Saturday Morning 10:15 am the weather was closing in, we couldn’t wait any longer for Ben so a group of us set off on the treacherous first leg of the walk from Clay Bank Car Park to Lord Stones Café. We had just passed The Wainstones when we got the news!! Ben had made a last ditch attempt to catch up. He fought his way to the top of the first climb, but sadly didn’t make it any further and went back home.

We climbed through the mist and rain for several hours, over Cold Moor and to the top of Cringle End not far from the half way destination. Here we saw the horrifying figure appearing through the mist; dirty muddy and drenched to the skin.. luckily it was only Ray. After regrouping we started the final descent to the half way point with the anticipation of hot bacon and sausage sandwiches awaiting us.

Refuelled, strengthened with reinforcements and with the weak November sun fighting the mist and rain, we set off on the return journey, mostly FLAT! I believe Geraldine was told!? We pushed on through boggy mud and puddles, relieved that the skies were now clearing and the rain had stopped.

Regrouped at the top of a steep slippery slope we set off on the final leg through Broughton Plantation where large uprooted trees ripped from the ground lined the winding path. We finally all reached the car park and civilization; wet and muddy but with Patrice and the Great North Air Ambulance Service at the forefront of our minds..

Thanks again Cath Oldcorn and Chris Burke for organising the walk and I hope we can continue to raise more money for GNAAS. All late sponsorship will be accepted.

Later in the month I will be auctioning off a framed photograph from the walk.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has spoken out against the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment’s bid to take on the design review role fulfilled by CABE.

“The Prince’s Foundation is entirely inappropriately placed for a role which demands complete impartiality when making decisions related to the future of the built environment,” said Ruth Reed, RIBA President.

“Good design must not be determined nor constrained by arbitrary stylistic preferences, or the notion of what buildings ‘should’ look like; good design is simply about delivering both the client and the public’s needs within budget, in a way that is appropriate to the building’s context.

“It has to take full consideration of the aesthetic, future use and technical ambitions and constraints of the client, site and brief.

“Design review is one of the most important aspects of CABE’s role, and is a way of helping clients and local communities achieve better buildings.

“The integrity of the process must be maintained, and therefore it should continue to be delivered independently.

“It is something that the RIBA continues to explore with the Government.”

Link to the original article on dexigner.com

The Prince’s Foundation

Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) launched an online Sustainability Hub, designed to be a one-stop portal for sustainability information for architects, students, and educators.

This web-based resource, which offers users a platform for learning and discussion, was developed by the Institute to engage the architectural community with sustainability as an inspiration for design, and to pitch green design as an emerging business opportunity.

The content of the Sustainability Hub will initially be centred around four core elements:

- A comprehensive set of design strategies illustrating how to embed the strategy through the conceptual stages of design.

- Relevant and inspiring case studies focusing on the design process, not just the finished building.

- A blog introducing the latest projects and ideas relating to sustainability, content updates, and discussion regarding the experience of RIBA members. High-profile guest bloggers will also be featured alongside a number of regular contributors.

- An expanding series of short films tied into the design strategies, each focusing on one architect, building and design strategy.

The RIBA has ambitious plans for the future growth of the hub, to include book reviews, discussion platforms, related events, and a directory of education and CPD opportunities.

“The RIBA has been at the forefront of sustainable and low carbon design for some time,” said Ruth Reed, President of RIBA. “In developing the Hub, we envisage that it will help to form the central, one-stop site for all of the Institute’s work on sustainability.”

myPANTONE Palettes is an interactive color workspace that provides an easy and engaging platform for selecting and working with colors. It integrates into any application that supports system level color pickers. There are multiple ways for designers to select colors through the software:

-Color Pickers: Colors are selected within a hue circle or square hue gradient color picker, or by manually entering RGB or HTML values for known colors.

-PANTONE Palettes: Colors are selected directly from PANTONE Libraries (only with Libraries installed)

-Eye-dropper Tool: Allows users to pick up any color appearing on their desktop.

-Color Blender: Forms a color gradient between two user-defined colors with up to 83 individual steps between them.

-Color Schemes: Colors are selected according to color harmonies: monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split complementary, triadic and tetradic colors.

-Image Palette Builder: Allows users to import an image into the Image Palette Builder and automatically generate a palette using the dominant colors within the image. As many as 12 colors can be automatically generated.

Defining, Saving and Exporting Color Palettes
After selecting individual colors, users can drag and drop them within the myPalettes area to create a color palette. They also have the ability to view any saved palettes, print, export, organize and lock palettes, as well as edit individual color properties.

myPANTONE is a free download once signed up as a Pantone member

Just a few Photos for the trip there are others saved in Events on both Leeds & Stokesley Servers.

Keeping the file size of a PowerPoint presentation containing mainly images has always been a time consuming task, copying every image to be in the presentation, saving them to an appropriate size and resolution keeping the quality of the image sharp but the file size small. If this process is ignored (often it is) presentations can become slow, jumpy and in the worst case have big delays between slides.

This has now been addressed it the latest version of the software with the facility to change the size and resolution allowing images to be added at any size, reduced and cropped once the presentation is complete.

This feature can be found by selecting an image, selecting Format, select Compress Pictures.

Then you have several options depending on the purpose for presentation. Be aware this cannot be undone so if you want to email the presentation but also print it make a version for each.

The basic rule and challenge of architectural photography is keeping the vertical lines vertical, just flick through the pages of architectural books or magazines. Vertical lines are kept vertical.

This principal should be followed through with all Visual Imagery.

As the saying goes, rules are meant to broken. But to break a rule, first, you have to learn it so that you may have a good reason for breaking it. For example, if you are taking the shot right from the base of the building and shooting straight up . . .