Last ever Freshers week

It's nice to be back in Sheffield again for the last year of my undergraduate Architecture degree, and I'm so happy to be living in a lovely new house with 5 girls that I love. The week started with my parents driving me up from London on Monday with a car full of stuff, ready to move into my new room. The most significant parts of the week night involved going to 'Tuesday club' at the union to see Shy Fx, Ms.Dynamite, B.Traits and Dismantle, which was a great night especially as the union venue 'Foundry and Fusion' is finally open again after a year of refurbishment. Wednesday night was basically a reunion of all our friends at uni at a night called 'Gold Teeth' at the Harley Pub, and the last highlight is an unexpected impulse buy at Oxfam on friday; a reclining armchair for my bedroom!  Sitting here on sunday night the day before the first day of term, I'm feeling nostalgic already about never going to a freshers again and my housemates and I were discussing that is the time when everything is our 'last', ie our last september together, our last house together... rather lame I know.. However, I am quite excited about never having freshers flu again!

Tuesday Club

Me and Jasmine in an obligatory pre night out photo

Estelle getting a feel for the new armchair in Oxfam

First proper house meal: Courgettes, Feta Cheese, Sweet Potato, Wine and Jazz music

South East Asia: 16 stops in 8 weeks

This summer my best friend Estelle and I set out on a 2 month adventure across South East Asia. Starting in Bangkok, we travelled north via Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai and then onto Pai. Taking the slow boat into Laos from Chiang Kong, our only stop there was Luang Prabang. From there we flew via Hanoi in Danang in Vietnam, working our down the south coast (Hoi An, Nha Trang, Saigon) before crossing into Cambodia. There we started in Sihanoukville in the south and travelled north into Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Our last two weeks were spent on the Thai Islands of Koh Phangan, Koh Tao and Koh Phi Phi.

I can honestly say that it was one of the most fantastic things that I have ever done and I truly had an amazing time. We also met so many cool people along the way, which made the trip even better. One of my favourite places that we visited was Pai in Northern Thailand, where we had the best time staying in a hostel called 'Spicy Pai' and where we made friends who we then travelled with for a lot of the trip. It was a very chilled place surrounded by picturesque mountains and just planted fresh rice fields. The town itself was backpacker heaven, filled with the most gorgeous food and book shops and market stalls selling some of the coolest jewellery and bags that I have seen! We had a great few days renting scooters and driving from waterfall to waterfall, exploring the scenic countryside. It was my first proper time on the back of a scooter and it was just so exhilarating; I felt so free riding along, watching elephants go by with the cool breeze from the wind blowing my hair from side to side. At night we made our own party with our new friends from the hostel, pretended we were at full moon with bright neon face paint and then danced the night away at a wonderful Bamboo club where the floor felt like you were on a trampoline. We were so sad to leave after the 3 nights we spent there, but they were some of the best days of our entire trip.

Wat Pho, Bangkok, Thailand

Ayutthaya, Thailand

cycling amongst the ruins of Ayutthaya, Thailand

Tiger Kingdom, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Luang Prabang, Laos

monks in Luang Prabang, Laos

Marble Moutain, Hoi An, Vietnam

Estelle cycling to the beach, Hoi An, Vietnam

Hoi An, Vietnam

Waiting for our flight to Vietnam

Pai Canyon, Pai, Thailand

Estelle chilling in a hammock in Spicy Pai hostel, Pai, Thailand

Taking a break from scootering in Pai, Thailand

 meditating on the beach in Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Estelle looking great in Sihanoukville, Cambodia

A tuk-tuk in Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Estelle, myself and Vicki at Lotus Bar inKoh Tao, Thailand

Dancing the night away at a beach party in Koh Phangan, Thailand

 watching the sunset in Koh Phangan, Thailand

Coming up to the last week of the project!

Over the past week or so, I have finally got up to scratch on my Vectorworks and photoshop design skills, in preparation for the final review on the 8th of May! Here are some of the things I've been working on.

