no2self.net archive - 2004 to 2007

entries listed in alphabetical order

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* QT movie link - see last move in the sequence

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Hi honey, I'm home. Hard day at the office dear? Yes, it was a real grind...

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The following are well-recognized scoring "moves" in fencing competitions. Some require additional props, but most can be improvised.

The Back up the Stairs Retreat
Usually executed mid-match, this maneuver features one combatant backing up a set of stairs to a landing from which there is no means of escape but a hanging rope. (See, Swinging Back into the Fray)

Swinging Back Into the Fray
Normally via chandelier of hanging rope; in gymnasium climbing ropes may be substituted.

The Circular Flip Weapon from-Opponent's Hand Move
Executed with a deft circular motion of the wrist, this maneuver deprives your opponent of his weapon. Bonus points awarded if weapon then seized from air by its grip. (points deducted from grabbing blade.) Self-satisfied leer optional.

The Dagger Parry
Having been divested of his weapon by the Circular Flip, above, the fencer may draw a six-inch dagger from his belt and proceed to defeat his bewildered opponent. (Psychologically devastating to opponent, and a real morale-builder for your team).

Cutting Chandelier Rope to Drop on Pursuing Team Members
Successfully executed, this move can really shift the momentum in a competition. It involves use of one's weapon to cut the rope holding up an overhead lighting fixture so that it falls on opposing team members. Extra points awarded if fixture is of circular design and actually confines the pursuers. (See "Encirclement Points") A basketball backboard and hoop can be substituted in most gymnasiums; however, in such case encirclement points are limited to one, given the small diameter of the rim. If burning candles on the chandelier ignite other objects, or competitors, additional bonus points may be awarded.

Stabbing Cask Instead of Opponent
This is actually a way of LOSING points. It occurs when a fencer backs his opponent into a cask or barrel. By sideways feint, the opponent causes his hapless aggressor to stab the barrel, rather than himself. If liquid spurts from the barrel or cask, subtract an additional point; if liquid is flammable (ex: brandy) and comes into contact with downed chandelier candles, add 3 excitement points.

Weapon Lodges in Solid Object
Another momentum-turner, this occurs when a fencer's weapon becomes lodged in a solid object (other than an opponent) and its end breaks off. Distance points may be awarded, however, if remainder of weapon is thrown ineffectively at opponent.

The Veg-o-Matic
Extra points are awarded when ever an errant slash dices organic material (again, other than an opponent) such as apples or melons on nearby training table.

The Whittler
Employed after loss of main weapon, this maneuver involves the use of a wooden object to parry an opponent's slashes. Points are awarded for the number of successive slashes which reduces the wooden object to a nubbin (often followed by "desperation throw," described above).

Seize the Amulet
This move can be pivotal in competition. Each competitor wears a hanging pendant around her neck. The match is over when a fencer corners her opponent and flicks the pendant from its chain with her weapon. Extra points if caught in free hand. (normally followed by a sprint to the team bus).

The Graffiti Slash
Originated by a fencer named Zuckerman at NYU, this maneuver is used to inscribe one's initials on an opponent's uniform. Bonus points awarded for script. Neatness counts.

Tag-Team Moves
While not exactly politically correct, these moves foster strong team spirit. They involve members of the women's team in, essentially, a supportive (if not downright decorative) role. Some of these are:

• The Cowering Behind the Fencer Backing up Stairs Move
• The Swinging on Rope with Male Fencer Escape
• The Weapon Replacement Toss
• The Cradling Head of Dying Male Fencer Pose (dying fencer must remember to recite: 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve)

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Architecture Week Launch
Trafalgar Square
Saturday 11 June
13.00 - 17.00
FREE music * performance * installation * demonstration -- Freeness (13.00 - 14.00 and 15.00 - 16.00) Bringing us tracks created by African, Asian, Caribbean and Chinese musicians from across England with a DJ set by Blacktronica. http://a.chtah.com/a/tBCqCg9ANYHpyAXHisOAP91yBBb/arch9 Urban Freeflow (13.00 - 14.00 and 15.00 - 16.00) Free-running is about finding new ways through the city landscape - climbing, leaping, somersaulting obstacles in your path (such as giant stone Lions). The Urban Freeflow London team show us how its done. http://a.chtah.com/a/tBCqCg9ANYHpyAXHisOAP91yBBb/arch10 Architecture Week Speakers' Corner Needs You! (14.00 - 15.00) Hosted by Maxwell Hutchinson, architect and BBC LONDON 94.9FM broadcaster. This is your chance to address an audience in Trafalgar Square. http://a.chtah.com/a/tBCqCg9ANYHpyAXHisOAP91yBBb/arch3 Red Ladies (16.00) Performance group the Clod Ensemble salute the Square's heritage as a site of political protest and stage a (mock) political rally. Be vigilant! Women dressed in red may try to solicit your support. http://a.chtah.com/a/tBCqCg9ANYHpyAXHisOAP91yBBb/arch11 Superconductor (All afternoon) A multitude of entrances, exits, corridors and courtyards in which to roam, explore or sit quietly and contemplate. A bold and adventurous temporary artwork by artists Gaia Alessi and Richard Bradbury. http://a.chtah.com/a/tBCqCg9ANYHpyAXHisOAP91yBBb/arch12 Moose (All afternoon) Moose is a graffiti artist ... with a difference. Leaving a temporary imprint through the environmental friendly process of removing dirt with water, he will change the way you see the Square. http://a.chtah.com/a/tBCqCg9ANYHpyAXHisOAP91yBBb/arch6 -- Architecture Week 2005 17-26 June - architectureweek.org.uk for a full programme and 600 events across the country

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King Rem laid into Alain a little. I felt as though I were witnessing the start of a fox hunt. I think Rem's deluded when he states that "all architects have good intentions", but his real frustration with dilettantes such as Alain is that he is too gentle and not constructive enough. Rem cried out "We need help!" due to the absence of criticism - a point made (although admittedly not well made) by this blogster previously. Critics nowadays are kissing starchitects' arses because they want to publish their coffee table books. King Rem feels this lack of intelligent criticism between the authors of the built environment and their critics is leading to a real paucity of architectural quality. We are really lacking a Mumford, Huxtable, or Jacobs today. At least, that's what I took from it.

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Alain de Botton is given short thrift by the architecture establishment, seemingly because he has the audacity to meddle in their affairs, of which, they assume, he can know nothing. He is suffering from the Prince Charles effect - the willingness to speak up on behalf of the common man about a subject he has currently wondered [sic] into whether by accident or purpose. Having read his latest book, "The Architecture of Happiness" I did find it a little wanting and naïve from an architect's perspective. I'll leave the reviews to the qualified. And indeed that's how he came across in this debate. You could almost hear the "tut-tuts" and eye-rolls from the audience. But at least he's willing to bring up these issues and take them to the public, which is more than most of the assembled architects are willing to do, preferring instead to incestuously breed ideas. When at the end, he said that he was "looking forward to being able to appreciate the ugly", I don't think he was being ironic at all.

For a very long time, taste and artistic training have been things that only a small number of people have been able to develop. Only a few people could afford to participate in the production of many types of media. Raw materials like pigments were expensive; same with tools like printing presses; even as late as 1963 it cost Charles Peignot over $600,000 to create and cut a single font family. The small number of people who had access to these tools and resources created rules about what was good taste or bad taste. Over the last 20 years, however, the cost of tools related to the authorship of media has plummeted. Suddenly consumers are learning the language of these authorship tools. The fact that tons of people know names of fonts like Helvetica is weird! [...] As people start learning and experimenting with these languages authorship, they don’t necessarily follow the rules of good taste. This scares the shit out of designers. In Myspace, millions of people have opted out of pre-made templates that 'work' in exchange for ugly. Ugly when compared to pre-existing notions of taste is a bummer. But ugly as a representation of mass experimentation and learning is pretty damn cool.

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There are different approaches to a global market. You can brand your style, as, say, Zaha is doing in a very super manner, or you can brand your approach. And I think our approach is very practical and dialectical; there is a desire to build the outstanding out of a dialogue.

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Architectural Advent day 15:

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Architectural Advent day 19:

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In Conversation with David Adjaye and Hew Locke (June 18)

notes: took some pictures of the Hew Locke installation last weekend - see entry immediately before this one

Drawing : City : Futures (June 18)

Vivid Launches its New Space (June 17,18,19,20,21,22)

notes: I've mentioned Kate Pemberton's work here before - see entry on endfile.com

The Bells of St Martin's - Finale Event (June 26)

Artbox/ Foot Prints InTheSnow / Rick Myers (June 17-26)

The Mailbox Final Phase Design Competition (June 17-26)

notes: looking forward to seeing how the new kids on the block, Kinetic, square up to the establishment - either way, I hope a Birmingham practice get it rather than Barfield or MAKE

WAG New Galleries and Working with Listed Buildings (June 22)

notes: this baby's on-site right now, although sadly Simon Patterson's art installation for it has been removed from the project. I mentioned this project here way back when I first started this blog. If you want to see more of Patterson, he's at the Ikon gallery until the 17th.

Birmingham School of Architecture & Landscape End of Year Show (June 21,22,23)

notes: I shall be there to support the school in its recovery from the last few months of turmoil - come along and buy me a drink.

From Westside to Eastside - an Architecture Week Walk (June 17-26)

notes: Route laid out by friend and ex-tutor Joe Holyoak - he's the guy who asked Amanda Levete why Selfridges is the shape it is - see my entry entitled 'that building' for the answer.

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'Capability' Brown's Pleasure Gardens at Compton Verney (June 24)

Sat 24 June, 2-5.30pm
Join John Phibbs and explore the immediate surroundings of the house, the design of the pleasure grounds and their role in 18th century life. £10/concs £8 (includes gallery admission). Event will include a two-hour walk. Please wear appropriate clothing and footwear.

www.comptonverney.org.uk

The Creative Prison Seminar (June 20)

The Creative Prison Seminar is a national one-day event which draws on results from Rideout's multi-artform Creative Prison Project with life-sentence prisoners & staff at HMP Gartree, it will explore the role that environmental design, creativity, & education can play in preventing re-offending.

www.rideout.org.uk

Produce (June 19,22)

Simon Harris & Dan Burwood present 'PRODUCE' The launch of a site-specifically designed market stall, selling fresh local produce,as part of an arts program on the Civic Centre Estate, Ladywood where Residents & visitors will have the opportunity to collaborate with artists. See www.civic-centre.org

Venue: Civic Centre Estate (behind REP Theatre)
Ladywood
Birmingham
B1 2NN

www.simonsaysproductions.com

Habitat - T House (June 19)

To coincide with the launch of two specially commissioned studio 'pods' architect Ranbir Lal and artist Colin Pearce will take up temporary residence in one of the studios. You are invited to bring in an object and a memory you associate with tea/tea drinking and join them for tea and discussion.

Venue: Vivid
140 Heath Mill Lane
Birmingham
B9 4AR

www.vivid.org.uk/habitat

Troll - a map of the heart (June 17,18)

A couple of old trolls lead a fascinating unconventional walking tour around some of the less salubrious, hidden parts of Birmingham's underbelly exposing the architecture of the city in a new light by telling the hidden, salacious and exotic histories of many of the city's buildings and landmarks

Venue: Birmingham City Centre

www.fiercetv.co.uk

Remembering the future: steps towards a Museum of Lost Heritage (June 24,25)

Last public opportunity to explore the site of the former Museum of Science and Industry, Birmingham. Artists Alistair Grant and Stuart Mugridge create a series of themed trails prior to demolition and redevelopment.

Venue: Former Museum of Science and Industry
144 Newhall Street
Birmingham
B3

Architecture Week Film Festival (June 21)

A series of films over the course of Architecture Week chosen by some of the worlds leading architects, inluding Rem Koolhaus, Adam Caruso and Birmingham's Glenn Howells; Exploring the relationship between film & architecture.

Venues:Custard Factory Theatre and Fort Dunlop.

www.fiercetv.co.uk

Open Practice (June 23)

To mark the 10th anniversary of Architecture Week 10 architects across the region are opening their doors to the public. This is your chance to see plans, models & visuals of their recent projects & talk about their practice & proposals. If you can take at look at their websites before your visit.

Venue: Axis Design Collective
Crosby Court, 28 George Street
Birmingham
B3 1QG

Contact: Me!
Axis Design Collective - 0121 2361726
http://axisdesigncollective.com

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Seminar at the Architectural Association 24+25 November 2005:

Surface Intelligence: Ambient and Augmented Architectures.

Please join us if you are able for the Imperial/RCA/AA/EPSRC CultureNetwork seminar at the Architectural Association, London All the best, - Tom Barker Professor IDE RCA // Smartslab // AA-DRL // b consultants

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Forget the rampant aestheticism and architectural blinders of the twentieth century. We live in a pluralistic age, and it demands a new pragmatism. We are beyond "either/or"--we live in a world of "both/and." The issues are quality, habitability, and sustainability, not style du jour. The issue is real urbanism, not some polite, politically palatable "lite" version thereof. I'll take good New Urbanism, just like I'll take good Modernism. But it's not about the starchitects and their ideologies anymore. Can't the catfighting parties on the different ends of the aesthetic spectrum just grow up and get along?

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Some parallels between the worlds of construction and software architecture are obvious. Starting at the top, a truly creative architectural design needs people all the way through the hierarchy to implement it. We also have similar "materials" issues in terms of the infrastructure, tools, and libraries that are available. However, we have one fortunate advantage over the construction world in that you can write literally anything in code if you have enough resources, whereas there are some absolute limits in the construction world.

"There are two forms of postgraduate architectural education in the Netherlands - the grant system and Rem."

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1. but only if you visit the site, as there is a Romulan cloaking device cast over the RSS feed on this one.

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The current Canary Wharf geographical context exists only through the visual primacy of framed pictorial views controlled by a system of Windows^TM. [datawall_exterior.jpg:in] The London Docklands desktop theme is supplied as default on start-up. An intervention into the existing architectural operating system is commenced by the installation of a new autonomous program. The introduction of new information forces the background to recede and locational priority is destroyed. Where would you like to go today? As each new program is installed and the system registry is increasingly traumatised, connection with the Windows^TM system is made tenuous. Crash. Reboot. System corrupted. Format disk [Y/N]? Acceptance of a context free spatial position¹ and intervention within an already initiated process², generates an internalised, self-referencing, non-place architecture. Space is carved arbitrarily by the force diagram scribed by "...the dichotomy of living between the physical and the digital..."³. The activated external surface of the data plane is manipulated by the information pimp, who lurches through the x, y and z co-ordinates with minimal physical effort, sending his e[version] ⁴ out to work from the comfort of his own executive chair. [datawall_interior.jpg:in] As the data field records the journey of the e[version], it’s deformation freezes the moments of contact and simultaneously implicates all others within the mesh. As the user descends from the chair, the mouth of the data surface opens. The negative result of previous positive actions becomes the void between the data planes and forms the volume of physical living space. The reconciliation of physical and digital occurs as a point of equilibrium between the tension of opposite forces. Take a shit, have sex, drink a glass of water. The boundaries of movement reconfigure the volume; until the e[version] is found and activated again...

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1. 50 storeys above the ground plane in a homogenous spatial system - the flat in question was on the top floor of the building
2. the external envelope was complete at this point
3. taken from the competition brief
4. e[version]: the e[lectronic] version of the user
   or
   eversion: n. 1. The act of turning inside out. 2. The condition of being turned outward. (Dictionary of the English Language)
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   eversion: casting the virtual world unto the real, multi-threading virtual/real and actual/possible. (Marcos Novak / A.D Profile 133)

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Between 1963 and 1971, there was the magazine Architectural Design. AD was about ideas. One or two contributors went on to build their designs, but mainly it was about things that might be done. This was the era of Archigram, the avant-garde design group, and also, most importantly, the critic Reyner Banham. Banham needed Archigram, Price and one or two others because they fed him. Equally, Reyner told them what they were doing. Magazines today need to include finished projects to attract advertisers, which is very sad because it promotes the idea, particularly among younger architects, that they have to build. This was anathema to Price. He never felt that he had to build, and he didn't build a great deal. It's not that he wasn't interested in building; it's just that he didn't want to do anything that didn't contribute to the ideas and the thoughts he was trying to explore. ... Towards the end of his life, Price was more relaxed. The notion of doing nothing, of observing - which so many people have forgotten - is something that I think he understood. On the drawing Surf 90, for instance, he has written: "Time to stand and stare." ... One of the young architects Price influenced was Rem Koolhaas. Koolhaas will take a brief and keep it in terms of diagrams as long as possible. The library being built in Seattle at the moment, which is going to be a magnificent building, is exactly that. Koolhaas has analysed the user's brief and essentially built the diagram of the analysis. He has taken it in different directions. Certainly, there is a formal expression in Koolhaas's work you would never find in Price, but there is a huge debt there.

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In one ... of my favorite books, by Henri Louis Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion the author comes to the conclusion that the universe, to paraphrase loosely, is a machine for producing gods. It seems to me that architecture is, in fact, the machine that produces the universe which produces the gods. It does so not fully through theories or reflections, but in the ever non-repeatable and optimistic act of construction. The qualities of its resistance, which are as pragmatic as the materials from which it is built, form an irascible and volatile field whose smile is not that of Buddha.

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Anyone embarking on an architectural education (or stupid enough to go to a party with some architects) will eventually discover the phrase 'deconstruction'. The following text helps to,

a) stop any conversations on this subject before they go too far, and

b) explain what's happening in that strange park in North-East Paris: 'Parc de la Villette'

Just remember that deconstruction is all about word play and the questioning of perfectly sensible hierarchies, such as up/down, left/right and alive/dead. Anybody who’s seen ‘Night of the Living Dead’ has seen deconstruction in action. Zombies exist in an interstitial space between life and death. The zombie horror genre of movies can become a critique of popular culture unfettered by the restrictions of predefined values or ideology.

The best way to understand a new idea is often through metaphor. If deconstructivist architect Bernard Tschumi (architect of Parc de la Villette) made tea, he would probably do it like this:

Tea bags and disjunction

The hierarchy imposed by the term 'tea', prevents those of us involved in tea making from acknowledging the paradox which is inherent within the word play. Tea is not tea.

The rational act of tea-making is made sensuous by working within the program of water and leaves. The modernist tea maker may strive for a monovalent concentration on an individual element - either leaf or water - the Platonic tea. Yet, the tea event is derived by the collision of each element, rather than allowing the dominance of, let us say, the tea leaf. Instead the breaking down of these accepted hierarchies within the water/leaf dialectic, creates real tea pleasure.

This pleasure can only be found within the bondage of order. The institution of tea drinking is established by the systemic rules: cup, tea leaf, water, and the dairy produce variable. These rules do not limit us, but rather, provide the possibility of brewing through disjunction. It is the interstitial space between these elements that defines a new paradigm of drink.

The action of introducing these bi-polar conditions can be performed in numerous ways. However, the postrationalisation of cinematographic methods of control - fade in/fade out, cut/splice, pan/freeze - can be used as diagrams for the deconstruction of the joy of liquid consumption.

For it is only by recognising the institutional tea rule that the subject of drinking will reach the full depth of experience and its sensuality. Like eroticism, sweet tea, needs both system and excess. Which can be seen as a kettle/sugar dialogue.

To really appreciate white tea, you may even have to run out of milk.

Hmmmm, deconstruction....

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There was a guy says Tony, called William Mitchell, who did sculptures in concrete for the facades of buildings. All I can think of is the guy at MIT, but for the moment I keep that to myself. I once went to a lecture he gave and heard him talk about the first time he started thinking about ornament and facades. He was on a train and as it passed under a bridge the history of the smoke patterns billowing over the surface above had brought the surface of the wall into greater relief. That's when he first got the idea. He told us about failed experiments with mangles where they would put concrete on boards and feed it between rollers with patterns cut into them. They got in a mess until they realised it was better to keep the concrete still and move the rollers.

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Who do they think we are? Who do we think we are? Although I am not legally entitled to call myself an architect, for the purposes of this study, which in effect forces a 'them and us' situation, I feel, after six years of study, having been indoctrinated with the language, ideals and points of reference of an architect, that I am now more architect than not. However I do not wish for this to come across as a paranoid exponent of a conspiracy theory against architects. A 'no-one likes us we don't care' attitude fails to enhance anyone's reputation (unless you are a Millwall fan) but if architects are found to be distant and aloof, with a 'take us or leave us' mentality then it does seem that they (we) are going to be 'left.' Who knows, perhaps we will discover the opposite to be true, however I doubt that. I can only make judgements based on my personal experience of calling the RIBA for the purposes of researching this project. I was told by the receptionist that unless I was a member I couldn't speak to anyone and should instead ring the premium rate (50p / minute) information line. Architects? Aloof and elitist? Well superficially their (our) professional body shows clear signs of being just this, so what about the members? And what does everyone else think about architects? Do non-architects care about architects? Do they know about architects? And what is this knowledge based on and informed by? Personal experience? The media? Fiction?

The aim of this dissertation is to use the famous extract from C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Lucy enters the cupboard and first discovers Narnia, as an index for a personal storage system. This is used to house my own narrative on the theme of closet space, an individual 'wardrobe of words'. My writing then, in inhabiting the 'fixed' text of Lewis' novel, uses the predetermined structure of the story to develop my own investigation of the theme of cupboards. In effect I aim, like Lucy, to enter the mundane space of the wardrobe and discover a "whole country" within. The methodology I use is similar to George Perec's in his essay "Think/Classify" where he explains, "The alphabet used to 'number' the various paragraphs of this text follows the order in which the letters of the alphabet appear in the French translation of the seventh story in Italo Calvino's "If On One Winter's Night a Traveller". Rather than letters, I use the words of my chosen extract, as a means of classification. Reading and writing between the confined lines of the text become a way of 'slotting between' as one would file objects in a cupboard, generating a spacious place of creative investigation. The method of classification created through this process of reading and writing questions the opposition of orderly classification versus random spontaneous thought. It is here that the theme of the research develops: an exploration of the nature of the space of the closet, both as a mechanism for control and categorisation but also as a place to explore the freedom of the imagination. And so, following Lucy's journey from exterior to interior, my dissertation investigates these alternate themes and reflects on the implications that such a duality might have for the architect as designer and definer of space.

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* Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals/Architecture

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A sample of lace will be scanned, turned into a 3D computer model, and moulded into the pigmented precast concrete panels forming the elevations of the centre. "With this technology," observes Caruso, "you can do very intricate ornament again." Sullivan and Wright live on. As does Berlage – his Holland House, right behind Foster’s Gherkin in the City of London is "a constant reference". Caruso St. John regard this kind of thing as real ornament. For them, it is cheating to muck around with algorithms and mapping programs to generate façade details, as some modish architects do. "Why go to that kind of incredible contrivance to get an articulation which in the end is always very reduced?" ponders Caruso.

The "Holiday Home" is an experiential installation exploring and quantifying areas in which the holiday home departs from modern design conventions. The orthogonal surfaces of the archetypal house are extruded and skewed creating the sculptural armature within which the dichotomies of home and holiday home are played out. The new architectural shape emulates escapism, the expectation of a holiday as removed from the everyday experiential routine. The interplay of what is real and what is virtual transpires on a number of levels touching on ideas of collective memory and phenomenological perceptions.

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Exurbia (aka Edge City, subSuburbia, sprawl, outta control, psychick death zones): that newly expanded, resurfaced and subsubcontracted housing areas that aren't really near anything, except the highway. These are evidence of continued flight from the urban zones by the almost affluent. Requiring a car as they usually have no sidewalks, the exurban neighborhood is a psychological battlefield that pits "neighbour" against "neighbour" in non-communication assaults, assumptive competition and hyperreal conspicuous consumerism. A word to the wise: do not go there except with the most profound sense of caprice and beatitude.

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Architectural Advent Day 9:

Farrell-Grimshaw interviewed by James Meller (PDF link)

My profession has a short memory. I post this in the same week that my office has been asked to attend meetings to discuss the benefits of standardisation in timber frame housing. This time round everybody has agreed to call it MMC (Modern Methods of Construction). Farrell and Grimshaw understood the systems approach - it's exactly that: an approach. Yet despite all the urban design debates about context sensitivity, design quality and environmental performance, it seems there are many who are still chasing the idea of a set of standardised products rather than techniques.

This is perhaps too intuitive to be called a system, but it has systematic elements threaded through it. One of the things we are doing at the moment is low-cost housing, for housing societies on many different tiny sites where, right from the outset, we thought we had to get something constant going through these things. What is the constant element? It isn't the appearance of the buildings, because in England today every little local planning officer is a law unto himself. So we scrapped the appearance side of it and looked for other common threads. Wat we were able to pin it down to, was the frame structure of the building and the internal finishes, but not the external finishes.

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More image/text mash ups.

'...seems to admit more affinity with construction photos than with images of finished buildings ... divisions haven't yet been filled in ... leaves openings for life to develop and lets the architect suggest an unpredictable future ... The design remains an idea, or a net in which various bits have got lodged like bugs in the radiator grille of a car. Like these insects, the gelled or completed elements of the structure are significant as clues to a process, signs of activity which buildings can't entirely contain. So this work is like a machine not in its strict logic but in its absence of extraneous baggage and its unprogrammatic linkages...'

Image: Fawood Children's Centre by Alsop and Partners (photo credit - Alan Lai)

Words: Robert Harbison describing Cedric Price's Interaction Centre in Thirteen Ways: Theoretical Investigations in Architecture.

