We handed in on the morning of the 16th
January – a double module; Urban Landscapes Public Space and Design with
Plants. The site was Armley Mills, the area; Chimney Place and the task was to
design a low maintenance immersive landscape. The Pubic Space module focused on
hard landscaping, construction and fine detailing. The Design with Plants
module…..well, I think you can guess.
The aims for Design with Plants were,
amongst others:
- To develop a theoretical understanding
of the wide scale context of planting issues, key designers and stylistic variation.
- To investigate and develop skills and
best practice in the development of planting scheme proposals
- To review the principles and process
of planting design including management implications.
- To investigate and develop skills and
best practice in the development of planting scheme proposals at an
appropriate scale.
- To investigate the process of planting
strategies, design and planting proposals
- To develop a knowledge of key planting
styles and designers
- To develop a knowledge of management
issues
- To extend the students vocabulary of
plants.
I started off with high hopes, buzzing with
ideas but in the end I felt my design to be quite average. Not that I wasn’t
happy with the end result – in fact I was incredibly proud of what I had
achieved. But it was my first time going through the whole design process – and
there was just so much to think about, that innovative ideas, I feel, got left
by the wayside. Still it is a learning process and there’s always next time…
As you can probably guess from the time
between my last post and this one – and I feel I mentioned last time too, the
work has stepped up a notch. If you want
value for money at university – do a design degree. The lead up to hand in
was probably the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life and extremely intense- it
was also fun, and rewarding. I truly enjoyed every minute of it.
After spending a solid week or two on CAD –
I feel quite comfortable on it now. I actually began to enjoy it! My next two
goals are to spend some time on photoshop and googlesketch up.
So it all starts with a sketch design, an initial artistic concept of the design....(which I almost didn't put up, because I dislike it so much - had a bit of trouble with planting symbols - got a bit better by the time I got to the client's plan! See below...)
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| It was necessary to keep the train tracks in the site so my design worked with them. I was influenced by linearity in design such as Martha Schwartz's Power Lines and Tom Leader's Shanghai Carpet |
The two main sheets for the hard landscape module are the Layout Plan and the Construction Details
The below image show's my thought process in terms of soft landscaping...
Both my tutors, for these modules (Emma Oldroyd for the hard landscape and Steven Heywood for the soft landscape) are
two of the reasons I am extremely glad I came to Leeds Met. It is refreshing to
have tutors that are so involved and dedicated to their subject – that they
really push and challenge you in a way that can only be good for you (even when
it seems like its not!). They both demand a lot, and have very high standards,
but it’s the kind of attitude that’s “I love landscape architecture, I’m
excited by it, I give a 100% - so should you.” And I do.
