Focus Week: Museum of London

The museum of London shows how the changing city has evolved and grown over history from early settlers, to Roman Londinium. With Londinium being where the heart of the city is and then in the Saxon times another settlement was set up further down stream where Charing Cross is now. The City of London is built on a huge area of marsh land that over centuries has seen the River Thames Cut down in width dramatically One other exhibition currently on display is about the Great Fire of London in 1666 showing some of the original artifacts that survived the fire and how Londoner’s fled to the banks of the Thames to escape the flames taking only their most valuable, but not always their most useful or important of belongings.

Focus Week Barbican and Museum Of London

Trained as a photographer, Shahbazi shoots images–including portraits, still life's and landscapes–and often uses them as source material not only for photographs but also for paintings, billboards and handmade carpets. By altering the scale and transposing the imagery into a new medium or a style associated with another culture, she subverts viewers’ expectations and explores the complexity of identity.

For her project in The Curve, Shahbazi collaborates with a team of Iranian billboard painters, employing techniques and styles typically used for commercial advertising in her native country.

Focus Week: The Barbican and Museaum of London

Along Charing Cross Road I came across an art gallery called The Window Gallery. It is Sited opposite a bus stop and all the display windows are screened off with performing artists behind it that only show the shadows and silhouettes of their movements with no sound, almost like a puppet show that they do in Asia were you just see the shadows. Passers by are to watch the event to see how the couple being projected bond and touch each other in the mood of seduction. It is one of many events being held at The Window display Gallery titled Seduced created by PG Students at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. It is running in conjunction with The Barbican’s exhibition Seduced Art and sex.

Focus Week: Triton Square and Regents Place

Triton Square won a, well deserved, hard landscape award. (EDCO were the landscape architects and Sheppard Robson the architects). The square is visually dramatic. It opens to the sun and the south but it is engulfed by noise from the Euston Road and battered by gusting winds generated by the high buildings. CABE commented that ' The nature of Triton Square and the surrounding development needs to be considered further in relation to wind disturbance.

Focus Week: Spitalfields Market

Old Spitalfields Market, or simply 'Spitalfields' as it is fondly known, is the world-famous East London destination. Home to a flourishing creative community, Spitalfields has over the last 14 years secured a place at the forefront of interiors, fashion, the arts and food.

It has been the site of a busy market since 1638, when King Charles gave a license for flesh, fowl and roots to be sold in what was then known as Spittle Fields. Three hundred and sixty odd years later and now located within the historical Horner Buildings, the market continues to be the setting for a thriving narrative.

Focus Week 2: Medicine Now exhibition Welcome collection

The Upper part of the Exhibition space is a Medicine Man and Medicine Now. Medicine Now looks at current day medical issues including Malaria, obesity and genomes and the links this can have to major illness in future life with the humans body such as diabetes, and over health problems. One of the main interests was that of a cut through of a donor’s body which showed how the muscles, veins and bones are laid out with in the body and the variations of color of each, which really had a fascination about it in how the body is structured together so precisely. There was also an area showing obesity and Malaria, which compares an illness associated with developed nations and a disease associated with developing nations.

Focus Week 2: Welcome Collection

Walking on from the British Library I visited the Welcome collection which is an exhibition of different forms of work in the Building opposite Euston Station. It is free to enter the Gallery which has a large modern bookshop with a wide range of artist’s books and media design, a cafe, Reference library and three exhibition main spaces showing, mixing medicine, life and art all in one building The Main exhibition being shown on the ground floor was “Sleeping and Dreaming", which investigates the science and need for sleep and dreams and the effects of what this can have on the humans body due to insomnia.

There were videos and films displaying people and their sleeping patterns. This was then shown and recorded by having drawings of the different pattern readings that were carried out as well as artwork. The exhibition also was displaying scientific experiments which look at caffeine products in food and how this can change the appearance of the humans body and knowledge of how well they are aware of there surroundings.

Focus Week 2: British Library

The British Library Situated Just of Euston Road London is one of the largest In Britain. On Approaching the Library from St Pancras Station you relies the infrastructure of the building is red brick work from the 1980's or early 90's. The gardens that create the garden into the forecourt of the Library actually look more modern than you would think with the date of the actual Building.

Photographers Gallery: A New Future

The Photographers Gallery is to have a new home in the heart of Soho in 2010.

The new Gallery will have double the current exhibition space, provide state of the art technology for education, have a new on-line resource centre and a street level café and bar.

It will be designed by internationally acclaimed architects, O’Donnell + Tuomey, as their first major UK commission.

The gallery will have three main exhibition spaces, a cafe gallery called wall for all featuring the publics works and a print sales gallery. They also plan a whole floor for lectures.

The Gallery will also create a huge new art space for Soho.

Ramillies Street: A New Public Space In Central London

Ramiliies street in London is sittuated just of oxford street, a small passage linking oxford street, to carnaby street and Great Malborough street. With the move of the Photographers Gallery here in 2009, the need for predestrinising this area is a key element to defining a new public space in central London.



Ramilillies street is a main delivery entrance to some of the top leading brands on oxford street so changing it needs to work along side allowing the vehicular access also.