Northern Ireland trip

At the beginning of the East holiday, I went to Northern Ireland with my friends. We have spent two days in Belfast. First I want to talk about the City Hall which was finished in 1906. The appearance is very splendid, the main material is Portland stone and the building style is the Baroque Revival. A big dome is in the center, and the primary feeling this building produced is awfulness. On one side of this building is a nice garden with some columns in it. There are three Latin cross on the grass and the atmosphere is very peaceful.

Inside the building, the ornaments are extraordinary detail and luxurious. Such as the floor, the lights, the stairs, everything is grand. I can see the big dome as well. I was strongly influenced by the space. There is a small exhibition area as well, it recorded the memory of this building.

The shopping center is another great building, unlike most buildings here, it is focus on modernism and technic. In my unclear memory it has three parts, and uses a circulated area which is full of stairs to connect them together. The roofs on the three parts is glass (maybe plastic), and use the steel truss to support them. In the center, the roof is a glass dome which is supported by steel truss. It is very high, and a rolled stairs can get to the top. There are several platforms on the stairs, it is all supported by steel. I think the dome is to bring the old elements to the new building.

Most of the buildings in this city are built by brick, including some modern buildings. Some of them are very high, and uncountable bricks keep the city its own characters. Maybe the brick is the tradition in Belfast. On the whole, this city has a completely different feeling compared with Dundee. It has many buildings built in recent years, at the same time the using of brick weakened the feeling of modernism.


 

Paper Project

Paper Project is the last design assignment in this semester, it is an interesting project and also helps us familiar with the basic structure.

In the exercise 1 we need to make three models, the aim of it is try to find the space possibility with A4 paper. The fist one I made is like a "shell", the way to make it is just rolling some cut parts of paper. And the concept in this is to show the contrast of surface and space.

The second model of mine is cutting several strips on one paper, and then snap it and make it cross the paper. Like the picture. And the concept of it is to show the two faces of a paper. On one face is the repetition and the same, and on the other face is the different and variation. The third model is about the cube and cylinder, and the aim is to show the comparison of the arc line and the straight line.

In the exercise 2, I developed the "shell" model, made it more detail and used detail paper as the skin. The second model is several cylinders, it is inspired from exercise 1 as well, but in exercise 1, the cylinders are very weak, and this time I made the overhanged parts more stable. The third one is a tetrahedron, it is consisted of four triangular faces, so this structure is very strong.

In the last exercise, a pavilion which related to the prior models needs to be made. I chose the site which sits

on the hillside of Dundee and it is surrounded by many playgrounds. I developed the "shell" model, and decided to use it as a small sitting place for relax. I developed the structure of it, made the thickness of the beams, and added a column to support the structure. The image shows what does
it look like in the site.