day one - brief one

the first brief was to come up with the big idea, we have to do a presentation at 2:30pm today including 4 powerpoint slides only and talking for 5 minutes. There were various criteria to meet including things like a slogan, conceptual diagram, visuals and sketches, sections etc.
In our group we have Russell garden designer 3rd year, me landscape arch 3 year, Simon MA landscape arch and Elisa and Vero who are both landscape arch students from Lille. Elise could speak quite good english, but overall the language barrier made things more interesting! Drawing was a good way of explaining things. They did say they struggled to understand anything our lecturers were saying though!
Simon took charge and we got down quickly to coming up with a concept. I had suggested we related the textile history to the layers we would use on site, however, concept meant different things to the french who seem to think more literally, so they could not understand why we would relate to something that was no longer there, but we eventually seemed to understand each other! I then feel we spent too long on this part and possibly should have moved onto ideas at this stage. Jamie came round and suggested we now come up with our vision in the next couple of hours.
Aside from one disagreement by Elisa (who thought it was insane to either remove a road or to put it in a tunnel as she saw it as part of the landscape we should incorporate as people need roads), we got on fine - our only issue seemed to be that we were not really moving forward. I often find in these situations that designers struggle to do things quickly! By the time 9pm came round we had only just begun to come up with ideas and it was suggested we all go home and do some drawing. Not much sleep again...people in the room were looking exhausted by then.
and so I had better get on with day 3! With our group meeting at 8:30 and I am hoping today we will be more decisive - from my background of finance, where I am used to having to set strict schedules for clients, I am not used to just doing lots of thinking but not getting stuff down, so am hoping we do that quickly this morning so we have something for 230pm...wish us luck...

day two in Lille

I am staying with fellow landscape architecure students Nick and Kenji in the Hotel Stars, basic but comfortable and meeting our main aim of being a few minutes walk from uni as we knew we would be spending a lot of time there...we werent wrong - day one involved a 13 hour day...
We arrived to coffee and croissant and a very good lecture from he Director of urbanisation of Lille. As Nick said, it was a good example of how to present and everyone was impressed: clear slides, very good overview of their strategy and what they want for the future, what has come before and overall context.
We then headed onto site in different groups and Nick found some of the french students who got us onto site quickly (after much debate about which bus though) and Will then suggested we each have a task. I did a photographic survey and between us we got hard and soft materials, views and viewpoints, sketches and level changes. On the way out we met another group who had walked for almost an hour to get there and looked suitable fed up, so we were pretty relieved to be heading to the warm having done an hour and a half on site....and hopefully getting what we needed.
We got back to Uni for 3:30pm and were then put into the first small groups and given the first brief.

Lille charette - day one

as promised to those left in London, here is a bit of blogging about what we are doing here in Lille. 25 students from the 3rd year landscape architecture BA and Masters programmes have come to Lille to work with 18 students from their university.
We have been given a canalside site to create a scheme for and so far...
we arrive on Sunday at 3pm (well, not everyone, someone got on the train to Paris...) and went straight to the site. This involved a rather long walk (an hour?) in the snow, in -10 degrees. We walked round for around an hour or so to get a feel of it, see the level changes (important on this site) and the overall context. We then spent another hour trying to find a cafe open on a Sunday to warm up!
Very good hot chocolate brought a smile back.
The city was more likeable than I expected - with a lovely mixture of materials and architecture, lots of brickwork and coloured tiles and an interesting history. We also walked through an interesting Giles Clement park near to the station, which had held its structure through the winter months well and gave some inspiration for planting schemes.
After a couple of people walking off with the wrong suitcases and some concerns with there being too many students compared with Lille student's sofas available, most got to bed by midnight....some drinking was had..

today's class

was a helpful one. Good to be sat down with a close up of our masterplan at 1:200 and do some quick focused overlays. I find this really effective - limit the time you spend thinking about it and you have to make quick decisions.
I always find that you should trust your instinct (yet still make the mistake of not always doing so).
So, you quickly come up with an idea or a solution, then you spend a day thinking more about it and changing your mind several times, before...coming back to the same thing you thought of to start with!
Sometimes it really is worth just setting the stopwatch and getting things done fast. Surely, the more I do this, the more time I will be spending drawing and working through things on the page and therefore improving those skills anyway.
So the usual "its not rocket science" but part of the necessary thought process nevertheless...
Keep noticing the thin drainage lines through paving recently, must find out what they are, I quite like them.

fontsinuse.com very useful site