A Love Affair With Cities

I can’t help but think of cities in terms of lovers. Or past relationships.

Edinburgh, where I attended university for four years, was my first true relationship. My first true love. We knew each other intimately. Gave ourselves to each other completely with a trust and naivety that only the young and that first true passion can offer. Through four year we nurtured each other and watched each other change until, we grew apart. And I left.

I visit from time to time. We stayed friends. The last time I was there, I looked up at St Giles Cathedral and thought – I still love you, but not in that way. I’m happy you’re happy. I’m glad I can still be here. No, it was not with real true love that I looked upon the Auld Reekie but a fondness that develops between two people who have shared things and known each other a long time.

At the moment I currently live in Malmö, Sweden. It was tentative at first but then it swept me off my feet. A total breath of fresh air. So different, so refreshing, so calm and cleansing. It was really what I needed just when I needed it. I felt like it gave me time to be myself, to really be me. It calmed me, it truly did. And yet, yet…I’m not sure we are right for each other in the long term. It doesn’t make me laugh the way other cities do. It seems, very mature and stable. Never wants to go out on a Saturday night. I am not ready for that.

What of Leeds? I was in Leeds for year before coming to Sweden and I have to return there in January to finish my MA. Well, to be quite frank, I feel like Leeds is a drunken one night stand that keeps happening. Brash and loud, it’s a bit immature (as Malmö is mature). Whilst it’s fun, it is also exhausting in that, I don’t think life should be quite like this either.

And other cities? Copenhagen – a flirtation that someday may have the capacity to become real. Berlin, the most interesting person I’ve ever met but who always asks my name every time we meet?  Paris and I, quite controversially, cannot even stand to be in the same room as one another. I snogged Perth once. New York, a great friend but nothing more. In fact, plenty of cities are just good friends. Some only acquaintances. And then, a whole heap that I have not yet had the pleasure to meet.

The Line Up

St Giles, Edinburgh

Malmö

Hyde Park Corner, Leeds

Lake District Photos

These are some photos from a trip to the lake district a few months back that was in aid of our Rural Landscape Planning module.

Coniston Water

Torver Common

Coniston Water from Brantwood

Forestry in action

Admin Post

Hi all, 

As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to be working on a more professional website alongside this blog. As I result I have changed the website address from soniajackett.blogspot.com to peripateticisland.blogspot.com - so please take note! More information and links to be provided soon regarding the website.

Meanwhile....have you checked out my other new features and side projects? 

Currently working on Counterfeit Food - still a tumblr site but hoping to get a more official look soon!

And if you're into visuals (or a curious set of friends and family), I've added a photoblogroll of My Peripatetic Life.

All the best,

Sonia

Venice

35mm Pentax Super ME

Gloss finish (don't know why I did that, will definitely be going back to matt)

If you have had a gander through my previous photos you will have notice that I am intrigued by vanishing points; down streets and alley ways, enfilades, below two trains in a railway station frame a vanishing point as it disappears into the countryside. Why so? I honestly am still trying to pick it apart, I think somewhere it is along the lines of a mobius strip - that there is always more to see, to experience and it could be right...down.....there....and it comes back to me as the starting point. I have the power to walk down towards that "point." At the same time I think I see that vanishing point as something running away from me, something I am trying to chase - that insatiable hunger to always want to do/see/feel/live more. 

When I took these pictures however, I was in Venice. And if you read my last blog post you would see how it is the people who swarm to venice - the locals, the countrymen, the tourists, who you rub intrinsic shoulders with, and share La Serenissima with - then you would know it was also this that makes the experience of Venice. Venice is beautiful but the smells, noise, chatter, and character of Venice is either now made by people, or has been made people - lest we forget that. So in these photos, I have tried to incorporate these thoughts - the layers of Venice, physical and material but also ... the human dimension.

Venetian Character

Campo S.Giacomo Da L'Orio

Four Venetians

Venice Santa Lucia 

Vicenza

Villa Rotunda, Vicenza

Vicenza

Venice

Mass in Salute

Maurizio Nannuci at the Guggenheim

From the Belfry of San Giorgio Maggiore

Campinale

Da mangiare, Da Damminare, Da Vivere

La Serenissima

Earlier this month I returned to one of my favourite cities - Venice. A few photos of the trip can be found on MyPeripateticLife  photoblogroll.  

