Tuesday 5 November 2013

Sketchup Model for Metis to work out the placement of the parterre pieces. I wanted them to start off overhead, like a straightforward iconic parterre pattern turned on its head. The dimensions of the pieces shrink further down the garden, adding to the illusion of receding space. Then the traditional forms begin to shift, twist and fall down, just as the culture, traditions and even language brought to the New World from the Old World are sometimes kept whole and frozen, immune from the natural development they might experience ‘At Home’ and others broken up and reused in new and different ways, their original meaning or purpose left behind or changed. This mixture of old and new is a reflection of the word Metis for me and tension between old and new. The pieces are intended at the back of the garden to almost filter away into the forest, their positions could be changed to allow trees to come forward into the design.






Metis model to explore how I wanted a somewhat monolithic front wall to control the view of the garden until entry though the doorway so as not to dilute the effect of the perspective trickery. I wanted this to recall the way these gardens were originally intended to be viewed from above, from a building. It also helped me to work out the exagerated foreshortening. First I distorted the broken up parterre pattern, narrowing it at one end, creating an optical illusion to make the garden stretch further away from the entrance than it actually does, then I placed in on an angle, higher towards the entrance, to add to this effect.I wanted the viewer to almost picture the vanishing point, and I think the last photo illustrates this. The model also helped to visualise the effects of the shadows on the ground, which were an important addition to this illusion. It did NOT help me at all with the placment of the broken parterre pieces. Trying to cut out the foamboard for this was a total waste of time, so I moved onto a sketchup model to sort this out.




Quick 2 minute sequential sketching following Jamie round the School of Architecture last week in a mob. I had to darken these up quite a lot so they were even visible whcih made me realise my linework is a bit vague and spiderey. I need to spend more time looking and then draw lines that people can actually see with a fatter pen.


Tuesday 15 October 2013

Concepts for the Metis Garden Festival entry design

The first image is an initial concept sketch in class done while I was thinking about French Canada and how the traditions taken the from the old transfer to the new. Some traditions are proudly retained. Some disintegrate and fall away. I began with this D'argenville's parterre broderie design from which I took a few iconic shapes, creating a simplified parterre design, which I then started to break apart.





Tuesday 1 October 2013

Favourite Plants - Agastache 'Black Adder'

Agastache 'Black Adder' in the foreground. What's not to love? Self supporting, drought tolerant, flowers June to October solidly, then looks good over winter, two tone blue, strong form, always covered in butterflies and bees, easy to increase by cuttings. Too evangelical?

Client & Process Eye Level Persepective Views

These are some of the mostly sketchup created perspective views I did for my school assigned client last year. I was quite pleased with the fact that I was able to whip them up in an evening. Not so thrilled that my PC decided that the application of shadows was a step too far. 20/20 hindsight: They are all a bit busy. I needed to spend more time in photoshop and give them more life. Hopefully my new rocketship PC will help.





Client & Process A1 Plan & Aerial Views

I felt pretty happy with these two A1's in January, but I can see the annotation is overdone on the plan view and although I wanted to convey the essential woodland clearing feel that is the sites dominant characteristic on the aerial view, I don't think the sketchup trees are quite right, and they certainly use too much memory.