Architecture, Revit, & Me

Winery Update

2013-06-05T14:12:00.000+01:00

So the Winery is moving ever closer to completion here's the latest picture from site to prove it:

Published!

2013-05-02T11:31:00.000+01:00

..we have had our first publication for the Courtyard House. A local residents publication for South East London..

Living South Magazine: Courtyard House

Rathfinny Winery Glulam Frame

2013-01-29T11:21:00.001+00:00

..hot off the press - I just received these photographs from Mark on site at the Winery. The Glulam beams which support the green roof are now in place and the shape of the building is really coming together!

Royal Society of Medicine

2013-01-16T19:14:00.002+00:00

Whilst I was working as an Associate Director at Dyer in 2010, I designed a new raked lecture theatre within an existing room and a new glass floor breakout / lounge area for The Royal Society of Medicine in London. The project was put on hold for a year and by the time it started up again I had already left and set up Design-Cubed with Mark. However, I maintained a role for Dyer to oversee the overall design as the project was constructed. Works are now close to complete and I'm extremely happy with the result!

Since this is after all supposed to be at least in part a Revit Blog for the record I produced the initial concept using Sketchup but quickly moved to building the design in Revit to be able to make quick and accurate changes as the design and brief developed. Working drawings were produced (not by me) in AutoCad.

The images and photos below show some of the design images from Revit and are followed by photographs of before and after.. Hope you like it!

Design Rendering for the new Lecture Theatre

Revit image for new glass-floored hotel lounge

Revit image showing the lecture theatre 'insert' and access ramp

Before and after photographs of the new lecture theatre - "The Wimpole Room"

Before and after photographs of the new glass floored hotel lounge

Photographs of the refurbished circulation space around the lounge

Photograph of the atrium below the glass floor (timber panels and ramp are new and provide entrance to the new lecture theatre)

A Sparkling Wine-ry

2013-01-16T14:13:00.001+00:00

Yesterday I paid a visit to our Rathfinny Winery project in Alfriston, East Sussex. We've been incredibly fortunate with this as it is one of the first of it's kind in the UK (a benchmark for things to come??) and it's a very exciting, good size project - the client is aiming to produce top quality sparkling wine with the Vineyard set to be the largest in the UK once completed. We worked alongside Martin Swatton who came up with the original concept for the design and have continued to develop the detail and now deliver the project. Mark (my business partner) has been doing tremendous work running the job and leading the design team - now it's paying dividends as we see the form taking shape as the steel frame nears completion..

Open House- Day 1

2012-09-22T21:28:00.001+01:00

This afternoon we opened up our house for the first time to the public as part of London Open House - we had over two hundred visitors in just over 4 hrs. I must say that so far (tomorrow we're open again for the whole day )it has been an incredibly positive experience - it's been great to get so much feedback and we've had many positive comments. The weather today certainly played its part as its been beautiful clear blue skies. Tomorrow however will be quite different, the forecast is for heavy rain and strong winds and with the large windows and rooflights in the house the feeling inside can be dramatically affected by the outside conditions - it will be interesting to see if there is any change in peoples reactions as a result..

How many men does it take to fix up a banner?

The lull before the Storm

People arriving

Blue skies.. - inside & out

All hands on deck - London Open House!

2012-09-21T13:43:00.003+01:00

..so excuse the pun but it really has been all hands on deck this week as we've built a new deck for the courtyard in the new house and tried to finish off as much as possible in time for opening up for the public this weekend as part of London Open House. We've managed to achieve quite a lot but there will still be quite a few things not complete - such as the front gate.. Sadly we've been let down by a delivery of pebbles for the front courtyard today so things won't look quite as good as we had hoped but if there is one thing I have learned building a house it is not to rely on deliveries being on time!

Here's my builder Keith (on his knees!) and Mick carrying soil for the new planter..

'All Hands on Deck'

..and even my In-laws have flown in from Sweden to help with the gardening and making the curtains!

Silence is Golden

2012-09-20T22:20:00.001+01:00

It's been a very long time since I last posted on this blog. And this silence has definitely been golden as it has been due to us being extremely busy.. Since the last post we've:

Completed the design of a winery near Eastbourne (south coast of England) which we've been working on in collaboration with designer Martin Swatton - it starts on site this month.

Won a competition against some of the UK's largest architecture firms and all but completed an extensive summer improvement works to convert a Grade II listed Girls High School into a modern 6th Form Centre in my home town Bedford.

Moved into our new house which is now close to being complete - we're now frantically preparing to open it to the public this weekend as part of London Open House.

