Paphos old harbour

Another all-nighter tomorrow? Possibly.

My current project has to do with replacing the shading structures erected in front of shops and cafes at the promenade in the old paphos harbour. Its now almost exclusively a commercial and recreational area, the only boats there being small fishing boats, the coast guard, a few tourist boats and yaughts and other recreational vessels. The cliend is the municipality of Paphos.



The current structures are obtrusive, dark, and completely cover up the facades of the stone buildings behind them, which the municipality wants freed up. The shop-owners have used shading devices of their own to expand the territory of their business further on the promenade, adding depth to the structures, and worsening the problem. As a result, even I have no idea or recollection of what the actual buildings there look like.

Our proposal is for modular structures, which will be light, transparent, and set back from the buildings. They should provide just enough shade for the summer, but not too much as to darken
everything underneath. We're trying to make them high enough to allow the sun through during
the winter, when it is lower. The shop and cafe zone is narrowed, compared to before, but another
narrow zone is provided on the opposite side of the promenade, by the sea. This has the pedestrian
road run between them.

The modularity of the structures should reduce cost and the time required for assembly, as well as make maintenance and cleaning easier. Round columns every 5 metres will support a metal grid frame. Another aluminium frame containing timber louvres will be slotted in the first. Polycarbonate panels will be fitted above the louvres, providing shelter from rain as well. The PCP panels are self-cleaning, and the louvres are removable for easy maintenance. It will be designed so that only one row of columns is required, to free up space
underneath.

Wii thoughts

I got my Nintendo Wii this Xmas. Just before Xmas to be precise. A week after its launch.
My initial idea was to write something on the social impact the machine has made in my home.
But that'd be boring. Instead, I will simply list my thoughts on the experience, good or bad.

Here goes:

• The appearance of the console and controllers seems to borrow from the initial i-pod designs. A lot! White plastic covered in clear polycarbonate. Very sleek. Also, clean and discrete. It takes up very little space, too.
• You'll need a lot more space in the living room, around the TV, in order to play. Especially multiplayer, as in Wii sports tennis doubles.
• Other than sports, most other games can be comfortably played sitting down.
• I'd like to see the LED light up more often!!!
• How come no-one thought of the pointer before? Still, it makes sense that such a fresh idea was introduced by Nintendo first. On the downside, pointer movemend becomes erratic when you play from a distance. But thats not an issue in my (admittedly spatious) living room)
• Depending on the implementation, motion sensing controls are either fantastic, of plain broken. Tennis, bowling, batting, golf detect motion almost flawlessly. Boxing and pitching in baseball are crap. When it does work, the level of immersion is remarcable, as close to the real thing as possible. Therefore...
• ...as far as I'm concerned, the controller is a success! Now its up to the softare designers and developers.
• Mii channel isn't particularly fun on its own, but seing recognisable faces in games is fantastic!

• It makes me wish my camera used SD cards, then maybe i'd use the photo channel every once in a while. When i did test it, it ran smoothly, loading photographs on the fly and without delays.
• If only I could use my wiimote and nunchuck to play gamecube games...*sigh*
• I want to be able to use my keyboard, flash memory, card readers and external hard drives on the USB ports!!! And for the photo channel and messageboard to support them!
• I want a music channel exclusively for playing mp3s...how easy would it be to implement?
• My parents often join in for a competitive session of Wii Sports!
• My sister got paranoid about beating me in tennis...
• ...and so did my mum.
• I came home one day to find my dad playing 4-player bowling...by himself!

• I can't wait to connect it to the internet with Wi-fi. I want to have my Miis mingling, to watch a Mii parade and send messages to friends over the messageboard.
• The internet channel! I'm curious how it will display at these low resolutions. I'll be playing flash games, accessing my e-mail, watching videos on Google video and youtube.
• It will let me stream all kinds of content from my PC hard disk, over the internet, using Orb! Photographs, music, video. Yes, it does become a big deal when you can view your digital photos on the 42" plasma screen in the living room. With friends.

Thats it for now.

vardastudio

This is the tiny office I work for during my year-out. Tiny as in 4 people working here at the moment. Other than the office head, I'm the only other architect. Plus the two interior designers. So, a spacious, open plan office with enough computers, a modelling area and a healthy bookcase! Always a mess though, it looks like the studio we make it out to be.

Radio Paradise has become the studio's official soundtrack, streaming directly from Paradise, CA. Andreas Vardas, the head architect, keeps evaluating our design methodology and level of work, comparing with work of large studios globally. And trying to get as much exposure as possible. We're being published often in national magazines, and regularly do competitions, which we've never won, but get awards almost every time.

Projects range from residencial, either one-off houses or larger developments, then we have commercial projects. Public areas and landscaping, retaurants and bars, shops and office buildings. In the past 6 moths I've been involved in all kinds of projects, and in various stages. Getting a taste of everything.

So, now I can start posting on projects, with images and drawings.

Intro

My first post on my first blog! I suppose I can only get better with time. In the meantime,
I hope this is interesting enough to read.

This Blog is intended to be an online mini-portfolio, with short descriptions and photos of projects I work on. Among other things. Since this is a blog, and blogs are more personal affairs (already this fells a bit like keeping a diary), I will inevitably post on other subjects aswell.

This post is made in case anyone else stumbles upon the blog. It is mostly for myself that I make this on-line record of my work. A quick website that I put on-line some time ago isn't going very well for me, since I haven't updated it since
it was first designed. Posting on a seems to be more convenient than manually updating a website, so I'll have a go here.