During february 2011, 20 students from the University of Greenwich went to Lille for a week to participate at a workshop at the Ecole nationale du peysage in Lille. In our first day we were introduced to a couple of the students from Lille. They were also providing accomodation to a couple of us. We visited the city during the afternoon together with Robert ( one of our tutors ). During the evening the Lille students arranged for all of us to go and have dinner in a very nice restaurant. We ate amazing food, the atmosphere was getting more and more pleasent as the wine and beer kept comming to the tables. Arround 11 oclock the group had to be separeted as we had to go back to our hotels and host to get a good rest for the comming exhausting week...but lovely week as you will see.
I forgot to mention that I was very lucky to stay at Baptiste's house with Alick and Claudia. The hospitality of the french can not be described with words.
So the week has started:
We went to school in the morning and their was breakfast organised for us in the student bar. We met also the french teacher version of Jamie, Findlay. A little bit of intimidating characters if you as for my opinion, but inspiring non the less.
We took the subway to the site...
EURA Technology building
A little inside of the site
Next
We came back to the studio and started to work in groups of 5 and we had to present our concept ideas the very next day. Unfortunatly i have just some pictures with our design from the first group
This is a sketch developed by Batiste, trying to present our idea of a new hub area and the wild island in the background.
These are Grant's amazing sketches which give the feel of the other part of the site that we refered as breaking thru walls.
Combinig the groups
After our presentations 2 groups of 5 students each were combined to develop a refined masterplan, sections, sketces and diagrams. The following pictures are examples of work from the studio
And of course Robert watching over us all the time. We do have to admit that he was easy on us on wensday when he allowed us to go and have a proper lunch, a nice break in the middle of the workflow.
The masterplan!
Me and Amelie worked on putting together on computer the A0 and the A3 document. This was happening friday morning, a couple of hours before the presentation in front of the people of Lille. ( i do not remember well who exactly they were, but i do remember their functions: politicians, urban developers, and architects, and of course lets not forget our tutors and Paula who came from London that day)
Our group in the process of creativity and never ending discussion about streight ( french students ) or curved ( english students) lines
Our vision for the future residential areas of Lille
The 2 concept masterplans of the 2 groups combined
Diagrams... i was impressed how abstract the french students start their concept ideas. the one with red in the right corner is my attempt of representing my concept idea
The circulation diagram belongs to Super Grant, as i like to call him, and the other ones to the french student if im not mistaking
The sections were done by Grant and rendered with Edith's help. Everybody loved the sky, which i think shows our first impresion of the site. Strong S-E wind
Precedent images. The one in the middle of the bottom of the page was created by me in photoshop
Lovely sketches done by Sue
Simon's eco quartier technological inside
And the start of the amzing model, and you can see the final one on Grant's blog.
Last but not least the only A0 page that i have in my possesion the conceptual diagrams which Im not pleased about as Jamie kept rushing me to send it to the printers as fast as possible. I still fish I had 10 more min during that morning to proper make a composition for this page...
It will be shown in the next post as I dont have time to resize the image right now