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I'm a graphic designer at an architecture firm, and am currently setting up a new business-card template to send to the printer. The templates had been designed to accommodate long, hyphenated last names as well as multiple professional accreditation initials. After entering in all 100+ names into the forms, one person's name did not fit. This person used their full first name---not unusual---but then also their full middle name, whereas most chose to forego even a middle initial. And then, this person wanted "Associate AIA" after his name, which I suppose is OK, but it's sort of like putting "almost AIA" after your name. ("Associate AIA" means you have an architectural degree and are paying dues but haven't yet passed the certification exam.) So, in the interest of trying to get all the information to fit, I asked if he wouldn't mind either using just an initial, or else maybe getting rid of "Associate AIA." He declined to omit any information, explaining that "It's not 'Frank L. Wright.' " (posted by salvomania)

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We have two primary interests in the chimerical. One has to do with its seeming capability as a concept to help define existing phenomena of fairly complex hybridity in which categorically different systems somehow operate as a single identity. The other, is based on the assumption that the ways in which chimera are constituted and operate hold clues to a transformatively aggregative model of construction/production. That is to say, an aggregation which becomes more than the sum of its parts, and therefore is not reducible to its constituent parts. Thus, the chimerical has the potential to be both an analytical and methodological tool. In combination, the two models offer an opportunity to link dissipative/aggregative operations to transformative ones with the co-citation analog identifying similarities between unrelated sites/structures/programs, and the chimerical analog employing these initial similarities to construct new sites/structures/programs. While existing categories might cease to be useful, the paradigm of the network/chimera has the potential to open up an entire new range of previously inconceivable kinds of structures for which no names exist as of yet.

• Gunning Fog Index 12.93
• Flesch Reading Ease 44.04
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade 8.63

• Gunning Fog Index 7.90
• Flesch Reading Ease 68.71
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade 5.18

I'll be the one in the t-shirt that says 'Architecture Sucks'.³

Notes:
1. RIP DNA
2. related entry: non-linear canals
3. unless my current level of bravado has ebbed away by morning

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...crime can be reduced through 'territoriality' - people extending there control over their immediate surroundings - and recommends using ' barriers' to 'maximise private space and minimise public space'.

Under the section 'The Fence', it advises that fences be supplemented with anti-intrusion sensors, CCTV, shock lighting and alarms.

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The debate over quality, or lack of it, in the development of mass housing in sweeping tracts of southern England has been fuelled by Cabe, the government's Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. Its chief executive, Richard Simmons, wrote in the Guardian: "Our challenge is to create the kind of neighbourhoods that people will want to live in. This is not a question of aesthetics or style." Oh yes it is. I would have thought that Simmons's job was to champion the way buildings and the "built environment" look. However, as he was referring to new housing estates, or "sustainable communities" in New Labour-speak, in the Thames Gateway, a tragic fiction of a non-place in the profitable making, I suppose we must learn to forgive him. For this stretch of sopping, strangely beautiful land along the banks of the Thames has become the dumping ground of crass new housing for poor people, many of them migrants, employed to clean up the costly messes we make in our homes, offices and public lavatories, and to stick expensive tickets on the windscreens of our cars. This is a no-go area for such trivial things as aesthetics, civility or style.

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*of course, any muppet can build at that sort of density, but doing it successfully is quite another matter

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1. or is it Tracy Island?
2. Recently Mies' grandson got to do that for real, but on the wrong building.

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housingprototypes.org, a guide to housing design examples listed by project, architect, building typology, city and country:

HousingPrototypes.org contains examples of housing designed by different architects in different historic periods, countries, and cities. Projects range in scale from single buildings to examples of large social housing projects containing thousands of dwellings. A typological guide provides for research by housing site and building organization. Each example is presented as an individual case study complete with building data and description, a critical analysis, bibliographic resources, photographic images, and drawings. The data is cross-indexed for easy searching by housing type, country, city, architect and date.

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While Selfridges is certainly an asset to Birmingham, should it not raise concerns that the most talked about building in the region is a shop?

I couldn't agree more.

p.s - and yes, Bobby H, I'm flogging old projects again; get over it ;)

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Note that we are not dealing here with theoretical physics, which requires a language not known to everyone; architectural theory should be written in a common language understandable to every person. After all, they have to live with its applications.

We have to live with the laws of physics, too; that doesn’t mean we should all be conversant in string theory. We listen to music, but we’re not all expected to perform Schenkerian analysis. It is wrong to suggest that just because everyone uses buildings, architectural theory should be dumbed-down to the level of those who have had no architectural instruction.

I don't think so. By the same logic we should do away with voting and leave politics to political scientists. No

1. http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Idiot

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In Search of Suburbia: 11 October 2005 - 26 March 2006 We are all familiar with the suburbs. The majority of the UK's population lives there. We all know what we mean by suburbia. For many of us it is summed up by the 1930s semi-detached family house with front and back gardens. And many of us have strong feelings about it, whether positive, quiet, safe, leafy, and family-oriented or -negative- think Mike Leigh snobbery and Desperate Housewives undercurrents. But in fact the suburbs are incredibly varied, both in date and in the type of homes provided. So why do we have such a strong tendency to homogenise this vast diversity? Is there really such a place as suburbia or are there many different and changing suburbias? MoDA's exhibition goes in search of suburbia by looking at a number of different developments in the vicinity of the museum: the red-brick villas of Edwardian Palmers Green; 1920s and 30s social and private housing in Oakwood; the sparklingly bright modern homes of the 1950s; the large-scale mixed planning of the late 60s Grahame Park Estate in Barnet; and a small 1990s development.

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It is with great regret that I have to inform you that you have given incorrect information to readers of your blog regarding the export options of sketchup. I have been using this programme for some time and must report that you can indeed export orthographic projections directly into autocad at the correct scale. Indeed, so accurate are these exports that a recent PFI bid I was involved in was drawn almost entirely on sketchup, including plans, sections and elevations.

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For God's sake, some place in our T6 universe there may be a place for a pure, unadulterated object. I am concerned that our new urbanist eyes are so colored by what we are trying to project into the built world, that we have stopped feeling or empathizing with others who feel that certain buildings elevate their existence.

Note to self: That's me, that is. I lose site of the art in all the process and technique. This is exactly why my love of Anish Kapoor's work feels so dirty.

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Which well-known New Urbanists, not hailing from Greater Miami, were overheard making the following less-than PC comments after a ceremony to honor Frank Gehry's contributions to the cityscape? "What's next," the first asked, "a humanitarian award to Osama bin Laden?" The other responded: "We'll give a painting award to Adolf Hitler!" The prize was intended to entice Gehry to a party at the recent Congress for the New Urbanism, but the architect was not so easily played. He sent an underling to brave the bow-tied throngs.

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We'll have time for coffee flavoured kisses
And a bit of conversation.

A lot of my original customers are dead, of course.

These cafes started dying off in the 1980s and then came Starbucks and the other chains and they started vanishing. But these cafes have a whole secret history; they tell a story, of the wave of Italian immigrants who came here and brought their culture with them. They incubated a whole sub-culture of music, fashion, film, sex, crime.

My thoughts all seem to stray, to places far away
I need a change of scenery. Ta ta ta...

The first person to tell me the source of the opening and closing quotes in this entry gets to keep the original sketch and use it to wipe up next time they spill their coffee.

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Telling people you're an architect and having them say they like Frank Lloyd Wright is like telling them you're a novelist and being told they like Steinbeck. It's like, um, okay... The only thing worse is people still asking you what you think of Bilbao.

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Greg Lynn will present some projects that ... are chosen for their flexibility and adaptability. To initiate transformation and mutation, external constraints are exerted on these internally regulated prototypes. The result of this interaction between a generalized flexible organization and particular external constraints is a design process that has an undecidable outcome.

Professor Dexter's experiments are in turn pointless and dangerous. They seem to stem from a combination of optimism and an uncertain grasp of reality.

Denzil Greg image source: Forbes.com

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Making Urban Places
Lecture 2: An Urban Vocabulary That the urban spaces which make up our cities is merely a collection of spaces left over between buildings, is an opinion which is spatially, socially and culturally bankrupt. Urban space, for the urban designer, is a public theatre for a complex mixture of social, political, economic and individual behaviour vital to all of us. Such spaces are of equal, if not greater significance, to our growth and development as the architecture we inhabit. Historically urban space was not merely an extension of architecture, but space created from elements of a distinctively urban character. In this lecture we set out to examine this urban vocabulary with two intentions:

1. To group the vocbulary under the perceptual headings of Kevin Lynch and relate them to a common human experiences in space.
2. To reveal the dynamic rules of combination (syntax) underlying such a vocabulary which permits us to create a rich and diverse language of urban forms.

References: Gorden Cullen: Townscape
Kevin Lynch: Image of the City
Camillo Sitte: City Planning on Artistic Principles
Rob** Krier: Urban Space

* last time, I -cough- promise
** I think there's a typo on the PDF that says Leon when it should say Rob

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Architectural Advent day 21:

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Architectural Advent day 22:

Architectural Advent day 23:

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Contemporary architecture in Beijing strives to be contextual. This simplistic and thought-free architecture style ignores, or worse refutes the ever-changing reality of 21st century China. In a context deprived of clarity, as the periphery of Beijing often is, the Beijing Rock is a contextual, driven by prevailing urban forces, not existing urban form.

* note to self: the looseness of a suit is defined by it's seams - head back to a recent post on PLSQ for more.

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Astragal starts blogging For the first time in the 111-year history of the AJ, the magazine's most famous contributor has gone virtual. Indeed, in a move that will astonish some of his longest serving readers, Astragal has started his very own blog. Some of the highlights of his first effort at e-scribbling include tales of welding dwarves, a collection of Mackintosh look-alikes, why architects are big in the movies and Seb Coe attempting a pun. Enjoy Astragal at www.ajplus.co.uk/astragal

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The architecture of a computer system we define as the minimal set of properties that determine what programs will run and what results they will produce.

Appreciation for a thing because of its closeness to the Platonic form of such a thing, its minimal distance from the perfect execution, is, I think, possibly *the* thing that makes you a hacker rather than a programmer.

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Artificial Love is good also. About Shepheard blogging; I've just found this:
http://www.paulshepheard.com/shep_home.asp I think it's better than any blog. - AH

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Since Dan Hill has already nailed an extensive and unbeatable review of the exhibition, I've decided to just provide a supplement and offer a photo set of visitor's comments, see here for the full set: I'm 93 you know

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Marcus Novak lecture on friday at UCL

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...that photo was taken at the NY Milkshake Company, on St. Mark's Place, in NYC ... Cooper Union (the Arch. and Engineering school) is right down the block, so I assume the original image had something to do with that. However I couldn't resist adding the addendum. I mean, I gotta stick up for my favourite architect and all.

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Part One of a ? part series: The Ole Scheeren lecture

Who do we think we are? Who do they think we are? The disparity between what architects think of themselves and how they are seen by others is obviously very marked. It is quite disturbing to someone involved in architecture, how unaware people are of architects and architecture, but heartening that they are actually interested. I think this disparity is becoming less, with initiatives that give architects human approachable faces again. However, the public cannot help but see the contradictions which face the profession, the legacy and historical model of the brilliant egotistical genius, which architects understandably find difficult to give up and the progressive politically correct model which is more of a sympathetic team player. The results of the psychological tests mentioned in Chapter One state that the most talented and successful architects follow the first model, however to gain the respect of colleagues and the public in general the pressure is on to become all inclusive and empathetic. These two models seem to be mutually exclusive. As visionaries architects have a social responsibility to forge the future and to do that they need have supreme confidence, but also be approachable and human.

People seem to have this impression that architects are all rich! Any architect would laugh at this. Many people are genuinely surprised when they hear how little most architects actually earn. The architects we see on television, the Richard Rogers, the Zaha Hadids, are wealthy, not necessarily through their architecture, but the public aren't to know this. The fictional architects we see are usually in slick, cool apartments, but then the Hollywood version of anyone makes them more shiny than the reality!

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(* I think there were also some natural factors for this mist, but I didn't get chance to make a note of it)

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Part 2 of a 3 part series: The Ole Scheeren lecture

reuse old and zaha - anti white box new work for bangkok cedric p finite infinite cities with legs free for all - vespa problem - solution - undefined

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1. They would discuss ideas over breakfast, since Cedric told him that he had to work in the mornings - the later it got, the less able he was to think straight. I believe this was one of Cedric's infamous traits. Were he to appear in Rodcorp's 'How We Work' series, the answer would probably be: early.

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The third and final part of my notes on the Ole Scheeren lecture.

Everything you described about the development of the CCTV project seemed to be rooted in the program and process of the building's complicated political and organisational requirements. There didn't seem to be any mention of personal, subjective desires that you exercised yourself to help shape the final form. I'm thinking here about the shape of the loop. Would you say that the building's formal result was entirely data driven?

Absolutely not. I don't believe in data driven architecture.

It's strange how all the questions are only about CCTV.

* It was a hardware failure that caused our credit cards to fail back in part I. Architecture is poorly paid but we can at least afford to eat, which is all that really matters.

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There are several key features to an open source architecture:

1. Designer–participants: where those who participate are also those who design the system.
2. A control system that one allows oneself to be part of in order to expand that structure: an example can be found in computer games that provide modules for end-users to code and create their own, sometimes startlingly different, versions of the game.
3. Choreographies for openness: group instructions that are interpreted and modified as necessary by participants, individually or collectively. To begin, established boundaries are required in order to foster creativity; this does not mean that they cannot be breached. They are placed as reference points, not to pre-define limits.
4. Re-appropriation: where existing spaces, objects or actions are both fuel and catalysts for further creativity
5. Capacity for sharing design problems: each person has different skills and often a problem requires a solution that can only be provided by another. A web-based example, lazyweb.org, shows how it is not important for everyone to have the technical capabilities in order to have an open source model of production.

1. Ask the client what they want.
2. Agree the brief.
3. Acknowledge the budget.
4. Get it to work with the site.
5. Ask a builder to help construct it.

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Architecture Movement is the dynamic element of accommodation, the first business of a building, and is seen to purpose in the contrasting characteristics of 'Hall' and 'House'. In 'Hall' the plan of progression and activity in movement is memorable in form and occasion, with assurance of safety. The architecture of 'Hall' will declare and fulfill this common expectation with the conviction of a work of art that works. 'Hall' is theatre, arena and the like where symmetry rules in the round or axially, with movement in reflective order which clearly establishes and refers to front, right, left and return, the vital orientation affecting communal intelligence in an assembly: safe dispersal depends on it. 'House' has infinite variety of arrangement in the shape and relationships of accommodation. There is progression from room to room in royal apartments and houses of parade, and in museums; and there are arterial corridors serving rooms in hotels, hospitals, schools. In dwellings, some are wholly of rooms opening off halls and landings; others combine rooms of privacy with a living space of open quality that integrates circulation. Movement is as varied as human behaviour, and every age has manners in moving, giving it style; but the art of design is timeless in principles that shape form to induce and control this dynamic. The empathy between movement and repose is a visible spirit in architecture.

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Architectural Advent day 11: (will I ever catch up?)

update: 18.12.06

I just re-read this and somehow it has turned into one of the most arrogant sounding entries I've ever written. That wasn't the plan - let me explain...

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Architectural Advent day 12:

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This week in colour:

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BraviaAdvertLocation.kmz

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Oh, and if, like, seven years after you have finished the job, someone gets a papercut on a printout of the web page you designed advertising the local thai restaurant, then you will be liable for all damages. Granted, its not four square metres of glass spontaneously exploding, like, thirty-four stories in the air and showering down on an unsuspecting group of school children and their charity working teacher, but boy, them papercuts smart.

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• Warning A: If you are not an architecture student taking your part 3 exam, this will not be of any interest, move on.


• Warning B: If you are an architecture student and you choose to use it as inspiration, be sure to make a decision about whether or not humour has a place in an exam that will be the culmination of 7 years of study.

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...it got me thinking about whether or not this is the going rate to stay in accomodation designed by Pritzker and/or Guru Architects. And so below is a woefully incomplete list of boutique accomodation. Note that in each case the most expensive option has been taken.

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Administrators have been called in at a multi-million pound arts centre being developed in the Black Country. The Public, in West Bromwich, was scheduled to open in July but it is has debts and other funding issues. Bosses said they had no choice, but are doing everything they can to secure its future as a venue for theatre, music, dance and creative technology. Work has been halted on the building until financial problems can be sorted out, putting about 81 jobs at risk.

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Matt: Have you seen the Radio 3 architecture thing?

Me: No, what is it? Sounds good.

Matt: To be honest, I filed it under "tell Rob about that" and forgot it.

How do buildings affect us? Over the next year on Radio 3 we'll be exploring the impact of the built environment on our lives, and the importance of architecture. For this site we want to hear about the buildings you love, and the spaces that inspire you ... and to provide an expanding archive of interviews with architects, debates and features on architecture.

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"derived from the particulars of the real world, from data and processes of the virtual world, or from numerous techniques of capturing the real and casting it into virtual, motion capture for instance. Since time is a feature of the model, if the model is fed time-based data, the form becomes animate, the architecture liquid."

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Selfridge's store when it was first built threw out the scale of the whole of Oxford Street. No doubt it was a fine advertisment for Commerce in the grand manner but architecturally it was a misfit.

FRIEND: 'Well, I see that there's very little about this house you like. Have you any views about what you yourself would have built in its place?' MENTOR: 'Of course I have, but I cannot be expected to give you details, only general principles. Well, first of all, I would build a house that spoke to me in terms of this century and no other. I would trust to good proportion of general mass and line, rather than to ornament or detail. But if I used detail I would see that I got some value out of it. I would put it where it could be seen and meant something to me. I would not just put it in places where other people in the past had been in the habit of doing, for that reason alone. I would build my house of permanent materials. I would see that it fitted the character of its surroundings. If they were formal ones, such as are found in most streets, then I would build a formal house. If I were in romantic surroundings on the banks of a river, or a windswept sea-shore, or in a clearing of a forest, then I would build in the romantic manner. I would try to avoid leaning too much on the Past, but I would not spurn it altogether. I would recognize that there is much to be said for the materials that man has found suitable to his use for house-building these hundreds of years and I should be chary of departing from them. I should recognize too that each has developed a technique of its own, and that I am likely to get the best results if I study the work that has been done in the past, not so that I may slavishly copy it, but rather so that I may learn the lesson that it is to be gained from it.' FRIEND: 'You set yourself a difficult task.' MENTOR: 'Yes, but a task worth trying.'

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RP: "...by the way, architecture is also a very polluted art in the sense that it's polluted by life, by the complexity of things." JT: "By compromise." RP: "Yes, by compromise, but in some way this compromised art becomes more real and more true than other art." JT: "Because you have to deal with the compromise, you can't walk away and say 'I won't make a compromise.'" RP: "Exactly, so the secret is that you don't really do compromise, you are just confronted by life all the time."

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A doyen of Topiary once told me,
That one day he would like to grow a maze,
It seemed to be quite logical
That this should be his wish.
And with that
We both went our separate ways.

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Originally, schmuck meant decoration or ornament in German. It's easy to see how that would become a word for jewelry, but what about the other meaning? In Yiddish (a language related to German, spoken primarily by European Jews), schmuck means penis, and you can still use it this way, though it's less usual than the first meaning. Apparently at one time, a man's schmuck was considered decorative. This is similar to the slang expression family jewels (testicles). from slangcity.com

...the industry was riven in two. The Fundamentalist movement, in support of Classical architecture, conservation and 'retention of old buildings at any cost', was reborn, fuelled by the press and public opinion. It had effectively been given a Royal Charter. The advocates of contemporary design, on the other hand, were lost in a wilderness and seemed to be thwarted at every corner.

Enabling the client community to be involved in the detailed process of design rather than exclusively the local authority, is I am sure the kind of development we should be examining more closely. Apart from anything else, there is an assumption that if people have played a part in creating something they might conceivably treat it as their own possession and look after it, thus making an attempt at reducing the problem of vandalism. What I believe is important about community architecture is that it has shown 'ordinary' people that their views are worth having; that architects and planners do not necessarily have the monopoly of knowing best about taste, style and planning; that they need not be made to feel guilty or ignorant if their natural preference is for the more 'traditional' designs - for a small garden, for courtyards, arches and porches; and that there is a growing number of architects prepared to listen and to offer imaginative ideas.

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This appendix to the B_ S_ Housing Market Renewal Prospectus sets out the strategic design strategies that will help deliver these objectives on the ground in the Pathfinder area and is part of a wider initiative by the Pathfinder to develop tools to enhance quality in design. This recognises the fundamental importance of design quality to housing market renewal, both as a driver and outcome for transformational change.

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Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the number of the shoe shops were increasing. It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that no one should walk on it again.

Jacqui Kennedy, the council’s head of trading standards and licensing, said: “We are looking at Broad Street having a special saturation policy as we have an area where we need to improve the mix of leisure and entertainment facilities on offer. We do not want to see the area have one type of bar and no restaurants.

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Dear Colleagues, It is with great regret that I send this email but the Birmingham School of Architecture's future is at severe risk. I enclosed an edited version of a recent report from the University's Vice Chancellor Dr Peter Knight which announces the disolving of the Faculty of the Built Environment. Several of the courses are being placed into another Faculty but the future of the School of Architecture is thrown into serious doubt. The attachment has been edited for brevity but I have attempted to maintain the key points and I have highlighted the key sentences for your convenience but these include statements which are extremely worrying. There is a suggestion that the School could move to the Art & Design Faculty which I guess most of us would welcome and place the school in a more design led environment. It is also a common belief that the School would thrive in a city centre location rather than at Perry Barr. This revelation is apparently not related to the BA problems over the summer which I now feel are behind us. The working group report was released yesterday and copies are being made public. As trusted colleagues who have always supported the school I am asking each and every one of you to write to the Chair of the Board of Governers as a matter of urgency. I don't think I need to tell anyone how critical it is for us all that the City retains a school of architecture. We are also the only realistic provider of part time courses for many students and I know that several of you spend your employees here to study with us. The Part 3 course which many of you are very familiar with would almost certain be lost as well. ... I appreciate that the school has had a turbulent recent history but I believe that many of you are aware the good work that is being done here by both staff and students but I urge you all to take action on this to save our school. I believe that another local Univeristy undertook a feasibility study on setting up a school of architecture and found it to be unviable - this suggests that it is unlikely for a school to be created if we lose the one we have. Please do not leave this to others - we need your help. Please send letters of support to:- Mr Paul Sabapathy
Chair of the UCE Board of Governers
2 Mulroy Road
Sutton Coldfield
West Midlands
B74 2PY Finally I ask that you all spread this email as widely as you can to maximise on support. Many thanks Kevin W Singh RIBA
Course Director PG Diploma in Architecture
Birmingham School of Architecture & Landscape

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Housing Corporation chief executive Jon Rouse, who controls a £3.6 billion development budget over the next two years, outlined seven reasons for a return to suburbia and said anyone who believes the country's housing crisis can be met through the expansion of urban centres is "frankly kidding themselves". He said policy makers should admit that Barking Reach, the Thames Gateway's flagship development, is not a "landmark urban development" but a suburb ... The seven reasons:

1. Suburbia is the dominant form that British culture aspires to.
2. Only suburban design can give us mixed communities.
3. Only suburbia can reconcile national and local planning objectives.
4. Suburbs are what people with no choice choose.
5. Suburbs can protect the rural domain.
6. Suburbs can be very sustainable.
7. Good suburban design is very flexible and adaptable.

"There's been a tendency - it's the mainstream tendency - to describe places which are and should be suburban as urban."

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Neil, you've talked very eloquently about all the programmatic elements that go into making your building, but you've never talked about the final form of your buildings and how you think they look. I wonder if you could say a little about your feelings on beauty?

I'm completely obsessed by beauty. It's all I think about. I thought that was exactly what I've just been talking about for the last forty five minutes. It is, isn't it?

Just look at that. It's a f**kin' ab*rtion. Have you ever seen anything so ugly?

I know, I'm not sure if it's supposed to look like f**kin' chain mail or a f**kin sex aid.

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but she's a girl says;

..I rather like the brashness of it, for no reason that I can really justify. I normally hate brash buildings, but the bullring seems to be so ugly that it sort of passes out the other side and becomes attractive. Like a warthog.

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Offered for a second time, the four-month course develops the operational and intellectual instruments that form the basis of professional practice. Without substituting for a formal architectural education, weekly classes are addressed to advanced students and practicing architects who find a significant gap between their formative instruction and the challenges they face as professionals. The course is designed around the idea that architectural know-how is not an intuitive ability that comes only with experience but a body of knowledge that can be taught. Once-a-week classes, taught principally by Rafael Viñoly, begin in September, 2006.

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Wayne Hemingway's lecture at this week's affordable housing conference was a great start to the day. With perceptive observations that were very well presented, he was one of the few people to talk about how to deliver cultural sustainability in affordable housing as well as environmental sustainability. I was glad of the opportunity to raise some points during questions and would like to repeat them here for wider comment and make a further connection that I didn’t explain clearly on the day.

