Pre Analysis

I managed to get this plan from the site manager at OscarClarke containing all of the unit names for the adjacent commercial units. Unfortunately it seems there is no detailed survey of the complex and building structure as modern works have only been concerned with interior fit-out.

The first render of the new city model. For some reason some dodgy blue planes have appeared but overall the result is decent.

This is the highest resolution aerial photograph available and will be useful for the next stage of urban analysis. I have stitched it together for the city centre. The traffic patterns are clearly visible (note the trail of buses adjacent to the castle) and you can just about read pedestrian density.

This is a basic Yahoo! pipe template which is essentially a combined aggregator and filter with five input feeds. It may need to become more sophisticated depending on the level of information. Obvious inputs at this stage would probably be infrastructural like CardiffBus, National Rail, Mobile Telephony (O2/Vodafone etc.), the Millenium Stadium and Pachube but could also include ‘soft’ feeds like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and LastFM or MySpace for additional event listing.

Left is Louis Kahn’s drawing of the traffic movements within Philadelphia, which I am interested in as a mode of study beyond a purely cartographic representation of urban space. Right is a model of Peter Eisenman’s Romeo and Juliet Castles:

The program for this project was to present the dominant themes of the stories of Romeo and Juliet in architectural form at the site of the two castles. There are three important versions of the story which were taken as the basis for the architectural programme. Each narrative is characterised by three structural relationships: division (the separation of the lovers/the balcony); union (the marriage of the lovers/the church); and their dialectical relationship (the togetherness and apartness of the lovers/Juliet’s tomb). The project responds to fundamental cultural changes that have taken place in the last century, by using an architectural discourse that is founded in a process called scaling.

Not quite sure about the analogy but the model is fairly spectacular.

Cedric Price’s Birmingham & Midland Institute HQ. I admire his use of diagram to explain the frequency and hierarchy of programme.

Thinking ahead with regard to materials…

About George

George Metcalfe recently graduated with Distinction as Master of Architecture from the WSA. A freelance designer and multi-creative, he is interested in the intersection between architecture, urbanism and information communication technology.

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