The past year has provided a couple of critical professional & personal development milestones, not least of which was exhibiting some photographic work I had taken earlier in the year at The Holy Art Gallery, near Dalston Kingsland in London. Then there is also the opportunity I have been provided by both my alma mater and my current employer, for taking up a part-time teaching position at UCA to deliver a module in parametric and generative computational skills for second year undergraduate architecture students.
Read More
Kew Gardens Visit 2/2
Kew Gardens Visit 1/2
Last week I visited Kew Gardens - mainly to see The Hive (the relocated British Pavilion from Milan Expo 2015). However, after walking through the Tropical House, the climate control systems started catching my eye. Systems in place that I could see included:
Mist dispersers
Automated windows
Temperature & humidity sensors
Air-tight doors
Water features
The Alpine House had another system in place - what I assume was a solar shade.
V&A Visit
A couple of weeks ago I went up to the V&A to see the new courtyard, as well as an exhibition of plywood (which was thoroughly interesting - they had a 1:1 mock-up of a CLT structure, cladding, insulation & all).
If you ever plan on walking through the Sackler Courtyard on even a mildly sunny day - bring sunglasses. The white porcelain tiles have a rather significant luminance - welcome, if strong. I’m not going to add much more, as I don’t want to turn this into a reporting piece.
View from the South Bank
Design Museum Visit (cont.)
Design Museum Visit
Well, yesterday I treated myself to a trip to London (birthday treat!), and visited the Design Museum at their new digs in Kensington. They are now located at what used to be The Commonwealth Institute - a place I actually visited an incredibly long time ago, as a child.
I also visited the Serpentine Sackler Gallery where there is an exhibit of Zaha Hadid’s early works. They are thoroughly fascinating. It was also very cool to see so many images of The Peak (Hong Kong) - another place I was fortunate to visit as a child, although at the time I did not (nor have any reason to) know who had designed it.
I’m trying to stitch together a night-time panorama of the north bank of the Thames from near the OXO tower, but the exposure balance was wrong on the first attempt. I’ll put it up if and when I fix it.
London Visit 2/2
I used to visit the NT *alot* as a kid. Loved going to the theatre to see all sorts of plays - a good chunk were Shakespeare - as well as ballet and dance performances. I’d like to start doing that again at some point.
Also, apparently “fuck mugs” is a thing. Time to check urban dictionary again…
London Visit 1/2
Popped up to London on Saturday to get some photography practice in. Also popped up incase I wanted to attend Pride, but I didn’t in the end as it isn’t any fun when you’re not in a big group.
I really need to get myself a smaller camera for some things. Walking around Borough Market with a gigantic (comparatively) 5D MkIII, and feeling comfortable taking photos, is well, difficult. Its like I’m jumping in front of people’s faces going “HEY DUDE! YEH DUDE! IMMA TAKE A PHOTO OF YOU NOW! HAHA!” Yeh. Cue hanging the camera around my neck taking shots at chest level. But then I feel like a creepy stalker. *sigh*
I also love passing by and just watching folks at the skate park underneath the Southbank. It is the only place along that stretch that feels human, feels alive.
V&A Visit
Popped up to London yesterday, primarily to go to the V&A. First time I’d actually been to the V&A - much preferred going to the Science & Natural History museums as a kid. Managed to get some sketching done, but most of the time was spent wondering around the place, as it is quite the maze. It is definitely the kind of place you can spend an entire day or more in, sketching. I’ll inevitably end up going back over the summer.
The other reason to pop to the V&A was the Elytra Pavillion. The modular structure is fabricated using robotic weaving techniques applied to carbon-fibre. The research and design is lead by a team at the University of Stuttgart. If you’re in London on either the 17th or 18th of June, they’re doing a live build of a module - so you can actually see the robotic fabrication method at work. There is also a Biomimicry & Design Symposium at the V&A on Friday 17th June, which is ticketed.
Also went to see the new X-Men film - was awesome. Especially the costumes at the end. That trip took me over to “The O2″ (nee, The Millennium Dome), for the first time since its construction back in 1999. I understand now why it took a while to figure out what to do with the space - you can fit 5 storey buildings in it. I feel that they missed a trick though. It would’ve been awesome if they turned it into a multi-level botanical park & public hydroponics facility.
The Shard 2/2
And some more photos from my time up The Shard. Did a lot of playing around in Lightroom & Photoshop on these. Reasonably happy with the end results.
I tried to filter out the reflection on the lower-left quadrant in the first image of London Bridge Station. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how, so I just cropped it out.
Even though I really liked the first image of the wider shot of E. London, I wanted to try and remove the reflections and other artifacts. This took the use of a gradient filter, brush filters & crop in Lightroom.