pulling things together and the London Eye

Today we worked in the morning beginning to put the pieces in place for Friday's presentation.

At noon we stopped and quickly returned our class materials to our hotel rooms. Then we headed out to the section of London that holds Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, St James Park, Buckingham Palace, and the London Eye. We grabbed lunch then met in the really really long queue to await our half hour trip up into the sky above the river Thames.

Finally we were on board and got to enjoy the 360 views of this city we have called our home for the last week and a half.

With that extreme sightseeing over the students were free to go and explore the city more. Tomorrow rain is in the forecast and there is much work to finish before Friday.
I've had the privilege of taking students to London 7x now. For me the city is a bit of an old friend, yet, I can be surprised while walking when I come upon some place just off the paths I'm used to that holds hidden beauty.

logo types, maps, research, and more

Today the work continued on for week 4. More work was done on the ethnographic portion, more research, more graphics, and refined maps. More work was also done on the logo and logotype comprehensives for the developments name.

Welcome to week 4

The weekend was filled with various site seeing and adventures by the students. A shoe was lost but everyone had fun.
Today the work resumed - on the ethnographic issues related to the project, on the city name logotype designs - each student worked on both. 17 students, 17 brains, 17 educated solutions to the work.

When our day ended we went to Primrose Hill, took in the views overlooking London, and then headed off to dinner.

Week 3 - Client Presentation and "hello" weekend

Today we left the hotel at 9 am to commute to our clients office. The tube was packed with morning commuters. It was very muggy on the tube and the students learned what professor Chimenti has named "marinating in humanity" feels like. Off the Northern Line to the Central Line than off and a short walk on the busy central London streets to Buro Happold's office.

Two teams presentations began at shortly after 10 am and then feedback from the client.

At noon everyone went to lunch in the neighborhood of our client, then retraced our steps to the tube station to travel to Notting Hill Gate and take a fun walk through a colorful neighborhood on our way to the Design Museum.

With that our first work week in London draws to a close and the student are off to explore and enjoy this amazing place trhey find themselves in. The professors also get a bit of a break.

One day to prepare and update presentation

Today was very compressed. New information was synthesized, old information was updated, new research was done. Presentation was rehearsed, adjustments were made, presentations were made again. Tomorrow is the big day - week 3 presentation live in front of the client.

visiting Oxford

Today we left the hotel again at 9 am for the walk to the tube station, the ride to Paddington Train station, and a train ride to Oxford. Why? In order to understand the situation for a young person trying to live in very expensive London, or very expensive Oxford (and Cambridge) you need to visit those places. In order to understand what the area is like between the Oxford and Cambridge you need to visit Bedford and Stewartby (two of the places closest to the site of the proposed new development.)

We were guided around Oxford by Sophia Spralja, daughter of Professor Kathleen Kaiser, and former Oxford student. She gave us an insider view to the town. After the tour we enjoyed lunch and then the students were given the rest of the afternoon to explore before returning to London.

Tomorrow we synthesize all the information we gathered these past two days and add that to what we did on Monday and heard from our client on last Friday. All this will be mixed into this weeks Friday Presenation live at the clients London Office.

visiting Bedford and Stewartby

Today we left the hotel at 9 am to walk to the Barbican Tube station to ride to Farrington to catch a train to travel to Bedford - about 1 hour outside of London - to see the town that that our project received it's name because of.

We arrived in Bedford and walked around soaking in this old city (established in the 800s). We were most interested in looking at the entry to the city from the train station, the high street, and the river walk. We ate lunch at a very nice pub, then walked back to the train station to go to the town of Stewartby (estabished in 1928) home of the London Brick Company, which in it's heyday produced 8,000,000 bricks a week.

We walked into the town past wild flowers then got an unexpected access to the closed factory, stories from Phil who worked there, and a town/village tour from John. Then we took the train back to London after gleaning great information for our project.