Intended Reading List

These are the books I hope to read over upcoming months, and are in no particular orders.

Jeremy Till - Architecture Depends

Philip Roth - Sabbaths Theater

Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

Barry Lopez - Arctic Dreams

Barry Lopez - The Future of Nature

Salman Rushdie - Shame

Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow

Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Christopher Alexander - A Pattern Language

George Orwell - Fighting in Spain

Henry Thoreau - Walden

Im currently reading Maurice Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology of Perception and am looking forward to something a little lighter next. Given the opportunity I am also looking forward to rereading Gaston Bachelards The Poetics of Space and Shay Salomons Little House on a Small Planet (also just orders the second edition, thanks to Emma for the suggestion). I am open to suggestions if anyone has seen or read something they think may interest me.

Literature Review

In late 2009 Honours students were required to prepare a literature review and annotated bibliography which located their ideas and research within the existing context. This provides a good indication of where my concept has come from and what I hope to achieve through my research.

In addition; I will be posting annotated bibliographies as I read more and an intended reading list, describing the books I will be reading. Hopefully this will indicate the direction I am going and provide an opportunity for people to make suggestions.

Revised Schedule 31/12/2009

Dates and Locations are now as follows [until further notice].

Piccaninny Point, Tasman Hwy, Bicheno -07/01/2010 - 02/02/2010

Featherdale Farm, Tasman Hwy, St Helens -02/02/2010 - 17/02/2010

Unknown Location, Launceston -17/02/2010 - T.B.A

Move-In Delay

The scheduled move-in date has unfortunately been pushed back further, from todays date to mid next week. This may mean that I will not be spending any time at the Millybrook Fish Hatchery but until I revise the schedule I will not know for certain.

I will hopefully have a new schedule prepared and posted within the next few days outlining the changes made.

Dave.

TS1

TS1 is an Australian designed and built transportable, modular building system which has been used in a variety of applications, most recently as an accommodation dwelling. They boast a number of awards, recycled material use and can be erected in a single day.

The base units cost between $29,000 and $38,000 and have many optional extras from kitchenettes and bathrooms [$3,500 & $6,500] to awnings and decks [$2,000 & $5,500 respectively].

More information is available from their website:

TS1 now

Cheers to Paul K for this one.

Revised Schedule 24/12/2009

Dates and Locations are now as follows [until further notice].

Millybrook Fish Hatchery, Upper Esk -28/12/2009 - 12/01/2010

Piccaninny Point, Tasman Hwy, Bicheno -12/01/2010 - 02/02/2010

Featherdale Farm, Tasman Hwy, St Helens -02/02/2010 - 17/02/2010

Unknown Location, Launceston -17/02/2010 - T.B.A

Move-In Date Set

After many delays were finally ready to move in!

This morning I have spoken to Both parties responsible (the microhouse owners and the property owners) and have confirmed the date of the 28th of December, only 4 days away.

Most things are organised already, and things are looking very promising.

The delays to date have meant that the schedule will have to be revised again (version 3) and dates moved accordingly, which I will hopefully do and post today.

Cheers for now,

Dave.

Honours Topic

How can micro-housing be invested with poetics to engage and enrich the users’ senses and experience?

Micro-housing is defined as the miniaturising of home, reducing our spatial requirements to the bare minimum. There are many timely factors which contribute to our need to down-size, including the economic, social and environmental costs of a large house and the degradation and numbing of our sense and perceptions through material living.

Current architectural discourses concerning Micro-housing focus on its empirical aspects and its tangible benefits such as the potential for energy savings, instead of perhaps the more potent, intangible benefits, such as residential wellbeing and happiness.

Poetics has been widely used as a descriptive tool; however its capacity to influence architectural design has not been fully realised, and has the potential to connect the physicality of architecture with the thoughts, memories, dreams and stories that it evokes within its users.

In this research I will be literally living with and seeking examples of poetics in a building of 9m², to gain an understanding of how poetics can be embodied in micro-housing to enrich our senses and experience.

- This can also be found on the School of Architecture & Design; Postgraduate & Honours Students page.

Welcome to the blog

Well, we have a home.

Creating a blog seems to be taking me longer than expected, however hopefully we will be online soon. Hopefully I will have some images up soon, along with a description of my project and myself.

As this is my fist time creating a blog there will certainly be problems, delays etc. So please be patient.

Cheerio.