Great Places
Tim Crocker’s Tuesday Talk
Thanks to Tim Crocker for his enriching talk about his work, the qualities of his subject matter, and the purpose of architectural photography.
On a personal level, his appearance and enthusiasm were a welcome counterbalance to the blandness I’d sketched earlier that morining. 
Great Streets
Just to get in the mood for the great streets competition, I went out last Saturday to do a photoshoot of Edinburgh’s High Street, collaged here together with a few shots from Culross taken earlier. With music by EST (tune I mean You by Thelonious Monk), not very Scottish!! Hope you enjoy it.
click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CULH9Ye0DNM&feature=g-upl
Peter Lusby Taylor
A Different Kind of Place: Dubai – ‘The City of Merchants’
Dubai is one of 7 emirates making up the United Arab Emirates. U.A.E is not a fully developed country yet but is richer than any other developed one out there. About eight million international tourists visited the Emirates last year. In my opinion Dubai is an amazing window to the future of design because of their innovative designs for skyscrapers and their attention to the finer technological details is outstanding. One only has to visit the Burj Khalifa to see what I mean.
1993
1999
The blend of historic buildings with the new shiny ones being constructed in the area is electric and inspiring and is one of the attributes of Dubai that makes it so great. However, Dubai is not held in high acclaim by many architects due to the fact that they do not believe their buildings are sustainable. Nonetheless, Dubai is still a unique environment like none other, incredibly diverse and massively impressive given it was a desert not too long ago.
2006
Dubai has lots of magnificent resorts like the Burj Al Arab, seven-star hotels, world-renowned golf courses, desert safaris, sand duning and indoor skiing and some of the best shopping in the world.
2007
What makes Dubai a great place?
Dubai is my favourite place to be as it is an extremely diverse and unique country with lots of culture. Its skyscrapers are phenomenal and the hotels are second to none. The climate tops it all off for me though as it is sunny all round.
2012
Images source: www.dubai-architecture.info/HIST-DUBAI
Katharine Nsiah
Work Experience
Quartermile
The Edinburgh Team (minus PLT who took the pic)
In true Scottish style, we abandoned ship as soon as we caught a glimpse of the summer sun and headed for Quartermile, the ongoing redvelopment of Edinburgh’s Royal Informary by Foster & Partners. It’s not everyday the world’s most admired architect puts together a mixed use residential scheme in your neighbourhood (well in Edinburgh anyway) so we thought we better have a look. To look properly, we took our sketchbooks. We split up and focused on the following areas to record: mixed use, the public realm, street design, refurbishment, new build residential and new build commercial. The drawings are what we managed to do in the time and proved a useful basis for a discussion a week later on what we thought worked and what didn’t.
Quartermile’s eight hectare site (including nine listed buildings) sits between the outskirts of Edinburgh’s Old Town and The Meadows to the south. It’s called Quartermile because all your city needs are met within a quarter of a mile. It’s beautiful. If you are in Edinburgh, have a look.
SPM - Mixed Use/Cafes
1
RJF - Public Realm
2
MOS - New Build Residential
3
JPA - Street Design
4
RFK - Refurbishment
5
TPS - New Build Commercial
6
PLT - Street design is spare and uncompromising Foster's insertion- puts the Victorian melodrama at the far end into sharp relief. A place for hurrying past not for lingering. Gridded facades up close do not provide any resting place for the eye.
7