We stayed on the top floor of an apartment building, just east of St Mark's Square. The terracotta roofs filled with make-shift balcony gardens spanned as far as the my eye could see, only intercepted by the occasional bird and worn bell tower. 

Terracotta Rooftops from the apartment window 

Smells; cooking oils, herbs, noises, calls, church bells and sunlight created an aroma of serenity. I was in La Serenissima - the most serene state of Italy, otherwise known as Venice. 

Venice is the ultimate city to walk in. I walked down the Fondamenta Minotto, sketched a boat. I went to the Giardani Pappadoroli, visited San Giacomo dell' Ora, Frari, San Rocco, bartered in the Rialto market. 

Campo Santi Giovanni E Paolo 

The Campo S.Giacomo Da L'Orio was a delight to stumble up - a pocket park in the middle of Venice whilst the Campo S.Giovanni E Paolo was the perfect location to people watch, framed by a bridge and the basilica, its namesake. 

On Wednesday we went to Vicenza. Every time I cross a bridge in Venice, the sun beating down, the canals a murky aquamarine with texture like a Canelleto painting - I think; "to live somewhere that gives you so much please...." I though that about the place. In Vicenza, or just outside, we visited La Rotunda, and I thought it there too, but actually about the villa itself. Palladio's masterpiece was recently bought and restored by a wealthy American. I am not envious though, I am just glad someone appreciates it every single day. 

Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza 

They say Venice is two maps layered upon one another. That is what it is like - history saturated in twists and turns. When I walk around Venice, I always appreciate it for its present. But. I never think of it without, in the back of my mind, in some small way, it's history. 

The streets are always full of myself, the walker, the dreamer and the Venetian in Prada or Gucci, the Venetian in full swing with their shopping back from the Rialto and the teams of souls from every corner of the globe. Those that have had the pure pleasure to immerse themselves in La Serenissima since its foundation. 

Couples in St Mark's Square

End of Year One

Completion...for the moment anyway.

Once again it's been a few months since my last real post. The amount that goes on leaves me with little time to blog about my experiences and as a result this becomes a kind of blog where I just upload my work. Hence, over the summer I will be working on a website which I can use as an online portfolio and keep this separate, a blog of musing and whimsical online notes (when/if I find the time!). 

The conversion year is finished - and I passed, hurrah! It's been pretty intense but I've enjoyed every second of it. Landscape Architecture is definitely the right choice for me. I'm not there yet, and I know what I need to work on (I find it hard jumping from the large scale urban design stage to the detail design stage. A way to overcome this is perhaps to start using more scale models, even if they are just rough working models). 

I've never worked so hard. 8am till 9pm days in the studio as a standard, especially leading up to deadlines. It's great. I love the studio-culture; people eat there, shower there, nap there. It's somewhere you live and breathe design.

View of Leeds from the studio at Broadcasting Place

I couldn't have achieved half of what I have done without the help of friends and all of them came from immersing myself in the course and the studio. 

Watch this space….

Urban Green Submission

These four sheets comprise my submission for Urban Green

I have spoken about the masterplan and research in more detail elsewhere on the blog... I don't want to spend too long talking about these as I am planning on redoing certain aspects of it over the summer.

I am not totally happy with the over all package. I believe the content is there - I definitely did my research in terms of construction and the food growing! (the most reinforced concrete planters EVER). The overall aesthetics, layout etc, however, need some work. There is no overall cohesive feel to the four sheets.

Better get on pintrest....

1. MASTERPLAN

Food Boulevards

Food Boulevards are listed as an urban food growing typology in Jason Grimm's 'Food Urbanism' (2009). Effectively these are excessively wide streets that are utilised for food growing and managed by local producers or co-operatives. 

The Brewery Park vision sees Leeds's new park as a food hub - not just in terms of aeroponics units and the conversion of the old Tetley Brewery warehouse into an indoor market, education centre and restaurant area - but in terms of becoming a truly productive landscape.

