Did you laugh or cry?
Meanwhile, back in the office, this is what I'm working on at the moment.
You can see a part of the old school on the right. The yellow stone buildings are my new additions. The pointy bit will be the new entrance with admin and a lecture theatre and the new school hall is behind it on the left.
Here's a sort of aerial view.
Around the back we are knocking down loads of crap from the fifties and temporary classrooms to create a new dining hall (the curvy bit) with a new library and classrooms. All the parts with greenish roofs are new. There'll be loads of photovoltaic panels on the hall and the rest of the new build has grass or sedum roofs with grey water recycling and a big new heat pump under the swimming pool so that awful boiler chimney can come down in the next phase. By the time I'm done the school will be twice the size and need half the current power to run it.
The dining hall will be dug in to the side of a small slope so that it's barely visible from neighbouring properties.
The grass roof will carry on the line of the slope, hopefully hiding the fact that there's a bloody enormous building under there.
Here's the new entrance on the left and the existing entrance (which will just be for staff) on the right.For any newbies who might not know, I design girls' schools for a living. Here are a few more of my 3D models to illustrate what I get up to.
There are more under the "Work" label, along with a lot of whingeing.Right … Enough work. I'm off to the city for breakfast.
27 comments:
So where is this going to be erected? :D Or did I just miss it?
Oxford, Joy. It's in four foot high bronze letters beside the entrance. Hee hee.
Hello !
Nice building !
Mme et M. Benaut left home thirsday morning at eleven.
It was a short visit but a very nice one. Actually they are near Chinon and after they will drive to Avignon and Montpellier in the south if the country. Thanks for your visit at my blog. On the beginning of next week I will post the newspaper article.
Cool! Thank you, Claude. It is nice to be able to follow the pair of them around France.
Thanks for popping over here. I'll check out the newspaper article when you post it.
Hehe. You gotta understand - I just woke up when I posted my comment :)
I must visit Oxford one of these days. It's frustrating how far it is from Norwich.
Dive - wow looks amazing BUT why not Boys' Schools???? How can you be so exclusive????
Aha! I took another look at the photo and I couldn't read the signage - 'twas a bit blurred. :D
ooo, I remember the colon segment.
I love this new building plan, especially the curved dining room. Explain grass rooves.
Oxford truly was built in the wrong place, Joy.
Go in the winter to avoid the tourists.
Jules: I LIKE girls! The best thing about school was the fact that I got to hang around with schoolgirls all day. Now I can get PAID to do that! Yay!
Hee hee, Joy. Luckily the builders will have the high res versions, otherwise we'd end up with a blurry sign.
Thank you for re-naming my school so intestinally, Robyn!
A grass or sedum roof absorbs ninety percent of the rain that would normally get washed into the sewers and cause floods. Plus they have a network of pipes and mini-reservoirs built in to collect and filter the rest for use in flushing the toilets (grey water recycling). Also they act as insulation. Together with the photovoltaic cells and the heat pump the school should more than halve its energy use and its sewerage bills.
We're planting the dining room roof with the same grass and wildflower mix as the meadow slope in front of it and the remainder will be low-maintenance sedums.
Boring for most folk but exciting for me.
Wow. Bring that grass roof technology to the States and start a shingle revolution!
Hee hee. It will get there when the Democrats get back in, Robyn. If your imbecile Nazi rulers still persist in burning Alaska's National Parks for warmth they'll have no need for energy efficient buildings.
Sigh … If only fifty percent of Americans weren't dumber than a hat full of pigshit.
Really awesome looking school! The curves are especially nice. Also I'm very impressed by the energy efficient aspects of your design! There's a lot of that going on in CA as you can imagine. (I was recently walking across the UC Berkeley campus and heard two guys talking and one said, "Dude, what do you know about photovoltaic cells?") When you say school, what ages are we talking about? Is is a boarding school?
Not boarding, Katie, and ages from infant to university.
This one is the equivalent of your junior and senior high plus the first two years of college. After that they go on to Oxford Uni.
I'm not speaking to you today Dive. Well, maybe I am but only because that nice guy who plays guitar and likes people is always nearby.
I have tried to help you with the lady folk and you retreat to your knives and towels, and now won't even consider picking up Maria's fictional scenario character's tube of lipstick?!
Run Forest, Run!
Now the talented architect is designing a Marxist cocoon around himself to shield him from the evil Rebublicans who are mostly just people like Prudence and me- trying not to be taxed into the negatives and be completely controlled by the government? We are not evil but are merely trying not to spend more than we make. Some Republicans ARE evil but that can be found on either side of any issue.
Boohiss to political slamfests.
Ok, now that I've gotten that off my chest, have made my own poorly crafted protective bubble and am quickly recovering from your latest jabs to my intelligence, let me do a 180 and tell you how awesome your new school creation is!
Well, it IS! I am amazed at this grass roof grey water technology of which you speak. Isn't that so cool!!! I like what you guys do in the name of conservation!! (Yes, even though I'm evil and want to drill in a remote part of my own country).
Are these schools partially funded by the government or are they strictly private organizations? I'm curious about the school going all the way through to early college. That is an interesting concept. I think many young people could benefit from a more structured beginning to undergrad studies. I certainly would have.
You are fortunate to have a job that thrills you(and everyone else) and suits you so well!
Hope you had a nice relaxing day with Phil and the others.
Your friend, the Fluffy Cloud
Thank you, Fluffy Cloud.
I'll not throw any more stones at the Republicans and I'll steer clear of weemen today as I'm in a good mood.