The request: that Wayne should endeavour to bring his message to students in the country's schools. Whilst I have no doubt there are many architects that could present a similar position just as successfully, the fact is that when guys like Wayne speak, students listen. The observation: that the problems highlighted in many of the examples of poor housing developments were the result of applying an urban sensibility to what should have been suburban solutions. My concern was that this was at odds with the infamous 'Wimpeyfication' letter to The Independent that had carried the title 'Why I Hate Creeping Suburbia'. I was relieved to find that he'd suffered at the hands of the editor and in fact the opposite was true. He loved suburbia. The connection: How long has it been since schools of architecture taught about suburbia? How many of us in that room could have professed an enthusiasm for, or interest in, suburbia? We spend our formative years being obsessed by the city and considering suburb as a dirty word freely interchangeable with that even filthier term, sprawl. We need to start teaching about suburban communities positively. The proposal: Over the last couple of weeks we've all crept out of the woodwork and started shouting about how long we've loved Jane Jacobs and how important her 40 year old book is; and rightly so. One of the most interesting discussions I've heard so far was on radioopensource.org, during which one of the panel suggested that what we needed today was a Jane Jacobs of suburbia. I propose Wayne Hemingway steps up to the challenge. Rob Annable
--
Axis Design Collective

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Architectural Advent Day 4:

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LibraryThing continues to impress. Book groups can now be set up on the site, so as you might expect I've leapt in and started one for the architecturally interested.

http://www.librarything.com/groups/architext

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Architectural Advent day 16:

...their book will be useful to all designers and builders looking to construct soundly, but readers should be wary of joining the more-autonomous-than-thou race.

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* this is volume dependant - one is clearly not the other

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• sections in italics are quotes
• for more ideas about interconnected surfaces and deforming topographies, see my previous post on the data wall, and the subsequent revelation about this blog.
• for a contradictory view on whether the space between bodies can still transmit environmental relationships without the aid of blood or sea, see my previous 'teeth on plastic' entry
• for other chapters see Peter's entries here, here, here and here. Also my previous bag blog. More will follow. Eventually.

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Books owned

Last book bought

Last book I read

• Field Event / Field Space by Kevin Rhowbothom (picked it up again after further thoughts regarding 'loose design' I mentioned in the last entry)
• Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (attempted it as an undergraduate some years ago but wasn't ready for it, worked better for me this time round)
• ...and I've also been reading some great essays on globalism suggested to me by Anne Galloway after I quizzed her for ideas to kick start me with a concept for the moblog.co.uk exhibition I've been threatening to do for about a year - there are links on my wiki.

• in the living room: Ted Hughes' Hawk in the Rain (discovered this in a great restaurant in York - first piece of poetry that ever literally took my breath away)
• in my car: Edwin Abbott's Flatland (discovered following an entry by Peter)
• in my wife's car: Goethe's second part of Faust
• by my bed: Homer's Iliad (remember what I was saying about chronology?), Cullen's Townscape and a copy of Angela Hatherell's dissertation Who do they think they are?
• in the bathroom: E.M.Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread (a bookcrossing find in the city)

5 books that mean a lot to me

• Buddhism by Christmas Humphreys
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyoder Doestoevsky
• The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
• Architecture and Disjunction by Bernard Tschumi

If on a Winter's Night was my first experience of Calvino. It couldn't have come at a better time for me, in the midst of a tortuous search for some form of raison d'être during the beginning of my post-graduate studies. The following quote (which I also used in an essay at the time) sums it up:

How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person! Style, taste, individual philosophy, subjectivity, cultural background, real experience, psychology, talent, tricks of the trade: all the elements that make what I write recognizable as mine seem to me a cage that restricts my possibilities. If I were only a hand, a severed hand that grasps a pen and writes...

I'm passing this on to...

notes:
Despite Stuart's suggestion that I've lost any accumulated book review kudos by daring to be enthusiastic about The Da Vinci Code, I continue to maintain a book category. A while back I posted a list of books I was hoping to read this year. I appear to have wandered a little off course.

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• TheBorribleTrilogy by Michael de Larrabeiti
• TheFutureOfIdeas by Lawrence Lessig
• Faster by James Gleick
• ThePoeticsOfSpace by Gaston Bachelard

notes:
1. this should say five, but to my horror I appear to have lost my 100 year old copy of The Iliad
2. it works!

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DPM includes a comprehensive guide to the camouflage patterns issued to soldiers of 107 nations around the world and, for the first time in print, thoroughly documents the rise of camouflage outside the armed forces - its use by anti-war protestors in the 1960s, further exploration by modern artists, and reinvention within areas such as fashion, architecture, music, film and sport...Rescuing camouflage from its unhappy associations with war and conflict, this book emphasizes its natural and artistic beauty. Here is the indispensable modern reference guide for both the novice and the seasoned camoufleur.

If the realisation of the possible is a matter of interpretation, or re-description of a given set of identities or organisations, the actualisation of the virtual can never operate by resemblance, and therefore it requires from tools that will allow us to see -and therefore to imagine, to conceptualise- what we have never seen before.

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I would rather be Falstaff or Sancho than a version of Hamlet or Don Quixote, because growing old and ill teaches you that being matters more than knowing.

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2nd S.F. Judge Delays Ruling on Gay Marriages Superior Court Judge James Warren told plaintiffs he would not issue a court order until they corrected a punctuation error in their legal filing.

By Daryl Strickland
Times Staff Writer

5:09 PM PST, February 17, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO - Conservative groups trying to stop the city from issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples failed to win any immediate action today in two separate court hearings.

Superior Court Judge James Warren told plaintiffs late this afternoon that they would likely succeed on the merits of their case but said he would not issue a court order until they corrected a punctuation error in their legal filing.

"I am not trying to be petty here, but it is a big deal That semicolon is a big deal," Warren told attorneys, according to an account by Associated Press.

In documents filed with the court, the Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund had requested a court order that would force the city "cease and desist issuing marriage licenses to and/or solemnizing marriages of same-sex couples; to show cause before this court."

"The way you've written this it has a semicolon where it should have the word 'or'," the judge said. "I don't have the authority to issue it under these circumstances."

In the first hearing earlier today, San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Ronald Quidachay said he would not decide a lawsuit today that sought to block more than 2,500 marriage licenses issued to gay and lesbian couples since Mayor Gavin Newsom directed city officials to start the practice Thursday.

In the courtroom, located across the street from where same-sex couples were lined up to get the marriage licenses, Quidachay said the Campaign for California Families gave the city insufficient notice to get an emergency order.

"The court itself is not prepared to hear the matter," Quidachay said.

The Alliance Defense Fund filed a complaint Friday seeking a court-ordered halt to the marriages and was ordered back to Superior Court this afternoon. Attorneys for the Arizona-based group filed briefs Monday, as instructed by Judge James L. Warren, contending that California law must be enforced - even if it is unconstitutional - until an appellate court states otherwise.

"The mayor is breaking the law," Alliance spokesman Rich Jefferson said.

California law defines marriage as between a man and a woman. The newly elected mayor ordered marriage licenses amended to allow same-sex unions, stating that to do otherwise would violate the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal plan to file motions today to intervene in the cases on the city's behalf.

Lee Romney and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

sources:

1. http://www.latimes.com

Disclaimer: confessing to having learnt about punctuation does not provide grounds upon which you may critique my writing; I shall no doubt forget it within a week...

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Sweeping generalizations deserve no mercy and people who rely on them merit all the rebuffs they receive. Provided that an opportunity of questioning them is presented, they are, however, more dangerous than helpful to the controversialist, as they are so open to attack. If only for that reason we should avoid them. The fact that they are dangerous, however, has given rise to a trick of argument known as illegitimate extension. Suppose you were to maintain against me that: "Some Englishmen are unreasonable." That is a moderate position which I should find it difficult to assail. I might, therefore, resort to a trick. I might say: "That's all very well, but if you say some Englishmen cannot be reasonable you ought logically to say all Englishmen are unreasonable." In this way I am seeking, illegitimately, to extend your argument until it covers a position which is demonstrably unsound. I am seeking, that is, to manoeuvre you into defending the proposition: "All Englishmen are unreasonable," a proposition which I can disprove with the greatest of ease.

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As soon as we are out of the primordial matter, we are bound in a connective tissue that fills the hiatus between our dicontinuities, between our deaths and births, a collection of signs, articulated sounds, ideograms, morphemes, numbers, punched cards, magnetic tapes, tattoos, a system of communication that includes social relations, kinship, institutions, merchandise, advertising posters, napalm bombs, namely everything that is language, in the broad sense.

1. see previous entry on Blood, Sea chapter

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Jane was a champion of diversity, a diversity of buildings, residence, businesses and other nonresidential uses and different people of different ages in an area at different times of every day. She gave us eyes on the street. Her philosophy was a neighbourhood's safe, active, vibrant and economically successful when there are people there all day doing different things, from all backgrounds in life, and from all cultures. Jane was way ahead of her time. She saw cities, as in her words, "organic, spontaneous and untidy," and viewed the mingling of city uses and users as crucial to economic and urban development, and by understanding and dissecting how cities and their economies emerge and grow, she cast new light on the nature of local economies and communities.

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The idea is to celebrate the "street ballet" of your favorite block, not just because you like it, but because it exhibits the characteristics that Jane Jacobs enumerated as essential ingredients to a quality urban life.

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1: Editions covered by this upgrade: All United States Viking hardback editions. ON NO ACCOUNT attempt to upgrade any advanced reader's copies, Penguin Softback or UK editions; a 'deep text crash' may result which will render your book unreadable and could wipe your entire library. 2: Earth the book by touching it lightly against a dictionary. 3: If you are running your library on the outdated SCROLL V7.3 or PAPYRUS 2.8, please upgrade immediately to BOOK 7.3 which is available by downloading HERE and is now bundled with PageGlow^TM and AutoPageTurnDeluxe^TM at no extra cost. 4: If you are running the Beta Version of BOOK V8 and have Anti-GrammasitePro^TM or ReadZip^TM activated, please disable before upgrade. Third party hardware ancillaries such as bookmarks, pressed flowers, old bus tickets, etc, must also be removed. 5: Using a fine black pen make the following corrections: ...

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Léger rebuilt his country place in the Chevreuse Valley without an architect. He thought it would serve him for a long time. Here he invited his friends. A table was pushed into the studio and spread in the midst of the paintings. One ate here with delight, with all the necessary reverence a good meal deserves, for Léger was a first-class cook. He was also, in contrast to many great men, a most excellent companion. Some female creature was always around the place, but he never paraded this before the world. For him the problems of his work rested on a completely different level.

His studio in New York was near Fifth Avenue on 40th Street. Skyscrapers overshadowed it. Fernand Léger was working then on his great series of 'Divers' which posed the problem of depicting with a simple black outline hovering, falling, interlocking and transparent figures in weightless space. As he often did, Léger superimposed wide bands of clear colours. I stood in the studio with Moholy-Nagy and asked, "Why have red and blue patches been laid over the lineal structure of the bathers?" I knew that this was related to the play of contrasts that Léger always emphasized, but Moholy-Nagy gave the anser: "Don't you see that Léger must get even with those things out there?" - and he pointed to the skyscrapers. Defense by creative reaction.

* I'm not going to tell you exactly which bookshop because I have tried to hide another book by Lewis Mumford so that it's there when I next return with more money in my pocket.

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1. This is just some of the tools I use, not an attempt at a comprehensive list.
2. incredibly, I almost forgot this one, thanks to John Hill for reminding me in the comments about the tool I use every day.

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PDF link: MA_UrbanDesign_ReadingList_2005.pdf

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Two thousand years ago Marcus Tullius Cicero used to make two-hour speeches in the Roman Senate, without notes, by constructing in his mind a palace whose rooms and furnishings, as he imagined himself roaming through them, called up the ideas he wished to discuss: ideas were made memorable by locating them in space. ... Our purpose in writing this book is to help make real places more memorable; to inscribe some suggestions for building that will make the actual world of buildings and landscapes capable of carrying ideas for those who live among them - rendering them as valuable to thought as Cicero's imaginery palaces were to speech. In the following pages we assemble a set of observations on the composition of places. We cast these observations as Chambers for Memory Palace, each with a title. The titles consist of elements (nouns) and actions (verbs).

1. me on Cullen's Townscape
2. my boss on Mrs Rietveld Schroder

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Hi Mike,

Ralf has passed on your comments about the cartoon I posted. I'm fascinated to learn that you may have copies in English, I assumed it was just an obscure one off!

Whatever info you have would be much appreciated. Regards, Rob

Can you pass me back the URL again? I assumed that the piece was a translation of the little nemo original; the images I noticed looks familiar as part of a long sequence in which Flip, Nemo, and the Imp are wandering through Morpheus' castle. I have several of the Fanagraphics full-year reprints and may be able to locate the piece. If it's not a translation but was originally in Dutch, I may be of little use, although I could probably put you in touch with Eric and Fanta, who could get you and Bill Blackbeard hooked up. I think Blackbeard edited the Nemo books. I seem to recall something about early seventies bootleg dutch reprints of Nemo preceding US reprints by a couple of years. I may have read that these reprints influenced Joost Swarte, who so clearly has looked at McCay (among other early cartoonists) pretty closely.

Mike, Time for a confession. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that until about 5 minutes ago I didn't know anything about the history of Nemo or Winsor McCay. If I'd bothered to Google it in the first place (as I just have) I'd have realised that I got the Sendak connection completely the wrong way round! Here's the link again, it should make you chuckle... http://rob.annable.co.uk/journal.cgi/2005/01/07/books/little_nemo I found the strip in a furniture catalogue put together in the late 60's showing the collection of iconic furniture owned by a Dutch university. If it's not too much trouble, I'd love to see what you have, but it's clearly not quite what I imagined it might be. Rob

oh, fantastic. It's just what I thought it was. I'm certain i have this. I will leap off the couch into action in a minute. McCay also is widely credited as the inventor of animation, for his "Gertie the Dionsaur" films. here's a wikipedia article on Nemo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo

Ok, yes, this is known as the "Befuddle Hall" sequence. I have it in several republications. This transcription is taken from page 110 of "the Best of Little Nemo in Slumberland," edited by Richard Marschall. FRAME ONE
Nemo (on the left, in policeman's cap):
I wish we had never come into this Befuddle Hall in the first place. Flip (to right, in cap, appears bearded and with cigar):
That isn't the question now, it's how are we going to get out. FRAME TWO
N: The whole affair seems to be sideways. It makes me dizzy.
F: There's a hall running up and down and crossways! Don't fall in, now, hear? FRAME THREE
N: Let's give ourselves up when we get out of here, eh, Flip?
F: Let's get out first! Whoever named this Befuddle Hall knew his business! FRAME FOUR
N (to the Imp): Come on! You slowpoke! Hurry up! Don't be so slow!
F: I see daylight! Come on! Hurry up! FRAME FIVE
N: We'll hunt up the princess now, eh? And go back to the palace!
F: Yes! There's the door to this befuddle place yonder! FRAME SIX
I: Pug ug umble guck!
N (losing cap): I'm so glad we are going to get out of here!
F: I told you I'd find the way out, did I not, eh? FRAME SEVEN
N: Yes! You did not! We are as bad off as ever!
F: Huh! This beats me! I'm certainly, um, twisted! the only thing we can do is go back again! FRAME EIGHT
N (having fallen out of bed and awakened): Huh! I was wondering why everything looked so sidewise like! --- Every single LNIS ends with Nemo awakening on the floor in a smaller frame. There is a wonderful sequence which starts with him in bed, and the bed grows legs and gallops over the city wildly until he awakens, having fallen out of bed.

Little_nemo_plancha_1.jpg

The strip you found has an original publication date of 1908, and is drawn from a several-weeks sequence known as "Befuddle Hall." From the same sequence:

McCay_LittleNemo.jpg

There was a very terrible animated film adaptation of the strip made in the 1990s. In the US in the seventies, a wonderful animated campaign for Levis' pants made heavy and direct use of imagery and sequences originating in the strips, but wildly psychedelicized in the nineteen-seventies idiom. Performing a google image search on the quoted term "little nemo" seems to yield a number of scans of the strip in color, as it was originally published. The strip was an anchor of the American sunday comics supplement and original rotgoravured pages are sought-after collectibles (I have never seen one in real life).

LittleNemoADVERTe513_bis.jpg Anyway, there's a ton of stuff out there of Nemo and on McCay. If you can find it, "Little Nemo 1905-1914" may contain every strip from the greatest period. This edition was published by the Evergreen Press (a subthing of Taschen), has an introductioun by Bill Blackbeard, and the ISBN is 3-8228-6300-9

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/3822863009

absurdly, the book dealers on Amazon have this listed as $280 and up. Hope you enjoy getting to know Nemo. It's truly brilliant drawing.

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In the supermarket beauty parade, an apple must look good in front of the camera or risk rejection. A Dutch firm provides packhouses with machines, which cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, to measure cosmetic perfection. The 'Greefa Intelligent Quality Sorter' takes up to 70 colour pictures of every apple on the conveyor belt to determine the 'blush of non-equally coloured fruit', and to grade it by size. It can detect deviations of as little as 1mm². So if the supermarket specification says that an apple of a particular variety must be, say, 15-17% blush red on green, it can 'grade out' or reject any that are 18% red on green or a miserable 14% red on green. The beauty parade often means the difference between profit and loss for the farmer. Anything 'graded out' ends up, if the farmer is lucky, as fruit for juice at giveaway prices of 3-5p per pound, but as often as not it will just go to waste.

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There are moments in even the busiest urban life when our relationship with the city is suddenly changed. A meeting ends early, we have time off to see a doctor or solicitor - whatever it is, for a couple of hours we stroll, we are relaxed, we possess the city, instead of being held ourselves in the grip of its routine. In summer, light winds move through the warm streets, reminding us of our trade with the hot lands, the bales of calico, the boxes of spice. In winter, the afternoon sky goes a heavy pink, the lights come on, we are wrapped in a northern dream of gaiety under the chandeliers. The city has the irrationality of a flower, the power of a volcano. But such a mood cannot be deliberately invoked. It must come by accident, although we do at least know that we must be on foot, for only thus can we emulate the casual, sideways motions of butterflies, or of bees, drinking the city's nectar. Wheeled things go in a straight line, to infinity; you cannot cover a city, or have any part of it, on wheels... ... Think of it, a wonderful quiet area from Park Lane to Charing Cross-road, from the Mall to Oxford-street, full of beautiful people, relaxed, shining, talking animatedly or gravely to one another. We had a hint of what it would be like on the nights preceding the Coronation, when the Mall was simply a great promenade, a susurrus of strollers, a murmuration of mortals. Is not this what cities are for?

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The basic principle of ethics states that the value of a complex whole is not directly proportionate to the value of its parts in isolation, since the relations between the parts, as well as the nature of the parts, are relevant to the whole. It states, further, that in some cases the value of a complex whole is increased by the addition of elements that, in themselves, are evil; just as the sublimest musical effects may contain elements of discord, and our most valued aesthetic experiences, such as those we derive from tragedy, may contain elements of pain. In the hedonic sphere the working of the principle is obvious. Many physical pleasures depend in some degree on suffering, or at least deprivation. Enjoyment of rest is increased by fatigue, and of eating hunger. It might be argued that in these cases deprivation is merely a pre-condition of the pleasant experience, and not an ingredient in it. But if we consider some of the more complex human enjoyments, such as ski-ing or rock-climbing, it is clear that an element of strain and danger is an actual part of the experience and heightens its pleasure.

There are occasions when we derive aesthetic pleasure from real events even though they may be painful or horrifying. But for this to happen the events must usually occured at such a distance in space or time, and be so completely beyond our intervention, that we can regard them with something of the detachment with which we regard the events of a tragedy...In certain rare states of consciousness, however, we achieve what has been aptly termed "physical distance." Many people enjoy, from time to time, short-lived but profoundly satisfying experiences when they seem in some strange way to have got out of themselves and out of time, and when eveyrthing around them acquires a profound amd moving significance. These experiences, with which few people are quite unfamiliar, are mystical experiences of a rudimentary kind; and what may (we suggest) be happening, both here and in full mystical experience, is that we have slipped momentarily "out of gear" with our practical life and are reacting to the things and events around as we do a work of art. Hence the profound sense of harmony and integration. We have abandoned our dual allegiance; we have slipped momentarily into the cosmic attitude; we are "in tune with the universe" to the extent that we, like the rest of Nature, have become blind for a time to all but aesthetic values.

At the time of the broadcasts, I held two assumptions that were common among the more highbrow type of sceptic. These were: (i) that Jesus, though he was deluded in believing himself to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, was, nevertheless, a great moral teacher, and a man of outstanding moral excellence, and (ii) that though Christianity is now rapidly being outgrown, it was a great force for good in its day. In the light of wider knowledge, both assumptions now seem to me to be false. I now incline to the view that the conversion of Europe to Christianity was one of the greatest disasters of history.

images: image 1 is the cover, image 2 is an advert from the back of the book

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Calling all mums and dads! We’re looking for the parents of babies and toddlers to join our young Red House Readers, reviewing and recommending books to other mums, dads and teachers. We will regularly send you brand new picture books and novelty books to test drive with your little ones and we’ll look forward to publishing your opinion both in our catalogue and on our website. We take the advice we receive from our Red House Readers extremely seriously and will quite often decide not to advertise a book on the strength of the reviews we receive, so you can see we are looking for those prepared to take this responsibility as seriously as their younger peers.

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I, on the other hand, am completely naked.

• Thirteen Ways by Robert Harbison
• The Future Of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig
• Jane Eyre by like-you-need-to-ask
• Urban Space and Representation by M.Balshaw and L.Kennedy
• Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric
• Dude, Where's My Country? by Michael Moore
• Faust (Part II) by Goethe
• The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
• Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek
• The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
• What is Architecture? by Paul Shepheard
• Changing the Earth by Emmet Gowin

The second trip outdoors only provided more clouds. I never saw the eclipse, unlike Joel and all these smug people.

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In his book, Breitschmid, assistant professor of the history of architecture and design at Virginia Tech, inaugurated a reinterpretation of the noted German philosopher Nietzsche, namely that creative thought, and “building thought” in particular, fundamentally determines the world of Nietzsche. The book is recognized for the study of the modernist transformation of space in the architectural thinking of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The other books selected by the Institute of Philosophy were: Leone Battista Alberti, "De Statue;" Aristotle, "The Categories;" Aristotle, "Metaphysics;" Aristotle, "Physics;" Rudolf Arnheim, "The Dynamics of Architectural Form;" Le Corbusier, "The City of Tomorrow;" Jacques Derrida, "Chora;" Martin Heidegger, "Building, Dwelling, Thinking;" Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art;" Johannes Kepler, "Harmonices Mundi;" Jean-Francois Lyotard, "The Inhumane – Reflections on Time;" Plato, "Timaios;" Vitruvius, "Ten Books of Architecture."

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• The most beautiful house in the world by Witold Rybczynski
• The poetics of space by Gaston Bachelard
• The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping / Harvard Design… by Jeffrey Inaba
• Why buildings stand up : the strength of architecture by Mario Salvadori
• The death and life of great American cities by Jane Jacobs
• The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch
• Site planning by Kevin Lynch
• An atlas of rare city maps: comparative urban design, 1830-1… by Melville Campbell Branch
• The timeless way of building by Christopher Alexander
• Great streets by Allan B. Jacobs

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A Special Form to Fill In by David Bateman

Good news: here is a special form to fill in.
All of your problems
will be solved at once. However, please note
the form is very big, very complicated.
It will take you some while to fill in.
There are many details
you will need to check
and then to re-check;
questions over which you will agonize
lest you should spoil the form and have to start again.
It will find you brooding
sleepless, sleepless,
in every dawn.

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The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Tonight the museum possessed an almost oppresive quality. Long shadows encroached everywhere, and the usually soaring vaulted ceilings appeared as a low, black void. 'This way,' Fache said, turning sharply right and setting out throught a series of interconnected galleries. Langdon followed, his vision slowly adjusting to the dark. All around, large-format oils began to materialize like photos developing before him in an enormous darkroom...their eyes following as he moved through the rooms.

Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown

It was very dark in the main hall. A little bit of moonlight came through the windows, and Stanley could just make out the world's most expensive painting on the opposite wall. He felt as though the bearded man with the violin and the lady on the couch and the half-horse person and the winged children were all waiting, as he was, for something to happen. Time passed and he got tireder and tireder. Anyone would be tired this late at night, especially if he had to stand in a picture frame balancing on little spikes. Maybe they won't come, Stanley thought. Maybe the sneak thieves won't come at all.

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More on Gordon Cullen's Townscape:

The following words are by Gordon Cullen, the images are from Chuck Jones' 1949 Oscar winning cartoon, For Scenti-mental Reasons.

continuity

thereness

pedestrian ways

anticipation

mystery

the maw

focal point

the block house

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1. Seneca: On the Shortness of Life
2. Deleuze and Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus
3. Giedion: Architecture, You and Me
4. Pevsner Architecture Guide: Birmingham
5. Iain Banks: The Algebraist
6. Dostoyevsky: Notes from the Underground and The Double
7. Sven Lindqvist: A History of Bombing
8. Kevin MacNeil: The Stornaway Way
9. Italo Calvino: The Castle of Crossed Destinies
10. Primo Levi: If This Is A Man - The Truce

Notes:

a. Thanks to Matt for reminding that I really must get around to reading 'A Thousand Plateaus'. Approaching it here in 2006 feels a little like stumbling into a party late, hoping that my timing might be seen as fashionable, then realising that actually it's just rude not to be punctual.
b. Thanks to Rod for pointing me to 'A History of Bombing'.
c. Thanks to Peter for reminding me about 'The Castle of Crossed Destinies'.
d. Thanks to Matthew for buying me 'The Algebraist' for my birthday last year (it's half finished - I'm getting there Matthew!)

