Lille day three I think...

We then merged groups and we were with a group whose main theme was ecology and a wider strategy  in terms of infrastructure. Perfect match for our scheme. After several discussions going in different directions all day (another 13 hours) and I felt we were drifting, my patience ran out so I spoke to a few of the other team about how I saw the fabric concept being taken further and they were on board. It worked well with their ideas  and then we all went home. The next day I didn’t go in (health stuff) and the funny thing was, by not being there it felt like my idea was considered more than if I had been there shouting the toss. So it was developed further (and well I should add) in my absence.

The team got on with allocating tasks etc, when I came in the next day Julia and I had been given the A3 book and precedents, (probably we felt as we had been awol the day before - Julia only for some of the time though) however, we just got on with it - no time to argue now. Julia can now do an A3 book in record time! It made me wish once again that we had learned such useful packages as Indesign in earlier years at Uni rather than Bryce (far less relevant to us) and repeating basic CAD we had already done twice.

Anyway! Julia and I ploughed on - her with the book and I wrote a mission statement and did a precedents A1 sheet. I tried to stand back from the group discussions in the studio aside from going in every couple of hours and then push to get the next decision made. Simon and I locked horns a few times as his style is more relaxed whereas I just want to get on with stuff - all very amicable though! We can laugh now (although I have to say there were tears from me at the pure exhaustion, frustration of getting nowhere fast and lack of food.)

Lille - Day two cont... got a bit confused!

So, its funny as I approached group work totally differently this time, not necessarily deliberately and so got a very different experience from it. I am usually always team leader, with there only being one time since I started this course when I wasn’t and all that happened was that the person leading turned to me after a couple of days panicked and said they wanted me to help them, with ultimately me sticking my oar in and pulling things together on the final two days (yes it was a nightmare).  I hope its not because I’m bossy (!) but because in my family we are just “take charge” sort of people. We don’t like fuss or faff. My parents always just taught us to get on with things and to try to see everybody’s point of view.

This time, we had a Masters student in our group who had come with the aim of improving leadership skills and a very strong willed French girl in our smaller group of 5, so I stepped back and let them take charge. With interesting results. it’s the first time I have had real design input into a team task. Often friends on the course say that I will end up doing project management or policy or presentations and things like that as that is what my background is in my current career in finance, but that I shouldn’t worry that my drawing isn’t as good as others as I probably wont be so involved in the design side (yeh thanks friends, its not that bad!) haha. Anyway, I actually always have a zillion ideas and so it was great this time to be able to step back from organising people and resolving group issues and to put my ideas on the table. First thing I did was suggest we look back to the textile history of Lille and use this as a theme or concept to base our new design on - so basically there are layers or threads in a city such as roads, canals, promenades etc and we should try and make a grid to connect up both sides of the canal on our site as at the moment it was too separate. Now I actually thought that idea was a bit naff and basic, but Simon our Masters student thought it was a great idea and said we should run with it. I thought it was an obvious one that everyone would choose yet after the first round of presentations, I was chuffed that several people said that our team had the strongest concept. Very surprised. I’m going to get confused on which day was which so bear with me.

We slept on it after 13 hours…and no dinner again and in the morning I took in a doodle I did, which I will add here (now covered in glue etc) where I took our team ideas of an ecological aspect, long term view and self sustaining living and pulled them together. So houses right on perpendicular smaller stretches of canal which alternated between being used for leisure such as swimming (Simon suggested natural pools - great idea) and boating and my favourite - as I want to live there - living overlooking a piece of natural wetlands replete with birds swirling around. I felt this connect to a wider ecological area on the other side of the river. A new way of living. Anyway, Russell loved this, Vero was coming round, but Simon took charge and sadly it was decided not to follow through. I found it very difficult to get my voice heard that day and tried to explain that we needed to move forward. Several times. Simons leadership style is different from mine and he said he just wanted to see how things naturally went. Of course this meant when it came to our first presentation  we were told it started strongly and then petered out - which is how our discussions had gone to be honest!

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