Commenced work on site for a new office building constructed using SIPs (structural insulated panel) for the staff of the winery project.

Submitted an extensive contemporary house extension for planning approval.

..and Moved into a new office behind Waterloo station

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A Beautiful Swan..

2012-04-30T15:14:00.002+01:00

Here's a project which we've just about completed which really illustrates what can be achieved with a bit of vision and careful design. Working in collaboration with Martin Swatton Design we took an existing 80's bungalow and created a 'Beautiful Swan'! Here are the before and after photographs..

Outside - Before

Outside - Remodelled

Interior- Before

Interior - Remodelled

S,M,L,XL

2012-02-06T09:39:00.001+00:00

Last week was quite a week and it neatly summarised the variety of work that we're engaged in now, coining the title of Rem Koolhaus's book S,M,X,XL (Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large - okay I admit I'm stretching it here a little) here's what I was working on..:

S(mall)
The crash pad in Paddington (see our website: http://design-cubed.com/current.html) is now nearly completed. At less than 50 sqm and just over 4m high overall this is a project which is tight for space into which we've squeezed a mezzanine floor with a bedroom and spare fold down bed sleeping area. In spite of the low ceilings the result feels surprisingly spacious thanks to the open layout at ground level and a the central double height space.

M(edium)
My house continues to move forward and I'm still spending a lot (too much?) of my time on it - visiting site and organising materials (trying to haggle deals from suppliers in order that I can afford to finish it the way I would really like). Today's an exciting day (weather permitting with snow on the roads) as the huge sliding folding doors are due to arrive and then we will truly be wind and weather tight..

L(arge)
I'm back working with my old employers, Dyer, as a consultant on a project for the Royal Society of Medicine. I worked on it as the project architect for Stage C (Concept Design) 12 months ago and after a delay while the client organised funding it is back and full steam ahead. The project includes conversion of an existing period style room into a state of the art raked lecture / conference theatre and the infill of a double height space over the foyer with a glass floor for breakout..

X(xtra)L(arge)
Through our friends at KDS Associates we were asked to produce a concept idea for Criterion Capital (a London based developer with a large and exclusive property portfolio) for a residential tower scheme in Colliers Wood, South London. I worked a quick initial concept up using Revit (use of curtain wall systems and interchangeable families to create the facade detail) and here's the result..

Rooflights!

2012-01-19T10:04:00.000+00:00

So the building of our new house continues and yesterday we reached the important milestone of being watertight with the installation of two very large clear glass rooflights.We've been incredibly lucky since the weather all winter has been unseasonably mild and there has been very little rain.. Until today that is - now it's raining and I don't care!!

Here's a time-lapse video of the rooflights being installed in just over a minute..

I'll post something on the rest of the house soon..

Website Update

2012-01-16T07:44:00.001+00:00

Last week I updated our website to show some of the projects we've been working on:

Check it out at: http://design-cubed.co.uk/current.html

Back on the Blog

2012-01-15T10:57:00.002+00:00

Well it's been some time since my last blog but now it's the New Year (resolutions and all that) I thought it was about time I started up again. Since the worst thing you should do in these situations is to start with excuses I thought I'd do just that and explain away my long blogging silence..

BlogPress, the App I use to draft my Blog on the iPad while I'm out and about has had a bug which has stopped it working for the last few months. Finally an update has now been released so I can get back to the writing.. More importantly, since October things have been really busy - which is of course generally a good thing. We've been involved in quite a number of exciting projects, with many of them already on site and one actually completed:

Ooyala, an internet based digital media company based in California, engaged Mark's (my business partner) friend's practice, Blitz in San Francisco, to produce the concept design for their new European head office off Carnaby Street in Soho, London. We were engaged to complete the detail design, specification and to see the project through on site. The programme was extremely tight, from Blitz's start on the design to construction completion and Ooyala moving into their new offices it was only ten weeks!

Ooyala Breakout & Kitchen

Ooyala workspace & medium meeting room

Ooyala workspace & large meeting room

Another three jobs have started on site, two of which are already close to completion - a refurbishment of a bungalow on the south coast for a vineyard manager; an extension to another bungalow in Dorking; and a small crash pad in Paddington, London.

We've also been working on planning applications for a winery, a scheme to add three stories of executive apartments to a 60's block in Kensington, and the remodelling of a large private house on the south coast near Brighton..

But my biggest excuse has been the house I'm building. Unfortunately the builder I was using got into financial difficulty and left site at short notice. The result was that overnight I became a true self-builder and in order to keep things moving and to stay within budget I've had to manage the rest of the build myself, employing trades and purchasing materials directly. In the beginning it was certainly stressful and time consuming but it's provided me an experience of construction from a different angle. Now that the house is really taking shape it's turned out to be a real distraction and drain on my time as I really just want to spend all my time on site admiring it and watching it grow!

