.GOLDRING

THESIS EXHIBTION

2010-11-26T09:37:00.000+02:00

EXHIBITION

THESIS RENDERS

2010-11-26T09:36:00.002+02:00

RENDERS

THESIS MODELS

2010-11-26T09:35:00.000+02:00

MODELS

THESIS POSTERS

2010-11-26T09:33:00.000+02:00

POSTERS

THESIS ABSTRACT

2010-11-26T09:32:00.002+02:00

ABSTRACT

MOVE TO A NEW BLOG

2010-08-29T12:28:00.000+02:00

This blog has been a document of my journey through the last 5 years at the University of the Witwatersrand's Architecture School. A journey that I feel has been well worth the blood and tears (metaphorically speaking of course). In a move towards my professional career as an architect, I have decided to create a new blog that will become in future a document of my experiences as a practicing architect, in addition to any other creative endeavors that I will undoubtedly explore.

I have valued your support, and interest over the last few years, and hope that this journey will provide for interesting reading and viewing.

Please view my new blog:

GOLDRING

Programmatic Mapping for a Winery

2010-07-28T14:24:00.000+02:00

Without Going into to much detail, this is some programmatic mapping that I am using to generate a programme for my winery... I shall elaborate at a later stage. Consider this mapping candy for now :)

BEST WEB DESIGNER IN SA!!!

2010-06-23T16:48:00.000+02:00

AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED... AMY IS THE BEST WEB DESIGNER IN SA!!!

HAVE A LOOK AT HER PROFILE:

AMY ELLMAN

Johannesburg has gone Bafana Mad!!

2010-06-09T12:26:00.001+02:00

Sent via my BlackBerry

BRT Artwork Glass Panel

2010-06-08T15:39:00.000+02:00

Here are some pics of the 'finished' artwork on the glass side... The steel work is yet to come...

OTHER BRT ARTWORKS

2010-05-31T11:01:00.000+02:00

BRT ARTWORKS

BRT Artwork by Bronwyn Kotzen and myself

2010-05-30T21:01:00.001+02:00

Initially, by mapping out the tree coverage ratio within the containing north south axis boundaries of Empire Road and the M2 Highway, and the east west axis boundaries of Charlton Road and the M1 Highway, the fact that “Johannesburg is one of the most treed cities in the world” is celebrated. This exclusively identifying quality separates the city as not only a unique metropolis within South Africa, but within the global community as a whole.

The graphic as an entirety seeks to create a figure ground to emphasise the tree coverage to space ratio found within the inner city that gives Johannesburg one of its many unique characteristics. This graphic is focused onto the area surrounding Braamfontein Metro Centre and the Constitutional Court of South Africa and further concentrated around the Joubert Street Ext Station. This approach contextualises the tree densification quality around this particular station within the inner city.

Pics via Johannesburg Daily

Re-scripting the winery

2010-05-24T02:32:00.000+02:00

investigates how a space as crude as factory has become an architectural

icon of romance, culture, tradition and sophistication. It is an exploration of tourism theory which

utilises the work of John Urry to build an argument that tourism is 'fabricated autheticity'. This

agrument is then opposed with the work of Joseph Pine which makes a contradictory argument

impying that everything is authentic. Orientalism and its impact is explored through the work of

Edward Said which combines with the work of Urry and Pine to analyse selected wineries within the

Cape wine region. This exploration illustrates that the winery is a hybrid of villa, palace, place of

worship and factory and because of the typological link to the villa, the winery typology is able to

utilise the social reading that essentially embuse a factory space with romance, culture, tradition and

sophistication. The essay culminates with the idea that should one re-script a winery, it becomes a

typology that could offer a multitude of possibilities in driving urban renewal and community

regeneration.

The Life of an Architecture Student

2010-05-16T15:36:00.000+02:00

Design Models

2010-05-10T23:33:00.000+02:00

These were diagram models created for the design charrette. Essentially the idea was to show the social effect of a winery in the landscape in comparison to a winery that is placed into an impoverished settlement.

anna.flv

2010-05-08T20:04:00.000+02:00

Doll House Poster

2010-05-07T00:20:00.000+02:00

Doll's House in Rotation

2010-05-06T20:08:00.000+02:00

PanNarrans

2010-05-05T22:35:00.000+02:00

Storytelling in the 21st Century is facing some curious effects due to the emergence of Wikipedia, Twitter and Blogger.

