Hello Helsinki

Last night we had a small chance to relax.
We had a small recption with the Head of Urban planning for the city.
Some drinks at the house of one of the organisers and then we hit the bars again. Some also went clubbing........ but was way too tired for that.
The reception was held in the board room of the city council. It was very impressive how they balanced formality with comfort. Do to the fact that a balcony connected the formal board room with a huge Sauna. I could imagine the descision making happening more in the sauna than in the room. Not an imagine I would for A&B councillors.

We then went to Teha's home. It was overlooking the lake and it happened. The said lets go for a swim. 4 of us went down to the water, stripped off and went in.
It was beautiful. The dusk light all around and the water was warm.

More talk and drink and bedtime was 3 am. The sunlight hit my room at 4-30 am...........I have been barely awake all day.

More later after a snooze I think

Ian

Officially the workshop is over.
We had a day of creaing prototypes of the exhibition.
The exhibition itself is to encourage children of various ages to explore the built environment using each of their senses.
We called it "making sense of Architecture".What do you think of the working title?
The overview is to have the child to help a stickman animation to become 3D by going out and using various tools to think about the built environment in terms of their individual senses.
The stickman tells the child that he can't sense the world and they need to go out and do it for him. The child goes out and returns to describe the sensations. The more the child describes the more 3D that sense organ becomes. For example when the child goes out and uses their touch sense. They return to the Kiosk and they tell the stickman about that sense. The more they tell the more 3D the hands of the stickman becomes.
In the backgroud the voice is recorded building up a record of the words used to describe Architecture................. Any thoughts?

We finished working on the prototype at midnight on wednesday.
In Scotland midnight on wednesday would be pretty quite..... not here. The pubs were still packed. So we had to use them.
It feels very familiar here. From the Guinness in the pub to the HP sauce in the cafe's. Everyone is incredibly friendly and helpful.

Thursday was the finishing touches to a display for the Symposium.
We then had some more of the backgrounds from the rest of the groups. A huge range of projects but they all seem to have common themes of design.
Children love to build and do in realtime and virtually. They explore and discover.
Design as concept covers so many areas that it can be very difficult to define. The approach I like is that Design is the process which takes you to an outcome. It doesn't matter if you are designing a peice of artwork of an electronic circuit; they both have a Star, The Brief, some research, ideas, tryout and then evaluate. This design process gives everyone a structure to allow their creativity to grow.

More later

Ian

The first thing I should do is add in something that i was so impressed by.
We had a lecture yesterday by an environmental psychologist from the University of Helsinki. She should how children use their environment and how they can be limited by it and how this effects them developmentally. It would take far too long to go into huge details but basics were lets kids play and take risks.
She also should us an IT programme which pupils log into and they give their opinions on their school enviroments. Its far more sophisticated than simply Typing what you think. It asks them to show on a plan where they feel things. Happiness, fear, uneasiness etc. The information is collected and used to influance future school designs.
She then showed a "Soft GIS" system which she is developing. This adds a layer to the normal Geographical Information Systems (GIS) which measures the environment in terms of personal experience. Which areas do people feel safe in? Which place make them nervous? It is planned to use this to influance the city planning...... Any comments?

The purpose of this week was too produce the basic concept for an exhibition to encourage pupils to connect to the built environment.
So not much then

We started today by taking the brain storming we did a few days ago and developing them.
The Exhibition should be active and experiential but what will do that?
After spilting into groups based on the senses we came up with particular ideas for exhibits/experiences.
These were wide ranging from the simple (like me) to the complex but the ideas were all truly interesting.
We are now creating prototypes, models and presentations to show others what we mean. We are hoping that this will form the basis for a future exhibition. At least part of the exhibition will be web based (and that wasn't my suggestion) and possibly based they could happen at the same time in different centres and allow international collaboration

I had better get back to work though maybe more later

Ian

Another busy day
After a night of excessive temps in the students accomodations. (They must really love these temps in the winter here!)
We actaully moved into the 'Doing' phase of this week.
We had a lecture from Gula on the nature of the ability to navigate architecture.
It was a fascinating talk.
We were then split into the groups of sense.
I was drawn in the touch group. This an interesting sense to look at and how we can can use touch to guide how people could learn. We, of course, went much further and designed a complete concept. We shall see what the reation is.
The second lecture of the day looked at enviromental psychology.
The talk use gibson's affordences.
this showed that Finland allows 8 years old to play outside a huge amount more than most other countries, particularly the UK.
Insecurities and fears seem to be the main reason for this but it has a huge impact for the negative for us in the UK.
The basic argument goes that if kids are allowed some independance then they well grow up independent people............ Is that a shock?
Well the effect of stopping kids plkaying outside seems to be huge.
Tonight was an amazing night is smoke and sauna.
I was not sure what this meant but it was a brillient night
We went to Alver Aalto's summer house. This was a wonderful building full of light and laughter (At least tonight). The night culminated in Leonart from Norsk Forum in Oslo getting everyone involved in a practical and fun excercise on structures.

