Sunday 1 November 2009

Hotel Project

Yay our first proper project!! Designing a 5 star rural hotel is the task and hand, and its beginning to scare me now at the scale of the project and how little time we have to complete it. Visiting the site was a good experience, though like a lot of people felt, its going to be hard to get away from whats already there and completely redesign it. I've started some research and I'm beginning to look at the floor plan. Currently, the bedroom sizes are whats causing trouble, as I'm not sure how big they should be. Spoke to a tutor on Friday and she suggested drawing it out to a bigger scale, which will apparently help and also design a general layout for each bedroom (pod) from where I can develop my idea.

Thursday 15 October 2009

Detailing- Example, with photos, sketches and explanations

REPLAY Ingram Street, Glasgow. Decorative Clothes Railing





The unique clothing rails in Replay are simple, yet incredibly effective in design. The basis of the rail is formed around two metal poles, which are suspended from the ceiling. Each pole has holes drilled through it, at regular intervals, from which a long piece of rope is knotted and threaded in a serpentine shape, therefore holding the two poles rigid and secure. Between each bit of threaded rope is where the clothes hanger sits. This in itself is an effective way of stopping the hangers sliding off the end pole and also stops the clothes from getting crushed, as the hangers aren’t bunched up together.
   The fixing attaching the poles to the ceiling is a thin plate of metal screwed to the ceiling. This has a thicker spherical part that has a “loop” drilled through it where a clip ( the type often used by rock climbers) loops through. From this a piece of chain threaded through the pole come up and attaches onto the clip, holding the pole in place. There are about four of these fixing holding the entire pole up.





Replay, Ingram Street, Glasgow. Decorative Coloured Rope Clothes Rail






The two poles are held together by coloured lengths of rope that are threaded through cups hooks, which are facing inwards on each of the poles. The cups hooks are screwed though the metal pole and held in place with a small washer to stop it slipping and also a nut screwed onto the end of the hook. Roughly every second hook has rope threaded through it, starting from the bottom where its knotted and going to the top, to the bottom and so on, in a random manner, and finally knotting at the end. This process is continued until the railing is completely covered in criss-cross ropes. The poles are fixed to the ceiling in the same way as the other railing system.



Kurt Geiger Shop Front Shoe Shelving






The shelving system in Kurt Geiger is mesmerising and creates a sensation that is almost like an optical illusion. In fact, we believe that this detailed relatively simply. The vertical slats of the structure are all made out of mirror. Two pieces of mirror are glued together so each side is mirrored. The shelves are made out of rectangles of bevelled glass, that are glued on each side and slotted in between the vertical slats. This is very cleanly done and no glue can be seen, which was often the case in other examples that we saw where a similar method was used. At the corners the mirrored edges are flush to one another and again it is really clean and smooth.