This was my first ever design project at university 15 years ago. The idea for the climbers hut was based on a piece of climbing equipment that can be lodged into cracks in the rock face to arrest a climber’s fall.

The hut consists of a Cor-ten steel cage with oak cladding infill and a smooth, curved plywood interior. Once the hut has been lowered into the cliff face and has wedged itself into place the floor joists can be inserted to ensure a level surface. The lower area is for storage of equipment while the upper area is for sleeping and cooking.

I revisited the project as an excuse to experiment with particle systems in 3DS Max. The snow capping on the foreground was produced by raining over half a million particles down on the model and then turning them into a mesh. The images where rendered with Vray and a small amount of photoshop. HDRI skies are from Peter Guthrie’s shop and the rock face textures were made from images sourced from CG Textures.com

Check it out, Dezeen have run a nice article about the studio in Hechingen.

Back in October last year I entered a RIBA competition for a cricket pavilion in Yorkshire. Inspired by the rolling hills of the North York Moors the roof line dips and soars to accommodate the different functions in the building.

If you haven’t already, sign up to the Whitaker Studio newsletter and you’ll enjoy a nice picture delivered right to your inbox every once in a while - http://eepurl.com/bet89D

As of 16th February Whitaker Studio will be expanding into the virtual world of architectural visualisations, so that we can offer imagery from conception through to completion. A small but growing portfolio of my work is available on our website and price sheets are available on request.

Hopefully see you soon.

Khamisi

A year ago a small ad agency based in Hechingen, south Germany commissioned me to design them a studio for their fledgling company. Unfortunately their start-up stopped before it started and the studio was never realised, but before it did stop we had just enough time to come up with a design. Inspired by the growth of crystals in a chemistry test tube I designed a studio using shipping containers as the raw material. Fanning out from a central core, the containers created a floor plan that would allow teams to have their own spaces while still allowing all activity to be seen, encouraging cross pollination of ideas. Above ground floor the containers reached up towards the sky, tracking the suns path and channelling light back down into the heart of the building.

I even had enough time to give Michael Poulard, at Gardiner & Theobald, a quick call and he put me in touch with their Berlin office. As luck would have it the quantity surveyor in the Berlin office had just finished working on a job that involved a lot of steel work and he instantly knew who to speak to about sourcing shipping containers from Rotterdam, before being cut and welded by a company in north Germany, before being delivered to site in south Germany. It all started to look quite feasible on their modest budget of £250,000.

But then the start-up stopped. What could have been…

You can find out more details on my website under Projects - Hechingen Studio.

Here’s a portrait from yesterday’s shoot that I quite like.

Felix

There are some nice, new portraits up on my website now over at www.whitakerstudio.co.uk and if you visit RIBA’s website you can see a series of portraits that I shot for them last month.

My brother tipped me off about the rather nice site First-Stop.org a couple of days ago. It’s a great idea and an essential resource for creatives on the hunt for a photographer or illustrator.