I have finally found the time to write another entry.
After arriving in Helsinki on Saturday I met up with the other participants. We have a huge range of backgrounds and experiences. From an Columbiaand the USA, to Turkey and lots of Europe in between.
We spent an evening talking and introducing ourselves over dinner all very pleasant and nice.
On Sunday morning we boarded a Bus to travel to Jvascula. This took about 7 hours. Its actually not that far but we had a 2 hour tour of Helsinki and Avro Aalto's buidings and a 1 hour stop for lunch on the way.
This did give me time to talk more to my fellow pilgrims on journey.
It was a late night with dinner and "getting to know you" time but the nights are light with being so far north.
Today was a marothon session:
7-30 Breakfast
8-30 Bus to the base we are using (An Aalto designed townhall)
9am start with an excercise on the senses of the building
11am What are positive exhibition experiences
1pm Lunch
2pm Brainstorming on what is possible
4pm Start presentations on what we have done in the past
7pm Back on the Bus for an Architural tour of Jvascula
9pm Drinks at a design studio
10pm dinner
Its now 1am and I am shattered

I am not sure how much I can post tomorrow as we leave at 8-30 again back we are going to Aalto's summer house for and evening of Smoke and Sauna.......... should be interesting but I am not sure if the isolated summer house will have wireless connections.

I am off to bed
Ian

I have faith again.
discovered what I was doing wrong. Though Copying and pasting on the UMPC can be tricky

Ian

Subtitle - This time it had better work or the UMPC leaves via the window!

OK This is my third attempt to write this from Sciphol Airport (At least it passes the time)

The first was a witty, urban, intelligent entry on my musing of Glasgow Airport at 5am during high season. I had spent an hour on it ............ then it went. IE7 Beta 3 popup blocker kicked in and when the page refeshed all my musings were gone. I was most annoyed.
The second was shorter and too the point and guess what........... excactly the same thing happened.
So this will be rather short and too the point.

I am at Sciphol Airport on my way to Helsinki.

Do you think that was too short? Well ok then.
I feel like I have been doing something, going somewhere for weeks. The reason for this is because I have!
School holidays begin and off we went.
Myself and my wife Caroline, off to Munich. Then we went to Italy. It was hot. (The previous posts had must more detail but not this time).
We arrived home on thursday night at 9pm I was on the 6-15pm flight from Islay on the Friday. So it was a bit of a rush job getting the undies clean and packing a bag...... again.
The alarm went this morning at 3-40am. I am not a morning person but this was so early that I think it was ok as it was still night.

I have been thinking about the letter I picked up (amongst the junk mail behind the door) giving me a little more detail on what we are going to be doing this week.
I didn't have time to get togeather some 'materials' which represented where I came from. Some how time just got away from me. The images shouldn't be a problem
I had a moment of inspiration and asked Caroline to stop the car on the way to the airport. I took a small plastic bag and collected some Peat and Heather.
I was feeling very smug and slightly cliched but at least I had something.
Then, last night, I also had a moment of clarity. I am taking a lump of brown material and some fibres of plant to Helsinki.................. via Amsterdam.
I began to suspect that perhaps this may not be the most intelligent thing I had done and maybe I had better quietly dump the bag. What do you think? A wise move or a silly panic?
I will now risk a post

Ian

I have decided to take the step of creating a Blog. This may seem like a small step to some of you but I have come to the conclusion that Blogs should be subject specific and not meandering.
So what will my specific topic..........Drum roll.
I have been asked to attend 'Soundings for Architecture 6' workshop in Helsinki.
To quote the introductory letter, "The main task of the workshop this year will be to create an exhibition on architecture for the children and other open minded beings with focus on seven senses and sincere investigations on how to communicate the perception and the experience of form and space, structure and material, smell, sound and feeling of the architecture with purpose of sparking young peoples curiosity and interest in the matter."

So not much then.

I am not sure how I was choosen to attend this, though I suspect it was because I have done some work with The Lighthouse, Centre of Design and Architecture in Glasgow . Initially with the Fantasy Design Project (School work shown here) and then FLaT project.. What ever the reason I am really interested in what is going to happen.