b) Site visit

Going back to the site and allowing it to determine and/or inform our understanding of architecture is vital, or so we are told. It is so easy to get caught up in what we see on our drawings and computer screen and take that as our blank canvas.

Turns out they were right - going back to the site again and again, gives you opportunities to rethink some of your assumptions, sometimes giving you a greater challange than you realise, sometimes making sorting out some of the difficulties.

Thankfully this visit was the latter, with some observations that I was able to make this time round providing more awareness about some of the issues that have been arising.

In particular:

- the rise towards the north of the site at street  - allows for better integration of disabled access to the radio room and better ceiling height for the boat storage without compromising the internal characteristics of the base

- a better understanding how the southern end of the site interacts with it's neighbour - now, and under the proposed Bank Street masterplan.

- what potential views from the marine ops exist in reality (not just on paper)