Owairaka. Mountain Top Community Hub.

This was a design I did for a 3rd year studio. This was originally going to be part of a much bigger master plan type design which turned out to be a bit ambitious when time constraints were introduced to the studio. I was disappointed that some my best ideas for the project never made it further than an analysis and assessment assignment, my brain and my sketch book. I decided to focus on bringing the Mount Albert community back to its greatest asset, the mountain Owairaka, through a park oriented library and community centre. I learnt a lot about the direction I want to take with design next year from the experiences, both the achievements and the failures, I had during this studio.

Courtyard, Pergola and Deck. Design and Build.

The brief Monica Bainbridge and I received for this job was to design a courtyard, pergola and deck in a sheltered corner of an existing garden. The area was to be used for a wedding just a month after the scheduled completion but was required to work as a outdoor dining, entertaining and barbeque area for those windy summer evenings following the ceremony date.

I designed the pergola and it’s dimensions to echo the style of the original existing pergolas that surround the house. The decking material, dimensions and bordering is also the same as the existing decks at the site.

The pavers are 600x600mm and made by Jagas. I chose this size as the area to be paved was quite large. The gaps in the pavers are filled with green dwarf mondo at 40mm gaps which will fill in an slightly cover the edges of tiles within about a year.

The rain cleared, the sun came out and the courtyard was finished in time for the wedding.

Swanson Garden.

This was a short 2 week studio that followed on from the high density sub-division design in Swanson. The task was to design what we thought could be a typical garden within that Swanson subdivision. I was faced with a site much larger than everyone else’s as I had taken the communal garden approach in the previous structure plan. So naturally I decided to present and render my design which required a large amount of work in a small amount of time using the Vue 3D modelling software. The most time consuming, fiddly CAD program available. The upside is that once I got there the renders looked amazing.  Once again this is a banner of two A1′s, so to view it in more detail click on the image and then on blue resolution number down the bottom of the page.

Swanson Development.

This was a 3rd year studio assignment to design a high density sub-division in Swanson to cater for the current rate of growth in the Auckland region and combat urban sprawl. I selected the site suitable for a transport oriented, mixed use development and designed a neighbourhood of high-rises surrounded by corridors of re-forestation, shared gardens and orchards designed to enhance the ecological health of the area, bring the community together and provide a supplementary income to the residents. It is a banner of two A1′s so to view it in more detail click on the image and then on blue resolution number down the bottom of the page.

Film Cad.

This is the video I created in the Level 7 CAD Studio paper as part of my Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree at Unitec. I was required to produce a video that promotes a new public space and to integrate and present an articulate design process that defines what landscape architecture means to me. As part of the brief we were required to include some greenscreen footage and a CAD animation. I filmed using a Sony HXR-NX5U HD and edited in Final Cut Pro. I used a cocktail of other programs to bring it together including Vue Infinite, ArchiCAD, Live Type, Illustrator and probably a few more. Wind it up to 720p, full screen it and see how it came out. Cheers to Monica Bainbridge and Tom Carey for their awesome acting  and thanks goes out to Tim Pierce, Jossi Wells and Byron Wells for lending me some action footage from their Winter of Wells web show.

Kingsland Railway Station.

This was a second year studio assignment to re-design the Kingsland Railway Staition, over bridge and square. I came up with a terracing walkway to the platform and a colourful geometric drainage system from the street down the site. I wanted to involve the local residents as well to some how choose the colour scheme and some of the planting. Seeing this again makes me want to go back to designing the way I designed this. Loose and carefree.

New Mombasa.

This was a second year assignment where we were asked to model an imaginary city that is described in a body of text of our choice using ArchiCAD 12. I chose the city of New Mombasa from the Halo video game franchise. I imported backgrounds that I altered and prepared in Photoshop to sit behind the ArchiCAD renders.

Orangihina. Te Atatu Botanical Gardens.

I came up with this design in 2nd year Landscape Architecture for a studio assignment. I can’t remember much about the brief but we were given the site in Te Atatu and had to come up with a design for a botanical garden drawing inspiration from a transect of the land we did from Karekare on Auckland’s west coast to Te Atatu.

Snow Base.

This is an assignment of mine from back in 2008. The brief was to sketch any building free-hand then create a 3d model of that building in SketchUp. The idea was to then put the building into an environment and overlay textures onto it in Photoshop. This is how mine came out. My love for snowboarding obviously showing through. Thanks to the Remarkables in Queenstown, New Zealand for creating such a setting. I used InDesign to lay the top poster out. Click on the images and then on the blue resolution number down the bottom to see them high quality.

Personality. Visualised.

I did these murals for an assignment a couple of years back. The images are supposed to loosely resemble parts of my personality that I think (or thought) relate to the three words given to me. The words are in the bottom left corner of each image. The only rule was that each image had to include my face in some way.