Easter Holidays Part I

It's amazing what a week away from uni can do. I've been doing long days of work every day but it's been more relaxed and I've managed to get so much done. My final plans have been updates. All that's left to do on the technical drawings front is the 1:5 sections and updating my site section. Once these are done, I can get them printed and work on their aesthetics. 
I decided to put Revit on hold as I started to see it as a time waster - I was spending hours working it out but I still don't have a model that I can use. It's much more worth my time to get my sections done through AutoCAD.

As well as finishing the first daft of my essay, I have also finished Part A of the IDR and made a good start on Part B. This section consists mainly on images and diagrams so I have had to work on them before anything else. From reading the brief, I can see many similarities between this part and the tech case study so I'm going to approach it the same way - similar diagrams and images. I plan on having this section finished, at least in draft form, by tomorrow.

Next week I am going away so I won't be able to do any work at all. Except for maybe a little bit of reading (although I tried that last year and it even that didn't happen). With this being the case, I want to make sure I get enough done this week while I am still in Manchester with very few distractions.

At this stage, I think the visuals and IDR are the most important things for me to be concentrating on but I also need to start thinking about what to exhibit. This is something for the week after next though.

I have a tutorial this afternoon but for now, I'm going to get my section details done.

Revit Funtimes

Started playing around on Revit last night and re-familiarising myself with the programme by trying to build my design. I'm really please with what I have so far but it's made me realise that I need to know exactly what is going on with my building in order to build it. It's the kind of programme that I'm going to be obsessive about - making sure I know every measurement and wall construction so that I can translate it onto the programme. Which can't be a bad thing. So first thing first is knowing exactly what is used and how it is used to construct it.

Back to the Tech Stuff

Having now more or less finalised my roof designs. I've needed to go back to thinking about the construction of my building. This involved looking back at the tech case studies and my understanding of the Ritblat Building. Essentially, my building can stand up without the aid of the existing facade. I really wanted to continue to use timber, mainly for the creche, and I think I came to the conclusion that I could use timber for the structure of my previous design so I am going to carry on with this idea. I have then been able to use a similar construction as the Ritblat Building. Having worked through this, I should be able to finally start CADding them up!
I need to finish working out how to join the existing facade to the new structure but I took a couple of books out of the library a dew weeks ago so these will hopefully help me to resolve this problem. 

I have a lot to do over Easter. One of the main things is my visuals. I've been told to find a style I love and essentially copy that style. There are a couple of styles that I really like and hopefully I can incorporate both of them. The first is Frank Lloyd Wright's drawings. Obviously, they were done by hand but I'm better at sketching than at photoshop anyway so this will be better for me. The other one isn't architecture related but not too unlike Wright's style. Being a hiker, I love looking at Wainwright's sketches of the Lake District and have tried to imitate them in my own sketches. While he very rarely, if ever, even includes a building in his sketches, the pen and ink style is definitely something I'd like to do.

Another thing that I'm going to have a go at is Revit. Now that I know the construction and form of my design, I think I can have another go at Revit. I did basic tutorials over the summer to get an idea of the program but not used it since, so if nothing else, I need to re-familiarise myself with it.