Related entries:

1. last year's list (which is admittedly still unfinished and some need to be added to the above)
2. the book baton
3. the whole book category

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Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.

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It seems to me sometimes that we're all sitting in a huge valley with people shouting contradictory things at each other. - p6 Stones with character, that's one definition for what architecture is, although it's as primitive as cave painting to put it so simply. - p11 ...a building is a performance: a one-off, never to be repeated performance where the supervisor is like the conductor and the builders - skilled workers? - are like the musicians in the orchestra. - p23 Morality, is another way of describinq the results of human discourse, of describing the trust between human beings. - p36 What is architecture? I think it's about being invisible but still having character. I think of it as a very modern theme - not inevitably contemporary, perhaps, but modern. Le Corbusier, in Vers une architecture, says, "Day by day our epoch is defining it's own style. Our eyes are yet unable to see it." And never will, I think, it's invisible. If we see anything it'll be the side effect of something else. - p48 There are illusions of form in literature. The pages of the books, with their margins and footnotes and headings, for one thing, and the structure of letter into word into sentence into paragraph, for the other. Well it must impress itself onto our senses somehow. The words must have order and form enough to be perceivable, but how many ways there are for them to break into the physical world. Words can be spoken as well as written. They can be coded into morse. They can be transmuted into binary numbers and put on a compact disc and sent down wires. The content stays the same. Here's Hazlitt's essays on my desk. Here's T.S.Eliot's. The books are exactly the same, in structural terms. The structure that makes them different in a critical sense is a mental notion. It doesn't exist. Now look at this building. It's a temple but if it were used as a strip joint, it would still be this shape. The base of the column doesn't mean the base of the column - it is the base of the column. Look at that concrete bunker over there. It doesn't mean the defence of the country - it's part of it. Just as the soldier inside is part of it. That's form. The mess of patriotism running through the soldier's mind, now, his reason for preparing to die for his country - that's content. - p75 Compromise sounds weak, but it means bind - as in promise - together. It represents the end of the argument, the conclusion. In physical terms it means the fitting together of the parts. - p86 Those stealth bombers are not painted black to evoke menace, or to disappear into the night: this is ablative black. The paint is full of ferrite particles that absorb radar energy and make the machines harder for the other side's radar to see ... It's difficult to see how character survives in such an environment. Here's an example: the big black submarines that cruise under the Atlantic Ocean are invisible, and apparently anonymous. But throughout the life of the machine, the hull picks up dents and scratches exclusive to itself, and consequently the sonar signature of each machine is slightly different. It acquires character through use. - p109 (my emphasis) Nap of the earth implies a close fit between the architecture and the ground it occupies. Not a "contextual" fit with the other buildings; nor a "programmatic" fit, with its users; but a fit in the vernacular sense. Opportunistic, energy efficient, buildable, and wise. - p112 The idea is that every building is really the conclusion of some dramatic impulse, made specific by the circumstances that surround it. - p124

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The architect is an archetype, marinated in cinema history: he is intelligent, scrupulously fair-minded (Henry Fonda's juror No 8 in 12 Angry Men was an architect), wealthy and creative. He's secretly romantic, like Tom Hanks. He's hubristic but brilliant, like Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno. And he's a fantastic lay: witness the scene in Jungle Fever when Wesley Snipes has sex with Anabella Sciorra on his own drafting table. Back to the drawing board indeed.

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Sometimes the dark silence of the night weighs upon me.
Peace makes me afraid; perhaps I distrust it above all.
I feel it's only a facade concealing the abyss.
I think of the world my children will know.
It's supposed to be marvellous but a phone call by a madman can mean the end of everything.
We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art.
In such miraculous harmony.
We should love each other outside of time...detached.

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Architectural Advent day 14:

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"Few designers change the visual language of everyday life - Marc Newson is one," blathers the first of the wall texts in this mid-career retrospective. "He has transformed the design of the objects and spaces around us through his own work and his influence on other designers." ... [N]othing in this exhibition substantiates the bold statement at the entrance. It does not investigate Newson's influence or place his work in a cultural movement. There is no critical perspective. The show feels like a concession at Selfridges. At the entrance is a huge bas relief of Newson's autograph.

In order to take weight its right chair-leg makes a side-step. It show its individual character.

Now that says door.

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I think a lot of football boots and team-strips rip off the consumer. The Pig boot will give the right performance at the right price.

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Architectural Advent Day 5:

Lessons in ergonomics for product design students...

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EdW: There was the interest of living next to cathedrals, it was a clerical family and so we lived next to some very, very good Gothic cathedrals and I think some of my early experiences of wandering through buildings and feeling different kinds of spaces were very, very important. I do remember being startled by how beautiful and interesting and odd a lot of the spaces in those cathedrals were. Those are some of my very earliest memories, so perhaps that something that fed into my feeling for objects. JT: The spaces rather than the shapes? EdW: Absolutely. The way in which you move, for instance in Canterbury cathedral ... from very high spaces into the crypt, you descend into spaces or get trapped in spaces and then come out again into completely different volumes and that sense of how spaces can change atmosphere and spaces can change your emotions seemed to me something that was very interesting. I suppose that is something that does connect to pots quite directly.

JT: Why did he think that making 250 honey pots taught you anything? EdW: Because there's a very basic level of skill that is only acquired through repetition. It's one of those truisms that's very difficult to get round in ceramics because people make it into a moral law, but it seems self evident to me that the more objects you make of the same size, the same shape, the more attuned you get to slight differences. Your eye and your hand become more carefully attuned to difference.

JT: Give me a thumbnail difference of what working in porcelain is and what working in earthenware or stoneware is. EdW: It's a very plastic material, but it's a very treacherous material, you have to work very quickly and decisively. It's a very seductive material as well, very smooth and very beautiful; but the interesting thing is, when you fire it you can't completely control the results. When you fire it to the temparatures I'm firing my porcelain to, it bends and warps and moves around. So you can't make a perfect porcelain pot, or I can't make a perfect porcelain pot. So what you're dealing with is a material which is susceptible to gesture, how you handle it, to your movements around it ... Porcelain, for me, had all those somatic bodily experiences of being able to move the clay around in a new way. But also, porcelain is part of the great matrix of how culture has happened; it's the silk road, it's how pots have moved from the East to the West, it's full of lots of different historical references.

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JT: You've said something about porcelain, but the fundamental material is clay, isn't it? You've said that one of the fascinating things about clay is that people don't know how to treat it in many respects, because what is it? It's earth. We're all human clay. It's a base material. Has this never worried you? EdW: Not remotely. Clay's a very interesting material in that sense, in that it's got no value at all. As it happens porcelain has got value, but no one really knows where it is in the hierarchy of materials. It's very low. JT: Just above lead perhaps? EdW: Way down, in the sense that anyone can dig it. It's free. A free material. It's also, of course, a material that is part of our poetry in that clay and people go together very well indeed. We are earth, we are dust, we are shards. It's part of the biblical resonance.

JT: The thing about clay is that you're constantly reworking it. If you don't like where you've got to on the wheel, you just go back to the basic lump, don't you? EdW: Pretty much. JT: That was put very crudely. EdW: It's only when you fire the pot; that's the point of no return. Throwing pots is very interesting because it's one of the great iconic images - the potters hands moving on the clay. It's a very seductive image. Of course what you're doing is making an inside and outside simultaneously, which doesn't happen in very many places in art. You're making a volume in a very short period of time. You're creating an internal space. JT: Back to your spaces and cathedrals? ² EdW: Completely. So when you're making a vessel - actually I really am only interested in vessels, that's, for me, the most interesting thing about ceramics - when you're making a vessel, every single touch of your hands after you've thrown the basic cylinder changes the interiority, the sense of internal space, completely. You can make twenty pots in a row and by just moving them ever so slightly each of them has a very different resonance, a very different sort of pitch.

1. see 'Contextual Slippage and the Info Pimp Force Diagram' for an alternative description of this condition
2. see part I

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JT: It occurred to me when you mentioned earlier that you put the imprint of the palm of your hand or you pinch the porcelain, whether that was one way of saying 'I know that this pot is going to come out different and this is my way of establishing my difference. I know it's not going to be perfect so I'm going to make it imperfect from the beginning.' Is there an element of that? EdW: There is an element of that. I'm torn. I'm torn always between making an object that has the kind of purity of a Donald Judd box that has the sense of efacement of the hand, where you can't see where the hand has been, but I love the gesture as well; the movement into an object that you can get with porcelain. I think recently with some of the series of works that I've done ... I've tried to have that sense of both clarity and movement going on between the different pieces. So that you've got the sense of how the hand works in different ways during the series. JT: When you make a series, are you aware of the previous ones that you've made and do you think, 'now I need to get a bit of dynamique into this set of shapes and do it slightly differently' ? EdW: Absolutely. The series is very, very carefully planned. In fact, I suppose my work goes in between (my emphasis) a lot of reading, a lot of writing, a lot of thinking, a lot of planning and then quite a lot of quick, dynamique making. So it's an odd process.

EdW: They are not cerebral pots when you pick them up, they are not cerebral pots when you touch them. There might be any amount of stuff going around for me. But I think when you look at them I don't think you need to read the title, I don't think you need to read my foot notes, you don't need to have read the books I've done or the exhibitions I've curated. I think they sit there in the world, by themselves and stand or fall on your reaction to them as works of art and I don't think they're cerebral objects at all. I don't think they've been made in a cerebral way, I just have a rather complicated way of getting myself to the wheel.

1. see part I and part II for previous notes

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W E B E L O N G T O Y O U

ps - comments are back on again, but I can't make any guarantees as I've been blitzed with a lot of spam this week.

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And then came the web. And the mass amateurization of aesthetic skill. These days many programmers fancy themselves web designers and the terminology of typography is disappearing from what will one day be the primary medium of publication. Web designers in general don’t seem to spend a great deal of time on even typographical basics. The minority who know about typography usually learnt it elsewhere and brought their knowledge with them when they came to the web. Most of the 20-something generation of web designers have probably bypassed print design altogether, finding it irrelevant rather than an essential tradition.

Frequently I follow back links to sites of 'web designers' who have commented in design blogs. Nine times out of ten the design of their site is mediocre and they're writing about programming or iPods. This is web design today, the aesthetic passion and cultured tastes of yesteryear have flown out the window to be replaced by an ever more burdensome weight of technological know-how that must be absorbed. I see this clearly coming from a print design background, but I can understand that those who started off on the web don’t want to see a problem when the solution involves looking beyond the web.

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Architectural Advent Day 3:

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Architectural Advent Day 8:

I've got some serious catching up to do after spending the weekend in Dublin - will start with an easy one: more 1966 Letraset...

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Architectural Advent Day 10:

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Architectural Advent Day 17:

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Architectural Advent day 24:

1. Letraset 1982
2. Rietveld Chair dimensions
3. Letraset 1966
4. Passive solar glazing
5. Driftwood Ergonomics
6. The Machine at MOMA
7. Letraset 1966 - 2
8. Planning Process
9. Farrell Grimshaw interview
10. Letraset 1977
11. Outrigger extension
12. Outrigger extension v2
13. Letraset Love
14. AR covers 1960s
15. AR covers 1970s
16. AD Book Review
17. Letraset 1982
18. Good Gift Christmas Card
19. AR covers 1980s
20. Living Bath
21. Manplan 3
22. Manplan 4
23. Manplan 5

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Architectural Advent day 13:

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Architectural Advent day 20:

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When we renovate public playgrounds and ask the local residents what they want for their play area the answer today is equipment from nature. I think this is a reaction to decades of use of standardised and unimaginative playground equipment. ... The pre-fabricated playground tries to live 100% up to safety standards. These standards developed, based on horror stories of real tragic accidents Although these are guidelines and as such are useful when combined with common sense, they have, in my opinion, been allowed to go too far. The child's real need for play and development is set aside with good intentions. I am convinced that standardised playgrounds are dangerous, just in another way: when the distance between all the rungs in a climbing net or a ladder is exactly the same, the child has no need to concentrate on where he puts his feet. Standardisation is dangerous because play becomes simplified and the child does not have to worry about his movements. This lesson cannot be carried over to all the knobbly and asymmetrical forms with which one is confronted throughout life.

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Elsewhere, the editors summarise: Berliner: the blogs react

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Pencils made from the carbon produced during cremation, A lifetime supply of pencils can be made from one body of ash. The sharpenings create a secondary ash, and displace the pencils as they are used transforming the pencil case over time, into an urn.

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Quadrant lounge: meet, drink, lounge, eat, chill.

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Architectural Advent Day 2:

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There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, in order to impress others who don't care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today. Industrial design, by concocting the tawdry idiocies hawked by advertisers, comes a close second.

Johnny Applesandal is eco-conscious footwear that allows the customer to participate in environmental cleansing through the dispersion of soil-cleaning plant seeds.

Perhaps industrial design isn't quite as phony as it was in 1971. Perhaps some industrial design isn't quite as phony as it was in 1971.

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The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialise free hand sketches. They make it possible by using a unique method where two advanced techniques are combined. Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture and become 3D digital files; these are then materialised through Rapid Prototyping into real pieces of furniture.

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You are invited to take part in a cutting edge digital art project that utilises mobile phone technology and traditional needlecraft.

The project can be accessed worldwide via http://ems.endfile.com NOW and is accessible to all. [error88.gif:out] Pixel designs can be sent for free to participants mobile phones, as digital wallpaper. The artworks can be collected, enabling visitors to build up an art collection on their mobile phones; a virtual transportable gallery. Participants will be given the opportunity to create there own unique crafted objects from these designs, as the designs are also available as cross stitch patterns, to print-out and stitch. Users are encouraged to upload images of their stitched samplers to the EMS website. This work questions the ‘high cultural’ or elitist methods of producing and collecting artwork. In asking participants to consider transforming disposable designs into tangible craft objects, the work will also question the margin between (digital) technology and (traditional) craft. The EMS project is soon to be exhibited at an the New Forms Festival in Vancouver, 14th – 28th October 2004.

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We are the Elite Designers. We design profound and beautiful furniture for those with wealth and taste. Which is why IKEA makes us furious livid and angry. Do their designs live, breathe and growl? Are they born from tears of pain? Do they gently touch the bottom of the human soul? Pah! Of course not, no more than weeds can attract a bee. The big blue place is odious, its affordable design is sickeningly shallow and we loathe it even more than we loathe football. Please join us in our unqualified hatred.

Smeets explains his theory that at the beginning of industrial mass design there was a social urge to supply households with modern, functional goods to make them more comfortable. But now he says that industrial production is more driven by commercial concerns, "It's why I hate IKEA. They say that they're doing a social thing by giving the opportunity for everybody to have good design in their home but they've transformed that now so that every time you buy a new chair you put the old one outside."

As to durability, 40 years of not very arduous use has almost entirely struck at the canework - whether the leather equivalent would have stood up better is hard to say, as is the cruel question of how much worse would the performance of a couple of tonnes of MDF armchair have been? All of which leads me back to the central fact, which is that these MR chairs - rocket science in the 1920s - have now become liabilities. Too much Ikea has flowed under the bridge to make chairs like these viable again.

Ikea is at it again. Knocking down the past to build a big-box emporium to hock their mass produced modern design wares. Here is a company that takes advantage of their Scandinavian design heritage to sell inexpensive, yet "well designed" products to the masses. But, in the process, they have now displayed two blatant instances of their disregard for design legacy. First, they defaced a Marcel Breuer building in New Haven, Connecticut. Now the wrecking ball has turned to Civil War era structures in Brooklyn.

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I am convinced that standardised playgrounds are dangerous, just in another way: when the distance between all the rungs in a climbing net or a ladder is exactly the same, the child has no need to concentrate on where he puts his feet.

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A collection of conditions loose enough to accomodate the complex topography, climate and culture forming a balance between the permanent, semi-permanent and fleeting. Inverted moraine diagrams turn the lateral and medial trails left by supraglacial debris into hill hugging weather buffers of shelter and prayer. Walls built from the mountain rock with the services buried inside them stand unmoved across millennia and provide an anchor to the fleeting visits of travellers and their technology.

* This was a collaboration with Tom Booker, Rob Squibb and David Sauvion.

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Instead of merely looking into the emancipatory potential of blogs, or emphasize its counter-cultural folklore, I see blogs as part of a unfolding process of 'massification' of this, still, new medium. What the Internet after 2000 lost is the "illusion of change". The created void made way for large-scale, interlinked conversations through automated software, named weblogs, or blogs.

I'd like to suggest that this isn't merely a conflation of unlike terms but rather that there is a steady evolution here. There is a desire in each of the subsequent movements to affirm the individual (through subject position, through productive agency, and through an active DIY voice), but instead each one actually does a more thorough job of wiping out individual subjectivity than the previous iteration (please slot the blob under dot.com Deleuzeanism... a million 20-40 year old students, all being original, all making nearly identical shapes). But, like Geert, what I am observing is not only the massification of the Internet but a more generalized cultural move toward nothingness that expresses itself through the medium of the blog. Through the blog, we attain a complete and fatal condition, making our comments into the void, thereby affirming our existence while we also emphatically assert our distance from any situation we might act in.

"It would be interesting enough if adaptive complex systems inescapably were located at the edge of chaos, the place of maximum capacity for information computation. The world could then be seen to be exploiting the creative dynamics of complex systems, but with no choice in the matter. But what if such systems actually got themselves to the edge of chaos, moved in parameter space to the place of maximum information processing? That would be really interesting: the ghost in the machine would seem to be almost purposeful, piloting the system to maximum creativity." Jencks introduces this discussion to architecture. Firstly describing the importance that science has within our changing understanding of modern culture and secondly by drawing comparisons between nonlinear theory and the process of making architecture, demonstrating which practices are already developing new theories for 'maximum creativity'. Outlining the manifesto for what he calls 'cosmogenic' architecture, Jencks attempts to predict the new movement of complex, emergent design. Simultaneously an assault on the reductivist modernist movement, the exposure of early post-modernism as an applied typology and an escape from the fragmentation of post-structuralist theory, 'The Architecture of the Jumping Universe' is a key text in our investigation. ... Following the post-structuralist flattening of hierarchies, the erasure of the architects ability to prioritise his subjective will creates a vacuum. The defining of the undecideable/in-between space allows theorists to reflect upon the moment that represents the act of making architecture, and the rigorous examination of process rushes in to fill the vacuum. Alongside this, the growing culture of scientific uncertainty (quantum science) creates new questions regarding Western society's ideas about the Universe's dynamics. If the processes of nature demonstrate a self-organizing ability to find the most powerful creative/evolutionary moment, why shouldn't architectural creativity demonstrate the same? Complexity science exposes the source of that creativity and finds that it too exists as an undecideable.

Let us return for the moment to the theory of the Universal Turing Machine. The concept is that the Universal Machine itself has no predefined purpose. For the machine to function it must be able to deform to the requirements of each new task it is given (the radical nature of Turing's vision is clearer when you remember it was originally perceived as something mechanical) as well as provide the result. Each problem the Universal Machine is set must also contain the instructions for how to solve it. Now, it is of course easy to see how this is precisely the way in which a modern computer performs, with it's dumb hardware supplied a purpose by the software; but it also reminds us that this Universal Machine is the perfect embodiment of objectivity. To use Eisenman's terminology, until the task in hand is commenced, it has no 'interiority'¹. It is formless. It is widely accepted that the benefits of using a computer are found among such things as its ability to perform complex tasks quickly, sort and store large amounts of data and, in an abstract fashion, shrink or expand linear restrictions of time and space. However, what I would like to focus on here is what the computer represents in the design process, rather than what it actually does. What it represents is the answer to the question of how to 'open up process' ¹. The continued search for objectivity or releasing of authorial control is over, since it is resolved by the presence of the Universal Machine. Since we are incapable of achieving true objectivity, we have introduced a stand-in that can. Now we can begin to see the importance of Van Berkel's statement, 'But it has to sound right'². Providing the source of objectivity is not the end to our quest; somebody must feed the Universal Machine. The one factor that all the architects we examined have in common, regardless of which side of the discourse they reside, is that they must all deal with their relationship to their machine. The most difficult task becomes how to move the process into and out of the machine, performing the eversion from the virtual to the real. We must find new ways to interact with the results of our emergent processes and position ourselves within our work.

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1. I'll come back to this in an upcoming entry about Thom Mayne
2. Winy Maas, RIBA conference, Oct 31 2000 responding to a question from the audience about authorial control
3. 'Move' by UN Studio
4. Note to students: never write an academic paper on the assumption that a conclusion will appear through the very act of writing it. It won't. Ask a scientist to tell you what a hypothesis is and why they're important.

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Deconstructivist: 'I don't even know if it's about me or about you, I can't tell what's right or wrong. All I know is that something has come between us and from where I'm standing it looks like we're in the middle of breaking up.' (and for extra pathos) Deconstructivist: 'Ohh, I don't know whether I want to live or die!'

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Chambers for a Brighton Memory Palace

Concept: "The first pier at Brighton was known as The Chain Pier, and there was a silhouettist working on it throughout most of it's history. The slhouettists moved to the West Pier when it opened in 1866, and continued more or less continuously until shortly before it’s closure in the 1970's."¹

The profile of a sea front pier is a well understood, easily recognisable form that stirs recollections. The history of the silhouette cutters on West Pier is captured within the full scale profile and becomes a surface to incite and then receive the memories of the people of Brighton.

Repeated, rotated and woven together to form a field of chambers housing exhibitions, events and installations; the grid becomes a set of co-ordinates that control the curating of time and topics.

Construction: The spaces are created by intersecting, perforated metal clad walls with an opening in each side connecting to the adjacent chamber. Exposed spaces drain towards the edges and covered areas shed rainwater into the cavity between the walls. Colour controlled lighting in the cavity seeps through the perforations and assists themed curation of exhibitions by directing visitors across the grid. Lightweight tent structures stretch over the volumes that trace a wandering path across the grid providing alternative environments for different events/objects.

Curate: The grid of silhouettes conveys the passing of time in one direction and cultural topic in the other. The profiles heading away from the beach out onto the sea carry the topic through the intersecting date lines parallel with the shore. We begin at the shore in 1865² and travel towards the horizon to the present day, crossing decades as we move from chamber to chamber. As time passes the structure continues to grow into the sea and new topics are added along the beach. Non-linear journeys through history are suggested within the volumes traced across the grid by the silhouettes of the original pier buildings.

The co-ordinates provide public meeting places with a nostalgic³ subtext.

"Should we meet at 1964/Mods or 1975/Pier ?"

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1. from 'The Silhouette Tradition of Brighton Pier' by Edo Barn.
2. the year the West Pier was constructed
3. as I was inking this thing into life, my RSS feeder pinged with a timely entry by thingsmagazine: The object as a starting point for nostalgia

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Dear Rob and Tony I'm very pleased to inform you that you have been awarded a commendation in the 2006 Euroclad Drawing Competition, organised in conjunction with Architecture Today and judged by Piers Gough and Sadie Morgan. There will be a prizewinners' lunch in central London on October 19th, which I hope you will be able to attend. Further details on this will follow shortly from CIB Communications. We shall be publishing the winning and commended entries in the October issue of Architecture Today. Congratulations and best wishes Ian Ian Latham
Publishing Editor
Architecture Today

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...And this group are building a meditation space to feel like a kitchen. The subtle noise of the condensing gas boiler in the cupboard helps them maintain a discrete control over their physical awareness before emptying their minds...

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Well, says the interviewer Simon Hattenstone, everything you paint or make seems like a fanny in one way or another.

Hahahahaha! Hahahahaha! My art is upside down and inside out. Absolutely. I've always said that. You might be quoting me there, hahahaha! I would say that to make new art, you need to make new space. The modernist space, all the great modern art, has been like the rocket, phallic, onwards and upwards. The new space is the opposite of that. It's in the gutter, it's deep, dark inverted, it's inside out. If you think what the space of the internet is, it's a curious non-space - it's like it's turning itself inside out because you can create so much more space by going in and deep. So this is, in a curious way, the future, and it links psychologically to the past and, as you say, it's sexual.

There are only two kinds of form. The one that sticks out and the form that sticks in. Everything else is flat, that's a fact.

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Note to self: remember to check for online version before typing out yourself - Guardian Unlimited: Into the deep.

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As the data field records the journey of the e[version], it’s deformation freezes the moments of contact and simultaneously implicates all others within the mesh.

The negative result of previous positive actions becomes the void between the data planes and forms the volume of physical living space.

The reconciliation of physical and digital occurs as a point of equilibrium between the tensions of opposite forces.

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Let's mobilise.

These are the detailed instructions to Birmingham's first flash MOB. Memorise them and then put them in your pocket.

