Arch1392 Reflections

With another semester now over I have had a think about ARCH 1392, what I have learnt, and my impressions of the subject.

Working in a team has both its benefits and downfalls with which we experienced both and the progressive nature of the course meant there was always something happening and to prepare for, even if it was small like a blog entry, or larger like the presentations and finally building to the final model in UT3.

I found the blogs to be a reasonable size for a weekly task and the presentations every 3 weeks were also achievable.

But as we had no experience in UT3, I thought perhaps there could have been some demonstration of the basics and common tasks we would all use that could have saved us lots of time later and allowed us to focus on producing better models with more features rather than trying to perfect things such as creating and applying textures and meshes from 3ds max, which ultimately was easy but the learning curve to get there was high for different tasks.

The first few weeks of the course where the lectures were not sorted and the course was still finding its feet, would have been an ideal time to get us all up and running with the essentials, which I understand wont be a problem in the future as UT3 is covered in first year in the new degree, but thought it might be worth a thought for the next time a new course/subject is undertaken.

Working in a team was great for us when producing our presentations, with fun ideas to present from different people appearing in what I thought were the more entertaining presentations of the course. We seemed to have a good balance for presenting and they were enjoyable to produce.

However due to the personal situations of members of our group, the bad side of team work was also experienced in the fabrication part of our project, with only 2 of us left to build the UT3 model at the end of the course. Perhaps this added to my feeling that we needed some teaching in it as we had less manpower than other groups, but leaving uni deep into the a.m. to achieve our basic results whilst satisfying to finish, left me feeling we could have achieved much greater results with more hands on deck and less time wasted learning the ropes and losing hours of work through constant crashing of the program when importing certain objects.

I also found in hindsight and from interacting with members from other groups that maybe more time spent giving UT3 a go from scratch rather than rushing to the comfort of 3ds max and trying to import everything, may have lead to a more user friendly model in regards to the technical problems we encountered.

Whether or not I will ever be in an office that uses this technology I dont know but I am glad I have the knowledge to offer it for either my own clients or to a prospective employee which will hopefully gain me an edge over other job seekers in the future.

I found our time with Matt effective and also for those travelling to get to uni and working found it easier to do our meetings after class than try to come back for 30mins on a seperate day.

Ultimately, with all the troubles we had technically with UT3, I found it fitting that the final presentations were abandoned due to technical problems in UT3!!! Whilst most of us were happy to go home to bed on Wednesday, I was looking forward to experiencing everyones models and as a group checking out each others work.

All in all I enjoyed the studio type course and found it refreshing from the standard structure of subjects which breathed some life into a hectic uni schedule and I think much was learnt by all in the first running of this course.

Reflections on topic order

After some discussion, these were our thoughts on the order we think the topics would be best in:

Planning - good to set a plan from the start
Intent - Possibly could be with planning we thought.
Records - learn the value of keeping records early on
Hierarchy - Would know a bit about the hierarchy of your group and
building by this stage
Context - start to think about the context of your building in its
surroundings
Knowledge - Plenty of time to get a  heap of knowledge by this stage
Remuneration - Doesnt need to be to early in our opinion.
Conflict - could be good to reflect on any conflict from later in the
semester

Conflict

“Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.”

The above quote by William James I believe is very true in regards to maintaining a working relationship in a collaborative effort when conflict arises. I believe a lot of conflicts can be happily resolved if both parties are open to solving it rather than widening it.
To often I see people dig there heels in, when a little compromise can see instant results......I guess ego comes into it a lot of the time.

So in the situation where conflicting parties cannot resolve their differences, it is important that the hierarchy in place can do it for them.

In the case of our project, we are yet to have to deal with any real human conflict but in theory our protocol to solving a problem would be this:
* two parties try to solve it themselves, if it doesnt work then:
* Speak to team leader, leader gives decision and if one party still is not happy then:
* Go to our group tutor or course convener and discuss resolution...this is to be the final 'appeal' so to speak, and whatever decision comes from that is final.

But conflict may not necessarily just be among humans. We have experienced conflict amongst machine, with exports of our 3ds max model not being accepted by UT3. In regards to this conflict there may not always be a reasonable solution as machines cant reason and compromise, what it wants is exact or it wont go on. This may lead to us redoing work in different ways wasting valuable time and still not guaranteeing a result.

I think more human conflict would have arisen in our project if we were all confident in every aspect of what needed to be done and then it would have been up to our individual ideas and designs about how to do it. However as we saw a foreign path to complete this project, know one in particular seemed set in any particular idea that they would really fight for, i.e. we were all flexible in what and how we achieved our goal.

So whilst I am happy to not have had to deal with any human conflict, it may well have been a better learning experience for us all if there had been!

Refernces:
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/whenever_you-re_in_conflict_with_someone-there_is/227935.html

Planning

Planning is an important part of everyday life as well as in the professional world. Things such as planning your day to allow time to get to the shops or pick up the kids and any other tasks require you to plan your time, although for regular life it is commonly done in your head, however a common example of everyday life planning in a written form is the shopping list.

In uni life, student diaries allow students to plan ahead and mark when assignments are due or when an exam takes place and thus how to allocate enough time to prepare for it.

In our collaborative effort, planning becomes an essential part of working in a team as we need to plan when we will have certain tasks completed, time and places to meet as well as the allocation of our tasks discussed earlier which is a form of planning our work.

In the professional world, in my personal experience, each week a list of all current jobs is prepared and ranked in order of preference and due date. I am then required to follow this plan to complete the work. Without this planning, dates would be missed, jobs overlooked and in general a far more disorganised practice would be run.

