You would think that if you are submitting for building plans to the local authority you would already finished developing your design. But here I am looking back at past sketches because the essence or soul got lost in autocad drawings.
Well due to some discrepancies of setback in Kuching I have the opportunity to do a huge courtyard garden at the back, hence digging out the old sketches.
But time is running fast. When that happens, you have to feel deeper and visualize better.
Commit your ideas to paper.
It’s coming to the end of the month now.
The client did comment and Boss also commented. We were confused exactly what was the decision. Is he taking the drawings to be shown to client again?
No, we are going to submit for Building Plan submission and all on board for the ride, albeit there are still niggly changes so scrape the plans again.
Trying to complete all plans, elevations and sections manually so can transfer to CAD
I suppose when Boss mentioned working drawing level, he wants us to be serious and stop fooling around the design scheme.
I would probably say the same thing myself.
Struggling to correct plans and confirm elevations. Late night again.
I am trying to do as much decisions in design quickly so the assistants can refer to my drawings tomorrow, so since I used my mornings for other things
Now I am arguing with Kamelia about the roof design. In my gut we need to base design on a rationale, and it could be modern design with neo colonialism elements.
Like what the sketch shows. We have the spaces ie internal courtyards but there is no rationale to basic design strategy in terms of articulation.
The design can be modern but the client wants pitch roof and Andalusian ie south Spain / mediterranean ala Moroccan so how do we marry them. To me the rationale is the colonial bungalow.
It all points out to me drawing up the whole elevations in manual and ask them to draw it on CAD, no matter how long it takes
Note that now I have to communicate well and give better instructions to the team so that we don’t lose precious time.
I need to correct the plans to a level that it is building plan, at the same time, planning submission standard. So in order for me to do that I need to give precise instructions to my assistants.
I could not do so because I was unable to communicate my ideas clearly partly due to indecisions.
So now no more indecisions.
Back to the drawing board. Boss called when I just arrived a little after 2 pm after my lunch date.
He gave me further instructions after meeting the client. He said “okay” and requested to complete a set for the client when he visits him in Qatar next week.
I asked Kamelia to print a set for me to work on. It’s going to have building plan submission information ie working drawing, so I need to push the drawing to another level.
The elevations and 3Ds need final confirmation.
Despite my hiatus, Boss took over and massaged the design and although it looks less what I envisioned, this will do for now to show the client. We did not have much time to shape the 3D so Boss said the strategy is to make the client like the plan first.
In the morning I attended the Department Meeting and presented for five minutes the idea of a Teaching and Research Nexus and involved with other agenda put forth.
I am coming to work only half a day from now on for the rest of my sabbatical at Juteras.
I worked with Kamelia the articulation of solids and voids and basic external form and we came up with the drawing above
Contextural Design 