Location:

Oxfam Shop, 95 Corporation Street.
Lat-Long: 52°28'51", -1°53'45"

Time: 12:12 pm

1. At EXACTLY 12:12pm, form a crowd OUTSIDE the doors to the shop (it's too small for all of us).
2. Remove the article of clothing you have brought with you and begin to wave it over your head whilst singing the chorus to 'Give It Away' by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and/or cheering and whooping.
3. Form a cue from the door to the counter. Quickly take it turns to place the article of clothing on the counter, and then rejoin the REAR of the mob OUTSIDE the shop (if you are at the front, make space for people to get out).
4. Continue to take it in turns to enter the shop and deposit clothes until 12:21 pm.
5. At EXACTLY 12:21 pm the mob should disperse IMMEDIATELY. If you haven't been able to get into the shop yet, don't worry, you still took part. Come back another time and donate something. There are at least SIX different exits possible, including two arcades - use them.
6. Smile. You just took part in the worlds first altruistic flash mob.

http://mobstirs.no-ip.org

"We got into this project because we could see the value in people expressing themselves in a way that didn't require them to act in a politically motivated way. We hope that the proof of that will be demonstrated by the varying age ranges we seem to have attracted. Some may argue that donating to a charity organisation is not apolitical. We don't think so. We believe the act of giving can happily be performed without requiring a specific cause."

"It's not about us and it's not about claiming Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame. You will not see us posing for dodgy photos in the Sunday Telegraph and calling ourselves Mr Zee; unlike a certain London organiser pictured in last weekends paper."²

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/features/2003/08/flash_mob/flash_mob.shtml
2. see paper version of http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/08/10/wmob10.xml
3. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mob_stirs/

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It begins. I catalogued the first 14. A series of 14 photos, one taken per day during the very first 14 days of my moblogging career. Some you will have seen before on my own page, others will be new; both in image and underlying story. I shall be exposing a little more of my life than I usually do. All were taken with an Ericsson T610.

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http://wolvesfreecycle.org.uk

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...I realised that I wasn't just listening to the music; I was listening to the sound of the building...

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On 24 Nov 2005, at 23.50, Rob Annable wrote:

On 25 Nov 2005 at 12:07:54 Matt Webb wrote:

On 29 Nov 2005, at 0.54, Rob Annable wrote:

'In my experience, the moments of greatest clarity come when you read or are told something you already knew intuitively. Something that you've never had either the experience or need to formalize in your mind before. By being shown old words in a new order, you're intuition takes shape and becomes recognisable as a form that you can hold up against others like it.'

On 29 Nov 2005, at 18:29:28 Matt Webb wrote:

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Those stealth bombers are not painted black to evoke menace, or to disappear into the night: this is ablative black. The paint is full of ferrite particles that absorb radar energy and make the machines harder for the other side's radar to see. It's difficult to see how character survives in such an environment. Here's an example: the big black submarines that cruise under the Atlantic Ocean are invisible, and apparently anonymous. But throughout the life of the machine, the hull picks up dents and scratches exclusive to itself, and consequently the sonar signature of each machine is slightly different. It acquires character through use.

Smoke has its roots in a conceptual project he embarked on while at college. "I was thinking about beauty and perfection," he explains. "When we talk about perfection [in design] we normally think about things that are smooth and symmetrical. Yet we call nature perfect, although a landscape of rocks is not smooth and symmetrical at all. How come we like that as well? If you have a scratch on your car you want to polish it away. But don't scratches make a product richer? Or if something breaks off, isn't this new shape also a perfect shape?

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Detached and unattached imply that one is disconnected, not a part of, disengaged or uncommitted. Enlightenment comes through a process of paying attention, deep commitment and insight into our interconnectedness. Non attachment is not clinging to the passage of emotions (or whatever) as it arises and then falls away. So some one who was detached or unattached might be unmoved by a beautiful sunset. But some one practicing non attachment would be rightly moved by it, and let it pass to be moved by the night, the dawn and the day. Each moment is fully a marvel in and of its own and so there isn't room to attach to its passing or one isn't still paying attention to this moment.

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What's a flâneur? Webster defines it simply as "an idle man-about-town," one of those fin-de-siècle dandies who ambled through the crowds of European cities in search of bustle, gossip, and beauty. In the tradition of literary flâneurs—Walt Whitman, Fran Lebowitz, Alfred Kazin, Joseph Mitchell, the Beastie Boys—Flâneurr seeks to scrutinize the city, to evoke the essence of the street. And to encourage flaneurial behavior, whether detached observation or decadent gadding about. (from the flanifesto)

__placing voices__ Voices of strangers heard in passing are key threads in the fabric of urban experience, subconsciously coloring our perception of a place. Yet such features are inherently unrepeatable, unique to every individual's listening experience, and, unlike a photograph, the location of a recording is difficult to recognize. 'Placing Voices' is a mobile-sound-blog software which uses the built-in sound recording feature of mobile phones (which is optimized for voice) and MMS messaging to place these fragments on a web-accessible map of the city as they occur. The objective is to express a map in terms of these experiences, to restore some claim to my memory of physical spaces over the transient voices heard within them.

This requires subjects to either produce a sketch map of the area of interest or estimate distances between key points, which the researcher can then use to build up a map representing their image of their area. This technique was used, for example, by Moar¹ to show that housewives in Glasgow and in Cambridge had very different mental maps of the British Isles. (from Applying Psychology in the Environment - apologies for the dodgy image, only had my phonecam to hand, click on it for the flickr notes)

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1. Moar, I. (1978) Mental triangulation and the nature of internal representations of space.

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Anish Kapoor:

I loathe making anything practical whatsoever. The funny thing about art is that it's useless. It doesn't do anything. That's very important, ha, ha!... ...that's your fantasy; that artists need to be dark and brooding...the artist as a romantic figure who is somewhat bohemian. Crap, crap, crap! I'm not bohemian; I'm terribly ordinary. And the other myth is that art is born out of pain. It is not. I'm sure that the best art - and maybe that's a very Eastern thing - is born out of joy. So phooey to that!

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Life is a wonderful business, though fools blow up London tube stations and sell each other crap and waste time with gossip about movie stars. If you can draw, you will always have a place to go that is beautiful and honest and true. As you sit in an airport you will find pleasure in the folds of a crumpled lunch bag. As you bide your time in a doctor's waiting room, you will find peace in the arrangement of the shadows on the wall. Even without putting ink on paper, you will be able to slip in to Drawing Mind. The point is not what your lines look like or how accurate your crosshatching might be.
The point is not the drawings on the page or the pages in the book.
The point is not the opinions of others who love/hate/ignore those lines you made on the page.
The point is not the money you make selling your work to galleries or publishers.
The point of practicing your craft is not to rise in the rankings of those who draw. It's not to have your style dominate (sorry, Dan!).
The point is to more easily gain acces to the moment, to the deeper more peaceful recesses of your Self.
The point is to live as well and as fully as you can today, right now, whether your pen is in your hand or not.
The point is to See and to Be.

Danny Gregory

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*edit: I should also point out that all these fantastic pictures were taken with single-use disposable cameras

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Architectural Art Advent Day 7:

Excerpts from the stainless steel clad brochure from the 1968 MOMA exhibition The Machine: As Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age. (10Mb PDF file!)

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Any single point on the topography of the diagram created by their interconnectedness is a dynamic stability linked to all other points.

Chomp.

written after Matt Webb's trackback hack reminded me of something.

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No success in the President’s medal I’m afraid, I made it to the final shortlist of 95 but here’s who won: http://www.presidentsmedals.com/results.aspx?w=1&dop=0&part=2&year=2005 Some good work, well deserved I think! Al

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You have arrived at a site that has no qualms about the messy connections between spatial practice, cultural criticism, technology studies, art history, architecture, and other realms. Yet this location was conceived under the sign of big "A" architecture. It is maintained by an architecture historian who has difficulty staying within the circumscribed realms of history and theory. Although a visitor will encounter detours and conurbations that may deviate away from issues about the built environment, it must be noted that this site embraces the totality that architecture represents.

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Hello Robert, I was going through your blog, and perhaps you’ll find this is of interest. I’d like to know if your site would be able to help pass on a great message to architectural students who visit – that they can now download the latest full version of Archicad FOR FREE. This Graphisoft policy began only a few weeks ago, and we’re sure students would greatly appreciate hearing this from you. Students start out with a 30-day license code while we check their status, then they get a year’s code (which can be extended if their study goes beyond this.) Navigate your visitors here to get more info:

www.graphisoft.com/community/education/downloads/

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Ignore me, normal service will resume shortly. This post exists only to provide myself some Google juice. Alternatively, if you're feeling extremely generous, find a way to use the phrase architects in Birmingham on your blog and link my other site. After all, it wouldn't be a testimonial. merely a statement of fact. I keep getting phone calls from a guy who wants me to pay him to get me to the top of the list for the phrase architects in Birmingham and I'd rather get there under my own steam.

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4) According to www.doyouwantcoffee.blogspot.com, why do architects need blogs? A Their jobs are boring
B They need biased information
C They have an egotistical need to talk about themselves
D They don't

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Architecture Sketches quoting Michael Maltzman:

"I can't say that I design in one way or another it is a lot more back and forwards... It is like casting a broad net and seeing what comes up... Some drawings, like plan sketches, are a little more accurate...I prefer the fast and fluid drawings...the best drawings are almost like a field where patterns begin to inter merge in the sketches...the ones that say 'OK here is the building' are the least interesting for me..."

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Keith? says hairdresser number one when she's finished mopping up the left overs from her previous victim (an OAP who came back in the shop afterwards to tell us that her friend had declared her haircut worthy of '10 out of 10!'). Keith puts away his book and takes a seat, confessing that things had got so desperate he'd been forced to resort to the tub of 'backup wax'. I'm glad I let him go first. Mercifully, hairdresser number two, the new girl, is stuck with the perm from hell. It's obviously a lost cause but her hairdressing Hippocratic oath prevents her from giving in. I shall have to wait till the lunch break is over for hairdresser number three.

1. Ha! According to The Sunday Herald, it is rubbish: "The key to good genre writing is plotting and pace. Brookmyre achieves neither... bulking out the page count are Brookmyre's attempts at humour... ". Although respect is due to the author for posting both good and bad reviews on his site. Note the way he splits them up as pre and post 9/11 - a section of the story apparently involves terrorists and planes.
2. number 4 on top, 2 on the sides

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• giotto, joachim and anna at the beautiful gate¹
• the words to grandad sung by clive dunn
• Darcy Bradell
• tschumi and poststructuralism
• 'Sex Shop Boys' 'big tits'

1. UPDATE: OK, much weirdness - this one seems to have fallen off the radar, I swear it was working a few days ago. It's a shame, I was hoping that the high art of the first one would balance out the low art of the last one.

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So I think one reason why [I love being an architect] - leaving aside other obvious reasons[*] - is to do with this see-saw balancing act; when the fragile beauty of [my ideas] can be denied so effortlessly by the combination of chance, improvisation, circumstance and irrational passion. It's the call-and-response tension between these forces that makes [my job] so thrilling.

[Hacking] Dan Hill. Go and read his excellent article, Design. Architecture. Football. to get the original version.

* money, fame, girls, black roll-neck jumpers etc.

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Whilst ironing clothes on carpeted bedroom floor, Kelly Atkins founder of Carpet-Burns, unintentionally ironed and melted the carpet pile which left a hard plastic surface. Seeing potential in how this material could be processed she embarked upon a three-year research and development project in to the recycling of waste carpet. Kelly now has a European patented pending on the carpet recycling process which converts faulty or end of line carpet stock into a hard mouldable plastic. Carpet-Burns innovative carpet recycling techniques result in a professional and sleek appearance of a highly functional product range.

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The rents in Chinatown have already risen steeply in an attempt to force people out, and if the eastern part is demolished it'll be a domino effect all down Gerrard Street and that'll be it, more faceless chainstore sterility, no more strange vegetables, soy sauce, firecrackers, dragon dances, red paper lanterns, calligraphy brushes, roast duck hanging on hooks, Chinese swordfighting videos, exotic aromas, old men playing the qin, gaudy neon, a typographical extravaganza of mingshu signage, and pretty Chinese girls avoiding squashed kumquats in heels.

1. I think from now on I shall call this wrinking

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#file name and location setup for ouputting to file
$timestamp = time();
$outfile = "/rob/journal/links/linklog/".$timestamp.".txt";

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The nature of public space in America today has changed. It’s shopping malls, large chain stores, that kind of thing. The presumption is that you’re going to purchase something, but once you try to express yourself in any other way, suddenly you’re trespassing. New York City is blessed with a bunch of real public spaces, but at this point, if you’re young in America, chances are you have grown up without authentic public space. I discovered that it was political to go into one of those stores.

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I am presently, simultaneously, discussing the fine points of aid policy on the phone with NGOs, while conversing with European anrchists about the demerits of the corporate media, which they believe are many.

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Grafedia is hyperlinked text, written by hand onto physical surfaces and linking to rich media content - images, video, sound files, and so forth. It can be written anywhere - on walls, in the streets, or on sidewalks. Grafedia can also be written in letters or postcards, on the body as tattoos, or anywhere you feel like putting it. Viewers "click" on these grafedia hyperlinks with their cell phones by sending a message addressed to the word + "@grafedia.net" to get the content behind the link.

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The researchers combined chemicals from green tea with synthetic proteins and an abrasive chemical it produced a mixture well suited to removing microscopic imperfections. By binding to these particles, the mixture gives them an electrostatic charge, causing them to be repelled from the platter's surface.

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• F-Spot: a full-featured personal photo management application for the GNOME desktop
• Jackfield: Apple’s Dashboard for the Linux Gnome desktop
• Elisa: a project to create an opensource media center solution for GNU/Linux and Unix operating systems.
• Jokosher: a multi-track non-linear audio editor with a prime focus on usability.
• Diva: Video editing for the Gnome desktop
• PiTiVi: open source video editor
• Banshee: Gnome media player

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...some of today's most imaginative artistic, technological, and even literary work is being produced in architectural studios. Whether you like their projects or not, in other words, architecture students are out-thinking, out-structuring, and out-performing novelists, hands down. It is now architecture that lets us rethink the world anew.

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rob, i spent a day with stephen heppell yesterday at the RIBA.

http://www.heppell.net/

seriously inspiring guy to work with (when you have the cash to pay for him!) rob

should have mentioned, he worked here for about 20 years

http://ww3.ultralab.net

he set up Notschool which was a really interesting idea

http://www.notschool.net/ns/template.php

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My argument may not be obvious, but it's not hard to follow, either. It centers around the notion that security must be evaluated not based on how it works, but on how it fails. It doesn't really matter how well an ID card works when used by the hundreds of millions of honest people that would carry it. What matters is how the system might fail when used by someone intent on subverting that system: how it fails naturally, how it can be made to fail, and how failures might be exploited.

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p.s - Aq, if you're listening, here's the entry about Peter Tesugen I mentioned. Sparkes, if you're listening, here's the entry about food processing that I mentioned.

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For the past few days I've been working with a group that, I guarantee you, will get direct aid to the people who need it most. Cindy Sheehan, the brave woman who dared to challenge Mr. Bush at his summer home, has now sent her Camp Casey from in front of Bush's ranch to the outskirts of New Orleans. The Veterans for Peace have taken all the equipment and staff of volunteers and set up camp in Covington, Louisiana, on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. They are accepting materials and personally distributing them to those in need. This is where we come in. We need to ship supplies to them immediately. Today they need the following: Paper plates, paper towels, toilet paper, baby diapers, baby wipes, baby formula, Pedialyte, baby items in general, powder, lotion, handy wipes, sterile gloves, electrolytes, LARGE cans of veggies, school supplies, and anything else to lift people's spirits. You can ship these items by following the instructions on VFPRoadTrips.org. Or you can deliver them there in person. The roads to Covington are open. Here's how to get there. You can drop them off or you can stay and participate (if you stay, you'll be camping so bring your own tent and gear and mosquito spray). If you can't ship these items or go there in person, then go to VFPRoadTrips.org and make an immediate donation through PayPal. Camp Casey-Covington will have immediate access to this cash and can buy the items themselves from stores that are open in Louisiana (all donations to Veterans for Peace, are tax deductible).

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• Library of Alexandria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See previous post

• BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Library of Alexandria discovered

Cripes.

• dodgeball.com :: location-based social software for mobile devices

let's hope this comes to the UK soon

• Joe Bussard's Vintage78

Oh my gosh. 25,000 78rpm recordings available for custom made purchase on CD.

• . BASILISK .

'an online journal of architecture, philosophy, literature, music and perception' - that doesn't work in Mozilla

• musicplasma : the music visual search engine

Spheres of musical influence - enter a musician/band and map their connections

• WFMU-FM 91.1/Jersey City, NJ; 90.1/Hudson Valley, NY

independent freeform radio station with complete internet archive

• The Vertical Farm Project

We're currently have 48% of the world's population living in urban environments, we're probably gonna need this soon.

• loud paper : news

architecture magazine

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• USB WiFi dongle antenna

Range extended to kilometres by using household implements

• Historical Fencing Manuals Online -- Swords & Swordsmanship

parry and riposte

• Daring Fireball: Markdown

Text to HTML plugin for bloggers

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Mixmatcher

submit and share mix tape proposals

• BBC - Radio3 World and New Music - Late Junction

Highly recommended - diverse and captivating.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• The Ecologist Magazine: Ecology News Online
• Images by Henrik Wann Jensen

cutting edge ray-tracing using effects such as subsurface scattering

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition

archive of all 5201 submissions

• SpaceShipOne - leading participant in the X Prize competition

it looks like these guys are going to be first

• Ansari X Prize

'...a future in which the general public will personally participate in space travel and its benefits...'

• climateprediction.net portal

distributed computing project to map our doom

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Everyday Matters. a series of occasional essays on creative things, journal making, drawing,etc.

Web log by Danny Gregory - some delicious pen and watercolour drawings to be found here

• MicroSky

' ...MicroSky is a freeware planetarium for mobile/cell phones with Java-support and a connection to the internet...'

• Ferguson Hill speakers

166cm tall, 8mm thick toughened cast acrylic horns - £9000 a pair

• Design Guidelines for Visualizing Links - Jakob Nielsen

'...Users shouldn't have to guess or scrub the page to find out where they can click...'

• london art aggregator

high culture squeezed together into one RSS feed - art smoothie anyone?

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Green Home Environmental Products

reused rubber messenger bags and more

• GreenPrices: Green energy in the UK

'...GreenPrices aims at stimulating renewable energy by giving clear information about the market for green energy...'

• Big Noise Music mp3 downloads

Oxfam backed service - '...tracks will cost between 75p and 99p, with 10p going to Oxfam...'

• Plants For A Future - 7000 useful plants

'..a resource centre for rare and unusual plants, particularly those which have edible, medicinal or other uses..'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Towel Day - carry your towel with you throughout the day to show your participation and mourning.

found via Sparkes at westmids.biz, we're quits now on the HHGTTG links!

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Universal Church of the Interactive Network

'...To help mankind achieve global consciousness via the medium of the Internet and in doing so make us a viable active member of the universe...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• LOVEFiLM

Rent DVDs online

• BioRegional: First One Planet Living community launched in Portugal

The world's first large-scale eco-friendly tourism

• Paul Ramirez-Jonas - Heavier than Air

'...Rich in romantic overtones they depict the isolated artist in an expansive landscape, the guide rope appearing like an umbilical cord connecting body to air...' - coming to the Ikon in June

• glassdog: My Kingdom for a Killfile

found via inteconnected.org - astute commentary on what's wrong with boingboing.net (nice site design too)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• kuro5hin.org

Can you use theoretical physics to design a city or a supercomputer?

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• PhatCanvas.

Limited edition designer canvases. Based in the UK

• WorldNetDaily: Ray Bradbury rips Michael Moore

"Michael Moore is a screwed a--hole, that is what I think about that case," Bradbury said according to an English translation of the story. "He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission."

• John Cage - Online recordings

via Dave - via cityofsound.com (I've no idea who Dave is, but thanks!)

• the web editor

'...but I actually want to use my computer; I'm sick of spending all my time setting it up...'

• Fahrenheit 9/11

"I want to make sure if I do nothing else for the rest of this year that those who died in Iraq have not died in vain." - Michael Moore

• Gramophone, the disk player in Berliner Style

'...scratches a groove into an ordinary CD, allowing you to make a gramophone style record out of it...' via boingboing.net

• Trunk Monkey

4 movies of the Trunk Monkey - I want one of these

• brianstorms weblog: Bradbury Schmadbury

"Well, well. What would Bradbury have to say about his own "theft" of Walt Whitman's poem verse, to name one of his stories? I Sing The Body Electric, published around 1969, is actually a name of a famous poem by Walt Whitman."

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• LacusCurtius - Inscription on the Base of Trajan's Column

  '...to the Emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan Augustus, son of Nerva of blessed memory...'

• The Acropolis Project: Trajan's Column

  A LEGO commenorative column modeled after Trajan's column in Rome

• The King Library Press -- Rubbing From Trajan's Column

  '.. long been regarded as one of the finest examples of Roman letter forms and has been the basis for many type faces..'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) nowhere near midnight via del.icio.us.

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• AMSN Messenger

  MSN for Linux - via a post on the Wolves LUG mailing list (thanks David!)

• LeoCAD Homepage

  CAD program that uses Lego as it's building blocks - available for Linux too!

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Center for Online and Internet Addiction - Help and Resource for Internet Addicts

  '...A test for on-line users to determine if they may be addicted to the Internet...'

• Distributed Proofreaders

  '...a web-based method of easing the proofreading work associated with the digitization of Public Domain books into Project Gutenberg e-books...'

• I/O/D

  'Software is mind control - get some.'

• Lucinda Rogers

  via dannygregory.com

• METAMUTE

  'the interrelationship of art and new technologies'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• www.engadget.com

  How-To Tuesday: Make your own Pirate Radio Station with an iPod

• Ara is me

  sweet pencil drawings - found via newthings.com

• low-fi commissions 2004

  '...low-fi welcomes proposals for 5 commissioned art projects from artists working with networked technology/internet...' via metamute newsletter

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Gmail Gems

  tips and tricks blog for gmail users (via 'but she's a girl')

• PIRATETV Theater

  This week's broadcast: 'The Twilight Zone: The Rip Van Winkle Caper'

• Green Building Store

  '...Our commitment is to supply building products which promote energy-efficient, sustainable and healthy homes...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• iCapture - your site through the eyes of Apple's Safari browser.

  test your CSS on Safari or IE (see ieCapture) - via kryogenix.org

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Scientific American.com: Sitcoms on the Brain

  '...ambiguity, incongruity and surprise are key elements in many jokes..' - proving (again) that Arthur Koestler was way ahead of his time (via boingboing.net)

• Subterranea Britannica

  '...a society devoted to the study and investigation of man-made and man-used underground places...'

• BBC - Radio 4 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

  On Tuesday 21 September 2004 at 6.30pm The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy returns to Radio 4 for a brand new series.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• My Kwiki: Phlog

  '...This plugin adds photo capabilities to your Blosxom blog. It makes entries out of photos or includes photos in entries...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Getting through the bottleneck

  Jeffrey Sachs describes the positive and negative effects of globalization, and proposes ways forward to achieve sustainable development

• Stand

  Defining Digital Freedoms In The UK

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Jonathan Glancey - My tower is bigger than yours

  'Hey, look, everyone, my tower's 500 feet tall. That's nothing, sonny boy; mine's 1,000. A thousand? Get serious, kiddo, I've got a 1,500-foot tower in my pocket. Know what I mean?'

• The New Yorker - critique of no.1 bestseller 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves'

  'An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is a little like an American lecturing the French on sauces.' - thanks Joel !

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Casketfurniture.com

  '...our products can last you a lifetime, and still be the perfect vehicle to carry you to the great beyond...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• The Laptopia Odyssey, Part 2

  '...Now, with SuSE 9.1, the indicator light works and so does Wi-Fi...' - there's hope for me yet

• Using Internet to Reduce Electricity Bills

  '...a system developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is using Web services to collectively adjust power usage to variations in price...'

• bOINGbOING LITE

  boingboing.net with anti Disney filter

• Trapped in Sticker Factory, Send Help

  found via lynchwalker.com

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• 'Facetop' Blends Screen and Video Images

  'Here you can see the 'ghostly' reflection of the user blended with what he sees on his screen.' - bloody genius, I want one

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Crooked Timber: Who are the bloggers in your neighborhood?

  blogging might be like: '...the eighteenth century coffee-house as a place where people could escape from their private lives, reinventing themselves, and engaging in good conversation with others, regardless of their background or their everyday selves..

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Royston Tan's controversial short film 'Cut'

  Movie satire of Singapore's nanny state

• cityofsound: Superheroes and the city

  Dan Hill highlights a Guardian article about comics and urban topography

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Age of unreason

  Guardian interview: JG Ballard talks about globalisation and terrorism, government and the media, the internet and intimacy (via submitresponse.co.uk)

• Google Guide

  Using Search Operators (Advanced Operators)

• The disorder in the RSS

  rodcorp on the "correspondences" between RSS texts

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Anthony Townsend

  Digitally Mediated Urban Space: New Lessons for Design (2004)

• Threadless T-Shirts

  Interesting tee shop - $10 each

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Del.icio.us phrenology

  Blackbeltjones posts a link to a visualisation tool for del.icio.us (here's what mine looks like)

• The Map Room

  A weblog about maps

• JoelKotkin.com - The Ephemeral City

  '...A successful city must be a home not only to edgy clubs, museums and restaurants but also factories, schools, companies and neighborhoods capable of regenerating themselves for the next generation...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• quiet american

  '...The world makes its own music, but we rarely listen with naive ears...I am opinionated and verbose. To those who suffer for these things I offer this: what I hear when I am quiet...' (via spaceandculture

• Low voltage light from suck.uk.com

  reminds me of the work of Paul Cocksedge

• rinky-dink.org - pedal powered mobile music machine

  '...But with RinkyDink favourites like 'Sugar Sugar' and 'Dancing Queen', smiling and dancing seemed to be a better idea than fighting; the Dink ended up leading the party out of Hyde Park again...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Online Papers in Philosophy

  Reports on changes to webpages hosting philosophical papers - warning: it's a BIG list (via crookedtimber.org)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Rules for Good Handwriting

  '...All downstrokes are equidistant...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Pixel Corps Online

  online tutorials for various medias, uses bittorrent for file sharing and creation of server farm for model rendering

• BBC - History - Restoration

  Public voting for which buildings should be restored, new series just started on BBC

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• BBC NEWS | World | Americas | WTC site architect sues developer

  '...Daniel Libeskind filed papers at the state Supreme Court on Wednesday, seeking $850,000 he says he is owed in unpaid fees...'

