OUGD503 Collaborative: London floods

Thames Valley Police have declared a "major incident" in east Berkshire.

A major incident has also been declared in Surrey by the county's police force.

Howard Davidson, from the Environment Agency, said he expected conditions in the county to deteriorate as more rain fell over the coming days.

"We have issued flood warnings from Datchet down to Shepperton, and we urge people to take heed of the flood warnings. We are anticipating another three or four inches on the Thames over the next 24 hours."

The Environment Agency said it had never issued as many severe flood warnings and that many areas had seen more than double their average rainfall.

A two-hour meeting of the emergency Cobra committee has taken place.

The prime minister took part by phone from south-west England, where he will spend the night.

Speaking afterwards, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said sites likely to have problems in coming days were being identified and prioritised.

"Everything possible" was being done to protect homes and communities, and special attention was being paid to water and electrical plants, he added.

The control of sandbags and ordering of temporary flood defences would be centralised by government, he said, and "full military support" remained on standby across the south.

Railway lines have also been badly affected with passengers facing severe delays.

OUGD503 Collaborative: Al Gore

OUGD503

COLLABORATIVE

AL GORE

Al Gore is an American activist and former vice president of the united states. He has worked on a number of different projects including the oscar nominated film 'An inconvenient truth'

Former Vice President Al Gore is co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management. He is a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and a member of Apple, Inc.'s board of directors. Gore spends the majority of his time as chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit devoted to solving the climate crisis.

Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980 and 1982 and the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.

He is the author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance, An Inconvenient Truth, The Assault on Reason, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, and most recently, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change. He is the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary and is the co-recipient, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for "informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change."

THE CLIMATE REALITY PROJECT

Source

The Climate Reality Project, founded and chaired by former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore, is dedicated to unleashing a global cultural movement demanding action on the climate crisis. Despite overwhelming international scientific consensus on climate change, the global community still lacks the resolve to implement meaningful solutions. The Climate Reality Project exists to forge an unwavering bedrock of impassioned support necessary for urgent action. With that foundation, together we will ignite the moral courage in our leaders to solve the climate crisis.

The Climate Reality Project employs cutting-edge communications and grassroots engagement tools to break the dam of inaction and raise the profile of the climate crisis to its proper state of urgency. With a global movement more than 5 million strong and a grassroots network of Climate Reality Leaders trained by Chairman Al Gore, we stand up to denial, press for solutions, and spread the truth about climate change to empower our leaders to solve the climate crisis.

A FUTURE WITH OUT CARBON POLLUTION

Carbon pollution is driving climate change, transforming our weather, disrupting our lives, and threatening our future. The culprit? Dirty power plants dumping unlimited carbon pollution into our air.

A groundbreaking rule proposed by the EPA, if adopted, will change this picture. The rule will significantly limit the amount of carbon pollution new power plants are allowed to dump into our air and help ensure a safer, cleaner, and healthier future for us all.





AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 Academy Award winning documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about formerUnited States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate made in the film, he has given more than a thousand times.

Premiering at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opening in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006, the documentary was a critical and box-office success, winning 2 Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song. The film grossed $24 million in the U.S. and $26 million in the foreign box office, becoming the 9th highest grossing documentary film to date in the United States.

The idea to document his efforts came from producer Laurie David who saw his presentation at a town-hall meeting on global warming which coincided with the opening of The Day After Tomorrow. Laurie David was so inspired by Gore's slide show that she, with producer Lawrence Bender, met with Guggenheim to adapt the presentation into a film.

Since the film's release, An Inconvenient Truth has been credited for raising international public awareness of climate change and reenergizing the environmental movement. The documentary has also been included in science curricula in schools around the world, which has spurred some controversy.

OUGD505 Studio brief 1: Usonian housing

OUGD505

STUDIO BRIEF 01

USONIAN HOUSES

In 1936, when the United States was in the depths of an economic depression, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright developed a series of homes he called Usonian. Designed to control costs, Wright's Usonian houses had no attics, no basements, and little ornamentation.

