Portsmouth, UK: We have received consent for two new kiosks on Southsea Common. The kiosks use space within a 1950s electricity sub-station and will serve coffee, cakes and sandwiches under an A1 Use. We will source standalone kiosks made off-site and slide them into the building. A series of hardwood louvres around the kiosks create an attractive façade when shut and provide shade when open. The louvres were inspired by a kiosk we saw in Les Tuileries in Paris a few years back.  You will see in the picture that the existing building is covered in a mural done by a local artist.

Hopefully the kiosks will be open Spring 2011. An article from the Portsmouth News about the project is below. You can view the proposed planning drawing here and Design and Access Statement here.

Deer Park Alpha are architects and designers. Give us a call if you would like us to look at a project you have in mind. 023 92 877 419

Portsmouth, UK: We have dug trial holes on the site of the changing and health consulting rooms building we are working on in Bransbury Park, Portsmouth.  The building is for a three way client of Portsmouth Football Club, Portsmouth Primary Care Trust and Portsmouth City Council. Three big clients, one small building!

We obtained planning in April and are now nearly ready for tendering. The planning process on this project will be the subject of an article in our Opinion column in due course!

Anyway, the most interesting thing in the trial pits were these three bottles. One of the bottles is a Mineral Water bottle and has image of Portsmouth Guildhall on them. The other two are probably beer bottles, one is from the Charles Mumby & Co Ltd brewery and the other Baggs Bros. Both bottles are marked Portsmouth, and the glass Baggs bottle again uses the Guildhall as a feature.

Interesting that local names and icons where found on bottles. Just the sort of local distinctiveness we have been exploring in a number of projects recently. Especialy in the Know Your Place project with Design Commission for Wales. However, further investigation reveals ‘Made in Barnesly’ on one of the bottles!

Devon, UK: The two new houses we have designed in Beer, Devon are nearing completion. Beer is a lovely village on the south Devon Coast. The houses sit up on the hill looking down at the beach and cliffs. We designed two quite traditional houses made of devon chirt flint. The plan is an exercise in geometry, as you can see below. There are two large rooms facing the view, on ethe lounge the other the kitchen and dining room. Both are a 6 metre square. The study is a golden rectangle with a 6 metre long side, as is the utility and main stair area. The entrance hall itself is a golden rectangle. Why bother with all that you might ask? Well, by striving to turn the plan into a serious of geometric shapes we have simplified the plan, yet added a level of complexity that will be felt ?imperceptibly by those that live there. It is also a fun design exercise, it adds a level of constraint to the problem of designing a house from scratch.

One of the houses is to be lived in by the owner of the site, the other has been sold. The site originally had a single 1950s house on it and was lived in by the owner for several years whilst a tortuous planning process involving six architects. We were the sixth, and got consent on a very difficult site where others had failed.

Portsmouth, UK: We have been working with the Solent Centre for Design and Architecure (from now on called SCAD on this website as I cannot keep typing the full name, I do have work to do…) on their SPUD project. That is Space Place Urban Design!

SCAD say:  ”SPUD is the name of a new network of architectural youth groups across southern Hampshire. The first groupwas set up in Eastleigh and 2 more groups have been launched in Portsmouth and Southampton.  Each group consists of young people aged 14-19 years old who are passionate about the built environment and interested in helping influence the future of their towns and cities. Each group has a specific design project and will work with an architectural practice, Planning Aid and their local authority to develop concept designs for their chosen areas.”

Anyway, yesterday we held an afternoon session which produced this interesting proposal by Zac for Tipner in Portsmouth. A rolling landscape formed mostly by the compost material from six new vertical farms. The rolling landscape covers the contaminated land with with organic material to decontaminate over time. The landscape also forms flood defences. The farms will produce enough produce for the entire city of Portsmouth. Cable cars will link this new farmpark to the rest of the city where the produce will be sold. We are looking forward to helping Zac finish the design for presenetation to councillor’s and council officer’s.

The Tipner area has been a scrapyard for many years. Rotting submarines on the site are my earliest memory of day trips to Portsmouth as a boy. It has been subject to a number of low aspiration (only a DPA opinion) design proposals over the past few years. If we are not careful what we will get is more anywhere apartment blocks, more anywhere shops, more….well, anywhere mediocrity. Indeed go visit Cardiff Bay, take away the Millenium Centre and you will see what I mean. Car-centric, commercial architecture not designed with people or places in mind. Interesting paper here on walking rather than using cars. This site is IN the city and is very well connected.