So it's been a busy but very productive few months.. Long may it continue (along with some more blogging)!!

Mews Concept

2011-10-06T11:56:00.000+01:00

One of the frustrations with architecture and running a blog like this is the fact that we usually can't post images of what we are currently working on due to project or client sensitivities, however I can share this one with you. We've been doing some speculative work along with my builder for a couple of new town houses in a mews style street near Marylebone, London. This is only some rapid concept work to give the end client an idea of what is possible and if the project goes ahead the design will no doubt change beyond recognition..

This movie was produced using my current favourite quick and dirty technique of exporting a sequence of jpeg images directly from a Revit shaded walkthrough view and compositing / editing them together using Adobe After Effects - music courtesy of YouTube AudioSwap feature..

Out of the ground.. Finally!

2011-09-30T14:10:00.000+01:00

It seems like an age since I last gave an update on the progress of my house build - I guess at this rate I'll never be able to replace Kevin McCloud and Grand Designs..

Part of the reason I've not written anything for a while is that until now there has generally been little to show - groundworks always seem to take an interminably long time to do and with this stage of the project being probably the riskiest it's the bit you want over and done with and forgotten as soon as possible! We've had the odd problem and a sleepless night or two but with a scheme such as this where we are literally building out the entire site you really have to expect a little difficulty along the way. Well we've got through it and finally the floor structure is down and the bricks are on site so, theoretically at least, the build should really start to fly now..

K College Fully Open

2011-09-22T18:38:00.001+01:00

K College main entrance & Media and Arts Centre

Today I got the chance to walk around the now fully complete K College in Tonbridge (Kent, Southeast England). If you've not been following my blogs this is a 23,000 sqm College for which I led the design whilst working for Dyer Architects in London - also see earlier post "Award for K College".

K College was built in two construction phases to an extremely tight budget and programme. Phase 1 opened last summer with two thirds of the total build, and Phase 2 (the final piece) is the part that's just been finished. I have to say I am extremely pleased and excited about the result. Whilst this (phase 2) was the smaller part of construction it provides the majority of the most interesting spaces and makes sense of Phase 1 - turning what was a new building that was surprisingly difficult to understand from within it's corridors, into a complete and very legible campus.

The new courtyard which replaces a 5 storey 60's building brings light and volume to the centre of the college and provides what will surely be a well used social heart. This is unlike the majority of internal atrium or "street" based education schemes of recent years as it is outside in the fresh air!! What I like most about this new courtyard space is that by taking advantage of the natural slope of the site we were able to produce three distinct levels or terraces each of individual character. This breaking up of the space helps create a more human scale and provides the opportunity for various activities to take place simultaneously without interfering with each other too much. I think my favourite terrace is the lowest which is adjacent to the main refectory / cafe and main performance venue - here we provided a spill out area for tables and chairs together with a series of 'elephant' steps to sit on. These steps create a natural amphitheater and the idea is that the college can now utilise this space for outside performances when the weather allows.

Anyway, here are some pictures I took from my visit, I'll leave you to make you own opinions..

Lowest Terrace with Elephant Seating & Middle Terrace for reading outside Learning Resource Centre (LRC)

Middle Terrace with view of curved LRC

Lowest Terrace looking towards refectory with cafe breakout

Curved timber cladding on LRC

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Tonbridge, Kent

Architect in the House

2011-09-05T19:15:00.003+01:00

One of the best things about leaving a large practice and starting your own is that you get the chance to decide where and in what you want to invest your own time in. When we first started we found it amazing, once left to our own devices, how quickly we were able to meet new people and broaden our network. One of the many ways we decided to do this was through an event called 'Architect in the House' which puts architects together with local people for an initial free consultancy to provide ideas for their house or extension- the 'client' is then expected to make a small donation in aid of the charity 'Shelter' in return.

So far we've provided three consultations for Architect in the House and I have found them all to be immensely enjoyable and rewarding. I have to admit to having experienced an initial feeling of trepidation of what would happen if I arrived and couldn't come up with any good ideas. However, after a relaxed chat followed by a quick measured survey to draw up a base plan from which to work from, the ideas flowed with the clients in a natural way. It has been great to be meeting people in this way and I've found developing designs in these brief encounters as enjoyable as working on concepts for multiple-million pound commercial schemes.

