Through the middle of our site the canal has a sharp bend creating, it feels uncomfortable walking around this point as you cannot see what or who is coming.

Gasholder No.8 is a listed structure built in the 1800's, it stands on the south side of the
canal seen in the distance here -








The Canal - looking south east from where our site begins.



We have just started a new project, visited our locaton on Monday which is a stretch of the regents canal which passes through Kings Cross in Central London.
The Canal is a public stretch of land with a well used towpath alongside. Canal Boats navigate through this area daily.
Kings Cross is currently undergoing a major redevelopment which is privately funded. Over the next 10 years the site is becoming a location for retail, a new university of arts, it will have a new large public square, flats and student housing and will have its own 'energy centre' - a building in itself which will provide all of the energy needs of the site.

The Area along the towpath is going to opened up to the new environment north of the canal which will make more of a feature of the canal and opening up the space.


Dark skies above the area

At the lectures in london i picked up a few wesbites that seemed interesting.

EyeOverFishing shows how fishing has damaged the sea, and maps a route to a fishery where ocean life can replenish itself.
http://www.eyeoverfishing.org/index.html

Breathing Earth is a real-time simulation displaying the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates. It's quite daunting how fast our population is growing.
http://www.breathingearth.net/

We realised that the main issues we had to deal with when farming in the sky would be:

• Light - design so that each section recieves enough
• Water - where from? - where does it go?
  
• Waste - how do we dispose of the waster created?
• Wind - the system needs to work unaffected by strong winds
• birds - protection of veg?

Because our aim was to visualise a way in which farming in the city could become a reality without creating new buildings and also working with limited space we began to develop our ideas so that the 'farming' could be possible to achieve using existing buildings e.g. tower blocks, high rise flats. Our ideas began to develop into creating a much more adaptable way of growing
food on tiles that could be taken down and moved about more easily.











As Part of the 'Teach-in' lectures we went to on monday there were follow-up sessions based on designing for the future. Micheal Herrman Organised an open workshop at the uni and got some local people whose work revolves around sustainability to join in.

We each chose realistic projects we feel is important to work on and collaborated in groups.

I chose to work towards making Vertical Farming in cities more realistic in the near future.

We began sketching how we imagined growing vegetables in a city might look - possibly a very tall greenhouse with vertical hanging layers of growth?

This sharp edged urban water feature reminded me strongly of Tadao Ando's style. Raw concrete, straight edges, falling water and steps define the space.
Artificial Rock
Maria Roossem - Breast Berries

Graham Hudson - Edward VIII
Remy Markowitsch - BONSAIPOTATO

Louise Bourgeois - The Couple

At night the relationship between the lighting in the ground and the surrounding buildings facades becomes harmonious, the square is revealed as a structure of varied grids at both horizontal and vertical levels.
The way the strips of light break from the formal centre grid through benches is a unique feature.

Here's some cool links i picked up from the talks:

http://www.eyeoverfishing.org/ - eye over fishing shows how fishing has damaged the sea and shows a way in which this could be corrected.

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/ - A site that contains graphic approaches to displaying info.

http://www.davidberman.com/social/dogood.php - i want this book. This line says a lot - "designers will choose what their young profession will be about: inventing deceptions that encourage overconsumption -- or helping repair the world."

Yesterday (12th) i attended the Teach-in conference held at the V&A based on sustainable design and education. There were many presentations from people representing company's which all aim towards designing ways to create a more sustainable existence. This website contains a blog following all the major issues looked at recently. - check it out. - http://climatesafety.org/

"Civilization needs a new operating system" - as said by someone at the V&A.