It might look real... but it isn't!

It's all starting to look like a proper building up at your new school, instead of gaping holes and cement. Now you can really get a sense of where the glass is going to go, and how your design will look. To help you along, I've transposed the design into the atrium with the help of Photoshop. It's not perfect, but it does give you some idea about how it will look.

The Vote

My next job was to get more students involved in the whole thing, so I scaled up two final designs agreed on during a meeting with your head teacher Ann Duff and head of art Sue Lovell.
I decided to do a full size panel of each design, so that you could get some idea of the HUGENESS of the finished project. You can see these hanging off the balcony in the top photo.
Well. The result was an overwhelming YES! for the one that your school mates had liked best all along. Just goes to show that they knew what you'd like.
I'm looking forward to the next stage now - interpreting the design digitally into an ENORMOUS file that will then be printed...but that's another blog entry...

I worked up the design - as you can see in the top three above - changing the shapes a bit and deciding how to do the 'shading' so that the coloured shapes linked with the clear parts in the design. I always design with the structure of the building in mind - in this case there's 48 X 2 sections of glass, so the beams are an important part of the design. When I was happy with the result, I scaled it up to 1:25 to give me more idea of the scale.
Now I had to present the design to Miss Duff and Mrs Lovell to make sure they liked it and wanted it all over the school dining room roof!
Everyone was totally enthusiastic, saying it was fantastic that the school would have something influenced by students in such an important place in the school. So you can pat yourselves hard on your backs, well done!

Your favourite designs

You all liked the bottom two design ideas best (see below), and split into groups to scale the designs up 25:1. That means the atrium roof light is 25X the size of these - still huge!
Scaling up designs gives you a chance to make changes, and to see if they 'work' on a bigger scale. Sometimes designs look good small, but don't look very good when they're big. We made a fair bit of mess in the library, but the results are great.
At the end of the workshop, you unanimously agreed - and that included Mr Peplow - that you preferred the bottom one and that it would work better in the dining hall space than the circles.

Some ideas emerge...

Here are the four design ideas Striking Glass came up with after seeing your classmates designs from the first workshop (see post below). The bottom two were chosen by the students as their favourites. They were seen as a lively and fitting centre piece for the dining space in your new school.

Now it gets real - site visit!

First of all the obligatory Health and Safety saw us all putting on welly boots, hard hats, bright yellow waist coats and even gloves (yes, in case we fall over and put our hands onto something sharp...) I think everyone looks rather dashing myself.


This is your future dining room space. The space above everyone's head, right down to the green digger at the end is where the atrium window is going to go. I think everyone got a sense of just how BIG this window design is going to be. Scroll down to the first entry if you want to see the architects' drawing of the atrium, to compare his impression with the reality.

1st Atrium Design Workshop

So what didn't you like about your current dining room? It's always good to find that out first, so we can work towards creating something you do want... I learnt that it was dull, cramped, sometimes cold, used for everything under the sun - and even smelly! The things you wanted in the new dining space sounded much more positive - colourful, lively, upbeat, yet also relaxing, orderly and calm. You stressed the importance of space and you wanted a stand out statement that was exciting and inviting.
So how do all those ideas translate to colours and shapes? We talked about the different colours and the feelings they evoked. You thought the 'cool' colours - blues and turquoise - were calm and relaxing, and the 'warm' colours - red, orange and yellow - were lively and active. The shapes you preferred were the flowing, organic ones - you weren't too keen on the sharp and orderly geometric look.
Next the students had a go at designing very small, scaled down versions of the atrium - and here they are! As you can see, lots of different exciting ideas... which ones grab you the most? Leave any comments below - they're always helpful.