Nottingham's rich, industrial past: Unearthed and Unused

Without its industrial background, which started at Factories such as Forest Mills, Nottingham would never have been able to establish itself as the influential and prosperous city that we think of it as today.

Unfortunately many sites encrusted with rich histories have been consciously neglected in the evolution of urban planning and design; often resulting in derelict voids in the city. Not only can these be a major eyesore and scar on the urban fabric, more often than not they are dangerous environments attracting undesirables and miscreants.

In the 'real world' the future of Brownfield sites like these lies in the hands of councils and developers and unfortunately (in their opinion) the cost of developing these sites much outweighs the perquisites they (and questionably society as a whole) will gain it return.

As for university, architecture world and the future of Forest Mills... It's in my hands. This is my site.

Site Section: CAD and Photoshop

The audacity to create something so crude yet so beautiful.

So This is it. The solution as to how to create an unpredictable set of outcomes from a predictable system. After many adjustments and different prototypes the masterpiece is unveiled. Although it may look like fairly hasty, much thought has gone into this and although it has been described as 'crude' beautiful images have been produced.

The device was inspired by the movement of a double pendulum but rather than being hung vertically and being powered by gravity, here a similar system is supported horizontally on a pivot and operated by the force with which the door in opened.

It consists of three arms that move randomly and independently from one another with the use of bolted pivots. The other end of the contraption is counterbalanced to ensure as smooth a motion as possible.

Recording the trace of the movement proved to be more challenging than initially expected. I originally intended to attach a paint brush dipped in ink to the end of each arm and then to place a large piece of paper under the door.

Unfortunately the paint brushes created too much friction with the floor and the motion of the device was severely impaired. Instead the paint brushes were replaced with small LED torches and there results were a pleasant surprise.

These Images were taken with bulbs on two arms only with the door being opened and shut only once; in reality I carried out numerous experiments with different amounts of torches and door openings. For my pinup i edited the colour of the images to make them more readable as print outs and my panels looked like this.

The image above shows 5 individual door traces for Two light and one system oscillation. The image below shows what traces would be left if the door was opened 5 consecutive times and each varying path was recorded within the same frame. Because of time limits of my cameras shutter speed I had to layer the image on photoshop.

It's all Architecture...Honest.

I've decided to start a blog to document the development of my design ideas, whilst in my second year of an Architecture degree at the University of Nottingham.

The project I'm working on at the moment is called 'Illustrious industrious'. Its eventual aim is to propose redevelopment ideas for the old Forest Mills site in Radford, but before that there's alot of background work to be done...Let me briefly explain.

We were asked to research a past or present industry of Nottingham - I choose to look at clocks and the way in which the movement of one part of the system lead to the movement of the next in a continuous, infinite (almost) cycle. As a result of this I moved on to look at Rube Goldberg Machines, whose movement follow a similar chain reaction idea.

It was pointed out to me that the interesting link between the two systems was that the clock has a predictable, timeless and repetitive movement whereas the Goldberg machines had a definite beginning and end, as well as a sense of unpredictability - although painstakingly and meticulously planned. Will that pin pop the Ballon? Will the Cog roll and Power the Fan which will blow the boat across the water?

Eventually (and yes some what tediously) this led to a 1 - 1 study in an urban context investigating repetitive systems with unpredictable out comes. Yes, you guessed it, I'm talking about doors!

The thing with doors is that they only perform one task; one predictable, repetitive movement. They open. And they Close. This is all. But what if you were to trace the path of the activity of the door each time someone opened it. What if the initial forced exerted on the door

governed the subsequent mark left by it?

Something to Ponder. I think I'll leave it there as that is a good synopsis of where I am at at the moment. But, rest assured, answers will some come.