The ticket design for the up coming St Machar Academy former pupils gig.
This design is based on the same concept as the poster, representing energy emanating from the school and sustaining. The design does depart from the restrained feel of the poster and makes more of a youthful splash, hinting at the diversity to come in the performance.
The poster I’ve designed for St Machar Academy’s former pupil’s gig, this March.
The gig is a new idea from the head of music and aims to inspire and encourage pupils to create their own bands and follow their musical noses with more passion.
The poster is a reminder of the fact that school can lead to bright, vivid futures. It also subtly represents a beacon of the efforts and legacies of teachers which are so special to St Machar.
In the foreground is a representation of the school’s very distinctive facade, and in the back ground, theatrical search lights subtly form the school badge and diffuse into the glow that emanates from the building.
There is an echo of art deco in this design, which ties in with the original school building’s architecture
Having finally completed the graphic scheme for my folio, I treated myself to a couple of hours refining my Photoshop skills on something that isn’t important! This is a cover for a playlist.
This link will take you to a behaviour model. Though at first glance (and at many other points) it is shallow: it does have a deeper resonance.
While much of the population of Aberdeen argues out whether they should have retained the “historic” Union Terrace Gardens or built new raised gardens over them - or indeed whether they should find a compromise: it’s always struck me that 99% of the argument wasn’t at all concerned with digging any deeper than aesthetics.
This behaviour model approaches some of the questions we must ask when we make decisions on such a large, important scale. While it’s creator has applied the model to such shallow questions as how to get someone to give you their e-mail address, it is equally applicable and important to how one makes the decision to enter or pass by a public park.
If there is ever to be an all encompassing solution to the question of the gardens, we must break down the psychology of the place, not just how it looks. We must break down the decision process someone makes to enter or pass by, rather than just installing a lift and a ramp. If we don’t do this, we’re making too many assumptions. If we don’t do this, we risk making unsustainable changes and unwise investments.
I had another crack pot idea - and jotted it down for later!
Somewhere in my designer inner monologue I’m usually looking for ways of creating things that have soul and modernity. So often these days, one seems to come at the cost of the other.
So when I spontaneously imagined myself inside the bowl shaped room above, well, I had to sketch it down! A ring of glass around the edge of the roof allows the walls to dissolve at the top, into a ring of light which streams down and bounces of the sloped walls. The light has an amazing, etherial feel to it. An aperture in the centre of the roof makes a dramatic, uplifting feature of the view to the sky. I can imagine lying on the floor of this room at dusk - looking up at the stars. I can imagine it with a light aircraft hanging just beneath the skylight … or a softly lit restaurant at sunset …
In the process of mocking up furniture to figure out sizing and space planning for Akira house. Its a lot of fun!
I love it when tiny little things come out beautiful!
This is the first model of Akira House.
At this point it was thought that the construction would be poured concrete, which would act as a great thermal mass and could be left fair faced on the ceilings to save budget. It won’t be concrete any more.
What you can hopefully see in the model is how light permeates the house, even when photographed inside a room with natural light from only one side!
It also gives a sense of scale, size, shape and feel. It’s exciting to see how even this early model, without any room divisions, has a personality and a sort of serenity that you don’t get in most “affordable” homes.
I was imagining how my Akira affordable housing concept would fit in a new development, how they’d be arranged and what facilities might be available to a community of Akira owners.
I ended up imagining this little shopping centre. I’d like to call it something else really. I hate most shopping centres. They’re generally soulless, placeless, insensitive monoliths. Anyway, I started building this scheme in my head - to be sensitive, “placeful” and permeable. So the scheme below shows two wings of units, separated by an atrium. At either end of the atrium, it opens out to big glass boxes that provide views into surrounding trees.
Those surrounding trees are a crescent placed there to shield the centre from it’s loading and access road and vica versa.
Loading bays and disabled parking would be in a subterranean level, beneath the centre. This way, loading bays aren’t visible to users of the centre and with service routes and mall separated completely, neither interferes with the other.
With British cities reaching crunch point when it comes to car traffic - and emissions causing concern, government is changing legislation and taxes on cars and parking. Across the country, transport infrastructure is also being reconsidered. With this in mind, it’s part of the wider scope of this concept to separate “buildings” and parking. As such, most parking is to be centralised in one low cost, simple building a short walk from the centre. This separation means that buildings aren’t dated by transport infrastructure, nor is transport restrained by being integrated with buildings for other purposes. As demand for parking changes, this space can be reclaimed without disturbing other facilities.
Also shown above is an early sketch exploring how the facade of a centre might help “dissolve” the building into its surroundings. The facade shown is envisioned just as a “jacket” to envelope the centre - so it has angled glass panels, which both reflect the sky on the sides of the building and allow cooling air to flow through the jacket at all times. The effect of this cooling could be moderated by opening and closing sections of the roof. Between the glass panels are brushed aluminium panels, to provide softer reflections and reduce solar gain.
