Meet our team- Tom Cooper

Education & experience:
BA - MSA
Part 1 Placement - SimpsonHaugh, Manchester
MArch - MSA

Skills & interests:
Sketching, Photoshop, InDesign, Revit, Rhino, Grasshopper, AutoCad, Lumion
Interested in incorporating nature into architecture and computational thinking

Hobbies:
Rock climbing, Skiing, mountain biking, travelling

Ideas about parks:
A park is provides a place and its people with nature and a space to relax in a variety of ways

During our work we asked for pictures of each team members views from their windows. This has worked beautifully as we have diverse group in a variety of places around the world that helps us show a rich exploration into what parks are.

Day 2 has been very creative with our trips to nearby parks. These are our responses to how we felt and the way we have perceived the park through abstraction using elements from the parks

Similar to our varied window views, our individual park visits were varied from multiple parks in Manchester to Abu Dhabi, India, and Romania. These helped us collect and record how parks are used around the world to compare the similarities and differences. Even those who visited the same park had different experiences explored through our abstractions.

A very creative first day with our Parktopia team!

We explored how nature is portrayed through music and had each of our team members pick a song, that reminds them of nature, and attempt to visualise it abstractly through any medium. Here are just a few examples!

"I generally associate nature with walking, with it serving as a backdrop for reflection or introspection" - Eva

"Being in nature can be a relaxing experience, but also makes me think of the sublime and grandness of the natural world, a reminder of our scale in the world" - Joel

"A lively atmosphere which makes peaceful sounds. It belongs to everyone and no one" - Namon

Day 4 we explored how parks are represented in social media such as Instagram to see the different ways and similarities between countries. Social media is a huge influence on people's life's today and seeing how parks are used through them tells an aspect of how they are seen today. We have identified popular themes such as the park used as a backdrop to 'selfies' or how famous locations of a park have been replicated as the perfect photograph so many times.

Day 5 we used a talk from teacher Ray Lucas on analysing film and how architecture and themes shown in it to aid our film absractions. We researched films that have parks and showed their meaning through art to explore how film represents them through different cultures. Such as The Trial of The Chicago 7 using the park first as a peaceful safe place to protest that turned into a violent riot.

Olga Partyka
Year: BA2

'For me parks are a space to relax and reset from everyday problems, as well as the provider of clean air.'

Olga has produced some fantastic work with a unique perspective and art style that has captured the park representations and how she understands it.

'I enjoyed analyzing my views on parks and translating them into physical things. I also liked the guest speakers a lot.'

Manika Bhalotiya
MLA1

A park to me is a composition of dramatic colored sky, semi-matured trees and an endless patch of grasses captured in one frame.

Manika has brought a great set of skills and knowledge into this project understanding parks and showed interest with our collaborators as they share a passion for landscape design. She has also provided great analysis of the data we found giving us usable ideas.

Working with the Team Parktopia has been really inspiring. It’s been a new and fun experience to learn about the art of abstracting any thought, literature or even a song.

Eva Crutan
BA1

My idea of a park is defined as a backdrop for activities, both social and introspective. To me, its most important function should be shelter.

Eva has been a great member of the team inputting her ideas and opinions on a project where collaboration is so important. Her abstractions have been very successful using a strong skill set.

During the project I enjoyed analysing various forms of media, and translating them through abstractization.

Jason Chen
BA1

For me, park is a connection between human and nature, which is like a transitional zone between man-made objects and nature, where human and nature achieve harmonious coexistence. What's more, park provides me a space for escaping from heavy work, shutting off my brain and having a breath.

Jason has brought a very important approach to our exploration of re-defining the park going one step further analysing our interview questions and producing thought provoking abstractions.

In this Events, what impress me most is the lecture about abstraction and nature from Pandora, which conveys me new thoughts about abstraction. Moreover, among those activities, I like the park visiting most, and my skills of Photoshop has been improved a lot. What's more, I really like our atmosphere of working in everyday's group meeting, which is positive and reassuring.

Anjana Suresh
MLA1

To me a park is personal. It’s a space where I can reflect on my emotions. The calm and serene environment in a park really helps relax and kind of gives me the feeling of being home, where I’m the happiest

As a masters in landscaping student Anjana has been fantastic in helping understand how parks are used and then exploring their use in different medias and areas around the world. Her abstractions have only got better as she learnt from our external speakers.

This overall experience working with group Parktopia has truly been amazing and very much informative. As a landscape architect student, the topics discussed have been so helpful in my study and I think its also interesting to see different perspectives from each as to what an idea of a park is to them.

Joel Richardson
BA2

For me, a park is mainly a space to hang out with friends, or go for a walk through if I need to relax. The experience of being in a park is one of feeling reconnected to nature. Even small parks, with only a few trees help give you a break and remind you of nature and something bigger than yourself.

Joel has been fantastic to work with throughout the project consistently providing useful information and ideas. This leads to him creating high quality work that hits the brief exactly.

I have enjoyed spending dedicated time each day on creating an abstract response to a range of source materials. The feeling of continued exploration of one idea but through different forms has led me to consider parks much more carefully, and I think I’m more aware and critical of park design. I have also enjoyed the opportunity to practice with software that’s new to me, like Illustrator.

Namon Thongsuwan
BA2

For me, a park is a human-centred outdoor space where you can perceive sense of belonging and hear restful sounds. It gives your brain and body a break from the chaotic and loud world.

Namon impressed us with some detailed abstractions such as after visiting a park and overlaying leafs to showcase the variety of colours and flora there compared to other parks. She has successfully shown her reactions to parks and expressed the other medias.

I have learnt a lot of useful software skills and analytical skills from CiA, CPU and USE students. Also, I find the tasks very compelling as abstraction is very individual and could inevitably present personal views on what parks mean to us.

Molly Kenwright
BA1

A park to me is an organic place of escapism. It is a place to reflect and physically detach from stressful situations; I use a park to socialise with my friends and enjoy the scenic nature.

Molly has been producing high quality work these two weeks learning from our skill workshops and producing creative artwork capturing the parks representation through many mediums.

I've enjoyed the combination of collaborative and independent tasks within this project; I have learnt a lot of new skills through meeting new people. Also, I felt that the external speakers were engaging and really complimentary to the project.

Day 7 we approached our park research in a new way to interview as many people around the world as possible with our online survey.

This gave us incredible rich data allowing analysis into why people respond to parks the way they do with emotions and descriptions. As well as the difference in how people want to use parks and how they do not currently provide for these functions, and more.

These abstractions along with the survey information in graphs and statements show an informed research and analysis to answer our question of how parks typologies are unified globally.

At the end of week one we used what we have learnt to inform the survey interview questions for the best understanding of how parks are used around the world.

Using ranking questions allows us to compare the answers more easily. Open questions give us personal responses to analyse. This information gives us first hand data to inform our understanding of parks and further our research and eventually conclusion.

The survey interviews gave fantastic data on how parks are used and thought about from a large variety of people. First we made this data easily readable to then analyse it and represent it to explain found themes. Such as how those interviewed in India stated a want for shaded trees and water features compared to no such mentions in the UK.

This data in graphs is useful to visualise, whilst we take it a step further to abstract it and show the analysis graphically.

Day 7 we took the same parks we visited for our site visits last week as case studies. We used the knowledge we have gained to analyse them against the interviews and theories.

Comparing these two different parks in the same city and then to a different country and climate importantly shows design decisions and the way people use them.

Our work has been made into a research booklet explaining our process and findings on the park typology in a clear narrative. This is for our collaborators Leaf to use for their foundation.