National Memorial Arboretum: University Trip

 During the first week of term, the course was fortunate enough to have a trip to the National Memorial Arboretum, designed by Fira. We were shown around by Ryan Sudall who is a director at Fira, and the design insights and information on our way around was great to hear from someone who has worked on this project themselves. It was very impressive to be see how they had masterplanned a site which already had memorials on when they took it on, and managed to link them all and add new memorials while making the space feel cohesive. If I could choose my favourite part of the site it would be the way the courtyard behind the visitor centre leads visitors into the rest of the site, while feeling like a very well designed and pleasant space in itself.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Oak Sett Paving

Image
 This is an image of some Oak Sett paving I photographed on a visit to Blenheim Palace over the summer. There is also an image of a sketch I did to think about how the setts would be constructed and what a typical detail build up for them may be. This is a paving material which I hadn't seen many times before, and would consider using as a different material in my designs in the future where practical. The example I saw at Blenheim Palace had what appears to be a resin or tar pointing in the joints. These are laid wiht end grain visible as it is most durable. The sub base and layers of the construction of these setts would need to be at least slightly permeable as they would otherwise rot.
Read more

Alney Island: Site Visit

Image
 On Wednesday 1st October, I went to Alney Island for an initial site visit to take photographs, walk around, and take in what the site currently has to offer. The weather was fine, with the sun shining, and very little rain in recent weeks prior to this visit, meaning a supposedly very wet site in fact seemed very dry! Notable features on the site were a historic Telford bridge, longhorn cattle which are used to sustainably manage the site, strong existing vegetation cover, and a large road and railway running through the site which bring substantial noise with them. Notably, the footbridge to the Gloucester docks from Alney Island was very narrow, and the decomissioned sub-station brownfield sites could be in the way. There is also a very convenient mixed use cycle route through the centre of the site which is a historic railway route which connected to the lock and docks.
Read more