The following were comments from my crit (09-02-2009) made by Michael Stacey and David Short:
The project has some interesting starting points but should be built up from layers of information,as opposed to just built upon one moment (the alignment of train and celestial spheres).
Questioning what my architecture is commenting on? Be 'hard nosed' (?)
What is the context of the project? Perhaps imagine the project is about the decoding of knowledge and information existing on various levels around the site, and making it accessible.
Draw more drawings (!?) and use themto explore the idea.
Access a deeper territory.
Think about the technology and materials I might use in the architecture. It doesn't have to arrive at the latter stages of the project.
If I were to do an exercise exploring the location of Roman settlements in relation to the contemporary city, would it uncover a special urban condition in St Albans, where the position of the settlement has moved over time. I wonder how useful doing an exercise would really be though? I guess it's another way of understanding the uniqueness of the site, but past that it might be another Red Herring to put in the fishtank. The movement of the settlement is based on the burial site of St Alban, and a change from following the invading Romans to following Christianity, which Alban was martyred for.
The relinking of people to the landscape and environment, on simple terms through the seasons, but perhaps in a more sophisticated a deeper level? Think about this
Some things to look at were:
Longitude by Dava Sobel - The thorniest scientific problem of the 18th century was how to determine longitude. Many thousands of lives had been lost at sea over the centuries due to the inability to determine an east-west position. This is the engrossing story of the clockmaker, John "Longitude" Harrison, who solved the problem that Newton and Galileo had failed to conquer, yet claimed only half the promised rich reward.
http://tinyurl.com/cuj9rj
Peter Rice's Moonlight Amphitheatre
So that's all they said. It was fair, I showed where I am but they wanted some proposals as to how I build on my ideas. I think I have a clear understanding of elements of the site. What I need to develop over the coming weeks is my architectural approach to the site, and how this can enhance my study into orientation.
