WEEK 8 LECTURE & TUTORIAL:

This week’s lecture was quite good in the way that it opened up my mind to think about the lifecycle of products. This will be a challenge to implement into my design process as I have never taken much thought to these kinds of issues which is really bad I know! These are my notes from the lecture:

It was good to speak to Jane this week and get feedback on my concept. Her suggestion was that it isn’t really viable to create an additional rail for the restaurant, which is fair enough. She thinks that it would be most beneficial for a restaurant or ‘support service’ to be easily transported to different locations around Canberra. This could potentially cater for different events at different times of the year like the ‘flower festival’ that takes place in Canberra for a week in spring. This could be a mobile restaurant that can fit on the back of a truck and be moved to different stations of the light rail- like an extension of the terminals, to cater for large populations at given times. This would obviously be even better if it could be transported through the light rail, but not imperative. This is mainly building on the idea discussed last week with Claire and the two mobile tutors. I had left by this time, but their idea was to create mobile terminals that are only temporary, and enclose the light rail system only when it is in use. This has the potential to be packed up and moved in the future when needed to cater for changing populations, developments etc. Claire has decided to take on this aspect of the light rail system – designing these retractable/mobile terminals, and I will design the support service (restaurant/entertainment) entity that is mobile to work in conjunction with these changing terminals. The main benefit from this is the ability for the system to adapt to the future and changing scenarios of Canberra. As the city is the capital, there are many events/ functions/ seminars etc. in different areas, so these mobile entities can move around the Canberra to cater for different needs of the people and place. These are my notes from the tutorial:

From here I will start to research restaurants/ support services that are transportable, and see if there is any way that a light rail could carry such a load. Depending on how this goes, I will see if there is any way that my ‘travelling restaurant’ idea could be incorporated to act as a cultural attraction in itself as well as just a necessity for the changing populations at the time. Claire and I will have to also look into different festivals and functions that take place in Canberra to plan an example year system that the terminals/support services will adjust for to create a strong purpose to the concept.