First Year: Site Visit to Stanmer Park.
First Year students have been developing a project for tea houses on a site at local Stanmer Park. This is the first site visit and architectural design exercise the first years have faced and they braved the weather on the coldest day of the year for their first ever site survey. The whole year divided up A 25metre stretch of ground between a forest and a walled garden so that small groups could survey strips of the site.
Back in the studio the groups made 1:20 models of 3m width strips of landscape. As their first exercise in site modelling there were some interesting studio discussions about the modelling of landscape, and representing contours, trees and greenery.
For the final week of this term, students will be investigating how to occupy such narrow strips of land with their designs for tea houses, and will be having to negotiate amongst themselves how to overlap their proposals, how to share common spaces and arguing over access to the landscape views.