Research over 2 week holiday's: including exhibition visit

Over the 2 week holiday's, I took the time to gather more primary research for my FMP, which included visiting, Manchester, London and an architecture exhibition in London. I first visited London, where I took my own photos of some of the iconic buildings there such as The big ben and the London Eye. I also took a panoramic photo so that I had an image with both of these iconic buildings together.

Due to the weather not being so great on this day, it has effected the quality of the photo, however when creating this i will try and do it in as much detail as i can.



During my stay in London I also visited the "creation from catastrophe" exhibition at the royal institute of British architects, to see if there was anything that would help with my research. The exhibition showed how architecture could re build communities, due to man made or natural disasters in cities, starting with plans for London, after the great fire in 1666  to current day disasters in Nepal, Nigeria, Japan, Chile, Pakistan and USA. It wasn't really what I expected, however it still helped with my research to show the different reasons why architecture keeps changing. These are some of the design plans that i looked at in the exhibition.

Sketched by Akihisa Hirata.

This was designed by the Kumamato Artpolis Töhoku support group after the tsunami in 2012. This project was awarded the Golden Lion award for best national participation as part of the Japan Pavilion at the 13th Venice architecture exhibition in 2012. The team of four architects, Akihisa Hirata, Toyo Ito, Kumiko Inui and Sou Fujimoto designed this to resemble a grove, inspired in part by the floats on display in the annual Kenka Tanabata Festival 

Sketched by Toyo Ito.

This was also designed by the Kumamato Artpolis Töhoku support group  in 2011 after the worlds fourth most powerful earthquake hit japan, killing almost 16,000 people. Over 100,000 building were flattened or badly damaged, the support group saw this as an opportunity to create something together, and to help people tp become independent again. Ito said " i want to connect people through design, my goal is not to re establish the way of life before the tsunami, but to create a new social life for the next generation."  i really like this idea as i feel like it has really helped bring people together during this tough time, and help bring people back onto their feet.

After my visit to London, I then decided to visit manchester for further primary research on architecture in cities. I found that both cities focus on tourism, but use the architecture in different ways, such as London has a lot more iconic buildings to create tourism, for example people visit London to see the Buckingham palace, however Manchester uses the architecture to create shopping centres, hotels and local pubs for tourism.

I took this photo as it had a small resemblance of The Big Ben in London, which i thought would be interesting to show.

Aswell as this research, i also have photos from previous trips to Newyork and Paris which i also intend to use in my research.

This was a photo i had taken whilst i was on a ferry to liberty island. I really like this image as it is quite eye catching due to the colours including in it.

A lot of the photos i have taken of the architecture in New York are inspired by Art deco, so i have decided to create a design sheet based on art deco, to show that i am taking in everything into consideration and developing my ideas.