• Vintage Douglas Adams interview on-line

  '...A 25-minute audio interview with Douglas Adams recorded in 1988 when he was promoting The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Antique Phonograph Music Program

  Every Tuesday evening, 7pm to 8pm, on wfmu.org

• growabrain: Radio Archives

  blog category listing online and independent radio stations

• BlosGate - The Email to Blosxom Gateway

  ...an email-to-blog gateway that allows you to publish to Blosxom via email without procmail rules and/or root access to your server

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Architect sketch from 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie'

  perilously close to the real thing (found via thingsmagazine.net who found it via plasticbag.org)

• ThinkGeek :: USB Cup Warmer

  It's my birthday on August 7th - all gifts kindly received!

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Simon Trpceski (with video feeds of past performances)

  I've just been choking back tears at the sight of Simon Trpceski performing Saint-Saëns' Second Piano Concerto at the Proms. A machine couldn't play with greater perfection. He's only 25.

• BBC - Sound of Life

  'Eavesdropping on elephants and imagining the noise of the birth of our planet...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Frank Gehry radio interview

  Gehry talks about fish, chain-link fencing and his new house project (found via Land+Living)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Calvino's Novels, by Gore Vidal

  via tesugen.com, who's doing the lion's share of the work in our inter-blog reading exercise

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Photo Friday - The Weekly Photo Challenge

  '...Each week Photo Friday posts a photo assignment. Your mission is the creative interpretation of the week's theme...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Parkspliced

  Blur's Parklife Revisited and Mutated (via http://www.donttellyourfriends.net/secret/)

• Colorblind Web Page Filter

  Design check '...color filter will show your existing web site through color blind eyes...'

• Archinect : Features : Peter Eisenman

  '...Liberal Views Have Never Built Anything of any Value...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• ---------------------------> p i n g f m

  netbased platform for audio/video experiments (via piratetv.net newsletter)

• htAccess Generater Demo

  found via submitresponse.co.uk (thanks Jack!)

• The Australian: Where icons meet irony

  '...Architects can be patronising in imposing their idea of the one single truth that binds everything together...' (via ArchNewsNow)

• virtualdub.org

  '...VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL)...'

• How to convert .3GP into .AVI

  format conversion HOWTO for my cameraphone videos

• Blackbeltjones/work: DIS2004: Day One: notes on Bill Mitchell Keynote

  '...there is a hand-made sign on the door showing a picture of an architect in a circle with a slash though him/her!..'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

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• Archispeak: An Illustrated Guide to Architectural Design Terms by Tom Porter

  '...Archispeak can seem insular and perplexing to others and -- particularly to the new architectural student -- often incomprehensible...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Classical Guitar Tablature

  800 classical guitar tabs in plain text format

• Flaxwood guitars

  '...Flaxwood guitars combine the dynamics of natural fibre composites with the warmth and power of expression typical to traditional wooden instruments...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The suit that makes you feel old

  '...A suit that simulates old age is helping architects design more user-friendly hospitals...' - I should probably get myself one of these (via diepunyhumans.com)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Sustainable Homes

  '...promotes awareness of sustainable development issues and good practice...'

• Buzzgrinder: William Shatner is No Has Been!

  '...Shatner teams up with Ben Folds for this surprisingly pop driven collection of songs...'

• Green Street

  '...Green Street will help you improve the environmental performance of your homes...'

• Animation of acoustic version of Creep by Radiohead (via boingboing)

  forget animated menus and intros you always skip - this is what Flash was invented for.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Buying a bike? Buy one twice the price with government tax-saving scheme

  '...a Green Transport Plan tax-exemption, discount-voucher, bike-buying incentive...' (thanks Tom!)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The Organ as it Rusts

  '...Music improvised from assemblages of tape loops, shortwave broadcasts, and field recordings...'

• Storefront for Art and Architecture

  List of exhibitions from 1982 to present day - scan down the list and follow the timeline of fashionable architectural theory over the last 20 years (thanks Al!)

• Illuminati

  Illuminati's first release on Newsense Recordings 'Searching for the new land' - sample track downloads available (via Late Junction)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Brazilians decode coffee genome

  '...Brazil would use the genetic code to create a super-coffee, richer in taste, more aromatic and resistant to disease and frost...'

• Honey, Where You Been So Long

  '...an MP3 blog to share pre-war blues, updated every working day...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The House That Built a Revolution (washingtonpost.com)

  film review - '...Wherein Frank Gehry and Peter Lewis Spend a Fortune and a Decade, End Up With Nothing and Change the World...' (via ArchNewsNow)

• Soul Sides - Can the drummer get some?

  '...Even when he's not soloing...he's soloing...'

• BBC - Religion & Ethics - Beyond Belief

  A well presented/chaired discussion on different theological topics, this weeks was about the growing interest in Buddhism in the West

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Audlink

  '... Audlink is a service that lets you put voice messages on the web using your phone....'

• BBC - BBC Four - Audio Interviews - (Ludwig) Mies van der Rohe

  6 October 1959 BBC Radio - Mies van der Rohe talks to Graeme Shankland (via Archinect)

• Nick Drake - Time Has Told Me

  entire contents of the limited vinyl triple album Time Has Told Me on mp3

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Making the switch to OSX

  '...Tired of viruses, lost files and the 'blue screen of death'? In the first of two articles about waving goodbye to Windows, John Dodds switches to Apple's OSX...' (via One Man and his Blog)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Architecture Radio

  '...Architecture Radio's mission is to promote learning and discussion about the pressing issues of design and the built environment. We do this by publishing audio/video recordings of important lectures, interviews and discussions on the Internet....' (v

• Arthur Wyatt - Emigration

  '...My name is Deakin, I work in emigration. I prevent illegal time travel...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Things Magazine: latest entry

  '...Surely the building can't embody great beauty and unspeakable ugliness at the same time?..'

• Modernist Dolls House

  '..comes with plexiglass sliding doors, beech furnishings, a kitchen island and shower...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Computer Arts Magazine - Daniel Brown wins coveted designer of the year prize

  I've just realised that I neglected to add the results to my previous entry on the 2004 Designer of the Year

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• www.trees4tranquillity.co.uk

  '...these young trees are not Bonsai to start with they only become so, by your training...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Steve Reich - Clapping Music

  click on Multimedia/Video - found via disquiet.com

• Growl Karaoke

  Posted for Jono and his band, Seraphidian.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Eyetrack III

  '...While testing our participants' eye movements across several news homepage designs, Eyetrack III researchers noticed a common pattern...' (via boingboing.net)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Gillian Welch live mp3s

  check out the Hendrix cover - Manic Depression

• saiz.co.uk - iLego

  '...a technical approach to the idea of 'coexistence of structure and chaos...'

• Metafilter: Where were you on 9/11?

  '...they showed the towers burning and falling on TV in the student lounge as kids ran up and down the halls screaming, screaming, because their parents were inside and they thought they were watching them die. A few of them were...'

• Springhill Institute - Manuel Saiz (closing event tomorrow night)

  '...I will spend the first four days shooting at the Zoo, trying to capture the most interesting moments from a selection of animals...' (thanks Liz!)

• PER BAK 1948-2002

  Just found out that Per Bak died in 2002. His work helped me see many sections of architectural theory clearly, '...A tree on fire is like a person with the flu, is like a galaxy forming stars, is like a gene turning on, is like a trader making a bid...'

• WorldChanging: Another World Is Here - Bright Green Living

  '...We may have hit upon the solution: a Wiki on Bright Green Living...' - volunteers needed to help construct a wiki on sustainable living

• Guardian: Pods and monsters - Glancey at the Venice Biennale

  '...Thank goodness for good old British inclusiveness...'

• Derrida: The Movie

  found via An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• blosxom:: a del.icio.us blosxom plugin

  '...a plugin for the blosxom micro-cms which retrieves links related to each story from del.icio.us...' (via blosxom mailing list)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• FreeMind

  FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java (via the LUG mailing list, thanks David!)

• Toycamera.com

  '...This year, 'World Toy Camera Day' will be held on October 23rd (2004). On that day everyone from around the world should dust off their toy camera(s), load it up with your film of choice, and take pictures!..'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture

  The 1982 Debate Between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman (via tesugen.com)

• Photographs: Villa Savoye

  via thingsmagazine.net

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• LickLibrary.com

  guitar tuition, backing tracks, TAB, mp3 downloads, transcriptions (thanks Al!)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• MVRDV design the next Serpentine exhibition (via ArchNewsNow)

  "They're smart. They're so smart. I hadn't conceived of going up."

• SourceForge.net: Project Info - Azureus - BitTorrent Client

  '...Azureus is a powerful, full-featured, cross-platform java BitTorrent client...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Kapoor exhibition

  '...the Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia, Italy is hosting a one-man show on Kapoor...' (via A Daily Dose of Architecture)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Animaris Rhinoceros Transport

  '...Since the dinosaurs became extinct nothing else this size has roamed the planet’s surface...' Check the video - breathtaking. (via things magazine)

• Hexstatic Virtual DVD

  '...Hexstatic have a new album/dvd coming out, here are video streams to 5 of the upcoming tracks...' (posted for Rob S)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Old Time Radio Show Server

  '...Enjoy some of the best programming from the Golden Age of Radio...' (via Dozer)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Deconstruction icon Derrida dies

  RIP Jaques - see here for more

• Kings of Convenience mp3s

  found via stereogum

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Kerrang! Radio 105.2 - Legends

  I've mentioned this station before, the latest news is that they've started a new stream that just delivers their 'Legends' show.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• cityofsound: MIT Stata Center

  a review of Frank Gehry's new MIT building

• Bit Prepared 1: A Missing Link?

  '...Building the case for turning the Boy Scouts into a worldwide advocate of free software...'

• Bit Prepared 2: Richard Stallman Meets the World Scout Bureau

  '... Linux Community Richard Stallman from the FSF, Ray Saunders from the World Scout Bureau and the author discuss the connections between free software and Scouting philosophies....'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Panchromatica: Libertarian Planning

  Ian highlights the key parts of a dialogue between Christopher Alexander and Bruce Snider (full article here: How we people can once again make our towns

• BBC - Radio 2 - Ken Bruce Session with Mark Knopfler

  live tracks including a sublime version of Brothers in Arms

• spiked-culture - Deconstructing Derrida

  '...Deconstruction was a method that spread from literary criticism, through cultural studies until it became so ubiquitous that you could buy a 'deconstructed [ie. rumpled] suit' in Camden, London, in the 1990s...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Extension Room :: del.icio.us

  '...This extension integrates del.icio.us into Firefox...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Starbucks consumer warning - product recall

  '...On behalf of the starbucks coffee corporation we would like to invite you in returning faulty paper cups to the ubiquitous coffee chain...'

• FAC_2 the update

  Thanks to my webstats I've just spotted that the original artist of my FAC2 remix has added a list of available versions on his site (scroll to the bottom)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• viksoe.dk - (Windows) GMail Drive shell extension

  GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Total eclipse of the Moon diagram

  set your alarm for Thursday morning 02:23 GMT (via biroco.com) (the link, not the eclipse)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Half Man Half Biscuit mp3s

  ...broadcast on the John Peel show on 3rd September 2002 (click the Kershaw link for more)

• John Peel RIP

  '...Here are some free and legal mp3 downloads of songs that John Peel has featured on his Radio 1 show recently...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Eye Spirits - Fortean Times

  '...the brain, on receiving incomplete visual data through the eyes, 'fills in' the missing elements as best it can...' And this is why there's no such thing as Truth.

• BBC - Food - Recipes - Search

  We have these 49 search results for "pumpkin"

• Guardian Unlimited | Online | Creative comfort

  A new group of [Creative Commons] licences about to be introduced to the UK could offer a more flexible approach to copyright law

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The Synchronicity Arkive - synchronising Dorothy and Pink Floyd

  '...The Wizard of Oz has been a classic film, ever since it came out. And Dark Side of the Moon has been a must-have on any album collectors shelf since 1973. Now you can enjoy them together...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Cookie cutter design, revisited by Aq

  Thoughts on design and usability with some interesting comments - the comment from Roberto almost made me want quit but I bounced back and added a reply.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• peterme.com: notes from Manuel Castells lecture

  Cities in the Information Age (via WorldChanging)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Derrida Declawed

  '...When the French philosopher Jacques Derrida died last month at seventy-four, the response was loud, passionate, and predictably divided according to demographic origin...' (via ArchNewsNow)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Mac SE Support Pages

  '...THIS IS the page for people who like to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube, and the last ounce of performance from their ancient Macintosh SE...'

• Portable Firefox 1.0 (USB Drive-Friendly) :: Mozilla Stuff :: JohnHaller.com

  via Jack's del.icio.us links

• 68000-mac-faq

  This file describes what works on 68000 macs like Plus, SE, Portable, Classic and PowerBook.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• gmail on you mobile

  how to set up gmail pop3 supprt on your phone

• Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulations

  posted while I think about the latest moblogUK competition

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Joel on Software - It's Not Just Usability

  usability vs. the well designed social interface (via Alfie's del.icio.us)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• 'Save Architecture'

  photos of today's protest at Cambridge (from 'lluniau bach traed' @ moblogUK.co.uk)

• Space and Culture : Lost in Space

  '...I love this tension between mobility and stability, the local and the global. This sort of complexity cannot be easily modelled, nor reduced to either structure or function...'

• Arcsoc: Cambridge University Architecture Society

  '...It is quite probable that the University is unaware of the impact the closure of the Department of Architecture in Cambridge will have...It has uncomfortable echoes of the closure of the Bauhaus...'

• How to write like a wanker

  '..No matter what Flash-blinded web monkeys would have us believe, the Internet is a text-based medium...' (via growabrain

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• LamRim.com

  Tibetan Buddhist Internet Radio (via growabrain)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Rail plan safe as architect [Will Alsop] is axed

  '...The renowned architect behind ambitious £350 million plans to redevelop Birmingham New Street Station has been taken off the project....'

• Will Alsop's new children's centre

  '...has its own 'big top', water garden and outdoor stage. It's a ray of light in a dark corner of London, says Jonathan Glancey...'

• The Freelance Hairdresser

  mash up mp3s - knees up, look sharp (dizzee rascal vs chas 'n' dave) is absolute bloody genius

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Tijuana Christmas (mp3s)

  ...to help everyone at the Wolves LUG enjoy a Merry Christmas...(posted as an apology for failing to attend the xmas bash!)

• Flickr: Architecture

  Group photo pool

• TinyP2P

  '...TinyP2P is a functional peer-to-peer file sharing application, written in fifteen lines of code, in the Python programming language...' (via boingboing.net)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Holmes on the radio

  '...Sherlock Holmes stories have been a part of radio programming since 1930. There are some 600 broadcasts listed on this site...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Chenard Walcker

  'Chenard Walcker is a Cut/Paste addict.'

• WM Recordings :: releases :: WM006 Chenard Walcker - Vize verze

  Chenard Walcker - Vize verze... go for the zip file of the whole album (via PCL Linkdump)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• mfeeds

  'media feeds for everyone. RSS enclosures and podcasting made easy.' (via Warren Ellis)

• Chenard Walcker - X Rays [EP09]

  more Chenard Walcker over at archive.org

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• growabrain: Architecture Archives

  a growing list of interesting links about architecture

• What is a Third Place and Why Are They Important?

  '..."Social condensers" -- the place where citizens of a community or neighborhood meet to develop friendships, discuss issues, and interact with others...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• FotoBuzz Viewlet

  annotation for images, similar to flickr.com

• folderblog

  '...a 20kb PHP script that automatically displays the images placed in a given subdirectory...'

• The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami

  The SEA-EAT blog for short. News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts

• Tsunami News

  Blogged updates on latest information

• Architecture For Humanity: Indian Ocean Earthquake

  taking donations for a reconstruction fund

• Kids with Cameras

  '...Empowering children through the art of photography...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• BBC NEWS - World - Asia-Pacific

  Asian disaster: How to help (list of organisations taking donations)

• BBC Radio 1 - John Peel - Festive Fifty 2004

  In at number 8: Half Man Half Biscuit - 'Joy Division' (yay!)

• www.thoreau.niu.edu

  The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau

• YSP - Yorkshire Sculpture Park

  '...Yorkshire Sculpture Park is one of Europe’s leading open-air art organisations showing modern and contemporary work by leading UK and international artists...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Big Box Reuse

  '...As K-mart, Walmart etc abandon their sheds ... they leave behind a specific building type that is now beginning to be reused in surprising renovations...' (via The Gray Area)

• Found Photo

  my submission to the Flickr group Found Photos (via PCL Linkdump)

• Jesusonic

  The Jesusonic is a fully programmable effects processor for guitar, bass, vocal and general use.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Wikimedia Commons

  '...This project provides a central repository for free images, music, sound & video clips and possibly, texts and spoken texts, used in pages of any Wikimedia project...'

• BBC Four Music - The Blues

  If you can get BBC4 this is essential viewing - 2 episodes down, 5 to go

• Martin Scorsese : The Blues (as seen on BBC4)

  '...Under the guiding vision of Executive Producer Martin Scorsese, seven directors will explore the blues through their own personal styles and perspectives....'

• eBay item - CHRIS FARLOWE- STORMY MONDAY 1966

  The star of tonight's blues movie on sale on eBay - I suspect the price is about to go up. Any wealthy benefactors care to treat me?

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Wiki Engines

  a comprehensive list of different wiki choices

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Anatomical Chart Company - Brain Gelatin Mold

  '...Fill the plastic brain mold with a customized gelatin mix and a few hours later, out pops a life-size, anatomically correct brain....' (via Mind Hacks)

• Guardian Unlimited Film | Reviews | White Noise

  '...He plays an architect - a dream job in films, conferring creativity and class and generally requiring nothing more taxing than standing around pointing at cardboard model buildings....' Ha! - (via ArchNewsNow)

• SABADABADA

  '... Look at hundreds of classic Bossa, Balanco & Samba LPs from Brazil, learn about record labels and artists, download selected tracks and share your ideas on the feedback page...' (via PCL)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• blosxom.ookee.com

  The Unofficial Blosxom User Group

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Classic Cafes | London's vintage Formica caffs!

  '...Often dismissed as 'greasy spoons', classic cafes are actually little gems of British vernacular high street design...' (via City of Sound)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Architecture for Humanity - Tsunami fund raising event

  '...We are asking people to please submit one 5�x7� photo under the theme SPICE, whose theme is to celebrate the culture, color, sights and sounds of region...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Architectural Elements - a photoset on Flickr

  by lil

• Apple iProduct

  '...Do you like Apple products? Do you live for every product announcement, every incremental upgrade, every rumour and fake screenshot?...' (via kryogenix.org)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Turn off your computer and read a book

  Joel manages what many of us wish we had the will power to do (click the graphic)

• BBC - Radio 1 - oneclick

  '...Slash and Duff from Velvet Revolver and Guns n Roses pick the tracks...' - great playlist, go listen, you have until 25 Jan

• The Urban Revolution

  '...The first English translation of Lefebvre's groundbreaking work on the urban experience....' (via Anne Galloway)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The Blogosphere as a Tuple Space

  via kryogenix.org

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• felt cafe - drinkcozy

  Where can I go to get felt? (via Jack's del.icio.us links)

• International Internet Free Day

  Sunday 30th January - interesting idea, but the fact that we even need this to persuade people to live again depresses me so much. (via SmartMobs)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• BBC - Radio 4 Front Row - 27/01/05

  '...Architect Will Alsop, the war art of William Orpen and using London Underground on film...' (Thanks Woo!)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Re-Place-ing Space: The Roles of Place and Space in Collaborative Systems

  via Anne Galloway's del.icio.us links

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• New (sub)Urbanism: The Copyrighting of Public Space

  '...Warren Wimmer's attempts to photograph Anish Kapoor's sculpture, Cloud Gate. When Wimmer set up his tripod and camera to shoot the sculpture, security guards stopped him, demanding that they show him a permit. (via Land + Living)...'

• 9 contemporary poets reading themselves through modernism

  '...Three nights of readings at the Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk on Penn’s campus...' part of PENNsound (via PCL)

• The Information Machine

  '...a short film directed by Charles and Ray Eames, commissioned by IBM in 1958 for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair....' (via thingsmagazine.com)

• cityofsound: The City (1939)

  '...Urban planning legend Lewis Mumford, Aaron Copland and photographer Ralph Steiner joined forces in 1939 to construct an idealistic film about the potential for 'new cities' to arise from the mire that America's cities were then perceived to be descending into.

• DIY Culture - Urban Explorations and Climbing

  '...Explore the horizontal and the verticle , throw some de-conditioning moves and clamber under, over and across the cityscape...' Disappointed I missed this one, I'll try it next time (via Sparkes)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• MKaku.org - Explorations in Science with Dr. Michio Kaku

  '...Explorations in Science with Dr. Michio Kaku, is an hour long radio program on science, technology, politics, and the environment...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The Free Range Activism Web Site

  '...One key feature of the FRAW site is that it tries to make all information available under free documentation licenses...' (another interesting link from Sparkes)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The Absolute Bottom 50 Blogs

  I'm surely number 14 - PuttingMyLiberalArtsDegreeToSomeUse.com (via boingboing.net)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• ProgeSOFT CADforLINUX

  '...CADforLINUX is a powerful and complete 2D/3D CAD environment, 100% compatible with DWG drawing format, developed in order to run on GNU/Linux distributions...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• SQUARE ONE: environmental design, software, architecture, sustainability, building science

  '...This site provides free information for architects, building designers, students and anyone else interested in energy efficient and sustainable design...' (via Tom)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Italo Calvino Viewmaster reels

  Calvino's classic 'Invisible Cities' now available as a Viewmaster reel (via boingboing.net)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• A Daily Dose of Architecture: Book of the Moment

  '.. Christopher "A Pattern Language" Alexander has completed his four-volume omnibus culminating his exploration of architectural theory over thirty years...'

• Warrenellis.com » Food Stories

  '...In my youth, I knew a market gardener. Tom was an epic piss artist who could frequently be found unconscious on the soil, sweating beer into the marrows....'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Corante: Strange Attractor

  'How metafeeds will lead the way to RSS nirvana. Maybe.'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• WebMedia - Lectures

  video streams from Princeton University (via)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The "Underwood No. 5" mini-ITX project

  I think I've found the solution to Joel's absence from the internet (as linked in previous linklog)

• Pictures of Walls

  '...The wall is the weapon of choice for the unarmed civillian...' (via spaceandculture.org)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The ElectriClerk

  1988 Macintosh computer meets Underwood typewriter c.1923

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Looking at Buildings

  '...from the Pevsner Architectural Guides. An introduction to understanding and exploring the built environment and architecture of all periods and styles with pages on architectural history, styles, traditions, buildings, materials and techniques, city g

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The Long Now Foundation

  lectures to download...Brian Eno, George Dyson, Bruce Sterling to name but a few (thanks Peter!)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Interconnected: a little accelerometer

  '...After a few more minutes, we had the tilt sensor controlling Timo's music. You rock the machine backwards for the next track, and rock it forwards for the previous track....' Nice. Very, very nice.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Hitchhiker's Trailer

  The UK trailer for the new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie.

• BBC - Radio 3 - Discovering Music Archive

  '...In Discovering Music the presenter takes a piece of music apart to reveal its inner workings and discusses what the composer had in mind...' Today's program on Chopin was fascinating.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Alice Malloy's Theremin Bra

  '...an amazing breakthrough in the world of touchless instrumentation...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• How to make chalkboard paint

  3 teaspoons acrylic paint, 1 1/2 teaspoons glazing medium, 1/2 teaspoon powder tile grout (via MAKE

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• A Nice Cup of Tea by George Orwell

  '...Here are my own 11 rules, every one of which I regard as golden...' (via growabrain)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The High Cost of Free Stuff

  '...And it was then that it occurred to me that a Zero Dollar Bill is really quite valuable -- it's good for the things money can't buy...'

• Europan 8 has just been launched

  '...EUROPAN's objective is to assist the young architects of Europe in developing their ideas and disseminating them on strategic sites proposed by municipalities or developers...' The question is, do I have the time to enter?

