Collabritive Project

Architecture and Art and Design students from BCU have come together to create a project surrounding the Paradise Circus in Birmingham. This blog will show our groups Progress. We are Chloe Barrett, Tatiana Lopes Pondes, Jessica Green, Lucy Martin, Aqilah Halim and Alex Marangoci.

[colabgroup1]

Final Presentation Materials to help explain our plans and ideas

[colabgroup1]

Final Design 

[colabgroup1]

This is a journal of the process of how we created the final outcome of this project.

[colabgroup1]

Final formative assessment Overall we felt that the presentation went really well. We received some useful feed back from tutors which will benefit the further development for our final design. Things to improve on : - Take photographs of casted areas of the library and make them into a book to archive where they are from. - Look into how libraries salvage books - Letters need improvement perhaps look at using acrylic and making them heavier and at a larger scale. - Book end could be something else such as the letters or tiles to be made heavier to support the books. - Joint of the shelf to be improved and perhaps casting our own concrete for the final design. Our next step is to look into all of these improvements and put them into action. We also need to book time with Luke to get some professional looking photographs of the prototype. Chloe

[colabgroup1]

Concrete book shelf created by Lucy and Alex.

[colabgroup1]

Lucy, Alex and Aqilah's finished sketch of our final idea.

Jessica.

[colabgroup1]

After bring all of the object together on the shelf and arranging them how we wanted them to be displayed we decided that we wanted the books to stand upright on one of the shelves, They didn't do this by themselves so I designed a bookend that would support them covered in mesh and made from plaster (concrete) to represent the area of focus in paradise circus. 

Jessica.

[colabgroup1]

Group meeting Monday 15/12/2014

We met up at the school of art to discuss how were going to display the shelf. We played around with the books, letters, texture tiles and viles to see how it all looks together. We came across a problem as the books would not stand up right by themselves. I suggested that we need a book end to correct this problem. We all agreed on this idea and that it would be great if Jessica could make the book end as it relates to her task she was given (collecting books). 

Apart from that minor problem the meeting was a success. Everything seems to be on target for our final presentation. 

Chloe 

[colabgroup1]

Final tile casting for assessment on 17/12/2014. Chloe - Me and Tatiana decided to cast more tiles. This time we added paint to the mixture and it didn't set too quickly this time, the mixture was the right consistency. I felt that use of black paint worked well as it gave it a concrete grey effect. I also banged some of the edges around the tiles giving it an old worn texture.

[colabgroup1]

Casting - Chloe and Tatiana

Written by Chloe - Concrete tiles casted from the old central library. We tried to focus on the areas that were covered in moss growth which were wood and concrete. As you can see they turned out well, the only problem that we had was that the plaster mixture set too quickly. This made our tiles un even around the edges and some of the tiles were different sizes in thickness. We were aiming to have much thinner tiles but because we had to pour the plaster in as quickly as possible,we didn’t achieve the outcome that we had hoped for. We feel that next time we could improve the tiles by adding grit or mud to the plaster. Tatiana suggested that we could even put real moss in the the casting. As you can see a couple of the tiles have still got moss stuck on them, we feel that this is a lovely effect but we aren’t too sure if this would be safe to have moss out in the open air inside the MCC, as this could put other objects at risk.

[colabgroup1]

Casting - Chloe and Tatiana

[colabgroup1]

Photographs - Chloe Barrett

Today myself and Tatiana went over to the old Library and collected some samples of moss. We collected moss from the concrete walls, pavements and decaying pieces of wood. 

[colabgroup1]

Concrete book shelf created by Lucy and Alex.

[colabgroup1]

Books.

We wanted to include some books to represent the old library so I looked into titles/theme that I felt were appropriate. Such as the architects that worked on both buildings, textures, Moss & brutalist architecture. 

Book list: 

John Madin by Alan Clawley, Published by English Heritage, 2011.

People, Place, Purpose: The world according to Mecanoo by Francine Houben,

Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Introduction to Botany: Plants, People & the Environment by Linda Berg.

Birmingham northern relief road flora & fauna figures by Unknown.

However the library only permits books with yellow bands to leave the building so we ended up using the titles:

Lost Gardens by 

Birmingham By

Jessica.

[colabgroup1]

Chloe Barrett - 300 word summary of current position

After the presentation our current position as a group is that, we need to bring all of our individual ideas together in order to create a final design. From discussion we have all agreed to take Alex's book shelf design and we are going to develop it further by incorporating our own ideas of what we would like to be displayed on the shelf. 

So far we have decided to display books related to the textures we have discovered around the library, Textured tiles, letters 'PFC' and viles containing moss samples. We have split ourselves into sections so that each individual has a job to complete for the final presentation on 17/12/2014.

Tasks for each individual: 

Viles of moss samples and texture tiles - Myself and Tatiana

Concrete Shelf - Alex and Lucy 

Letters - Aquilah 

Books on related textures - Jessica

As a group we feared that displaying moss wouldn't be allowed at the MCC, as it could contaminate other objects on display. We spoke to Emily and she said that there should be no problem with displaying the moss samples because they will be contained inside the viles. 

As for myself I shall get together with Tatiana and take some clay casts from the old library to create our moulds for our tiles. Together we also collect moss samples from our chosen area from the library. 

[colabgroup1]

Drawing by Lucy Martin.

After our presentation we had a Skype meeting and discussed how we wanted the design to look. Lucy took into account what we all envisioned and come up with this design. 

Although we felt the design was good, some of us felt that there was  too much going on and some of the ideas we wanted to incorporate such as the moss viles were lost. So we decided to simplify the idea by creating a concrete book shelf displaying books, letters, tiles and the moss samples inside viles. 

Chloe

[colabgroup1]

Book Case Inspiration

Lucy Martin