One of the consultations led to a small commission to look further at some options for converting a small bedroom attic space with a low sloping ceiling into a bathroom space. Presenting the ideas back to my client the following week reminded me of one the main reasons I enjoy being an architect. I felt fairly confident in the scheme but the enthusiasm with which it was received was truly gratifying..

Image produced in Revit showing the proposed converted bedroom attic space

Pouring Concrete

2011-08-25T22:13:00.000+01:00

If you can't get the concrete mixer quite where it needs to be then here's the solution..

Big, big hole!

2011-08-12T13:05:00.001+01:00

Well my house has been on site for just over two weeks now.. It's been quite an emotional time and has felt slightly surreal too. It's amazing how scary it is to start throwing loads of money at the ground.. the works here are by far the most expensive single package of the build and the point at which there is the most risk - but all you really get for it seems to be a big, big hole in the ground.

For the most part (touch wood), and considering the complexity of building out to the extremities of the boundary, the ground works have gone smoothly. I did have however have one sleepless night when the council's building inspector spotted three oak saplings which had grown in the neighbour's garden since we originally surveyed the plot at the start of the design right next to where the wall of the new house will be. Unfortunately, when it comes to the structural design of the foundations you have to allow for the effect of any existing tree which isn't to be removed to grow on to be mature. In this case, seeing as the building is on London clay and that the trees were so close to the site, it meant that either the trees had to go or I could pretty much forget continuing with the build unless I had lots of money to throw at piled foundations.. Thankfully I have an extremely understanding neighbour (she is my aunt after all) and so the trees have now gone and building work continues. Phew! But the story just underlines that the riskiest part of the process is in the ground...

Here's a picture of my Groundworker, Scott, to illustrate the depth the foundations and reduced dig have had to go to in the clay soil..

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Demolition!

2011-07-28T15:14:00.000+01:00

And so it begins. After three years, over which time I started to think it might never happen, work on site for the new house starts. It's amazing how fast things move once work begins - this video was taken less than an hour after the start and already the vegetation is cleared and the old wall is down..

..apologies for the heavy music!

My Worst Client!

2011-07-13T20:53:00.001+01:00

If anyone ever asks me who my worst client ever was (not that they ever do mind you) then the answer is simple - unfortunately it would have to be me! Designing a house for myself has been the hardest job I've ever done, with constant changes to the brief mixed together with self doubt - "is that really the best design I can do?".. In order to find the "perfect" balance between budget, function, and design I created option after option but always seeming to run full circle back to the original concept.

It's certainly been an interesting process and it's helped me appreciate even more what it means to be a client - a heightened sensitivity towards: any costs incurred before building works begin; and to the risks that could prevent construction from starting at all or from it coming in at the expected price..

Well the long road to site seems to be nearly over. I am on the verge of signing a contract with my builder and the start on site is now, all being well, only weeks away...

Since I've done most of the design for the house in Revit I thought I'd share a simple animation of the house created directly from a shaded view within Revit. I exported the walkthrough as a series of JPEG stills and produced the movie from them using Adobe After Effects to give me greater control over the finished animation..

Adobe Viewer Letdown

2011-07-05T14:13:00.001+01:00

The problem with trying to be clever with Technology is that you end up exposing yourself to the inevitable bugs in new software or to pushing a slightly out of date (2 weeks old) piece of hardware too far so that instead of impressing potential clients you can look a little silly as they sit and wait while you wait for your computer to (hopefully) respond or for you to resolve the latest techno niggle. I've recently experienced something like this with the Adobe iPad App "Adobe Viewer" (see earlier post: "iPad and Adobe CS5.5"):

..all had been working well, I'd been impressing people with the general slick wizzyness of our new iPad presentations using flicks to change slides, integrated movies / animations, and an interactive spinning 3d model to top it all off, when I noticed an update to the adobe Viewer App on the Apple App Store. Never one to be able to resist an update (it's got to be better hasn't it?) I clicked download and installed it to make sure I was bang up to date. All was well until I was in a pub ( best place to do business ) with an important potential client, I took out my iPad, launched my wizzy presentation from Adobe Viewer, flicked a few images across the screen, started the animation to seal the deal and.. bounced straight out to the iPad home screen.. I tried it again and it crashed out again at another random point.. In the end I resorted to using the apple movie viewer instead..

So the moral is ( surprise surprise), if it ain't broke don't fix it. Unfortunately for me though I know that this is a lesson I will never learn!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A load of hot air

2011-07-03T16:24:00.000+01:00

So after a fantastic wedding and a long honeymoon in France it's been back to work for the past week and a return to "ordinary" married life..

