We'll be introducing an extra component to your observation project tomorrow afternoon, for presentation the following Thursday 8th October.

The brief is relatively straight forward:

Select 16 of your photographs, print them, square them, and mount them with precision in a 4x4 grid with equal space between each (we call this a tartan grid). Obviously you don't want the grid to become too large so keep the individual images manageably small.

Draw a map of your habitual walk. Remember that what is represented on a map is entirely the preserve of those who commission and make it, in this case you take on the role of both. Again make sure your map is not too large, for it must be mounted or printed beneath your grid of 16 photographs and on the same sheet. Make sure you draw your map with great care, no-matter what you highlight on it.

This project is about being precise in presentation.

Session One: Observation

How many things in this picture would indicate that the location was Berlin? This session questions your powers of observation. How much time do you take to really look at the world around you? Some of us spend hours each day doing just this, listening, looking, thinking. Of course, as a generation, you have been brought up in environments where such passive activity is largely INCONCEIVABLE, but it is a practice you will have to cultivate to be successful.

Your task is to take a walk you habitually take (take it by yourself), something you hardly think about doing, and suddenly, to be self aware that you are doing it, that you have been asked as an architecture student to look at stuff again- why, how, and what. You might find yourself thinking, suddenly, about almost anything; bricks, puddles, fashions, signs whatever. Note the experience as a short piece of writing (less than 150 words) on your newly created blog. 

Go back the next day (shouldn't be difficult- you habitually do this walk) and photograph particular moments or materials you've had percolating in your head from the previous day's thinking.