Interim Reviews

Here are some of the pieces I produced for the project interim reviews, a few weeks after it was set. The brief is to design compact family housing, most practically in a terraced form.

Giant Monster Birds

Over the past few weeks, I have had a slight obsession with using Acetone to transfer pictures as a mode of representation. I love the worn, printed look it gives as well as how quick it is to do; getting me out of laborious hours of colouring in.  The way it works is by printing the flipped version of an image you want from a photocopier or a laser printer, lying it facing down onto the paper and rubbing the acetone all over with sock or cotton wool. The acetone loosens the dry ink particles from the print and transfers it to the paper, therefore it would not work with an inkjet printer. The drawing above is a section from the site that we are analysing in York, with the murky river Ouse in the middle. Note the extra large monster birds in the image, which was a slight scaling mistake! I also used acetone in a postcard task that we were set to describe our initial feelings of York. I chose a photo that I had taken of a busy street with the York Minister in the perspective distance, representing how it dominates the city with most of the roads in the city leading towards it. 

And presently the floods break way

 Site analysis of the site (St George's field, York): all the buildings you can see when standing on the site, and the extent of the area prone to flooding.

Both drawn on photoshop, using digimaps

When the beauty unfolds

source: unknown

Winter has come and almost gone

I finally managed to get my disposables developed from my skiing holiday with my family over Christmas. St Anton is a gorgeous resort in the west of Austria, situated amongst the Arlberg Mountain region in the Alps. It was also the place where the film 'Chalet Girl', starring Ed Westwick was filmed. It was our second winter back there and my second time ever skiing, and after a week exploring most of the pistes (blue and red mostly,not the black ones yet!), I can finally say that I can actually ski!

2013: I solemnly swear to post more regularly

Finding the time to blog is much harder than I thought... I set myself a new years resolution to post at least weekly, but it has taken me about 2 months to get here!

Nevertheless, I am back! It has also occurred to me that blogging is a great tool to get yourself known; as well as posting about what interests me I am going to make a habit of including pieces of work that I am currently doing in Architecture school, as I make my way through the last term of second year.  It's scary to think that I am currently just over half way through my degree, and the easter holidays are two and a half weeks away!.

Our project for this semester is HOUSING, and over the past 4 weeks we have been looking at many precedent studies, as well as conducting research on the uses of domestic spaces.  The year group has been allocated 1 of 6 sites in city of York, which we have now visited twice to carry out our site analysis. It's been quite exciting as I had never been to York before and I didn't know much about the city and trawling its medieval cobbled streets has been quite a novelty. Our latest adventure was climbing to the top of York Minister's tower; an experience that I can say I will never do again! The photos below are from the first especially sunny trip last Saturday.

York Minister: One of the most important medieval buildings in Europe

The Shambles: one of the oldest streets in York with overhanging timber framed buildings, which is said to have provided the inspiration for ' Diagon Alley' in the Harry Potter series

The crowded streets of York on a saturday afternoon

Inter-railing Europe Summer 2012

After a long interlude of more than 5 months I am returning to share with you with my thoughts, views, and updates on daily life. Caught up amidst the deadlines of last year, the bustle of the long summer and the start of a new academic year, the past five months have been exciting and I can wait to start by sharing photos of my two week inter-railing trip across Eastern Europe!

We travelled from Istanbul > Sofia > (via Belgrade) to Budapest > Vienna > Hvar > Split 

ISTANBUL, Turkey

This is where we started out journey, flying into Istanbul Airport on the 24th of August. We stayed for 2 nights at the Old City Esma Hostel. 

 I found Istanbul to be a magical, vibrant city full of glorious architecture (which I was soaking up and sketching!). Our lovely hostel owner, planned out our days so that we would manage to see as much as possible; the beautiful mosques, Cemberlitas Hamam (amazing turkish baths), boat trip on Bosphorus and ofcourse the Grand Bazaar.

