Winery Update

So the Winery is moving ever closer to completion here's the latest picture from site to prove it:

Published!

..we have had our first publication for the Courtyard House. A local residents publication for South East London..

Living South Magazine: Courtyard House

Rathfinny Winery Glulam Frame

..hot off the press - I just received these photographs from Mark on site at the Winery. The Glulam beams which support the green roof are now in place and the shape of the building is really coming together!

Royal Society of Medicine

Whilst I was working as an Associate Director at Dyer in 2010, I designed a new raked lecture theatre within an existing room and a new glass floor breakout / lounge area for The Royal Society of Medicine in London. The project was put on hold for a year and by the time it started up again I had already left and set up Design-Cubed with Mark. However, I maintained a role for Dyer to oversee the overall design as the project was constructed. Works are now close to complete and I'm extremely happy with the result! 

Since this is after all supposed to be at least in part a Revit Blog for the record  I produced the initial concept using Sketchup but quickly moved to building the design in Revit to be able to make quick and accurate changes as the design and brief developed. Working drawings were produced (not by me) in AutoCad.

The images and photos below show some of the design images from Revit and are followed by photographs of before and after.. Hope you like it!

Design Rendering for the new Lecture Theatre

Revit image for new glass-floored hotel lounge

Revit image showing the lecture theatre 'insert' and access ramp

Before and after photographs of the new lecture theatre - "The Wimpole Room"

Before and after photographs of the new glass floored hotel lounge

Photographs of the refurbished circulation space around the lounge

Photograph of the atrium below the glass floor (timber panels and ramp are new and provide entrance to the new lecture theatre)

A Sparkling Wine-ry

Yesterday I paid a visit to our Rathfinny Winery project in Alfriston, East Sussex. We've been incredibly fortunate with this as it is one of the first of it's kind in the UK (a benchmark for things to come??) and it's a very exciting, good size project - the client is aiming to produce top quality sparkling wine with the Vineyard set to be the largest in the UK once completed. We worked alongside Martin Swatton who came up with the original concept for the design and have continued to develop the detail and now deliver the project. Mark (my business partner) has been doing tremendous work running the job and leading the design team - now it's paying dividends as we see the form taking shape as the steel frame nears completion..

Open House- Day 1

This afternoon we opened up our house for the first time to the public as part of London Open House - we had over two hundred visitors in just over 4 hrs. I must say that so far (tomorrow we're open again for the whole day )it has been an incredibly positive experience - it's been great to get so much feedback and we've had many positive comments. The weather today certainly played its part as its been beautiful clear blue skies. Tomorrow however will be quite different, the forecast is for heavy rain and strong winds and with the large windows and rooflights in the house the feeling inside can be dramatically affected by the outside conditions - it will be interesting to see if there is any change in peoples reactions as a result..

How many men does it take to fix up a banner?

The lull before the Storm

People arriving

Blue skies.. - inside & out

All hands on deck - London Open House!

..so excuse the pun but it really has been all hands on deck this week as we've built a new deck for the courtyard in the new house and tried to finish off as much as possible in time for opening up for the public this weekend as part of London Open House. We've managed to achieve quite a lot but there will still be quite a few things not complete - such as the front gate.. Sadly we've been let down by a delivery of pebbles for the front courtyard today so things won't look quite as good as we had hoped but if there is one thing I have learned building a house it is not to rely on  deliveries being on time!

Here's my builder Keith (on his knees!) and Mick carrying soil for the new planter..

'All Hands on Deck'

..and even my In-laws have flown in from Sweden to help with the gardening and making the curtains!