Woohoo!

In a slightly Stephen Fry-related way (he is also something of a smartphone connosieur like myself) I am happy as Pocoyo about my Nokia E7¹phone. Though slightly fiddly to hold and type on, I find myself holding it in a most bizzare way. Yes, even the screen is smaller than I'm comfortable with also, but it's the most complete and frankly flawless Symbian device I've owned, this being Symbian Phone #4. This post is a test of its mobile blogging prowess. Although ostensibly a stopgap, it's going to replace my 5800 as my main phone, owing to its relative reliability. Based on the hugely popular S60, it has software galore, seems bulletproof, and the software is stable and seems to have plenty of RAM. Looks so good I need to get a DB9 to go with it. Best phone I've ever owned?

This is a bleary-eyed post from my mobe.

Anything to declare? David Hockney and trees. Hmm. Trying to decide between a desktop PC and MacBook, or a MBP. In any case, the Desktop PC makes more sense in terms of power and price. PowerBook still going strong though.

Absolute CAD

OK, eyes hurt. This thing is really simple actually, even though it's taken me ages to work out how to draw what was in my head. All it is is a 4m wide, 500mm thick slab, folded around itself so as to be a star shape when viewed from above. However, I stipulated that the verticals should be pitched inwards toward the centre at 30 degrees off the vertical. Also, I decided the corners should be curved to appear as natural as possible. Very simple rules, but quite a lot going on geometrically. There is a very slight problem due to AutoCAD 2002's limitations with 3D polyline smoothing, in that the 3D spline produced from the jagged line was circumscribed, as opposed to being a best-fit line through all the points. This is what causes the slightly abrupt fold where the curve joints join onto the straight sections... Ah well. I'm already a bit bored of this project. It does have exciting implications later when glazing is added to the roofed sections, however. There are two skewed parallelogram prisms intersecting, but the floor those sections are "open", which either means less floor or glass floors. Also, the design generates an excess of terraces and balconies, which may mean that these areas are asking to be treated in a material other than glass or wood, or conversely, that these sections should be enclosed in a more transparent way than the main vertical cladding material. Hmm...

Old dog, new tricks

Macromedia Freehand 7, Mac OS 9. basically drawing shapes and hitting the fractalise tool ad infinitum... I've recently been asked to do stuff in Illustrator but I must admit I have always preferred Freehand. It was fun when applications had a bit of competition... seems like Adobe own everything now, development could stagnate.

Timber...!

Back to the Kings Cross Thameslink Hotel project... this is a view of the massing model I used as a major step in planning out each floor, i.e, where to stick each room, circulation, where windows faced e.t.c... Pretty laborious stuff. Just to get to this stage, I built a foam model out of triangular shards, roughly where I wanted the hotel to be in the space on the site. I was trying to achieve a tree-like crystal form, a megastructure that was both organic and fractured, that paid particular care to its site, specifically the dome of the Scala next door. The overhanging "stalactite" part is a particular feature of the project, which attempts to "frame" the dome (some people might get some sexual vibes off that idea... none was intended when I designed it. Honestly!) Well... each point on the foam 'crystal' was plotted into AutoCAD and using boolean tools, I was able to plot the outlines of each floorplate, and cutting them out resulted in this glorious model. It's a shame that it fell over (I hadn't glued the supports from the 7th floor upwards, as it seemed to hold together pretty well with friction alone, but then the shallower supports I had made for the lower floors caused a structural collapse when it vibrated as I moved it... oops.

Viva la difference...

This is called "Different Wavelengths" and expresses a diagonally suspended series of shards of mirrors and filters, held together by a clear sheet, interrupted with dark bars like a barcode. "Infra"-red light enters and is reflected by the top part, whilst the bottom is illuminated by ultraviolet. The "barcode" is also intended to be read as spectral lines (used when deducing the composition of objects using chromatography), as well as a pun on the word "bar". Also with the alternating gauze and mirrors alluding to filtration and separation. The "red light" also alluded to the context of the project, London's Soho.

Googlability!

If anyone types "formfollowsfunky" into Google, they end up straight here. I have just wiped this entire blog clean for that very reason. I'm not allowing any old rubbish to appear here. Right, this is for a hotel project above the Kings Cross Thameslink Station, either side of the Crossbar and The Scala, Pentonville Road, London, UK. I envisaged a crystal-like outer skin with an interior like tree-houses, or a multilayered Venice. Was thinking of Ralph Erskine's Ark in Hammersmith, West London, and also looking into fractals and chaos theory.