Some have said that the word Usonia is an abbreviation for United States of North America. This meaning explains Wright's aspiration to create a democratic, distinctly national style that was affordable for the "common people" of the United States. "Nationality is a craze with us," Wright said in 1927. "Samuel Butler fitted us with a good name. He called us Usonians, and our Nation of combined States, Usonia. Why not use the name?" So, Wright used the name.

SOURCE: "Frank Lloyd Wright On Architecture: Selected Writings (1894-1940)," Frederick Gutheim, ed., Grosset's Universal Library, 1941, p. 100.

Exterior of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Brandes home, at 2202 212th Ave S.E., in Sammamish.

OUGD505 Studio brief 1: Community planning

OUGD501
STUDIO BRIEF 01
COMMUNITY PLANNING

Frank Lloyd Wright was interested in site and community planning throughout his career. His commissions and theories on urban design began as early as 1900 and continued until his death. He had 41 commissions on the scale of community planning or urban design.

His thoughts on suburban design started in 1900 with a proposed subdivision layout for Charles E. Roberts entitled the "Quadruple Block Plan." This design strayed from traditional suburban lot layouts and set houses on small square blocks of four equal-sized lots surrounded on all sides by roads instead of straight rows of houses on parallel streets. The houses, which used the same design as published in "A Home in a Prairie Town" from the Ladies' Home Journal, were set toward the center of the block to maximize the yard space and included private space in the center. This also allowed for far more interesting views from each house. Although this plan was never realized, Wright published the design in the Wasmuth Portfolio in 1910.

The more ambitious designs of entire communities were exemplified by his entry into the City Club of Chicago Land Development Competition in 1913. The contest was for the development of a suburban quarter section. This design expanded on the Quadruple Block Plan and included several social levels. The design shows the placement of the upscale homes in the most desirable areas and the blue collar homes and apartments separated by parks and common spaces. The design also included all the amenities of a small city: schools, museums, markets, etc. This view of decentralization was later reinforced by theoretical Broadacre City design. The philosophy behind his community planning was decentralization. The new development must be away from the cities. In this decentralized America, all services and facilities could coexist "factories side by side with farm and home."
COMMUNITY PLANNING PROJECTS:

1900–1903 — Quadruple Block Plan. 24 homes in Oak Park, Illinois (unbuilt)1909 — Como Orchard Summer Colony. Town site development for new town in the Bitterroot Valley, 

Montana

1913 — Chicago Land Development competition. Suburban Chicago quarter section

1934–1959 — Broadacre City. Theoretical decentralized city plan – exhibits of large-scale model

1938 — Suntop Homes also known as Cloverleaf Quadruple Housing Project – commission from Federal Works Agency, Division of Defense Housing — low cost multifamily housing alternative to suburban development

1942 – Cooperative Homesteads, commissioned by a group of auto workers, teachers and other professionals, 160-acre farm co-op was to be the pioneer of rammed earth and earth berm construction. (unbuilt)

1945 – Usonia Homes – 47 homes (three designed by Wright) in Pleasantville, New York1949 – The Acres, also known as Galesburg Country Homes, five homes (four designed by Wright) in Charleston Township, Michigan

1949 – Parkwyn neighborhood – A plat in Kalamazoo, Michigan developed by Wright containing mostly Usonian homes on circular lots with common spaces in between (since replatted)

OUGD505 Studio brief 1: Contextual research

OUGD505
STUDIO BRIEF 01
CONTEXTUAL RESEARCH

For the research project I am looking at a 'Collection of Frank Lloyd wright's work' Modernist architecture is something that i have always been interested in. I have considered a number of sources including online and books to source this research.

BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE:

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1000 structures and completed 532 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by his design for Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States.

His work includes original and innovative examples of many different building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. Wright authored 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio. Already well known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time."

