La Plage du Havre

I've been trying to find some information and images on La Plage du Havre. Maybe because it dates from the early '90's there's not much on the web but I'd be interested if anyone's had any better luck. I found the image below on a French website. 

Recovering my mojo

Of course, my plan was to continue working seamlessly as we transitioned into holiday but organising a family Christmas got me in its maw and then I hit a wall of fatigue. Going down to Worthing on my birthday was a good trip though.

The shingle and boardwalk garden is on the western end of the seafront. It integrates well with the beach but the lack of boundaries also means it sort of tails off into beach debris. The planting is drought-tolerant. I prefer the low growing springy mounds to the ubiquitous Phormium.

 There's an imaginative broadly nautically-themed play area with a white sand safety surface. I would have liked to have taken a much closer look if only I'd brought a suitably aged child with me.

The Splash Point area is at the eastern end of the sea front. It's a smaller, more contained area than I appreciated from photos, with a substantial sea wall curving around the seaward side. It's also a bit of a thoroughfare for cyclists. I thought the scale and detail complemented the setting well.

Other interesting stuff to help me get back on track:

• Tracey Emin on R4 'Today' talking about the regeneration of Dreamland in Margate and the need for more neon
• TED talks - Paula Scher talking about serious vs. solemn design
• 99% invisible weekly design podcast - a little 5 minute idea fest.

exploring playful

I went down to Bexhill to compare the east and west parades again and look at the potential for enlarging my site. It was informative to go with people fully prepared to give uncensored feedback (it's cold/horrible/I want to go home/sit in the car). How could a playful space entice people to linger and explore?
I looked again at some models I made that could be described as playful to see what qualities they have that I can use.

After looking at Joh Bates's masterplan document. I'm going to work through my ideas by sketching them.

Old travel posters

Only connect

Of course we are all roped together in one way or another.
Serendipitously, I came across this on tschumi.com 'There is no way to perform architecture in a book. Words and drawings can only produce paper space, not the experience of real space. By definition, paper space is imaginary: it is an image'. Tschumi was interested in approaching spaces cinematographically.

Humour will be satisfying way to explore the idea of  playfulness for our site. What about design as therapeutic process (for the designer)?

Things to make you go 'phew'

Not yet clear whether we traversed the group report high-wire ledge expedition. It's odd to be roped to a lot of people you don't know very well (but have thoroughly enjoyed finding out about). In need of mental relief? Try 'The Third Man' for total diversion and immersion in post-war Vienna. I almost feel as though I could navigate my way through those streets and ruined palaces as well as Bexhill seafront.

In need of a belly laugh? I bet. Well try Maria Bamford. I heard her podcast before I saw her and think she's even better with your eyes closed as her voice creations are amazing (and her prettiness is distracting).

Took a trip to Bexhill but 'forgot' the tripod

After some evening atmospherics, a shot of the light vessel and some good ole genius loci but too lazy, truth be told, to dig out the tripod. The iron railings stabilised the camera a bit and if you squint your eyes you can almost see Eastbourne....

Creative river

Went back to Year 1 work with David Smith to generate some ideas for a final image on my Wood Wharf sheet. It was good to re-visit. Planning to go to Grant's photoshop class and hope to return persuaded that it is possible to get excited about creating via the intermediary of a keyboard.

I read this about creativity being like a river. 'Be wild, that is how to clear the river. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life.'(Clarissa Pinkola Estes 'Women Who Run with the Wolves').

Wood Wharf at night

Easy to set this up but portraying light realistically requires more experimentation than I have time for just now. On screen the night-time doesn't seem too dark but it prints out a shade or two darker.

Wondering whether I could have focused more on the ground plane at Wood Wharf. Burle Marx's designs were meant to be able to be viewed by people in tower blocks and passing traffic which would apply here, albeit water traffic.

                                            Lago di Carioca 1985

Bucket-filling bubbles

It's playtime. I could have spent a lot more time exploring the possibilities for my bubbles.

I created these bubbles in an idea for Wood Wharf but I'm having to step backwards a bit and consciously go through the design process. I think the research on temporary solutions distracted me and the site was ending up with a lot of 'features' that don't really hang together.
Went back to '101 Things I Learned in Architecture School'. Today's lesson is: 'Being process-oriented, not-product-driven , is the most important and difficult skill for a designer to develop.' Oh boy ...

Did a swatch with Staedtler ergosoft pencils - nice bright hues and the colours overlay each other really well. They look better on cartridge paper than on white bond.

Letraset Promarker swatch. The colours are much stronger when scanned as a colour photo rather than a colour document.

Here's my dynamic composite entitled 'Wondering'. As you can see, I enjoyed playing about with warp, rotate and opacity. I need to find out how to save things in different, more compressed formats. I tried to upload the PSD onto the blog, without success. Would it have worked as a JPG? In the end I have scanned it in. We'll see tomorrow if it prints at A1.

Townscape Paris, 1968. Gerhard Richter. Saw retrospective at Tate Modern. Thinking about damaged landscapes, untruthfulness of landscapes, nature is 'always against us, knows no meaning, no pity, no sympathy' (watched 'Grizzly Man' last night). Abstractions help us think about 'inexplicable reality'.

Sketch design 1, axonometric. Not sure why the A4 won't scan in its entirety and the edges are lost. I can see that the couple of lines I did with the 'Rotring' are clearer than the ones I did after I read the brief and saw we were to use felt pen.

You spend all summer looking for an inventor and then a great one goes and dies. Wilson Greatbatch (1919-2011, inventor of the pacemaker and lithium batteries amongst other things) said something like 'do not fear failure or crave success, your work should be an act of love.' I find that strangely helpful when confronting those 'can't do' moments

Sequential sketches - 2 minutes per view

It would help if I found a standard style of human figure for indicating scale.

Okay, I did spend more than 2 minutes per thumbnail but, as in yesterday's class, I discovered that the more I engage my head, and the less spontaneous the effort, the more unsuccessful is my 'product'. Interesting how the different media have come out. The gouache looks far too heavy on paper but has luminous qualities on screen.

Final sketch, 3 others

Next time I'll post my sketches as a group rather than in separate posts as it's hard to convey what I was trying to achieve. I responded to the concept of refuge with slideable climber-covered bamboo screens arranged in an X diagonally across the space to sub-divide it into areas for contemplation.

Edited via Windows Photo Gallery. Still need to find out the dpi resolution.

Experimenting with best ways to post sketches.


Met an interesting guy in the Grand Canyon (no, really) who makes a living from blogging. He doesn't have a fixed abode but travels about blogging about his discoveries (can't remember his name just now)and generates an income from advertising. He recommended purchasing my domain name. This is the advice in the Saturday 'Guardian' column 'How to build a profitable blog' too. He recommended some agencies through which to purchase your domain name .. but I can't remember them either. Will post his name and the sites as soon as.