So what does it mean exactly to plan? Simply to organize what you need to do ahead of time and allocate the time in between to achieve your desired outcomes.

Some examples of well known planning:

· The season draw of the football codes, released before the season starts plans every match, venue, date and time with which a game will be played.

· WW2 D-Day invasion – this major military offensive was planned as the allies big attack against the enemy and is one of the larger logistical planning tasks undertaken.

· The tube railway system in London – a plan copied by many as its well organised structure is the yard stick for railway planning.

So essentially good planning allows the smooth running (or at least attempted smooth running) of a task and gives a structured organisation for all to adhere to.

References:
http://articles.bplans.com/index.php/business-articles/writing-a-business-plan/What-Makes-a-Good-Plan?/
viewedMon May 26, 2008

Remuneration

Remuneration is typically in the form of money paid for work completed. It is how the world works, I do some work for you and you pay me for it.

'Some examples of remuneration are:

• salaries and wages
• gratuities paid through an employer
• bonuses, commission and other similar payments
• vacation pay, taxable allowances and benefits
• directors' fees
• payments for casual labour
• amounts paid by an employer to 'top up' benefits, and
• advances of salaries and wages.'

However it is not always as simple as that and there are many variations along the way that can effect whether or not you are paid and how much you are paid.

Firstly, there should be an agreement or contract between the two parties for exactly what needs to be done and how much it is worth. You should then document what has been completed and alert the client of any variations that happen along the way that may alter the original arrangement.

These could be, in the architectural world for example, drastic changes imposed by council or the client that require the amending of plans and as such extra work which can lead to a variation in payment. If these things are not discussed and left until the end, disputes can and do arise.

Remuneration though is not always in the form of money, it may be a contra deal or in the context of university work a grade or result that allows you to proceed to the next level of study.

In our collaboration work where the remuneration is not payment but grading, it is important that all members feel there input is rewarded accordingly and is not dragged down by others.
The allocation of work done earlier in the semester would qualify as a variation as mentioned earlier, as certain unknown elements now require more work than thought and as such we all need to chip in to other areas to complete the task to ultimately get our remuneration.


References:
http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/english/taxes/eht/faq_remuneration.html viewed tue may 20th 2008

Context

Context

“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.”

The above quote relates well to our project as each part of what we do has a relationship to other (sometimes larger) parts of our building and environment.

For example our building (as discussed in hierarchy) begins on the lower floor for ordinary people, but that is to house more prestigious upper levels which then leads the focus toward the central dome. This in turn is set in our nations capital. So our building is designed to meet the context of our highest federal court.

This context is important as it effects the design of the building, as many lower courts built all around the nation are not as symbolic in the nature of there designs and are more designed to fit the context of there own local environments.

The actual materials used to contruct the building however do not appear to be specific for the context of the surrounding site or the building itself as Harry Seidler has used almost identical designs in buildings including the MLC building in Martin Place, Sydney which shares no contextual meaning with the high court of Australia in Canberra but remarkable resemblance in materials.

THE MLC BUILDING SYDNEY

The proposed High Court Of Australia Canberra

Many buildings, in particular energy efficient buildings, are designed with the environmental context in mind and materials chosen represent that. For example many buildings in Tropical Darwin are built on stilts to create airflow underneath with louvers to increase cross ventilation and also provide some shade to be outdoors to combat the tropical environment.

This is in keeping with the context of the building environment and would be out of place in Siberia……

So building context is usually related to the surrounding area and the use of the building, however it is not always totally encompassed and general non specific parts of the design can be used without affecting the overall context of the design.

References:
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/context/ viewed may 13 2008
http://www.futuredarwin.nt.gov.au/recreation/building.html viewed may 13 2008
http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=108161 viewed may 13 2008

Hierarchy

Hierarchy is an order which is used to progress a certain element through logical steps i.e. in a typical computer you have a file which is stored in a folder which is then stored on a drive.
This means you can find your information simply by following the hierarchy of: C:\simon\hierarchy.exe

Governments have a hierarchy from the prime minister downwards and probably the most common and well known hierarchy is in the military where a rank is assigned to each soldier and they must follow orders accordingly.

Hierarchy is also present in our collaborative group with myself being labelled the team leader. However, whilst this may be relevant to solving disputes amongst members, what I have learnt is that the real team leader is the person who continually ensures that the project is heading towards the desired outcome. In this regard, whilst I have done my best, our group tutor Matt has really been the group leader.

Hierarchy in relation to our building:

The building hierarchy consists of a square superstructure turned diagonally on a podium to orientate its forecourt symbolically towards parliament. The superstructure consists of vertical service cores carrying long span roof trusses in a crossover pattern which supports a glazed dome at the centre.
The glass dome provides light to the central open space while the enclosing walls are formed by long span beams with glazing in between attaching to the leg of the square cross. 3 of the enclosed 4 quarters of the cross are occupied by the circular court chambers while the remaining quarter forms the entrance.

The building structure reflects a social hierarchy in that the base contains the administrative offices and services while the upper levels accommodate barrister’s and judges chambers. It could also be claimed that the glass dome then extends the hierarchy to the heavens in a subtle reminder that there is only one other power higher than the courts. Very medieval in concept and reminiscent of the great cathedrals of Europe.

REFERENCES:
'Architecture for the new world. The work of Harry Seidler'
By Peter Blake
Horwitz Australia Ltd., Sydney
Wittenborn and Co.,New York
Karl Kraemer Verlag, Stuttgart