 Inside the beautiful Suleymaniye Mosque

Amongst the fountains in the gardens between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque

 Suleymaniye Mosque

 The Hagia Sophia

Istanbul Sirkeci Train Station 

Lamps at the Grand Bazaar 

Jo and I taking in the beauty of our surroundings

 Estelle reading our action packed day plan

SOFIA, Bulgaria

Taking a 4 hour coach from Istanbul to its Border at Kapikuli, we boarded a 6 hour overnight train to Sofia, arriving there on the morning of the 26th of August.

Sofia, was a city that I didn't really know much about before I visited. However, I had always been intrigued, partially because my sister shares the name and the greek meaning of the word being 'Wisdom', I figured it must be a pretty cool place. We stayed for only a night at the Crosspoint Hostel in  what was a quiet, leafy neighbourhood with a beautiful church a few feet away.  Sofia seemed to be unique, being the only European Capital with its own mountain and the only one named after a church.  We spent our limited time wandering the deserted streets ( it seemed that most of its residents flee to Bulgaria's Black Sea coast in summer time),  visiting its famous churches and monuments, attempting to get up the Mountain Vitosha ( and failing), and in the evening visiting an amazing, wooden, candlelit local pub which did not use any electricity! 

 Ash exploring the streets of Sofia

 The neighbourhood that our hostel was in

 Sofia's National Art Gallery

 Estelle admiring the the art

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral 

 Alexander Nevsky Cathedral 

Walking along the main squares, with the Vitosha Mountain in the background

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
Budapest is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. The life and culture there is exciting and our days were packed with trying to see as much of the city as we could in a few days. Some of the highlights were the amazing baths ( we went to the Szechenyi ones in Pest), visiting the Fisherman's Bastion, dancing on a roof club called Corvinteto, listening to live Hungarian music in a beautiful outdoor restaurant and spending ages walking through as many districts as we could!

We stayed at the Backpackers Hostel in Budapest, which is one of the nicest places we had stayed; hammocks and pillows in the garden! 

 Sightseeing: the mixture of modern and olden architecture in Budapest made it an excitingly beautiful city to walk around

 Sitting on a pillar on Heroes Square

 Hereos Square:  built in 1896 to celebrate 1000 years of Hungarian history, with the Archangel Gabriel at the top of the pillar

Our hostel was in the leafy suburbs across the river in Buda, near to the Castle district. Heres Estelle, Jo and Ash on one of our morning tram rides into Pest. 

VIENNA, Austria
Our trip to Vienna was very short, as we decided last minute to go on our way to Croatia, as we still had one more travel space on our Inter-rail ticket. We dumped our bags at lockers in the train station and spent 5 hours roaming the streets of Vienna. It was noticeably colder there, and it was the first time I had put on both my jeans and jumpers!

 Beautiful Architecture of Vienna

Excitement of being in Vienna for just a few hours! 

Horses from the famous Spanish Riding School

HVAR, Croatia
We arrived into Hvar's sunny neoclassical harbour after a two 8 hour train journeys, across Austria, Slovenia and most of Croatia! It was one of dazzlingly beautiful Islands we had ever seen, filled with the smell of of Lavender from its famous fields. We spent the last few days of our trip wandering the maze of cobbled streets, drinking coffee in the square, swimming on a nudist mini island, renting boats, eating dinner and watching the sun go down from the rooftop of our hostel, buying jewellery from the markets and drinking cocktails in the evenings.

View from the rooftop of our Hostel

Renting a taxi boat to the mini islands  

 Hvar's harbour

 Ash excited to be renting our own boat!

Swimming in the bluest of waters on a nudist beach

The Cathedral of St. Stephen on the eastern side of the main square

Split, Croatia

Our last stop on the map was the city of Split, from which we got our flight back to England. Spending only one night and half a day there, we managed to fit in one last beach trip and we spent the evening visiting Diocletian's Palace which was bustling with entertainers and musicians. 

 A very shallow beach!

 The last picture that was taken on my camera before it ran out of battery: Jo, Estelle and I, exploring the waters