Archinect - The University of Sheffield, UK (Jordan)

The Advanced Waste Economy

2009-02-06T11:34:59-05:00

Warning: REALLY long post ahead.

Here is a summary of my project in progress. Stick with it, its a lot to take in!

jjl_aweintroduction.pdf

The Dustbin of Europe
The UK currently recycles about one quarter of all its waste [1], with 27 million tonnes a year going into landfill sites, more than any other EU member state. According to the Local Government Association, an area the size of Warwick is now landfill and we are due to run out of landfill space within a decade[2]. This condition is exasperated by the fact that waste processing is considered unprofitable. Research undertaken by the School of Architecture in 2008, on behalf of Sheffield Homes concluded that the average dustbin in Sheffield would generate £11 of profit if certain materials were recycled, as opposed to a £28 loss if everyone were to recycle as much of their household waste as possible over a one year period[3]. Yet, from an environmental standpoint, it is essential that governments begin to take the landfill probl...

On agents, networks and peer to peer collaboration

2008-11-20T05:54:25-05:00

It's been a busy month for me. Live projects coming to a close (see previous entry), conferences and the start of our studio has left me with little to no time to get anything done (well, apart from having the odd beer or six at various functions). I've decided to break this one down into five sections. Apparently, we're not supposed to be plugging a bunch of links, but believe me, the student body has been very very productive over the last month. Following on from my ramblings on the direction of the school's website, with progress being relatively slow, a bit of a counter-culture led by the students has sprung up over the web, with research networks or other interesting projects beginning to surface. I wonder what the official reaction from the School will be, but in any case, our burgeoning online presence is beginning to show a flavour of the kinds of things we get up to.

AGENCY Conference
The Agency conference is an AHRA international architectural conference. This year, ...

The Sheffield Food Network

2008-10-20T16:15:05-04:00

So it's been a while since the last update - as ever the workload is intense but it's strangely satisfying. I won't blather on, except to say that the masters thesis is in, and I'll be posting up a copy for public consumption as soon as I have negotiate IP with the department.

In the meantime, it's been full steam ahead with the Live Project. If you have no idea what a Live Project is, it's something we do at the beginning of term for the masters course every year. It is a 6 week, real time project with a real client, with this years projects ranging from building a small pavilion, to re-programming a recycling strategy for a housing organisation in Sheffield. My own project is called the Sheffield Food Network: a website that allows users to map sustainable food sources made authoritative through a rating system.

Above: The WIP interface for the Sheffield Food Network.

There are several parts to the overall project; the first of course, is playing around with Google Maps A...

On social software and architecture schools

2008-09-25T13:36:53-04:00

Term begins next Monday and I'm still swamped with stuff to do. Currently thrashing out the second draft of my dissertation due in Oct. 15th. My paper is essentially on how we as part of architectural institutions should be using social software (i.e blogs/wikis/etc.) as a way of not only aiding the schools of architecture maintain day to day operations, but also aiding the studio based design process by establishing a kind of 'online culture' to discuss architecture. Essentially, it's transplanting pats of Archinect straight into the school's and becoming part of something much larger through networking. I've copied and pasted the abstract here:

"This proposal explores the possibility of creating a social topology that exists within the Sheffield School of Architecture through the medium of the School's website. Through the use of case studies in other economic and academic fields, it is feasible to develop and maintain a social structure that directly benefits the school in te...

So term hasn't even started yet...

2008-09-08T17:32:07-04:00

...and I am absolutely swamped.

One of the best things about final year at any masters course in Architecture is the dissertation. It pretty much dictates your entire holiday - if you want to do well at it you can forget about doing a job at practice unless you are incredibly organized and motivated, but if you're like most students you start the whole thing about 2 weeks before hand in despite stressing about it all summer.

I figured I'd try and be organized enough to get the thing written a couple of months in advance. Little did I know that despite three weeks working on it solidly every day and I've only just sent out draft 1.1 (yes I even included a revision history) to my tutor for comment and to a couple of mates. My advice; if you're in a position where you have to write your dissertation, get it going as soon as you can.

WIP Draft 1.1: 89 pages that's going to get proverbially hammered into submission.

On another note, since the paper is partly to do with online archit...