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

  '....Subconscious Art: a product of artistic merit that was created without conscious artistic intentions...' (via Drawn

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Christopher Alexander's OOPSLA '96 keynote... [Tesugen]

  '...systems of instructions which allow unfolding to occur in space...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Housing | British prefer 'Brookside box'

  '...a survey showing that most people prefer a suburban "box" to a trendy city apartment...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Kiddie Records Weekly

  '...For the entire 2005 year, Basic Hip Digital Oddio will be featuring weekly stories and songs from the golden age of children's records...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Art 101 - History and Appreciation of Art

  '...Art 101 is a multi-cultural survey of art from the Renaissance to the 21st Century...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• micampe.it: FlickrClient

  '...FlickrClient is a Python interface to the Flickr API...'

• GIMPshop

  Thank God. Somebody finally hacked the nasty interface on GIMP...Just OSX currently, I hope somebody takes this on for Linux too.

• Disquiet: interviews: Benoit Charest

  '...Benoit Charest, who scored the animated film Les Triplettes de Belleville, talks about turning a vacuum cleaner into a Theremin, and other jazzy feats of everyday electronica....'

• Unknown Public: Journal + Compilation CD

  '...The UP concept draws upon the creativity of hundreds of musicians: the performers, composers and producers who contribute master tapes in the spirit that writers contribute manuscripts to a literary publication...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Seattle Library

  a photoset on Flickr

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Michael Speaks

  Two Stories for the Avant-garde (via http://del.icio.us/tag/architecture)

• The Brothers Karamazov (online translation)

  by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (via How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• City Grids and the Imageability of Software Architectures [Tesugen]

  number 3 on the google search for 'imageability' - I'm so jealous

• Windsor McCay online

  more on the author of Little Nemo (via Drawn! - again!)

• Steve Keene

  '...Steve paints in multiples, producing walls full of work every day. For him, every painting is part of a single on-going work of art that is now many miles long...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Gabion: Rem Koolhaas in Porto

  '...Koolhaas takes architecture out for a walk and then hides behind a tree and watches it panic...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• blueprintphotography

  '...the use of blueprint paper as an alternative to film and photographic paper...' (via MAKE)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• freesound

  '...The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License...'

• Spatial annotation projects / elastic space

  '...A list of spatial annotation projects and platforms...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• StompBox Project

  '...it's a compact little box that gets data from cellular towers and re-shares it for multiple computers to use...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Casa da Musica by Koolhaas

  a photoset on Flickr

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• 2blowhards.com

  Architecture Elsewhere (interesting discussion in the comments too)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• BBC - Radio 2 - Documentaries - Eric Clapton - Slowhand At 60

  '...Eric recalls his 40 plus years in the music business beginning with the Yardbirds and Cream before progressing to international stardom as a solo performer....'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Parrots, The Universe and Everything

  '...The complete 87 mins Parrots, the Universe and Everything talk at UC Santa Barbara given [by Douglas Adams] a month before his death. It’s a speech about the environment and his book Last Chance to See...'

• 'Naked streets': Sounds crazy but might just work

  '...Entire towns in Europe have no traffic lights or signs, and they've never been safer...' (via WFMU blog)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• gumstix

  '...tiny computer boards about the size of a stick of gum, but powered by the same Intel XScale processor often used in PDAs, Linux smartphones, and other relatively powerful mobile multimedia devices...'

• Paul Catherall - illustrator

  '...designs are inspired by classic 20th century poster desgin, Soviet propaganda art and artists such as William Nicholson...' (via L+L)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Dark Lord Of The Architects

  '...Darth Vader - alias actor Hayden Christensen - is aiming to shun the Dark Side and become...an architect...' (via The Gutter)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Berlin - Holocaust memorial - a photoset on Flickr

  Fantastic series. Full of the crucial subject matter - people...

• Jarnaker.com

  Build a Skype phone

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Processing 1.0 (BETA)

  '...Processing is a programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• art orbit - koolhaas

  '...Hans Ulrich Obrist managed to catch Koolhaas at Hotel St. James in Bordeaux, for a conversation revolving around Berlin and the Wall...'

• a band called 'Architecture in Helsinki'

  Interesting name, crap music

• Green DIY articles

  '...selected articles from past ReNew and Soft Technology magazine...' (via MAKE)

• NPR : A Conversation with Maurice Sendak

  via boingboing.net - more on Sendak's influences here.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• WFMU's Beware of the Blog: 23 MP3s of Wild and Wooly Vocal Stylings

  '...All manner of vocal stylings, ranging from Ethiopian herdsmen serenading their cow's udders to avant garde types with microphones lodged in their esophaguses...'

• Katarxis 3: New Science, New Urbanism -- New Architecture?

  September 2004 publication - usual suspects: Alexander, Duany, Krier, Salingaros etc (via /tag/architecture)

• Self sufficient 'ish'

  The urban guide to almost self sufficiency.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• The Big Draw

  '...The Campaign for Drawing invites everyone to join in, using drawing as a tool for engaging with the past, present and future. '...The Campaign for Drawing invites everyone to join in, using drawing as a tool for engaging with the past, present and

• the drawing club

  '...a blog about drawing (and a club to join)...' (via Drawn!)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• del.icio.us: casting the net wider

  '...Bookmarked items in del.icio.us that end in one of a number of filetypes will now automatically get some system tags added...RSS feeds that have one of those system tags will automatically become a rss-with-enclosures file...'

• Riffathon 2004/5

  '...The Riffathon is an annual guitar competition designed to encourage players of all ages to get out there and riff!...' (thanks Al!)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• readinglist: bloxsom plugin

  '...This plugin allows you to keep directories of entries corresponding to current, completed, and queued reading and outputs lists suitable for inclusion on a side-bar to your (bloxsom) blog...' (via)

• Junkspace - Rem Koolhaas

  via tag/architecture

• Flickr: Photos tagged with architectureweek

  a new tag just started yesterday - let's get busy

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Are architects venal, vacuous and ego-driven?

  Jonathan Meades considers new evidence (via John Massengale)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Creative Class 2005/6 results

  Kate Pemberton from endfile.com is one of the 20 winners! Congratulations Kate.

• Meditation skills of Buddhist monks yield clues to brain's regulation of attention

  '...researchers have uncovered clues to how mental states--and their underlying neural mechanisms--can impact conscious visual experience...' (via Matt Webb)

• Damon Albarn slams Live 8 - NME.COM

  "I don't want to take part in an event that is so exclusive. Is this the most effective way to help Africa?" (via Bosh)

• Observations on the Waterbrush

  '...squeeze the barrel, water enters the bristles...' Want one. (via thedrawingclub mailing list)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• City Comforts Blog: Built-world podcasts

  '...In light of Apple's initiative into making the IPod a tool for Podcasting, I'd like to compile a list of radio shows which cover the physical environment, natural or built. Any suggestions?...' - Looking forward to some useful links in the comments.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Gabion: Form defeats function: Renzo Piano's Paul Klee Centre, Switzerland.

  '...a beautifully-made object lesson in precisely how not to design an art gallery...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• International Children's Digital Library - Read free children books online

  '...The mission of the ICDL is to select, collect, digitize, and organize children's materials in their original languages and to create appropriate technologies for access and use by children 3-13 years old....' (via Drawn!)

• nine inch nails: only. remix download

  Trent Reznor releases another single online to encourage people to remix

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• del.icio.us direc.tor

  '...del.icio.us direc.tor is a prototype for an alternative web-based rich UI for del.icio.us...'

• Alfie on TV!

  Alfie spent yesterday promoting his new site: http://www.werenotafraid.com - if you missed it, here are the interviews.

• BBC NEWS: Couple break kissing world record

  I met this guy once. He asked what I did for a living and when I told him I was an architect he gave me the most unusual response I've ever had. (via understated.co.uk)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Why I Bought a Typewriter on eBay

  '...so I took Thoreau's thoughts on living deliberately to heart...' via thingsmagazine

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Aisle of Averages - a photoset on Flickr

  'Late night experiments in Safeway.' - I was so disappointed this wasn't result of travelling at speed in a shopping trolley.

• The Uncanny and the Architecture of Deconstruction by Anneleen Masschelein

  '...This article shows how an understanding of the uncanny may be crucial to an understanding of contemporary deconstructionist architecture...' (via tag/architecture)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Philip K. Dick - How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (Essay)

  written 1978, from "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (via Jack Mottram's del.icio.us links)

• Welcome to OTHERPOWER.COM

  '...It's EASY to make your own power FROM SCRATCH!..'

• Warrenellis.com - Nerd Prom Photo

  'Animatronic Philip K Dick Weeps Real Amphetamines'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• the eisenman principle

  "...I'd rather have good look and bad theory. If you can bring them together, fine, but if it don't look good to me, forget it..."

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Pamphlet Architecture

  '...an opportunity for architects, designers, theorists, urbanists, and landscape architects to publish their designs, manifestos, ideas, theories, ruminations, hopes, and insights for the future of the designed and built world...' (via Daily Dose)

• Smart City: Home

  '...Smart City is a weekly, hour-long public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life, the people, places, ideas and trends shaping cities...' (via Anne Galloway)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Skate like a girl!

  Skateboard decks + Classic furniture icons graphics = perfect present for me this Sunday.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Stan Allen: Object to Field

  '...The assumption here is that architectural theory does not arise in a vacuum, but always in a complex dialogue with practical work...' (via Javier's tags)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• File Format Converter Project

  '...The Long Now Foundation (www.longnow.org) is beginning a kind of Wikipedia for file format conversion as part of our larger Long Server Project...'

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• B o S h: The London Nobody Knows

  '...I found it in the gutter ... I picked it up, intrigued by the title: The London Nobody Knows, by Geoffrey Fletcher...'

• BBC - Radio 3 - Architecture on 3 Programme Archive

  '...Browse through our archive of interviews, features and investigations into architecture...' (via Christopher's tags)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• A GUIDE TO PLAYING 78 rpm RECORDS

  '...The idea behind this guide is to help collectors to get the best results from their precious 78rpm records. It is not exhaustive, neither is it highly technical...'

• RSS 2 PDF

  Free Online RSS, Atom or OPML to PDF Generator (via Make - here's an example: no2self_pdf)

• The Morning News - Option C (March), by Danny Gregory

  '...Shit out, shit in. We rent a giant Taurus and head to IKEA in New Jersey...' Damn it. He can write as well as draw.

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Brian Eno: “Not Enough Africa in Classical Music, Architectureâ€� [Tesugen]

  '...Thus, the orchestral composer is open to all the problems and conceits of the architect, liable to be trapped in a form that is inherently nonimprovisational, nonempirical...' Oof. Peter unearths more Eno genius.

• Circuit Bent by fastmatt

  '...I take innocent electronic toys from the 80's and turn them into screeching, howling, glitching musical instruments...' (via WFMU blog)

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

entry:

• Holyrood - It's our £431m BMX park

  '...one group who have been delighted with Catalan architect Enric Miralles extravagant design are the city's young BMX bikers and skateboarders - who have adopted it as a play park...'

entry:

• The Cube Is Coming

  Ken Shuttleworth's project in Birmingham. Tetris meets a Rubik's cube.

found by me, collated by del.icio.us., published by deloxom

entry:

• Nurri Kim - Tokyo Blues

  'The city as seen through one material': beautiful photographs of the city and its protector - the blue tarpaulin (via Space and Culture)

found by me, collated by del.icio.us., published by deloxom

entry:

• City Comforts, the blog: New Urbanism's main weakness

  'New Urbanism's official voices have not effectively separated - in the public mind - site plan from architectural style. That anyone can still associate New Urbanism with 'traditional' facades is New Urbanism's major weakness.' - I couldn't agree more

found by me, collated by del.icio.us., published by deloxom

entry:

• Repeat - Writings on Architecture: Bobbing for Mies - Robert Venturi at IIT

  '...he saw Gehry's bandshell in Millennium Park as carrying on 'the idea of the great American loft tradition ... essentially a loft with applied ornament, which are these potato chips'...' (via DYWSC?)

• In Alabama, a Poor County Is Rich in Modern Architecture - New York Times

  '...Music Man's house, with colorful glass embedded in concrete floors and shelves that move on skateboard wheels, is one of about 40 buildings conceived and built by the Rural Studio...' (via boingboing.net)

• designboom.com - 'shelter in a cart'

  '...the subject of the international design competition is 'shelter in a cart' design a cart that can provide shelter and storage...'

• Suburban Loft, The - New York Times

  '...And partly because the city, once the bane of middle-class existence, has again become acceptable, even alluring - everyone wants a piece of the 'Sex and the City' lifestyle...' (via varnelis.net)

• PingMag - Thomas Heatherwick: My Temple Seeks a Sponsor!

  '...We talked to him about this incredible task, how he came up with a beautiful design and what finally needs to happen now to turn this idea into reality...' (via Rotational linklog)

• Videora iPod Converter - iPod Video Converter

  '...allows you to convert your regular PC video files (avi, mpeg, etc) into the proper video format that your iPod understands...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• 29fragiledays: Berlin holocaust memorial

  Vodcast entry from between the blocks of the holocaust memorial

• Telegram from Aalto: Institute Archives & Special Collections: MIT

  '...just unable to produce enough architectural philosophy you may publish this telegramletter as a substitute stop...' via lewism

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Log - the anyone corporation magazine

  '...In the public eye, architecture has become media stars parading their newest fashions, which verges on entertainment. Yet when architecture is truly political, it has a social purpose and a transformative potential...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Richard Sennett

  Capitalism and the City (via varnelis)

• TIME.com: How to Get Smarter, One Breath at a Time

  '...Scientists find that meditation not only reduces stress but also reshapes the brain...' (link to previous entry on meditation)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Flickr: Grocer's Apostrophe

  '...I want this group to document the ridiculous advent in English of the dreaded grocer`s apostrophe. Visit and post your own horrid examples...' (via Jack)

• Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net

  Mute relaunch: '...For years, it has been Mute's dream to conduct its publishing on a more participatory platform ... and now, after years of planning and building, it is alive and kicking at brand new site Metamute.org...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Coldcut : Sound Mirrors

  Now with podcast! (via pieceoplastic)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• HassleMe

  '...Not eating enough fruit? Forgot to feed the fish again? Need a little help keeping your New Year's resolutions? Tell us what to hassle you about, and we'll nag you via email at semi-unpredictable intervals...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• blog.thoughtwax.com - Mapmaking and the archeology of the future

  '...While it's technically interesting, impressive, geeky, and all that, I think it's interface also illustrates a shift in what we're perceiving maps to be...'

• cityofsound: Two possible Google Earth extensions: time and sound

  '...I could spend all day exploring this Google Earth, but it strikes me that there's a couple of extensions I'd like to see...'

• Mike Liebhold Lecture

  '...Out of this teeming ecosystem, we can see the beginning shapes of a true geospatial web, inhabited by spatially tagged hypermedia as well as digital map geodata...' with iPod video of lecture (via varnelis.net)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• RIBA Bookshops - Good Practice Guide: Keeping out of Trouble

  '...We all get it wrong from time to time and are aware of others mistakes, yet the evidence shows that we still never learn from these mistakes...' - Who? Me?

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• http://www.charade.org.uk

  '...Volunteers attempt to memorize a chosen piece of music, film, tv programme, play or book; through a process of walking, memorizing, remembering and reciting, they each attempt to 'become' their favourite 'media asset'...' - Paging Ray Bradbury

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Groundhog Day The Movie, Buddhism and Me

  '...The movie illustrates the power of practice. When you practice, change happens. Phil unleashed his creativity by selflessness...' - via dailydose

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Podbasket - the easy way to build podcasts

  '...Podbasket allows you to create your own podcast feed just by providing the URLs for offsite audio files...' - Strewth, this is good. Very good. (via tesugen.com)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Merkitys-Meaning

  Mobile Phone + Flickr + Context = Meaning (via Jack's flickr page)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Toronto Psychogeography Society Blog

  found via Tropolism - related entry: overheard.

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• The University of North Carolina Press - Tropicalia

  '...In the late 1960s, Brazilian artists forged a watershed cultural movement known as Tropicalia. Although elements of Tropicalia appear in film, theater, visual arts, and literature, the most striking manifestation of this movement is in popular music..

• Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings

  Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, David Bohm and Richard Feynman vs. Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Sri Aurobindo and the Dalai Lama (via New Scientist letters page)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Resonance 104.4 fm

  '...Resonance 104.4fm is London's first radio art station, brought to you by London Musicians' Collective...' (via thingsmagazine)

• SCI-Arc LIVE

  '...SCI_arc's lecture series is now being broadcast in real time over the web every week...' - Damn it! I missed FAT (via Tropolism)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• BBC - collective - Arctic Monkeys session

  “This time last year, we were playing to next to nobody. I mean that quite literally - less than ten people.�

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• organicgarden.org.uk

  Organic Garden UK Web Log

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• BuddhaNet

  Buddhist Meditation audio files

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• RED: Transformation Design paper

  '...This paper is a call to action to all designers and non-designers wishing to work in this way to join us in developing transformation design as a discipline....'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• GPS Visualizer is a free, easy-to-use online utility that creates maps and profiles from GPS data (tracks and waypoints), street addresses, or simple coordinates.

  GPS Visualizer can read data files from many different sources: GPX, OziExplorer, Geocaching.com (.loc), IGC sailplane logs, Garmin Forerunner (.xml/.hst), Timex Trainer (v1.3+), Cetus GPS, PathAway, cotoGPS, CompeGPS, TomTom (.pgl), IGN Rando (.rdn), Emt

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Derrida - Documentary by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman

  This award-winning documentary gives an intimate portrait of the brilliant, controversial philosopher and intellectual French icon Jacques Derrida, whose theory of deconstruction has deeply influenced the studies of literature, philosophy, ethics, archite

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• DPZ - Transect

  Duany Plater-Zyberk on the urban transect. Examples and papers.

• PORTA2030

  '...PORTA2030 launches its porta-pack, a wifi compact unit that documents, archives and transmits during the Node London media season in March, 2006...' (via WMMNA)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• The Hype Machine

  '...The Hype Machine keeps track of new songs posted on the best blogs about music. Easily listen, discover and buy songs that everyone is talking about!..' (via downloadsquad.com)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• MA by Research at the Centre for Suburban Studies - Kingston University London

  '...This is particularly well suited for those who wish to develop an independent research project in the multi-disciplinary field of Suburban Studies...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• New tool may reveal architectural past - MIT News Office

  '...A computer design tool originally created for animation may soon unlock the secrets of the structure of ancient cathedrals...' (thanks Avril!)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• architect OR architecture charlie rose - Google Video

  Google video episodes of architecture slots on the Charlie Rose show (thanks Peter!)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Ivor Cutler radio sessions

  from Peel in '69 to Kershaw in '99 - mixture of mp3 and rm

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Lomo pinhole

  Pinhole cameras and info - beautiful cardboard and a paper fold-it-yourself camera available

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• People Like Us

  '...animating and recontextualising found footage collages with an equally witty and dark view of popular culture with a surrealistic edge...' - check Molaradio in the downloads section (via WFMU)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• SketchUp - Google SketchUp

  They made a free version of Sketchup - download this, you won't regret it

• Is there an Artificial God?

  Douglas Adams' speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge U.K. September 1998

• Jonathan Raban

  '...Welcome to the Jonathan Raban Fansite, source of all things Raban from Books to Articles and other odds and ends...' (Author of one of my favourite books on urbanity: Soft City)

• Radio Open Source: What Makes A City Great

  Radio show about Seattle with Jonathan Raban as guest

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Joanna Sands installations

  '...Making visually simple changes to the surface of the floor Sands produced a series of works that subtly subverted the viewer’s spatial expectations...' - Beautiful. Subtle. Arresting. (via Land + Living)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Urban Tapestries in Google Earth

  '...nearing completion of version 2 of the Urban Tapestries public authoring platform we are pleased to release a network link for Google Earth...' - beside myself with excitement about this, can't wait for it to develop

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Telegraph | Entertainment | Swann's way with Franglais

  '..The Champs-Elysee was agog for le lunch, le garden-party and le five o'clock tea. Le sport was de rigueur..'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Architecture Week: Open Practice

  My office will be taking part Birmingham's open practice event - 23rd June - come and say hello!

• Take yourself on an Architecture Week podwalk

  '...Join designer Wayne Hemingway as he guides you along a spectacular part of the Thames...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Guardian Unlimited Arts | Arts critics | It's not as easy as it looks

  '...After years spent dissecting the works of the great artists, critic Jonathan Jones decided to put his money where his mouth was - and learn to draw...' (via rodcorp)

• no, 2 self mobile rss

  rss feed of this site for mobile devices (created with xfruits.com)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

entry:

• Dana Gordon: NOTE TO SELF

  '...Note to Self by Dana Gordon is a collection of objects for daily use. They invite us to focus on ourselves, without isolating us from our environment...' (via WMMNA)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• Brickonomics

  '...A rogue housing researcher explores the hidden side of the blindingly obvious...' A recent addition to my rss reader, racking up a stack of great entries on the housing industry. Essential subscription if you're in the field.

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• 1000 things made from bamboo

  link to building category - search for bamboo phone before you leave

• OneWebDay

  '...Celebrate the health and diversity of the internet. The mission of OneWebDay is to create, maintain, advance, and promote a global day to celebrate online life: September 22, 2006...'

• This is Availabot (Schulze & Webb)

  '...Availabot plugs into your computer by USB, stands to attention when your chat buddy comes online, and falls down when they go away...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• Librarians' Internet Index

  '...Every Thursday morning we send out our free newsletter, New This Week, which features dozens of high-quality websites carefully selected, described, and organized by our team of librarians...' Search engine with qualitative filters.

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• I heart pencils

  T-shirts, by Sparratease of London (via rodcorp del.icio.us links)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• Angels - Constructing Reconfigurable Space - Ruairi Glynn and Paul Burres

  '...The 'Angel' project questions the nature of fixed architecture and looks at the possibilities of an architecture lighter than air capable of sheltering us and even bringing communities together...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• they.misled.us » Dark Room

  Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. (thanks Jack!)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• O'Reilly Network -- What Is a Wiki (and How to Use One for Your Projects)

  '...We loved using the wiki as a provisional, shared, short-term memory - an ideal note taking device which allowed us to explore the ideas and information in Mind Hacks without getting bogged down by it all...'

• TiddlyWiki - a reusable non-linear personal web notebook

  '...allows anyone to create personal SelfContained hypertext documents that can be posted to a WebServer, sent by email or kept on a USB thumb drive to make a WikiOnAStick...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• Deliwin - A del.icio.us bookmark manager client

  '...a del.icio.us bookmark manager client, it will store all your bookmarks in the system bar so you can easily access to it by selecting the tag and then the link...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• Gliffy.com

  Draw & share diagrams on the web

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• Upside-Down-Ternet

  '...My neighbours are stealing my wireless internet access. I could encrypt it or alternately I could have fun...'

• Spam Architecture

  '...The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• Here’s what Web 2.0 means to me

  Results of Basecamp survey asking for comments on Web 2.0 - number 149: web 2.0 is ' Cool...like Google.'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• Slow Mail - TechkwondoResearchWiki

  '...Slowmail is an email service that deliberately slows down the pace of electronic correspondence, offering a richer, creative, more writerly character to email...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• CommunityWalk

  '...CommunityWalk is a website that is dedicated to providing a powerful yet simple and easy to use interface for creating informational, interactive, and engaging maps...'

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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• played in Italy: The Convention is back!

  Convention for the Protection of Virtual Architectural Heritage - via Rossignol

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

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I like to think that my shoes tell you something about who I am.

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At last I can reveal one of my most exciting innovations. This is a plan for my new self sustaining system for one man that will allow me to travel around the surface without requiring anything from it. The hat multi tasks by catching rainwater that goes into my water holding rucksack, where it is purified, capturing solar energy from the sun to light my torch and growing vegetables for me to eat on my travels. It also has a refelective surface so that it pushes the global warmup dangers away from me and back to where they came from.

I am the Man from Below.

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Love is rare
Life is strange
Nothing lasts
People change

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Hello All, I'll be showing two pieces of work in Leicester over the next month or so. The shows are part of a wider open studios event which you can find out about at:

http://www.hiddentreasures.org.uk/home.html

On Monday 29th August there will be an opening at the Leicester Creative Business Depot: Tel: 0116 2616800
info AT lcbdepot.co.uk
31 Rutland Street
Leicester
LE1 1RE A map can be downloaded from the website at http://www.lcbdepot.co.uk The exhibition runs till the end of September, 9-5, Monday - Friday. Also, Upstairs at The City Gallery (90 Granby Street, Leicester, LE1 1DJ. Tel 0116 223 2060) on Tuesday 6th September, 6.30 - 8.00. Exhibition runs till September 10th. See you soon. liz rowe

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How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person! Style, taste, individual philosophy, subjectivity, cultural background, real experience, psychology, talent, tricks of the trade: all the elements that make what I write recognizable as mine seem to me a cage that restricts my possibilities. If I were only a hand, a severed hand that grasps a pen and writes...

Outlines seem normal, but very vivid - everything is changing colour. My hand must follow the bold sweep of the lines. I feel as if my consciousness is situated in the part of my body that's now active - my hand, my elbow... my tongue.

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wrote: >> Hi John, >> Well done for spotting the pole/poll. I guess I gave
>> it away with the title.
>> Spotting myself in your sidebar has also reminded me
>> that I've been
>> meaning to do an entry about my bloglines
>> subscriptions. It's unfair of
>> me to not publish details about who I read and since
>> I've never got
>> round to adding it to my site, this seems like a
>> good way to go about it. >> Here's the list: >> http://www.bloglines.com/public/eversion >> I think I need to add a few from your sidebar. >> Regards, >> Rob

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Spark plug Fellow LUG member Sparkes suggests that this site is for people interested in fun things or built things. Like someone who has difficulty with the letters F and T, you can't say fairer than that.