EDUCATION AND EARLY CAREER:

Wright attended Madison High School, but there is no evidence he ever graduated. He was admitted to the University of Wisconsin–Madison as a special student in 1886.There he joined Phi Delta Theta fraternity, took classes part-time for two semesters, and worked with a professor of civil engineering, Allan D. Conover. In 1887, Wright left the school without taking a degree (although he was granted an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University in 1955) and arrived in Chicago in search of employment. As a result of the devastating Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and recent population boom, new development was plentiful in the city. He later recalled that his first impressions of Chicago were that of grimy neighborhoods, crowded streets, and disappointing architecture, yet he was determined to find work. Within days, and after interviews with several prominent firms, he was hired as a draftsman with the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Wright previously collaborated with Silsbee—accredited as the draftsman and the construction supervisor—on the 1886 Unity Chapel for Wright's family in Spring Green, Wisconsin. While with the firm, he also worked on two other family projects: All Souls Church in Chicago for his uncle, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, and the Hillside Home School I in Spring Green for two of his aunts. Other draftsmen who worked for Silsbee in 1887 included future architects Cecil Corwin, George W. Maher, and George G. Elmslie. Wright soon befriended Corwin, with whom he lived until he found a permanent home.

PERSONAL STYLE AND CONCEPTS:

 He made innovative use of new building materials such as precast concrete blocks, glass bricks and zinc cames(instead of the traditional lead) for his leadlight windows, and he famously used Pyrex glass tubing as a major element in the Johnson Wax Headquarters. Wright was also one of the first architects to design and install custom-made electric light fittings, including some of the very first electric floor lamps, and his very early use of the then-novel spherical glass lampshade (a design previously not possible due to the physical restrictions of gas lighting).

As Wright's career progressed, so did the mechanization of the glass industry. Wright fully embraced glass in his designs and found that it fit well into his philosophy of organic architecture. Glass allowed for interaction and viewing of the outdoors while still protecting from the elements. In 1928, Wright wrote an essay on glass in which he compared it to the mirrors of nature: lakes, rivers and ponds. One of Wright's earliest uses of glass in his works was to string panes of glass along whole walls in an attempt to create light screens to join together solid walls. By utilizing this large amount of glass, Wright sought to achieve a balance between the lightness and airiness of the glass and the solid, hard walls. Arguably, Wright's best-known art glass is that of the Prairie style. The simple geometric shapes that yield to very ornate and intricate windows represent some of the most integral ornamentation of his career. Wright responded to the transformation of domestic life that occurred at the turn of the 20th century, when servants became less prominent or completely absent from most American households, by developing homes with progressively more open plans. This allowed the woman of the house to work in her 'workspace', as he often called the kitchen, yet keep track of and be available for the children and/or guests in the dining room. Much of modern architecture, including the early work of Mies van der Rohe, can be traced back to Wright's innovative work.

Wright also designed some of his own clothing. His fashion sense was unique, and he usually wore expensive suits, flowing neckties, and capes. Wright drove a custom yellow 'raceabout' in the Prairie years, a red Cord convertible in the 1930s, and a famously customized 1940 Lincoln for many years. He earned many speeding tickets in each of his vehicles.

Wright strongly believed in individualism and did not affiliate with the American Institute of Architects during his career, going so far as to call the organization "a harbor of refuge for the incompetent," and "a form of refined gangsterism." When an associate referred to him as "an old amateur" Wright confirmed, "I am the oldest."

OUGD503 Responsive: Purdey's Bottle design

CARTON/PAPER BASED PACKAGING:

Carton and paper based packaging could be a good way to take the Purdey's brand, its renewable, ecological and fits the brief requirements as it is opaque. However I think the glass bottle they currently use is more high class and gives the user a more grown up, luxurious experience.

GLASS/METAL PACKAGING:

OUGD504 Design for print and web: Aesthetic research

OUGD504
DESIGN FOR PRINT AND WEB
AESTHETIC RESEARCH