My final Masterplan A1 Sheets. Really happy with my design as a a masterplan. A point along a process towards a final detailed design. I now know I should have done the all the all night work sessions before the final crit. So I could get them all printed and see them on the wall, then you can see all the layout problems. I knew my masterplan was not shadowed enough and too busy, but ran out of time. Very dissappointed with the actual detail of my sections. Got completely stuck trying to do sections in autocad and all the detailed linework I had done was wasted. Had do do the linework in a panic by hand and it shows. The specified trees are carefully places to acurately reflect the parks, but the hand drawn design isn't really coming through. Could have been so easily a lot better. Annoation was all on one sheet, the plan and ended up more of an essay. Whoops. Agan not really that thrilled with my perspectives. Most of my energy went into working through the design itself and I just didn't leave myself enough time to represent it. Jamie always tells us we need to know how long things take. Well now I do.

Thematic Title thoughts......Snakes and ladders is A) Rubbish B) Foucssing on a visual device and C) Really rubbish. The scheme is based around transformation, and the planting river and the pergolas were my starting point and the river has now been made into a paddling and damming stream to replace the paddling pool in Dickens Square . Hmmm.....eddy, fluidity, fluid dynamics, downstream, current, flow, fluid,stream? Needs some thought and I want it to be echoed in some sort of graphic device.

These are the very rough perspectives I took to the final crit. Some of them look terrible because some of the shrub and plant groupings are still just lines on the ground, so the intended landscape character isn't shown. The planting rivers winding back and forth across the views in Newington Gardens for instance. The geometrical hedges are easier to just pull up, and where they are present, like in the first two views, I am fairly happy. They need a lot of fancy pantsing to finish. In some places the background of housing blocks needs more screening to avoice a visual 'jar' in the views and I think the entrances need more emphasis.

I took this version of the masterplan 1:500 of my Transformative scheme to the final crit on Monday. Have completely redesigned Dickens Square as at the interim crit I was told it didn't have enough landscape character. All those big scale crossing lines left me cold in the end and in the end I decided a strong axial design (thank you Le Notre) focusing on a cafe fronting plaza was would serve the area best. A community hub.Ran out of time for annotation, so had to hand write it in a flap in the morning, and with that little sleep, the spelling was pretty special! Only the base colours are applied at this stage, and with only the briefest of annotation I need to explain things like the river better. Also face the audience. I can never seem to manage that!

Design Resolution. Blurgh. It's murder. I spend all my time inhabiting my own visualisations. Drifting off to my parks when people are talking to me.......Deary me. This week I seem to be thinking in terms of Baroque axis, Modernist structures and as pretty much always everything Japanese, old and new. Design Freeze? Not yet!