George Lauder Bursary - Week 9

Monday 27th July

• Today, we went out to get materials before studio as part of our final presentation also involved making a large site model as a whole studio group.

  
  

• This meant that from this point, our studio time had to be split between working on the group model and continuing with our own individual projects.

  
  

• We spent a good part of the day working out exactly how the site model would be made, what materials we would use and how the work would be split between everyone. Having a proper plan made it much easier to see how we were going to get everything finished in time.

Tuesday 28th July

• I had finally decided which idea I wanted to take forward for my larger intervention. Instead of focusing on the deterioration of the gatehouse like I had done with my prosthetic device, I decided to almost do the opposite and look at preservation instead.

  
  

• My idea was to completely submerge the existing gatehouse in water inside a large transparent tank as a way of preserving it.

  
  

• I spent most of the day developing this idea and thinking about how people would interact with the building, how it could still be viewed and what other spaces would need to be added around it. This was the first idea that I really felt I wanted to take all the way through to the final presentation.

Wednesday 29th July

• Today was split between continuing our own projects and working together on the large site model.

  
  

• I kept developing the submerged gatehouse idea and started looking more closely at how the new intervention would fit onto the site.

  
  

• There were also presentations happening from another architecture group on campus that day, so we were able to go and have a look at their work. It was useful to see how they had presented their projects and gave me some ideas about how I could show my own work for the final review.

Thursday 30th July

• Thursday was quite similar to Wednesday, with the day being split between the group site model and our individual projects.

  
  

• We also had another one-to-one discussion with our professor. This was mainly to make sure we were heading in the right direction and that our projects would be at a good stage for the following Monday.

  
  

• The discussion helped me work out some of the things I still needed to resolve with the submerged gatehouse and what I should focus on over the weekend. I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me.

Friday 31st July

• Today, Freya and I met with Sam Abernathy from the St Andrew’s Society of New York for lunch. It was really nice to meet him and learn more about the society and the different things they are involved in.

  
  

• It was also interesting hearing more about the Scottish community in New York and the connections that still exist between Scotland and the city.

  
  

• After lunch, stopped by Grand Central Station before I headed back up to Columbia and spent the rest of the day working in the studio.

  
  

• There was still a huge amount to get done for the project, so most of my free time was now being spent working.

Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd of August

• I continued working on my own project while also helping with anything that still needed done on the group site model. At this point, there were lots of different parts of my project that needed finished, including the model, drawings and working out the details of the intervention.

• I pretty much lived in the studio the entire weekend. I had to make sure I had an almost completed project to show on Monday incase there was anything I needed to change or add.