Evolution of a Style

After staring at those maps for a few days, I decided I didn't really like them. On our course, we have this problem: we're all encouraged to be creative and arty, but the work we're asked to produce is methodical, predictable and, well, boring. How do you resolve that chasm of a gap? You can see from these images that I've tried to convert my dull, undergrad photoshop work into something with a bit more visual interest, that fits in with the rest of my proposal presentation. Who knows, I may still ditch this playing around or go for something completely different again!

Site Analysis 1

I'm sort of mid-way through the process of piecing together my Design

Proposal so I thought I'd put up a bit of work-in-progress. These are the first two site analysis maps I've squeezed out - they actually need a few more things adding (and a key would probably be helpful...) but they're well on the way.

Oh yeah - the top image is Building Useage (try and work out what's what if you're bored), whilst the bottom one is simply highlighting the urban grain.

More to come...

Spatial Adjacencies

This is my first stab at establishing relationships between the different areas of the monastery. My biggest problem is going to be the Cloister, which is typically the central organising feature of a monastery. My island site won't allow room for a traditional courtyard arrangement, so I might have to 'reinterpret' the cloister into something a bit different.

I found these wonderful pictures on Flickr of the site in the snow, from 1990. The Leeds skyline is very different to the one we see today, as is the development around the canal... no Armouries for a start. However, the island is already there (which shouldn't be a surprise - it's on the earliest OS map I could find in 1854) and filled with a very similar combination of single-storey huts that is still there now.

Many thanks to Tom Ackroyd for uploading the photos.