The schools are ours, although the government keeps a close eye and steals our ideas for state schools, which is a good thing.
We're doing a lot more cool conservation stuff, including using one of my curvy-roofed school buildings as a test bed for "cloudy solar panels". These are a photovoltaic film a few millimetres thick that can be applied to curved surfaces and it changes colour to achieve the most efficient electrical gain from differing light conditions; it is almost black in sunshine and changes to silvery-grey in cloudy and low-light situations, whilst still producing maximum power. I asked the designers if they could make some for me that can change to any colour I want and they're working on it. It would be cool to have a completely photovoltaic coated building that changes colours like a chameleon. Great for art and design departments.
The curvy school building further down the post is part of a music department that when complete will be the shape of a treble clef. I designed the glass walls and open spaces to help the building heat and cool itself naturally depending on the season. It costs about the same as my house to power the entire thing.
We also have wind farms and are looking at a tidal power station for one of our schools situated on an estuary.
Carbon neutral design would mean you wouldn't need to drill Alaska. Kick Big Oil in the balls and follow us!
Dive -
You can link to me anytime :^D
Cool school and green, too!! I pretty much went to school in a series of cinder-block boxes, painted industrial green, blue and yellow. In elementary school, the boys had use of the gym, so the girls were banished to the "everything room" for phys ed. Imagine playing volleyball in a room with standard-height ceilings.
- Lulu
Amazing Dive,
I love the lines, the design and the environmentally friendliness. I can appreciate as our district just built a new school. We had the opportunity to meet with the architects to help plan our art rooms. It is a beautiful design, but not nearly as earth-friendly as yours!
Whoa dude that is so kool do you do model railways too? I went to legoland once and that totally blew my mind.
Lulu: Thank you and hee hee!
I'm afraid I went to school in a traditional red-brick English Grammar School with all the psychological horrors that implies. Which is probably why I try my best to build schools that kids will love to be in.
The kids who use the curvy building were asked to name it and they chose to call it "Happy House", which kinda broke me up a bit and made me realise perhaps I'm doing something right with my life after all.
Neetzy: I love doing art and design departments. I can go totally nutjob with colour and crazy shapes. Those are fun!
Hi, Brad. Hee hee. All Architects love Lego. I think I'm gonna have to borrow or kidnap someone's child so I can go visit Legoland, too.
Wow...a grass roof....how SMART.
This one's meadow grass and wild flowers, Maria, but we do have some large flat roofs over underground car parks and swimming pools that have gardens and trees and playgrounds on them.
I want a grass roof =(
Nice Pickies. Can you tell me what program you use? Does it have a 3D user interface?
Hi, E.
I use ArchiCad (which I know is available down under as I have a constant stream of year-out Aussies and Kiwis working for me) on Mac Pros with Artlantis R as a ray tracing engine for the final output.
If you've not used ArchiCad it is a full on 3D modelling Cad programme. You don't "draw" the building, but model it in 3D and plans and sections are merely slices through the model.
It's really cool. When you insert a window or door into a wall it adds in all the cavity insulation and lintol details on your plans and sections automatically.
Way too much to describe here but it is an awesome programme.
It really needs Mac Pros to work fully though. We do have some Windows machines here but they can't handle the high end stuff.
Cool! Ill have to check out this ArchiCad. Too bad you have to use Macs =(, I love my PC's!
Have you heard of Realsoft 3D? I used this program for my Visual Arts Major work (3D animation) in High School. It was a bitch to Render though: I was using my parent's PC, and the graphics card and processer were crud. It Took SO long! But nice effects in the end, and well worth the wait.
ArchiCad is bloody expensive, Dot, so only look into it if you need to do high-end CAD drawings for construction purposes.
I must confess I've never really understood all the Mac v. PC debate; I like using both of 'em; but the Mac Pros (as opposed to the home iMacs) are the only things that will handle the stuff I have to do. Each one's got 4 Intel processors inside and I have seven of the buggers linked as a render farm. ArchiCad is set up so that it looks for Macs on the network and steals any unused processing power from them to help the rendering.
I've not used Realsoft myself. When I'm not using ArchiCad I just tend to dick around with Bryce (hey, I'm old … I've been using Macs for graphics since 1984 and was an eager beta tester when Kai Krause's MacPaint became Photoshop v1 and when he came up with the original Bryce … ancient history, I know).
Rendering is always a problem, which is why I never throw away old computers at home; I just network 'em all up for batch rendering while I'm asleep.
I notice you've got Shiela's link on your blog (These Boots). She is totally awesome as a programmer, as well as a person.
Seven machines in your render farm! Nice. I’m loving the fact that ArchiCad ‘STEALS’ processing power: how evil!
Well, when you started using Macs for graphics Dive, I was minus four in age. =) In high school, we only had Macs, which was extremely annoying when studying IPT and SDD (Information processes and technology/ Software Design and Development). Since school, and throughout Uni, I’ve only used PCs, for the simple fact that I like to LAN it up with mates, and game like a bitch (excuse language). I’m not into graphics as much as I am programming and the logic behind them both. Yay for Math.
I’ll have to get Chatting with Shiela then. I love her Pictures!
Hee hee! Yeah, rub it in; I was born in the Cretacious.
Shiela programmes in Java and Carbon Lib for Macs and I know she does PC stuff, too.
We used to sit on the sofa with a bottle of wine; me playing GTA on the old PS2 and her typing arcane numbers into her laptop.
Programmers … Huh!
Yay for math indeed (except we add an "s" to it up here in Pomland).
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