The image below is a series of clouds that have caught in the moment, titled 'Conditions'.
The image below here shows a set of human lungs (roughly at a 2:1 scale) titled 'Capacity'. Made from glass. It would interesting to know how this was done because they appear to be hollow, but do give off some nice shadows.
This is part of Naomi Filmer's exhibit, this is titled 'Ball Lenses'.

Practice Research Part II

As a follow up to the research of practices in my last focus week I am planning to send some emails to the following practices;

Jerde
Belt Collins
Hassell
Urbis

All of the companies have offices located around the world, I'm focusing on the Hong-Kong office for each company. If you wish to visit any of the practices click the names above and it should take you to their respective home pages.

A Market in Bangkok

I didn't make this video, but I wish I had!!

Photographers Gallery, Ramillies Street, London

This is a short video of how the site looks currently.

Photographers Gallery, Ramillies Street, London

Near to Ramillies Street is Oxford Street one of the busiest shopping streets in London. This photo shows the view from Ramillies street onto Oxford Street

This photo was taken from Great Titchfield Street, if you image the scaffolding isn't there you would be able to see the building thats due for demolishion. Even without the scaffolding the access to Ramillies Street to bearly noticable.

And Carnaby Street a thriving pedestrainised area in Soho seen here with Christmas decorations.

Photographers Gallery, Ramillies Street, London

The second project for my third year. The Photographers Gallery in London is moving.
The new site is in Ramillies Street near Oxford Street and Great Marlborough Street.
Below shows the building that is being demolished to make way for the new gallery.

The new gallery has been designed by O'Donnell and Tuomey. Below shows an image taken from the final document O'Donnell and Tuomey produced for the gallery.

Shrubs Wood

This image is to show the layout to Shrubs Wood, and shows where the owners to the woodland live around the wood. The dashed line is the start of a short walk that my colleagues and I took part in.

Kent AONB

Below are some images from the surrounding area near to Shrubs Wood.

Kent AONB

As well as visiting the site, its important to see the surrounding area. To experience the area as well as thoughts and feelings for the site.

This picture shows the boundary that the barrow is very close to, and a meadow in the woodland very close to the barrow.

Below is some of my colleagues and I having a picnic in Shrubs Wood.


Tom and James re-living their child-hood by building a shelter and looking proudly at their handy work.

Kent AONB

As part of my final year project I went to Kent. Most of Kent is classed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The AONB in Kent has been named High Weald, for more information about AONB's and the High Weald click here.
The site for the porject is in a small privately owned woodland, called Shrubs Wood. The main focal point of the site is a Barrow located in the woods. The Barrow is neolithic, which means it dates back to the 1600BC.
These photos show the barrow, but as you can see its not very visible. The proposal for the site is to be cleared and the barrow restored to its basic oval shape. The barrow is roughly 38m long, 20 wide and at its highest point up to 2m. The photo below shows the barrow at its highest point.

From these photos the white line marks the boundary of the trees which are to be cleared from the site. They used to be coppice trees but have been left for too long.


Below shows one of the main routes through the woodland. This path has been classed as a public bridleway. This bridleway runs right next to the barrow, and is the only path that does run near the barrow.

Tate Britain

The Turner Prize A Retrospective 1984-2006.

This is a good way to look at the winners of the turner prize through the years. Its a good way to see how art has changed and developed through over the 22 years.
The use of technology plays a part in some of the more modern art but yet there is still a retro look to some of the art.

No pictures were allowed to be taken around this gallery so it has to be seen to be appreciated.

One of the wierdest pieces was by Damien Hirst, called Mother and Child Divided originally done in 1993.
Its a very odd piece but I wouldn't expect anything else from Damien Hirst.
I won't say anything about it, I would encourage you to see it or at the very least click the link (here) to see some images.

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is the home to the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the year gallery.

This gallery is definately worth looking at! The images that the photographers have on show were amazing. Some of the images just seem impossible to be able to capture on camera.

No photographs were allowed to be taken in the gallery and to be honest they wouldn't have done justice to the images on show. They are being shown as prints with a lit background so that every colour shows up as crisp as possible.

To view the winners and runners up for 2007 click here.

This is one my favourite pictures from the gallery. It was taken by Andrew Walmsley and is titled the Amber Thrush.
The image is from National History Museum and can be seen if you click here.

Out the front of the Natural History Museum is the Wildlife Garden.

The Natural History Museum call the Wildlife Garden an urban oasis, i'm not sure about this. This could be partly my fault for visiting it in autumn, but the garden seemed very manufactured, and it was hard to get away from the noisey road and building repairs that were happening nearby.

The garden does seem to doing well for something so small, with more then 300 native species, over 50 bird species have been seen, numerous amounts of moths and butterflies and regular visits from foxes, bats and squirrels.

This all seems ncie and looks good in the brochure but the experience of the garden is very dissapointing.

The Serpentine

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen.
This was a nice piece of architecture, the space was attractive and the lighting is hard to describe.

There's a lot of natural light but the lighting that is set up is very bright as well. The lighting has its own design as well, its almost like a big disco ball (but without the rotating cheesyness of a disco ball).


It was also home to wildlife as well as all the people that were there to visit it!

The Future Laboratories

This lecture was given by Future Laboratories.

Future Laboratories is a trend forecasting company. They try and predict new trends in society by using three factors;
1. Interrogation
2. Observation
3. Intuition
A combination of three help to give an insight as to how the trends are likely to change.

One of the main themes in the lecture is that design is changing to focus more on the experience of an event, rather then a physical object. Looking at the life/work balance, and thinking do we live to work or work to live?
The lecture was very interesting lecture and it will be interesting to see how these predictions evolve over the next couple of years.

Practice Research Part I

One of my focus week activities is researching practises in asia, that I plan to apply to for a year out job after my BA (hons) degree.

The website above is IFLA, they are the International Federation of Landscape Architects. This is a good starting point as they list all the landscape bodies for each country around the world.

The web page above is the Hong Kong Institution of Landscape Architects. After looking through their members list I short-listed some practices that I plan to make contact with about job opportunities next year. Some of the websites can be seen below.



The companies that I have chosen are;
Jerde
Belt Collins
Hassell
Urbis
These are just focusing on Hong Kong, I plan to find some more in Malaysia and possible China.

...Nature in Yakushima

Monkeys and deers. Deers on the island of Yakushima are quite rare but when i was there, there seemed to be loads and they were quite happy with the tourists taking photos of them and getting quite close. The monkeys cause a lot of problems on the island with eating vegetation and breaking fences. They are trying to be controlled with the use of electric fences in certain areas, but the fences aren't very high so it looks like the monkeys can just jump from tree to tree and easily clear the fences. The deers and monkeys seem to co-exist happily with each other.

...Diving in Yakushima

Diving anywhere in the world is great (so i'm told!) but having only dived in England and now Japan, abroad seems to win by a long way! The visibility is amzaing and the colours of the fish and the coral are unbelievable, you see them in photos but to see them up close is a completely different experience. I even saw Nemo and lots of baby Nemo's (Clown Anemonefish).
The dive school was http://www.hailan-diving.jp/