REVIEW OF FINAL MAJOR PROJECT (FMP)

Final Major Project Title: RESIDENTIAL PIER

The final outcome of my project is a luxury holiday house held onto a pier based in Limassol, Cyprus. It is aimed for retired people immigrating into a hot country set by the sea, or wealthy families. I feel that throughout my project I have made significant amounts of progress in regards to researching in depth about my project, sketching up professional perspective drawings, and learning new software’s. I feel that I truly know more about the history of piers and piers in general due to the amount of research I carried out and feel that I have reached my targets throughout the 7 weeks of my project. Methods I have used for my project is following my action plan and time management plan, being organised and to date with all work that needs to be completed. In addition to this I have made a daily/weekly blog of my process throughout my project. 

I think keeping up to date with my blog was a vital requirement needed for my project to show not only others my process but to also remind myself of my process, and note down everything that had been completed for that week. I feel that my sketchbooks have helped me enormously throughout my project. It enables me to write down, sketch down and note any progress throughout and any development I have made. I am also constantly going over the pages of my sketchbook to view visuals of research I had made and read about and remind myself about all the ideas I had formed during exhibitions and visits. It was also really enjoyable to be able to tick off my progress on my action plan each week. It was exciting to work towards the end of the project being able to begin my final model from the past 7 weeks of research and development of ideas. I believe that I have met the majority of my targets I had set for myself during this project. I was able to carry out significant amounts of research. I was able to finalise my idea properly from changing the apartment/house idea to a definite luxury holiday house. I was happy I was able to experiment with models to realise and find out which one I was most certain on using.  

Reflecting over my development process, I realised that this was the most vital point of my project. The process of building test models I believe is a crucial point for all projects. If it were not for my experimentation of models I would not have formed a model for my final piece. Once I had built test models out I then combined them together with my other test models and was able to form a new design, which I was truly pleased with. From this, I decided I wanted to adapt the design onto illustrator and laser cut it. I then put this together and was really happy with the progress I had made from a small test model idea. I then thought more into the scale of size and re designed it again on illustrator to be laser cut. After doing two test trials I then adjusted some small changes to my design and used this for my final model. I was really content with the way I progressed from a test model and was able to develop it further to be my final model. During my project I carried out questionnaires, which really helped in regards to my project as I had a better input from the general public and what their requirements were. I feel that the tutors helped me think more clearly and professionally about my project and also positive. I believe that doing crits in groups really helped as well as I was able to receive feedback of different ideas generated from students and tutors, which was useful information to have throughout my project.

 If I would change anything about my approach I would improve on my time management in regards to research, test models and drawings. I felt that timing was an issue occasionally as I was following my action plan to complete everything according to the weekly set targets. I feel that I have developed enormously with Photoshop and Illustrator. For me, these were programmes I was not familiar with and was finding it difficult to get the hang of. I feel that I really pushed myself to spend a lot of time learning how to work around these programmes and am really pleased with my progress. This will help me in the future, as these are programmes that are used all over the world in designing companies. Next year I am staying at Ravensbourne university to begin my degree on Interior Design and Environmental Architecture, which I am really excited to begin. I feel that not only this project but also this whole year has prepared me immensely to begin my degree course.