The former audience is now also storyteller.

"It's as if you bought a book and they threw in the printing press for free." - Clay Shirky

Does the democratic nature of the web lend itself to the writing of a story?

Let's find out!

PanNarrans.wikispaces.com is an attempt to write a story as though it was a wikipedia article. Add a line, a paragraph, edit some grammar, suggest a plot direction, anything!

Re-scripting the winery

2010-05-03T14:52:00.000+02:00

So here are the final products of our Design Charrette... On the left is an altered title page from the original posted previously. On the right are 2 graphics trying to encapsulate the idea behind my thesis. Much discussion happened around this presentation so, already, things have changed... I will be posting my models up soon. Tell me what you think...

{RE}thinking the Doll House

2010-04-27T21:24:00.000+02:00

"The vast majority of factors which influence decisions regarding architectural form are made for an architect by the surrounding environment. We are generally able to respond professionally to physical factors such as
topography, weather, and availability of materials or construction skills. Admirable design is often the careful and creative resolution of a site’s peculiarities. Many a potentially valuable architectural opportunity has however been horribly undermined by the problematic stylistic aspirations of a client. This is rarely a challenge which can be overcome by a single architect confronted by committed clients armed with a library of coffee table books and home magazines. The root of the problem is far deeper and sugar‐coated than one expects. Today’s clients are saturated from birth with imagery, much of it clichéd sentimentality, of hobbit homes and noddy houses. Fairy tales and
historical constructs presented to us from childhood establish a limited range of familiar forms, which we tend to accept as convention before we are able to critically assess their relevance to our environment or the modern world.
In this assignment students will be asked to engage with popular architectural iconography by designing and building a full sized doll house."

So... That was the brief that we were given... I challenged the brief... for 2 reasons...

The first is that any building that I make to 'educate' a child about good architecture may be good today and disturbingly inappropriate tomorrow, essentially propetuating the issue. I feel that things like void, mass, light, shade, volume and scale are far more appropriate when educating someone in architecture. This allows architecture to be contextual and responsable, not in style and trendy...

The second is that I wanted to explore the programs more than simply making a cutting pattern of something that I could do by hand... I wanted to used the computer to generate a pattern that I put together... Success or not... Well, I learnt... which is as far as I'm concerned the key.. so Yes.. :)

Tell me what you think...

Thesis Title Page... Take 1

2010-04-23T14:14:00.000+02:00

The Blurb says:

"Wineries have become glorified factories that indulge the tourist in manipulated grandeur, culture, tradition and sophistication, and in doing so, have successfully blurred the line between industrial factory and sculpture architecture."

GOLDRING on bloginterview.com

2010-04-13T23:06:00.000+02:00

If you are at all interested, you can look at an interview with bloginterview.com

Bruce Cantrell

2010-04-11T22:52:00.000+02:00

A Friend of mine, Bruce Cantrell is making his name in the world of photography. Give him your support!

http://www.brucekcantrell.com/

Matrix City 2

2010-04-01T09:42:00.001+02:00

Here is the Final hand in for the Future City Project. The text is quite small on the image, so here is the blurb:

'The tourist gaze' is a fabricated view of the city. This view is a compilation of nostalgia, day dreaming, media manipulation and naivety. "For the twentieth-century tourist, the world has become one large department store of countryside and cities" (Schivelbusch, 1986:197). The city becomes a scripted event that caters for the tourist. In a sense, by the tourist being in the city, the city that the tourist came to gaze upon no longer exists. The 'post-tourist' realises that the entire presentation of the city is pastiche and accepts that it is all a game that s/he is part of. Interpretation of the city now is comprised of a physical manipulated reality, biased and distorted baggage, and the fabricated tourist driven script. Essentially, the city only exists as a physical stage for the tourist's "right to disregard native concerns and feelings, [and] the right to spin their own web of meaning" (Bauman, 1993:241) to make the Matrix City.

The Matrix City is booleaned by a contour that runs through the landscape representing that the tourist gaze is contextual. It is then twisted as a distortion of the fabrication created by the tourist. The city begins to melt into the alleged fabrication to become a new city _ The Matrix City.

Bauman, Z. (1993) Postmodern Ethics. London : Routledge

Schivelbusch, W. (1986)The Railway Journey. Trains and Travel in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Blackwell

Urry, J. (2002) The Tourist Gaze. London: Sage