It's been a while...

The last couple of weeks have been quite interesting to say the least!

After converstations with our supervisors we agreed it was the right time to start getting to grips with the process through which our project would have to go through to eventually get built. So we decided to arrange a meeting with a University employed Project Manager to discuss the process from start to finish and ti find out if/how they could assist us along the way to ensure that we met all of the minimum requirements to ensure that we did not hit any [proverbial] brick walls; which is why we felt it neccessary to have the meeting now rather than further down the line.


The general feeling at the time was that the meeting with the Project Manager was beneficial and was definately eye-opening for Gareth and myself. We already had an idea that the process would not be straightforward, however we were slightly surprised to learn just how complex it actually is! We came from the meeting with a long list of names from pretty much all of the maintenance and management departments within the University along with a couple of council boards who would also have a say. This itself was not a major problem,(partly as Gareth seemed to know most of them anyway) but mainly as it was the one of the reasons for having the meeting in the first place. The other reason was to get someone on board to assist us through the process, helping us produce the right drawings and documents.. We were kindly 'offered' the services of an external consultant, costing 7% of the overall budget.


Prior to the meeting we were both quite optimistic about our budget, believeing that we were actually being quite restrained in terms of what we were designing. However... The Project Manager, who had himself just completed a similar project within the University, was less than optimistic and started throwing ball-park figures at us rendering our 'conservative' design (at the time) majorly over budget. Whilst being pretty demoralising it was actually a valuable experience for us as future architects.

So...

Since the meeting two weeks ago, we have been extremely busy producing new documents (clarifying business structures and contacts) whilst pretty much having to go back to the drawing board, coming up with a more scrutinised proposal.

I'm glad we had the meeting when we did, and now we can proceed with the project with this knowledge in mind to hopefully minimise the possibility of any problems down the line... touch wood!

Feedback Session

July 07, 2011 @Harcourt Hill, J-Block

Today proved to be an interesting and informative day regardless of the unfortunate poor attendance (no students).

The purpose of today was to create a discussion in order to generate a brief from which a successful "Social Learning Space" can be designed. Led by us, the conversation covered all the areas that we were unclear about, such as; materiality, end users, atmosphere, furniture and technology.

We started off talking about the issues surrounding the current failure of the space, the steady decline, it was decided, was due to dwindling student numbers due to closure of the accommodation as well as the current building works at Harcourt Hill Campus.

The future of this space's success will rely on being unique in its flexibility; many of the other teaching and learning rooms on campus are rigid and inflexible.
Coming from this meeting, we realised that for this space to be successful we need to find its niche.