The Know Your Place project we are working on for the Design Commission for Wales is trying to tackle these issues. DCFW have seen the light. The Tipner site offers so much for a designer to respond to. Zac’s proposal is the best yet!

Thanks to all the Portsmouth City Council staff who helped out with ideas and cutting!

Deer Park Alpha are architects: We practice and educate.

Portsmouth, UK: The adventure playground we designed to RIBA Stage C last year is nearly complete. It is looking like it will be open by the end of the month. The project was designed following some interesting research and public involvement. You can read more about this here: http://dpa-illustrated-news.org/Playground/

The design was taken on by the Architect’s Department at Portsmouth City Council, who got it from RIBA Work Stage D-L i.e planning to completion. You will see from the website we built about the project at the time that the design (though developed in detail) has stayed pretty much the same.

The buildings which house a large multi-function room, toilets, office and kitchen were intended to be built from shipping containers. The tower was a 40 foot shipping container on end, and the roof space is accessible by the children. This again was shipping containers as tunnels. All were to be clad in timber to soften the look. They were chosen because they are cheap and fitted with the project ethos around self-build play and using found materials. The buildings have turned out to be shipping container shape and size but made from masonry. Funny really. Still, it got done and the council architect’s team have done a great job. (This is an unofficial project information post.)

END.

Deer Park Alpha are architects and designers. That is, we not only design buildings but we write books, make comics, design products, graphics and websites. However, at the heart of everything we do is architecture and people (and sometimes animals). We teach art, design, architecture, urban design and creativity to all ages.

Beavering away on our own is not enough, we want to infect as many people as possible with a designer’s mindset. Design to us is simply defined as problem solving. The world is full of problems that are ALL solvable (perhaps not at once). The more people who go about their lives trying to change problems the better. I despise “you can’t do that” statements. It makes the blood boil. And when I hear it from a child my heart sinks.

We are working with many schools through Creative Partnerships at the moment. This programme has given us a fantastic opportunity to work with teachers and children to explore (what Tim Brown calls) design thinking.

If you are a school, college or university and are interested in working with us do call. 023 92 877 419.

Finally, as with so many things that seem to be interesting (to us anyway) the USA is the place to look, and especially in the cities of LA and NYC. Take a look at this interesting take on adult education called The Public School. Basically, people put forward a proposal for what they would like to learn, others agree, when a critical mass is achieved they find a teacher and learning happens.

Bridgend, Wales, UK: There will be another Know Your Place workshop this September 7th and 8th in the south Wales town of Bridgend.

Deer Park Alpha have been working in partnership with the Design Commission for Wales (DCFW) on this project since 2009. Know Your Place is a pilot project of workshops across Wales all about sense of place, how design effects how a place works and ask citizens to think about and articulate what they value about their place.

More info here: http://dpa-illustrated-news.org/?p=589

Deer Park Alpha are education specialists.

We teach design, architecture, creativity and urban design to children from age five through to adults. We run the first year course in architecture at the University of Southampton. Southampton is one of the UK’s best Universities.

Online: Our small book ‘Where We Live: A Guidebook to Urban Design’ is now available to view online. Thanks to the Solent Centre for Architecture and Design. They have found some online viewer thing. Check it out here.

See the film (!) about the book in the top right of this web page.

Deer Park Alpha are architects, designers and artists.

Some of our current and past clients include:

Design Commission for Wales

South East England Development Agency (SEEDA)

Portsmouth City Council

Hampshire County Council

Space Syntax

Cranleys

Welsh Assembly Government

Solent Centre for Architecture & Design

Bay House School

A E Parker

The Royal Naval Club

Portsmouth, UK: Another exhibition, but this time not of our work: We have been working with Portsmouth College this year on a project that links urban design and surrealism. There is currently and exhibition at the Pop-Up Shops in Commercial Road of the students work.

The work on display is the product of twelve workshops. The project is part of the Education Partner Programme by the Solent Centre for Architecture & Design.