The food boulevards are the critical element in this vision. Brewery Park and The Tetley Food Hub will serve to not only enrich people's lives but it will change attitudes towards food - the way it is; produces, consumed and often wasted - for the better. 

Food is the common denominator in society.

Brewery Park will be a celebration of food. 

2. DETAIL DESIGN (1:500)

1 metre high 'Thieves Gardens' feature an array of treats for people to pick - deterring them from picking in the productive areas.

The visuals showcase the view North-east of of the focus area shown, down a food boulevard with the thieves gardens on either side. The top visual is winter: Cabbages, Onions and Perpetual Spinach protected by Polypropylene netting. Sumer: Strawberries, Onions, Basil on the left. Purple Broccoli and Fennel on the right. 

3. SOFTSCAPE

4. CONSTRUCTION DETAILS

Pavement and hard materials layout plan with construction sections and indicative layout.

Cut away axonometric showing concrete formwork using timber shuttering and plywood.

Rural Landscape Project

Before the project began we undertook a visit to the Lake District, staying on Torver Common near Coniston. The trip enabled us to conduct a two day site survey focusing on ecological and cultural factors as well as undertaking a Landscape Character Assessment and thinking about visual impacts that could effect the site. The later in particular as the rural landscape project challenged us to site a visitors centre within Torver Common. 

MASTERPLAN AND VISION

This part of the project was done in a group with; Anna Bluke,  Yanna Georgie, Ryan Kearney and James Wilstshire. I myself rendered the master plan. The feedback for our group was extremely positive but the master plan was said to be still too diagrammatic. 

The group hit on the idea of the Poetic Landscape as a driver for design. John Ruskin's house is across Coniston water and visible from Torver Common. William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter are other notable figures associated with the Lake District and the area surrounding the site.  As a result we came up with two trails - the Ruskin Trail and the Wordsworth trail that corresponded to the landform, contours and immersion into trees, or glimpses of open grass land. 

We decided to site the building where it is shown on the master plan after finding the spot during the site visit. The landform is fairly flat, it could be made fairly accessible by providing roads and paths to the centre and it isn't far from Coniston Water. 

SCALE MODEL (individual) 

In order to understand the site better, especially the contours, I decided to build a model….

I experimented with black foam board, silver pins and white cotton. 

Scale Model of detail site at 1:500

DETAIL 1:500 (individual work)

Overall Detail Design Sheet

For the site design I used the idea of "way finding" and really pursued the concept of a poetic landscape. 

I used the following poem as inspiration for my design:

Lines Written in Early Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:-
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

                                                     - William Wordsworth

Visual showing Periwinkle covered glade/bower

Primrose alongside the cafe area at the Visitors Centre

MASTERPLAN

In the master plan I experimented with using words as texture. The above poem forms the contours and the background. Words describing the woods are used as the woods. Although I'm extremely happy with the outcome (especially when printed large and professionally - very clear) it is slightly illegible in some places and as a result needs some fine tuning. 

The immediate area outside of the visitor centre also needs further work, the idea was to use it as a mini-sculpture park (like that at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen) and there would be timber pressed concrete walkways honouring the woodland setting. 

There would be a written bench alongside a rill over looking the landscape.

I enjoyed this module probably the most out of everything we've done. The sensitivity to the landscape and especially with regard to trees and establishing a woodland was far more interesting than I would have thought! The trip was an excellent introduction to my love affair with trees….especially now its summer. Everywhere I go at the moment I look at how beautiful and green the trees are, or white and fully of boyancy and blossom. On that note I'd like to leave you with my favourite poem from the commanding Felix Dennis…. (or if you'd like to hear it in his raspy tones click here)

Whosoever Plants A Tree

Whosoever plants a tree
Winks at immortality.

Woodland cherries, flowers ablaze,
Hold no hint of human praise;

Hazels in a hidden glade
Give no thought to stake or spade;

London planes in Georgian squares
Count no patrons in their prayers;

Seed and sapling seek no cause,
Bark and beetle shun applause;

Leaf and shoot know nought of debt,
Twig and root are dumb— and yet

Choirs of songbirds greet each day
With eulogies, as if to say:

‘Whosoever plants a tree
Winks at immortality!’

Photos of the trip can be found here