On Purpose Siteseeing

I had some lovely opportunities to go siteseeing with friends, we had a great time, and look at all the pictures I took! From top to bottom: St. Paul's Cathedral (which I pass every day on the way to school), Near Portobello Market (Notting Hill area), Outside the Tate, Tower Bridge (where the #15 bus gets really crowded, so I generally don't take that one into the city, its a shame, because its a really pretty route), and lastly a cool tree near City Hall.

Random Siteseeing

So, I'm not very good at actually seeing things on purpose, but I have been doing lots of wandering around. Here are some pictures of some of the things I've seen. The first one is of the British Library. The second picture is Chinatown, and the third and fourth are of Leicester Square.

Camping in England

For those of you who don't know, I'm in the process of my Master's degree at Central Saint Martin's. The second day of school - they took us camping.

Now I have years of experience camping, but this was one of the strangest, we built our own tents from bamboo rods tape and plastic. My group's little tent got a make-over into a huge monstrosity when the organizer came over to 'help' us. Unfortunately, the plastic on our tent blew off before we could sleep in it. This happened to most tents - so we all slept in the main yurt - but there was one big problem with the yurt... it wasn't sealed at the bottom... So we just had the wind blow right through all night. I was alright, tucked into my sleeping bag, but I don't think it was a positive experience for all. We also built kites (sorry, I don't have any pictures) and a geodesic dome (those are my tutors playing on it).

Overall it was quite fun, we ate a lot, and chatted around the campfire, and went for fish & chips by the seaside the next day.

Oh yeah, we were in Dungenese, its somewhere in the South East, just past Kent.

100% Design

My first order of business when I arrived in London (yes, I moved once again), was to go to some design shows for a school assignment. I chose a couple, but the biggest one by far that I went to was 100% Design... It was amazing! It was just like going to any normal tradeshow - but just about everything was amazing... No Christmas ornaments here. Here is what I picked up in terms of overall trends...

Lighting: White and Frosted. Lightbulb was completely concealed by the fixture (maybe because of how ugly CFLs are... that's just my guess)

Wood: Everything looked raw and unfinished. Raw materials ranged from fiberboard, laminates to pure hardwood. I would say that laminates were predominant.

Wallpaper: Traditional patterns and newer patterns. The newer things had either a hand-drawn or constructivist look.

Textiles: Soft and nubbly textures. Quite a few booths featured organic leathers.

Materials: Quite a bit of innovation here, from small things like natural rubber flooring tiles to complete building systems (I saw a really cool water-harvesting proposal for a high-rise building that de-salinated its own water).

You can check out all of my pics here:

100% Design