Lots of School....

The last few weeks have been spent in the studio working on mapping exercises.  The studio works as a shared space between the Architecture and Urban design group (AUD) and the City group (my group).  We have a lot of shared group exercises as well as a semester long individual portfolio exercise.  This semester is based around different research methods related to the city with a particular focus on looking at marginality in the city through the lenses of shopping, dwelling and worship. 

The last couple of exercises have been about map creation (what is chosen as important information for a map, by whom and why) and map deconstruction.  Usually, as a landscape architect I am involved in the map and plan creation.  We make maps and plans to depict analysis and appraisals, explain a new design for a site.  Its usually accompanied with sections, elevations, photos and aspirational perspectives.  We do this to sell the idea to a client and to illustrate the benefits of the design.  We may choose to focus on one aspect of reasoning that drives the design - a particular bias. We also present these plans in quite a standardised way, a common plan language understood within the development disciplines.

It has been quite an interesting process pulling apart plans rather than putting them together.  We broke the class up into four teams and each team took a plan of Edinburgh from the last 250 years.  The plans were the New Town, a civic survey and plan for Edinburgh (the Abercrombie Plan), the Airport Master plan and the Leith Waterfront Master plan.  My group worked with the Abercrombie plan which was commissioned in the years after WW2.  We had a few quite surprising discoveries - 1) the plan  was based on large scale data gathering and analysis (with the prevailing theme that it is evidence based so must be right) 2) the survey plans and proposed plans are depicted in different formats, making comparison challenging 3) it advocates for quite dramatic alterations to the urban form to provide better heath for citizens, better working environments, traffic systems etc. 
After much research and staring at the plans for a few days, we began to think that representing our findings of the plan in the format of a plan wasn't going to show the differences between the existing and proposed as clearly as we would like.  So we made a film instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNaMpN9IhqU
Its a bit rough, but its also our first foray into film making.........

Other things going on have been a lot of reading, flat decoration and an afternoon in Crammond. 
Random photos:

Sheep in a field near Crammond

Pedestrian bridge over Leith St from St James Shopping Centre.  This is quite an amazing bridge - it was the the thing that I noticed and went wow over on the taxi ride after just arriving in Edinburgh after 36 hours of travel.

The astronomer's/caretaker's house at Carlton Hill  - Edinburgh is built on granite.  The castle sits on the plug of an extinct volcano and the royal mile is along the route of a lava flow.  One of the reasons why Edinburgh has such amazing architecture from the middle ages (12 story buildings!!!!!) is because the foundation rock is very, very solid.

Chimney Pots

Piers out to Crammond Island

The 'pointy' skyline of central Edinburgh

The studio at Forest Hill.  It used to be an old army barracks complete with shooting range in the basement.

Scotland 2010-2011

The purpose of this blog is to record my year in Scotland.  This blog will be a challenge for me as I’ve never been much of a journal keeper.  However, there’s always time for firsts of everything, and this year has been a good one so far for those.  I’ve moved countries, eaten haggis (not entirely convinced by it yet), danced a ceilidh (learned how to spell ceilidh) and, thanks to the Scots Australian Council and the Royal Bank of Scotland began a Masters degree.     

So, I should have started this blog at least a month ago.  Instead I enjoyed the Edinburgh Festival, having our first house guests Dave and Jude, and Kim and John, did a lot of reading (mostly fiction based in Scotland) and started to become familiar with the city I now call home.

For a quick recap of the last couple of months:

The festival was amazing.  It was quite impossible for me to comprehend the scale of the festival prior to landing in the middle of it.  Its not just one festival - there’s the Festival of Spirituality and Peace, the Jazz Festival, the Book Festival, the Mela Festival, the Tattoo, the Interactive Games Festival, the International Film Festival, the Art Festival as well as the Fringe Festival and the International Festival – this city really does have a festival for every occasion and that’s just August!!!

The scope of performances was incredible; as was the ability to use every available room and space not occupied in Edinburgh as a performance venue or art space – there were even markets held in a cemetery!  We soon discovered that finding the street address was challenging with streets at different levels, and then finding the right room in what was usually an old, rambling building was more challenge again.  Good for getting the street layout in my head though.

We ended up seeing many, many comedians, and felt a bit guilty that many of them were Australians who we probably could have seen on the other side of the world but never did…. 

Pick of the festival was not a comedian but a shadow puppet show called ‘Sticks and Stones and Broken Bones’ by a Canadian artist Mr Bunk.  It was one of the most beautiful theatre experiences of my life watching shadow puppets be created and then worked into stories live on stage.  The imagery was quirky, cosy and about taking pleasure in the little things, in daily life - a reminder that there is always time for play, to experiment and to pause and notice beautiful things.  

I also attended some sessions of the Festival of Politics at the Parliament.  Good on three points: 1) It was a crash course in the Scottish planning system which I definitely don’t understand yet, 2) an opportunity to look around the parliament building which I quite like (that will probably be another blog when its time for a design rant at some stage…) and 3) an excellent international press photographic exhibition in the foyer.  

I will be including lots of pictures in this blog too.  First ones are of my favorite Edinburgh views.

Arthur's Seat - this ones taken from Carlton Hill

Mushroom Trust garden off the Royal Mile - its a reference to the old roomed gardens of Cannongate residents when each house had a back garden.  Old maps show the gardens quite well.  Visit http://maps.nls.uk/joins/gord1647.html

View to the Firth from York St, this view was one of my forst gasp moments when wondering around the city.  There aren't many trees on the streets, so when a street opens up with a beautful stretch of green, framed with regular Georgian frontages and, on a clear day when the Firth is visable its quite beautiful.  The day I took this picture was a bit grey.