A gang from Expedition went to the annual conference IABSE and IASS conference last week to present our work in a number of fields.
Chris Wise and Andrew Weir talked about the design and construction of the London Olympic Velodrome at a presentation on the opening day.
Fred Labbe presented his paper, ‘Evolutionary Design for Environmental Expressionism’, which describes his work on a developing the multi-objective optimization processes used to design the honeycomb roof of the Santa Maria del Pianto station in Naples. Visit the Santa Maria Del Pianto project page for more information about this project, including a video showing the evolution of the roof design over seventy generations.
September 29th, 2011
Hot off the back of the press interest surrounding the 2012 Olympic Velodrome being the first Olympic stadium to be completed, with the project coming in on time and on budget, Expedition are delighted to announce that the 2012 Olympic Velodrome is already proving a winner being recently recognised with the following awards:
ICE London Award for best buidling of 2011
AJ100 Building of the Year Award
New London Award, both in the playing category and being named as joint overall winner
In addition we are delighted to also be nominated for the following awards:
September 2nd, 2011
By Oliver Broadbent, Director of Think Up
It has been almost a year since Expedition launched its Workshed site. We are really pleased both with the interest that it has attracted, and the use that universities have made of it in its first year.
The site was launched to provide university lecturers and civil engineering students useful tools for learning about civil and structural engineering. From the eye-catching Stuff Failure models to the interactive structural games, the site shows itself to be appealing to different learning and teaching styles. And key I think to Workshed’s success has been collaboration between Expedition, academia and industry.
August 15th, 2011
In my innocence I agree to speak on the cultural crossovers between Engineering, Architecture and Music. I will be in a trio with Ranulph Glanville, architectural theorist, and Michael Bochmann, violinist. Michael will bring his string orchestra, the Water City “band”, so we dovetail with quite a posh concert. But my little part causes me considerable soul-searching. For this is all to take place as part of their cultural embrace of the London Festival of Architecture in the Great Hall of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Not a venue where fools are suffered gladly.I meet Ranulph for breakfast near the Festival Hall, and over scrambled eggs we decide to blindfold the concert audience in the drinks break and ask them to wander about chanting pure vowel sounds…..so that they can really tune themselves in to each other and to the great architectural spaces through which are moving. Reverberation, grand architecture, humans….the links should all be marvellously clear. Three days later our jolly wheeze is ruled out by Health and Safety, so we are left with nothing but the chance to ruin a perfectly good concert with our unrehearsed ramblings.
July 28th, 2010
Studio in the Woods - a chance for childhood regression by exploring the great outdoors (on the spectacular grounds of New Barn Farm in the Isle of Wight) with some new playmates. Cramming an intensive four days into a nutshell; we undertook some soul searching, which led to some very democratic designing followed by some making. Escaping the city and spending time with a sketchbook proved invigorating. Armed with new ways of thinking about design our team mucked in to create ‘the road to nowhere’ – a timber jetty that deceived the eye by holding the level and led to a position of solitude projecting over the landscape. Following a tour of all the work and some very complimentary words from Ted Cullinan we devoured one last hog roast and bid a tearful farewell.
July 21st, 2010
On Monday 11th January 2010 Beneficiaries of the UST were honoured to welcome eminent British designer Kenneth Grange (RDI since 1969, don’t you know) to run a Think Up session about his career which spans some 50 fabulous years…
Many of his designs are familiar to us all: the first UK parking meters for Venner, food mixers for Kenwood, razors for Wilkinson Sword, cameras for Kodak, anglepoise lamps…and the list goes on.
(more…)
January 15th, 2010
On Monday 14 December many Expeditionites spent the day exploring the theme of creativity…
I don’t think many of us were sure what to expect. I know I was sceptical about being taught creativity, but I think I have probably learnt a few useful things I can apply to my everyday thought processes.
Exercises we did with Betina included were many and random-named! They included: category cruncher, shark island, naming things, red/metal/organic, wish woosh, sound ball, one-word (circle), one-word (pairs), Yes..and, Reframing (good news bad news), ‘red’ ball, simultaneous clap, gift boxes, quick draw (drawing a face), and even dolphin training (FYI: both Andrew and Sarah were great dolphins…such intelligent creatures)
Continue Reading December 17th, 2009
Raphael Petit, a Facades Architect from RFR with whom Expedition worked with on the San Paolo Tower, Turin, joined us for the day to give us an introduction to the world of facades. Raphael presented an interesting history of facades in the 20th Century - from The Great Exhibition to the Bauhaus. We discussed how facades are used and what they are for – the skin of the building, used to control light, temperature, appearance. We learnt a little about the manufacturing process and considered why some designs are restricted by the manufacturing process and what currently constrains façade design. We asked the question ‘Who takes the lead in façade design and why?’ Environmental responsibilities require designers to push for innovative facades and expert knowledge. Heated discussion ensued about responsibility in design and how the lead consultant should look to façade designers for guidance and the responsibility of designers to push for the right thing environmentally.
After lunch, wrapped up warm, we headed out to the city to view facades in action…
December 10th, 2009
After yesterdays amazingly warm and sunny day I was really looking forward to spending the day with Oli and Caius (our director/producers) and Michael (camera man extraordinaire) filming the UST launch film. Waking up this morning to a grey and cloudy sky put an end to my hopes of a day spent in the sun around Regents Park and Primrose Hill. I cycled into the office to pick up our props (mostly all booze related) before peddling myself over to Primrose Hill where it took me a while to locate the rest of the crew who were hiding in a café around the corner.
October 28th, 2009
Stealth Economist article uploader strikes again.
Following the session on Google, Microsoft and Apple at last week’s thinkup I thought it might be appropriate to post this. The author(s) are trying to second-guess the next move of the industry’s key players. Quite interesting if you are into that sort of thing.
October 26th, 2009
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