Yes, this is my third post and first year has already nearly come to a close.

We had the crits for our last project on thursday and friday, after an intense week of very little sleep (I never thought first year was supposed to be that hardcore! I hate to think of my sleeping patterns in the years to come..)
Our last project was interesting: Urban Live/Work Project. To sum it up in a few words: design a house/office sited on North Gray's Close (a close in Edinburgh's Old Town, with a 12th Century ruin on one side and a bare grassy area on the other) for an architect and her family.
I found that I initially thought a lot about the internal planning and the arrangement of spaces rather than the form or how it was to fit in the site. A key element was the idea of 'overlapping' spaces between work and living. I don't know what is the best way to go about desiging something: is it the internal use or the form or the relationship to the site that should predominate? Obviously they are all important issues, and ideally should be equally weighed, but surely one must come first? I suppose it all depends on the nature of the brief..?
Light was another thing that was important to me, as well as variation of spaces (i.e. contrast between open/enclosed, large/small, etc.).
I don't really know if I really 'liked' my project or not to be honest. I grew to enjoy it more as it developed but I don't think I'm as satisfied with it as I was with my Retreat project, even though it was a much bigger project and I did a lot more work on it. And the crit went better because I wasn't half dead (as I was with the Retreat one).

The thing about talking about what my tutors wanted.. I don't think it's something I really think about to be honest. It doesn't dictate what I do; I do something because I personally think it's good. Of course I'm going to be happy when a tutor praises my work, after all, they're the ones who are giving you the marks! They're the ones who are educating you, it's great if you feel like you have learnt something from them. On a side note, I've wondered how do the tutors actually mark work? Surely (as with all art and design courses) their personal taste comes into it? How do they subjectively judge what is a good/bad building?

Well, this week is all about our portfolios- we get given advice on how to improve them before handing them in after Easter. Should be fun whilst working full time.

And it's the Architecture ball on tuesday! Or the 'Carnival des Artes'. Should be interesting trying to find an outift between classes tomorrow..