We reviewed the team “The Tricycles” consisting of Emily, John, and Vera (Group 31).The group had completed most of the work that was required for the peer review, and explained the work they had done quite clearly making it easy for us to understand what they have done. Each member of the group had something to contribute towards the presentation, demonstrating a good teamwork ethic.

Their three city site images were based on the idea of merging dystopia and utopia. They suggested that the images portray a dystopian exterior landscape with a utopian interior. This is apparent in two of the images where the environment surrounding the buildings is smoky, grimy and dark suggesting a dystopian space.

The Tricycles presented to us that they were not concentrating on creating the exact Garden City from the short story “The Ultimate City” – written by Ballard; the group was more focused on cleaning up the image of the structures and creating a cleaner cut, pristine space. The composition of the interior reflects utopian qualities of order, structure, and perfection, contrasting with the polluted, broken composition of the landscape. In particular the internal elements of the building was aesthetically pleasing, this was from the fact that the interior spaces were clearly arranged in suitable aspects for the particular rooms, hence retaining its actual shape and portraying a modern hotel building. 

The idea of utopia and dystopia was apparent in a more general way, not focusing on any particular aspect seen from the short story - there were no distinct elements or imagery that came from it. The understanding of the differences between utopia and dystopia was very respectable, with a clear contrast between the dirtiness and darkness of dystopia and the cleanliness and more organised elements of utopia. We could say that they did not go deep into the meaning of utopia and dystopia, focusing mainly on the physical aspects. 

The Photoshopping skills achieved by The Tricycles was executed well, the design elements such as colour and the intricate detailing were effective in the overall pages. The overlapping of the dystopian world over the utopian landscape in the third image was attractive, showing the layering of the landscape in the contrasting styles, which also helps to further emphasize their idea. The hand drawn element of the building façade in the second image blends well with the overall composition of the design, and the untouched individual rooms in one particular image showed they were content on showing the spatial context of their building and through this challenging the idea of utopia verses dystopia.

Each member of the group had produced a GIF animation of their two plants. They each showed different aspects such as rotating around the plant, zooming in, and changing colour or lighting since the growth of the plant is not yet apparent. It was clear that each member of the group understood the process of creating a simple GIF animation. Vera’s hand was visible in the GIF, which (along with the others) showed movement and interaction around the objects. This was good to see the spacial awareness.

The avatars produced by The Tricycles were of a goodstandard and it would have been really interesting to see them test their molds with different materials. They produced a vast variety of avatars and a good quantity at the different scales that were required.

http://unitearchdes101.tumblr.com/post/27950104039/we-reviewed-the-team-the-tricycles-consisting-of

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Practice name
Unite

Blog Address
unitearchdes101.tumblr.com

Check List
3 297x297 images of the city – Done
3 stop animations of 2 plants – Done
rough data collection from micro environment – Done
3 avatars and 3 avatar moulds – Done
First of 13 A5 material cards – Done

Review

For this peer review, each group was expected to produce three 297 x 297mm illustrations of their site, which includes a section and two elevations. These illustrations should thoroughly demonstrate the groups’ understanding of their site and whether they think its more dystopian or utopian – emphasizing these two ideas in their 297x297’s.

From what our group observed in Unite’s illustrations as well as their own explanations, we gathered that they kept a few aspects of the original site in these edited drawings. These aspects included the car lot, the main building facade and structure, and some of the background elements such as trees and buildings. However they did add quite a lot of extra details in, such as numerous cars that were partially destroyed/rusted, dystopian like effects and other objects that aided to the ‘cluttered’ look.  These extra elements made a significant impact to the emotion of these drawings – making them look very gloomy, unwanted and abandoned – similar to the Ultimate city. The architectural language and ideas that were incorporated into these illustrations were mainly focusing on creating a dystopian image of the site, giving off the impression that these buildings and cars were taking over the world, destroying the natural elements in its path. Although this group really did communicate the idea very clearly – we believe that architecturally, in means of space and depth – these illustrations could have been executed better. They lacked aspects such as successfully showing hidden space (through sections) and illustrating form. In other words, the images seemed a little too focused on the theme of dystopia/utopia and forgot about how to express these sites and buildings in a more architectural manner. Also, the section of the underground car park doesn’t emphasize depth or space – perhaps a sectional of the main building would’ve given arise to numerous ways of potentially creating an abstracted section of the building instead of resorting to a car park. Through the means of media, this group used photoshop as the main form of media – using this software to create clustered car parks, dark gloomy skies, and contributing to the dystopian look.

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