Whilst I was away everything started to happen for Design-Cubed so my business partner Mark was swamped with things do do. Quite predictably things settled a bit in time for my return - I probably couldn't have planned things better if I had tried!

Also while I was away the tender returns for the construction of my own single storey house came in. The first of these arrived on the day of departure for honeymoon and came in well above what I had expected and out of reach of my budget - not the best leaving for holiday news! However, in the end there was a wide range of prices and we are now thankfully close to agreeing a contract and getting started - albeit with the idea of reducing the scope and completing some areas ourselves to keep the costs down (including insulating and waterproofing the flat roof!).

But before I focus completely on Design-Cubed work again a little look back at one of the fantastic high points of the honeymoon - a hot air balloon ride over the Dordogne valley in southern France. I have to admit I was a little nervous of the concept but in reality there can be few things as serene and magical as a balloon flight in beautiful evening sunlight, over stunning scenery, in the company of a fabulous wife!!

Wedding tomorrow

2011-06-10T23:37:00.001+01:00

Well tomorrow, after all these years (I know for sure it's been worth the wait), I'm finally getting married. The last few weeks have been really hectic as predictably everyone seemed to want something just before I stopped for two weeks for the wedding and honeymoon. But now it seems a good idea to pause and reflect on what we've achieved after three months in business..

So we set up the business, named it, created a logo, and learned how to make the website. We've since spent a large part of our time catching up with old contacts, as well as making new ones, to tell them what we are doing. It's been really encouraging to see the enthusiasm with which our presentations have been received, although I don't think I've ever drunk so many lattes before since a coffee shop seems to be the best place to do business meetings these days. It is very clear though that these meetings are, and will continue to be, just as important to the success of the business as the quality of the services that we offer.

Now it seems our hard work drinking coffee is starting to pay off. We're now at the early stages of working on a number of really exciting projects including: creating a 3d model and fly-through of a famous London tourist landmark to illustrate the process of it's refurbishment; the remodelling of a listed London sports centre to provide a new large gym facility; and collaborating on the design and working drawings for a landmark new winery / vineyard.. Exciting times, it seems I will be very busy when I get back from honeymoon.

Enough of that! Now to get my priorities sorted, work out what I'm going to say in my speech tomorrow, and look forward to calling my beautiful bride my wife!!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:London,United Kingdom

Telling the Story

2011-05-23T13:14:00.000+01:00

When I took part in Autodesk's Superuser Tour of Southeast Asia and Australia in 2009 the other speakers on the tour were Chris Ruffo, Senior Design Visualisation Industry Manager Media & Entertainment (now there's a catchy job title!) and Nicolas Aithadi, Visual Effects Supervisor at Moving Picture Company (MPC) in Soho. Their presentations had quite an affect on me.

Chris was presenting his view of the future, suggesting that the days of gaining an edge with an impressive image were numbered (as discussed in my previous blog) and that the direction industry leaders were taking was to create short movies to tell the story. Chris was careful to distinguish between a standard fly-through, as so many of us have created in the past, and a carefully directed piece produced by cutting a series sequences edited together.

Nic's presentation was perhaps somewhat more dramatic and 'sexy'. MPC are responsible for many well known Hollywood effects including sequences from James Bond, GI Joe, The Watchmen, and Harry Potter. Indeed as we spent much of our time together on planes during the tour I had the chance to see some of the pre-vis work for the "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" which Nic was working on at the time. Much of Nic's presentation focussed on how they like to blow things up (because it's cool!) but the meat of it explained how individual sequences are built up - from the moment of pitching for the work to the final cut. I was struck not only by the number of people involved and the complexity of the process but also by the parallels with the design process in architecture - the main difference seeming to be the scale of budget, resource, and number of different focussed specialisms involved. However, what interested me most was the opportunity between events to learn more about the tips and tricks of Hollywood production, including the basics of how to direct cuts between scenes smoothly.

On returning to the UK I felt keen to apply some of Nic and Chris's ideas and workflows into some of my own work. My first attempt combined sequences of a Revit model for a proposal for a leisure centre on the coast in North East England with footage of swimmers, canoeists, and someone sliding down a water flue taken from YouTube in order to try to capture some of the fun element of the building proposed. The opening sequence included some dramatic footage of the north sea at night with the building slowly appearing in the background through rolling fog. Due to potential copyright issues I don't feel able to post this one in full but a still from the opening shot is shown at the bottom of my first blog, "The Beginning..". Below is a more recent link to a video I put together (while working at Dyer) about 18 months ago to "tell the story" for a proposed mixed use library, college, and university building in southeast England. The building design and video was produced using Revit, 3ds Max, Photoshop, After Effects, and Premier.