Starting with an exploration of Surrealist art and studying the work of artists such as Salvador Dali and Giorgio De Chirico, we created a computer model of an imaginary city using modeling software SketchUp. The site of the city was Garrison Field, Portsmouth. We then took a ‘virtual’ walk around the model and selected still images of interesting and inspiring viewpoints. From these we introduced texture and imagery that expressed the history of the site.

Some artworks are straightforward; some are mysterious; all tell an urban story and express the student’s interpretation of the powerful interplay of place and meaning.

This exhibition has been on since last week. This week viewing is by appointment (or just drop by and look in the window as it very viewable). Drop us a line if you would like to view the exhibition. If you would like to book the Pop-Up Shops then call The Partnership on 023 9229 1482. The three yellow shops are available for £75 per week on a weekly basis. We plan to refurbish the exterior and perhaps open more of the shops along this part of Commercial Road later this year. See our post on the shops opening here: http://dpa-illustrated-news.org/?p=710

The Education Partner Programme has been established to create a teacher focused approach to exploring ways that the designed built environment can be used for enhancing the delivery of the school and college  curriculum and developing professional practice. It also provides opportunities for teachers and built environment professionals to come together and share good practice and work collaboratively.  The built environment (architecture, public space, landscapes) provides a fantastic and free resource right on the door step that is accessible to everyone to use for learning.

Photo Credits: Deer Park Alpha

Deer Park Alpha is the worlds most innovative and sustainable company! Ha ha.

You won’t find us facebooking or twittering. Though we do recommend Lance Armstong’s Twitter thing….it is the ONLY one worth viewing. The rest should be banned.

Portsmouth, UK: We have just completed the fit out of three new shops in central Portsmouth. The formerly empty shops have been refurbished to our design by the Bionic Engineers, a social enterprise we helped establish last year through the Future Jobs Fund.

The shops have a rolling programme of exhibitions and traders. Indeed, we are exhibiting some work produced by students at a local college we have been tutoring over the past few months. This show starts 2 July at 3.30PM, all welcome.

The ‘pop-up shop’ lettering is removable, allowing us to make new words with the letters, Fawlty Towers style.

We are now working on three other shops on the same parade, we hope to have completely transformed the entrance to Portsmouth city centre by the end of 2010.

We are currently working on five other shop and restaurant refurbishments and fit outs in south-east Hamsphire. Carl was involved in the design of both Innecto and Hakassan in London when I worked for Jestico + Whiles in London. The restaurants, llong with numerous hotel interiors for the likes of Intercontinental, Hilton and Malmaison gives me some experience in the field.

Credit: Image courtesy of Jestico + Whiles.

Credit: Image courtesy of Jestico + Whiles.

Credit: Image courtesy of Jestico + Whiles.

We are currently working on the detailed design of a new bar at the Royal Naval Club in Portsmouth. An overall classic design will have strange twist at the new bar , which will be made of back-lit model ships.

Give us a call if you have a project you would like us to look at for you.

Deer Park Alpha are Tour de France fans. Watch it live online here.

We are pleased to be currently exhibited a current project at ArtSway. We have been collaborating with composer Hywel Davies and engineer Nick Gradidge on a small dwelling in the New Forest. The project is part of the Solent Centre for Architecture & Design’s (SCAD) Artchitecture project. More info here.

‘Artchitecture’ is a project SCAD are developing in partnership with ArtSway, a contemporary visual arts organisation based in Sway. ‘Artchitecture’, is bringing together architects, artists and engineers to collaborate on exploring new models for rural architecture, through a series of temporary buildings in the New Forest National Park. The buildings will be a resource for interaction and debate on issues of sustainability, recycling, energy conservation and rural development, with artists’ inhabitation and activity as the catalyst.

This project has been a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with others who share similar interests but have different perspectives. I have been able to investigate a long term interest in creating simple spaces with locally sourced materials. I have focused on shadow, light, weather, Hywel and the pattern of the day.

Hywel, Nick and I have ingrained sustainability in this project in a simple and, we hope, obvious way.

This exhibition is set out to illustrate the process we have been though to date. It is a collection of sketches, notes, emails, paintings, models and photographs that are produced for every project. Normally the are consigned to a folder, or perhaps even the shredder.  It is has been interesting to consider these ‘working documents’ as pieces in their own right.

Thanks to Phil at the Solent Centre for organising and running the project. And thanks to Oliver, Ben and Tom on the office for putting the hours this week to help with the exhibition material.