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listen again You have until next Monday to hear Andrew Marr talk to Anish Kapoor and Deyan Sudjic discussing shape on Radio 4's Start the Week Here's a taster:

Kapoor: To make new art one needs to make new space...a little history of the way I understand this...Medieval space, if one goes back that far, was flat; then of course the Renaissance, and much has been said about space receding into the distance - perspective and so forth; then of course romantic space, which I think is very, very interesting and exciting - the idea of the threshold beyond which there is vastness and voidness, the self lost, in which, in a sense, time stands still. Marr: Does that take you forward to abstract impressionism? Kapoor: Well I suspect it does. In many ways these strands overlap, but one might say that modernist space - Brancusi, the Rocket, onwards, upwards, progress etc are phallic space in a sense. Then perhaps with Mies van der Rohe and Donald Judd one might begin to speak about space enclosed. What does that leave? It seems to me, to speak about contemporary space, one begins to think about a different idea and I'm really interested that space turns itself inward.

More from Kapoor: 1 Link to article about Sudjic's new book: 2 More on space that turns itself inward can be found if you follow the trail in yesterday's link to the footnotes of the increasingly regularly referenced data wall project.

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tesugen I've been reading Peter Tesugen's blog for several weeks now, so I was both surprised and delighted to find my own words staring back at me a couple of days ago. For those of you who haven't read my previous entry, it would do you no harm to just visit Peter's entry instead, as he does a very astute job of distilling it down to one paragraph. Peter is a computer programmer whose interest in architectural theory is delivering some fresh ideas from outside the industry. I particularly enjoyed his comments on Kevin Lynch's Image of the City. It's been years since I read it, so it was good to be reminded of the key ideas. It seems we also have a common interest in Matt Webb's Interconnected blog (who has some notes on the book design of Image of the City). If you have an RSS addiction like me*, you can also subscribe to Peter's blog in either the billingual version or English only.

* currently seeking counselling and will break the habit soon

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tetralomo by cosmiko [tetra1.jpg:centre2] (hardware from: lomography.com)

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tribe test

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I've got mates Nice! It worked! If you're a tribe.net user, you can get the code here.

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but you can't see them Not nice! It seems this post won't show up in the RSS feed, visit the site if you want to see what it's all about.

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tribe list For completeness, here's a list of tribes that I follow on tribe.net:

(except for all you lazy oiks who just read me via RSS, who'll see absolutely nothing)

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urban embroidery tags: consultation, participation, community Note to self: Must find a way to involve these guys in my next community consultation project...

This week we've been running a 5 day workshop with a class of 30 nine year olds in Year 4 at the Jenny Hammond Primary School with our friend and collaborator Loren Chasse. The workshop focused on 'everyday archaeology' - a term we're using to describe investigations of the local environment using a combination of Feral Robots, Urban Tapestries, Sound Scavenging, an Endless Landscape, StoryCubes and eBooks. Over the course of the week we have been using everyday archaeology to teach the students about relationships between the environment and pollution. The students have been acting as scientists and archaeologists to gather evidence about the world around them to uncover causes of pollution. This has been a trigger for them to imagine what they could do to help the environment and think about the kind of world they want to grow up in. The students gathered audio recordings, photographic evidence and used the Feral Robots to detect air quality in a local park, wrote stories based on the Endless Landscape, designed their own robots and created structures and environments using the StoryCubes.

from Urban Tapestries

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vision on tags: photography, furniture, tv, moblog, flickr Thursday hyperlinked: Listened to radioopensource.org podcast called Photography 2.0 - disappointingly but predictably flickr-centric - would have appreciated some recognition of the work that's been done over the years by moblog.co.uk (even back in the day when flickr was still spelt with an e) to further the discussion about citizen journalism - especially as I flagged it in the comments and they discussed the impact of the London bombings - some great arguments however from Fred Ritchin about quality over quantity and the predominance of the self in the million images a day being uploaded to flickr - attended Housing Forum conference - heard Regional Director talk about how we need to deliver 30% more housing with only 15% more cash - if we move any faster I'm seriously worried about quality being stuffed by quantity - look closely if you buy a new house in the UK over the next few years - also heard Left Bank Two by Wayne Hill which took us all back to Take Hart - impossible to remember Tony without Morph - arrived back at my desk to find a mailshot in my inbox from the London Architecture Diary pointing me to a furniture company called Morph - they sell recycled and restored furniture - site chokes in firefox though - find a link in Alfie's blog in my blogline subscriptions to the latest moblog.co.uk collaboration - live photos from the invasion of Didcot power station by Greenpeace - still delivering citizen journalism.

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404 WMD Just been passed this via a friend, via Radio 2, and I've passed it on to boingboing.net. Head over to Google and type in 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' and then press the 'I feel lucky' button. Some interesting links to some books and DVDs over at Amazon and an astute business move at the bottom - a link to WMD t-shirts over at cafepress.com.

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watch this space Received in this morning's post:

Dear Mr Annable, We are really glad you were able to attend the MADA Onsite Exhibition, Birmingham last year and hope that you enjoyed it. As sponsors, we were really pleased to be involved with such interesting and international design. We intend to continue with a similar idea, possibly with another practice, later on this year, keep an eye out for information on our website at www.zumbotelstaff.co.uk We hope to see you at the event.

Well isn't that nice of them to keep in touch? Revisiting my MADA Onsite entry at the end of the above link I discover that it also carried another Alsop link. I think that's quite enough coverage for him for a while, shout if you catch me doing it again any time soon.

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download for charity Just received in my e-mail and posted here as an addendum to a conversation I was having with a friend last night. Today is the launch of bignoisemusic.com.

Oxfam's music download service - www.bignoisemusic.com - is now live. Pick from over 300,000 tracks to download - including exclusive downloads from Coldplay, George Michael and Faithless. Besides the best music we've two Coldplay Gold Disks to give away & everyone who registers today will be entered into a draw to win a digital music player that holds over 2,000 songs! Single tracks cost 99p - but can drop to 75p if you buy in bulk. Most albums cost £7-99 - but drop to £5-99 the more you buy. You can get FREE 30 second clips - so you can try before you buy! And remember that 10p in every £1 that you spend on www.bignoisemusic.com goes to Oxfam to support our work to end poverty.

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second thoughts Ok, hang on, my enthusiasm has waned. It doesn't work with Mozilla: The site you have tried to enter requires Internet Explorer 5 (or better) with Windows Media Player 7 (or better) on Windows XP, 2000, Me or 98. Not only that, but the mail shot that I received had everyone's address in the CC field. Idiots.

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quote I've been sent an apology: Dear Rob, Thanks for your note. I am very, very sorry for the error that meant the email addresses were filed under bcc. I want to offer my profuse apologies. I am very sorry. Gareth

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Bollywood breaks I've snaffled a copy of the fantastic Bollywooded mash-up of Micheal Jackson's Don't Stop Till You Get Enough. You can find the link over at boingboing.net. Get it quick before the server dies from too much traffic (boingboing is rapidly heading towards a million hits a day). Further comments on the post in question unearthed links to boomselection and Si Begg; who's got a 2 hour set coming up on Radio 6 this weekend. All told, a very successful morning of mp3 hunting.

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busked New Street, Birmingham City Centre. 1:45pm. Buskers. Looked like this: [buskers.jpg:centre2] Sounded like this (1.2 Mb mp3 link)

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confused Posted as an offering to those crazy mash-up kids over at GYBO, or anybody else who Googles for that mandatory, obscure spoken word sample that all good bootlegs seem to need. I give you my strangest ever answer machine message: confused.wav

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oops ok, ok - I'm an idiot. The link was wrong before, all fixed now. Try again.

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return ticket to hell and back Justin Hawkins, front man of The Darkness, greets the crowd at last night's Birmingham gig in what I can only describe as a flying breastship. With flashing nipples. Pyrotechnics, wit and impressive musicianship. Teasing us with the occasional opening bar of a Van Halen track and reminding us not to take it all too seriously by stripping off to his slightly less than perfect (i.e. just like the rest of us) body. Rock fan or not, it's a great show, go and see it.

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guitarchitecture

Buildings that rock: Architectural dream no. 1256

To make a building whose narrative develops when you walk through it with the exact same change in tempo as Lynard Skynard's Freebird. It would take nine minutes and seven seconds to complete the journey.

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A handful of men For War of the Worlds fans: I noticed a billboard on the way to work this morning advertising a guest appearance by Jeff Wayne, composer of the 70s musical version, at St. Paul's Gallery in Birmingham tomorrow night. It's currently being re-released as a collector's edition. Remastered, remixed, DVD etc, etc. A whole bunch of new ways to hear David Essex singing about a brave new world.

Take a look around you at the world we've come to know,
Does it seem to be much more than a crazy circus show?
But maybe from the madness something beautiful will grow,
In a brave new world,
With just a handful of men.
We'll start, we'll start all over again
All over again,
All over again,
All over again,
All over again.

Which, strangely, doesn't appear to need the fairer sex to begin repopulating the planet. Just a handful of men? I'd like to see them try. Scratch that. I wouldn't like to see that at all. links: Jeff Wayne's site and waroftheworldsonline.com

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Rodeohead rides to the BBC

The wonderful Rodeohead by Hard 'n Phirm has made it all the way to John Peel on Radio 1.

It went like this: Sean points it out to Xeni over at boingboing.net. I read it, and as a longstanding Radiohead fan, I follow the link and download it. I listen to it and I laugh. I laugh so hard that tears well in my eyes. I wipe them dry and when my sides stop aching I e-mail Mike Phirman from the band and thank him. Then I e-mail John Peel at the BBC and suggest he plays it on the radio. I tell Mike about my e-mail and he says:

Right on! Thanks, Rob. We really appreciate that. Hopefully it will get all the way to the lads themselves! Cheers,
Mike

Then John e-mails to say that he can't play mp3s on air. Yesterday I sent him a copy on CDR. As I type this, to my absolute delight, John is playing it. Hard 'n Phirm have got some much deserved UK air time and I got to send a message to John thanking him for teaching me about Half Man Half Biscuit a few years ago. I think that's called a win, win.

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listen again Here's the link to last nights show, it'll only be good for a week until the following Wednesday. Rodeohead gets played about 1hr 43 minutes into the show.

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white label Here's the tracklisting from the show.

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to be fair Since this entry has just gone up on boingboing, I thought I should clarify a couple of points. Firstly, when the BBC told me they couldn't play mp3s, I asked them if they meant technically or legally - they replied saying it was technical reasons that prevented it. I didn't enquire any further, but in my experience as a listener to the John Peel show, I've heard him use several different studios (including his own house 'Peel Acres') so perhaps some of them are less well equipped. It does seem odd that Radio 1 isn't tooled up to deliver mp3s. Secondly, as I've mentioned in one of the writebacks below, when I said John e-mailed me I meant the John collective; it was one of his colleagues that I was talking to. I'm sure you can allow me a little artistic license in the re-telling of this story.

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CDR Never let it be said that my entries don't give good value for money. I'm pleased to see that the 'BBC can't play mp3s discussion' is continuing over at boingboing.net. I should confess that the conversation is moving out of my field of knowledge, as I know nothing about audio compression and CDs. The CDR I sent was burnt using a popular piece of software with an option to create CDs that can be played in a normal CD player. Is this what Mike Todd calls a linear version? If so, then his explanation is correct. I'm pretty sure that John used the CD I sent him, since it was confirmed as received by his team, and when he introduced the track he cited me as the source - when you listen you can hear that I managed to confuse him with a comment about how to pronounce my name. I should have had more faith, John Peel has probably introduced more oddly named bands/people than I've had hot dinners.

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Biscuit? Another Peel related entry: I was lucky enough to see a Half Man Half Biscuit gig this week. It's Peel related because it was he who revitalised my appreciation of them years ago when he played their Paintball's Coming Home one evening. Years before that I'd only heard Trumpton Riots, but it was through Peel I came to appreciate the true quality of their razor sharp social critique. They're funny, intelligent and they play guitar. That's enough for me.

Two hour set, all the classics, including 99% Of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd, Running Order Squabblefest, C.A.M.R.A. Man and The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train.

She stayed with me until
She moved to Notting Hill
She said it was the place she needs to be
Where the cocaine is fair trade
And frequently displayed
Is the Buena Vista Social Club CD

There was an interesting mix of people in the crowd but one thing bound us all together; no matter what our background, every single one of us has at some point had our ego sliced in two by a painfully accurate song line that's exposed us for what we really are. Great stuff. Somewhat reluctantly, I'm going to post some video. I say reluctantly because if you're not a fan already then the crappy phonecam quality won't help matters; but it's here so I might as well share it. Links to past entries referring to the mighty HMHB: 1, 2 and (mp)3.

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Now it's in my mind? Ten points to the first person who can tell me the source of the following poetry.

I've been sitting here all day thinking
Same old thing ten years away thinking
Now my days are gone, memories linger on
Thoughts of when I was boy Pennyfarthings on the street riding
Motorcars were funny things, frightning
Bow and hoops and spinning tops
Annie gretzel's lollipops
Comic cuts, all different things Areoplanes tied up with string flying
Telephones and talking things sighing
A radio and phonograph, Charlie Chaplin made us laugh
Silently falling about
Familiar things I keep around, near me
Memories of my younger days, clearly
Now it's in my mind?
Everyday I find, thoughts of when I was boy

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Grandad We have a winner! James gets in first with a combination of vague memories and Google. The text in question is the lyrics to Grandad - the #1 hit from 1971 sung by Clive Dunn. For reasons I'm not prepared to explain, it popped up via the Winamp shuffle button at work this morning and I decided to post it here. I took out the giveaway chorus to make it a little trickier. Congratulations James, you've won...absolutely nothing.

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leather shorts make it difficult to run About a week ago I was driving in to work when I passed a pick up truck belonging to the new Kerrang radio station. I decided to ditch the Today programme and tune in. They were about to do an outside broadcast that involved reading out the number in a phone box and the first person to ring it won a prize. It didn't quite go according to plan, as they managed to read out the number for wrong phone box. As he stood there waiting for the call, you could hear another phone box ringing in the distance. Not a very impressive start. Nevertheless I stuck with it for a few days and found that if I just listened to the music and not the DJ'ing inbetween it was a good station that played some great tracks. Yesterday, I got in the car at about 7:30am, turned on the radio and listened as their roving reporter described how he was stood in Wolverhampton city centre dressed in lederhosen. Apparently it was International Lederhosen Day. He was just about to explain what his plan was when he was suddenly cut off mid-sentence. There was a scuffling noise. A pause. Heavy breathing. Someone was running. More heavy breathing, footsteps darting quickly over concrete. In the background was a voice, 'Oi! Stop!'. He was running down the street chasing the kid who'd just stole his phone live on air. In lederhosen. Back in the studio they were as stunned as everyone else. They managed to get through to the second reporter, who confirmed, breathlessly, that they'd been running through the streets of Wolverhampton after a kid in a gray hooded top, but they couldn't catch him. The rest of the show was devoted to the story of the two of them searching the city for the mugger. They even managed to get him to answer the phone, whereupon he proceeded to grunt a few times in an effort to claim innocence and say that his name was 'D'. It was great radio. For once, the bits in between the music were more compelling than the music. There may be something of great importance to be learnt from this story, but for the moment it seems that the most obvious moral to this tale is not to make a phone call from Wolverhampton at 7:30 in the morning when you're wearing lederhosen.

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stalkers Having learnt that I've turned back to the Today programme, Kerrang radio has sent out operatives to ensure that I'm duly reprimanded. This morning I had to endure the sight of two underdressed women waiting for me at some traffic lights. It was awful. Really, it was. In the background I spied the reporter of phone theft fame learing at them over his microphone. [kerrang.jpg:centre3]

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guitarchitecture

Buildings that rock: Architectural dream no.[series summation]*

To make a building as satisfying to experience on every level - from the minutest detail to the sum of the whole - as Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing.

The feel of the door handles could be sensed from a mile away. It's place in the urban grain would be understood as you put your weight against the door.

(see previous dreams: 654 and 1256) * nail this one and there'll be nothing left - series ends

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Who are you?

The only bit of Live 8 that made any sense to me was the Who's performance. They played Who Are You? with the faces of world leaders flashing up behind them and followed it with Won't Get Fooled Again - one of the best records ever made - meet the new boss, same as the old boss - right every time. And they didn't say anything in between. Everybody else made speeches - the idiotic boy Barbie Doll singer in Razorlight came out with the amazingly erudite: 'we're here to make poverty history, right?' which got him a lot of applause and made him look really good even though, if this was real life, he wouldn't make it fronting a Stooges tribute band. Saint Bob bought on an Ethiopian woman, a survivor of the famine of 1985, and made a speech. He introduced Madonna who came on dressed in white, the same as the band and choir which I read as a sort of show-biz code for we're all equal, and dragged the unfortunate woman all over the stage like a human prop. Jo Whiley (who openly professed to NOT being a Who fan) interviewed people on the front row -
'Are you enjoying the music?'
'Yeah, great'
'And what about the cause, you know, Make Poverty History?'
'Eh? Oh yeah, that too. Yeah, great.' The cause is a worthy one but the intention to 'Make Poverty History' is utterly naive. It's about as realistic a possibility as smashing capitalism. Capitalism is at the root of third world poverty. Poverty is a necessary side effect of capitalism - the accumulation of wealth and the creation of an underclass. Without poverty there can be no wealth. A leading botanist recently claimed that if every nation on earth lived as well as America and Great Britain it would take three planets to sustain us. So there's the answer, and try telling this to Chris Martin, Bono, Sting, Madonna and co - let's Make Wealth History.

from wrecklesseric.com

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memo Note to self - buy this single:

William Campbell & Kevin MacNeil - 'Local Man Ruins Everything' (7") (Fantastic Plastic)

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memo 2 and this too:

Lagos Chop Up (Honest Jon's)

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More mash please Following the previous post, here's a link to a boingboing.net entry - it seems MTV are joining this band wagon too. Here in the UK, the Q music channel has also had a mash up feature for some time.

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Pirate radio More coverage of the now infamous DJ Dangermouse mash-up of the Beatles and Jay-Z, Black and White albums can be found over at Wired. I downloaded this a few weeks ago and, frankly, it's over rated. However, the extra publicity that it's brought to the mash-up arena is beginning to make the discovery of new work easier. After my previous entry's link to City of Sound I was moving through some of his comments and was delighted to find a link to the boomselection site that I was looking at a few weeks ago. I was even more delighted to find that he'd done some of the hard work for me and pulled out a link from the archives to an astounding track called Raiding the 20th Century. It's thirty nine minutes of musical genius that's also full of fascinating spoken word pieces and more than a few cheeky tips o' the hat to the forefathers. Which, in turn, reminded me to revisit the Coldcut led venture piratetv.net. Live streaming feeds most nights of the week, a chat room and occasionally live video feeds to boot. My favourite though, is the theater section. Mercifully, they've finally finished running through the entire Tolkien series and have moved on to a Twilight Zone play. Go back up the list and revisit the Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds*, and then go home and ask your TV why it can't deliver anything so exciting or enagaging. Also worth a look: London Booted, a collaborative project to rework the Clash's seminal album. Donations to charity invited before downloading.

*In a wonderfully circular fashion, I've just realised that sections of the Orson Welles play make a few appearances in the Raiding of the 20th Century track.

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keep your ears peeled I effectively turned my back on Radio 1's evening schedule after John Peel died. It turns out that was a big mistake. Stuck in traffic after a late night at the office last week, I caught some of Annie Mac's show and the opening few tracks on the following show hosted by Rob da Bank. In the end I was wishing the traffic jam had kept me in the car longer. Annie Mac has a tendency to play tracks from the Ninja Tunes label, which is reason enough to try it out; as usual you can listen again via the web. If it's not your bag, stick around for the Rob da Bank slot on Thursday nights - the best way I can (not) describe it is to point out that even after being five or six tracks into the show, I still didn't have a clue what was going on. It absolutely refuses to be pigeon-holed, so I shan't attempt it, just go and try it. Highlights from last weeks show were Art Brut, Rachel Lipson and Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo De Contonou Dahomey (streaming video).

bonus post: anyone who'd like to hear John Peel's nonchalant voice again is welcome to revisit the mp3 I posted last summer of the wonderful Rodeohead by Hard'n'Phirm [mp3] [notes]

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radio purgatory Mistyped URLs often provide sublime discoveries. Searching for something different to listen to here at the office this morning, I suggested that we try Radio Paradise - a site that my father-in-law recently suggested to me. I passed on the address incorrectly and we ended up at Paradise Radio - 'The Legends Of Italo-Disco And Euro-Beat'. We've just been listening to Video Kids - Woodpeckers From Space (Disco Mania Remix), which someone requested specifically from the list of over 2000 tracks on the server. Unfortunately, the recently played list tells me that we've just missed Sex Shop Boys - Big Tits (Brasil Import Remix). I'm off to request it again.

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request denied I'm not allowed to request the Sex Shop Boys because it's only just been played - I've gone for Boys by Sabrina instead. Can't wait.

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Summertime love Alright! [paradise_request.jpg:centre2]

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decay by 60dB It's been a bad week, architecturally speaking; making spaces and places hasn't been as much fun as usual. Problems on site, a roof that wouldn't fit, wasting time explaining why it wasn't my fault and grappling with more design codes is a small sample of the last seven days. This week's bid and this week's design brief has some great examples of the dangers of the belief that codes are always necessary and that all aspects of a project can be deftly summarised using recognisably urban designer type words. For example,

...the site layout should be sensitive to the nearby linear canal and edges of the space should be softened with the use of bollards...

If anyone can point me to either a non-linear canal or a soft bollard, I shall be forever grateful. I'm paraphrasing the document in question, but you get the picture. The problem with employing an army of consultants to produce a document like this is that the need to keep saying something outweighs the ability to recognise, and therefore keep quiet about, the blindingly obvious. Musically speaking, it's been a great week. Hence the chosen category for today's entry.

t  =

0.16 V A

where
t = reverberation time in seconds (s)
V = volume of hall in cubic metres (m³)
A = area of absorption in square metres (m²) Much like the academic culture that has really important things to say about linear canals, reverberation is, according to my Longman text book, the persistence of sound in an enclosure due to repeated reflections at the boundaries. t, in the equation above, is the time taken for a sound to decay by 60dB. One night last week I became a small fraction of A whilst I was sat in the V of the Symphony Hall in Birmingham. When you're sat in the cheap seats¹ at the back of hall, as I was during a recital of Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, the value of t becomes very important to you. The wonderful thing about listening to the CBSO in their own hall, is that the designers who were charged with the responsibility of keeping a close eye on the way V and A monkeys around with t, did a great job. In truth, I don't think there's any such thing as the cheap seats, acoustically speaking, and personally I like the view from top². Regardless of your opinion of classical music, if you live in or near Birmingham you should go and listen to the CBSO at least once in your life. If you do, here's a few things to look for whilst you're waiting for the house band to finish tuning up and for the conductor to swagger on stage with all the usual pomp and circumstance. Since different performances require different optimum values for t, being able to adjust A or V is necessary to get the most out of a space. At the Symphony Hall it's possible to change both. On either side of the organ are two large sets of doors. When these are open the hall increases in size by a third of its usual volume. Around the edges are retractable curtains that increase the area of absorption and above the stage is a lighting gantry whose height can be adjusted to reflect sound at the stalls more effectively. Some time ago I attended a lecture³ by the acoustic engineer who designed the hall, he was more than a little smug about what a good job he'd done (both here and in other halls across the world) but there's no denying that fact that he got it right. Here's a quick summary of the music for those more interested in the art than the science, as opposed to the art of the science which I've been talking about so far. The wonderfully named Modest Mussorgsky's Night on a Bare Mountain was a good, bouncy start to the proceedings to liven us all up; Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto no.4 was complex, restless, unstructured and perplexing; Tchaikovsky was, as usual, flawless. Towards the end of the Rachmaninov piece I started to find a way in by imagining it as the proceeds of an argument between two lovers. Neither of whom were in the right. In the car on the way home the DJ on Classic FM spoke about how Mozart was responsible for introducing the argumentative interplay of opera arias into piano concertos. It seems I wasn't far from the mark and the two lovers should blame Mozart rather than each other. Other musical journeys over the last week: At work, getting our daily fix of 'Legends'⁴ on the local radio station I've mentioned previously, we found ourselves listening to 'Crazy, Crazy Nights' by Kiss. My knowledge of Kiss is minimal, so I decided to download some more of their work and chose their MTV unplugged album from allofmp3.com. Half way through the set they play a track called '2000 Man'. One of the partners points out that it's a cover of a Rolling Stones track but he can't remember which album. Google tells us that it's from their 1967 album 'Their Satanic Majesties Request' (which, strangely, sounds like it should be a Kiss album). Ultimately we end up listening to and unanimously enjoying a track on that album called 'She's a Rainbow'. I'm willing to bet that most of you haven't heard either that album or that track; it's good, you should try it out. I'm sure if you look hard enough you'll be able to get hold of a copy. Over at kryogenix.org, some kind soul has posted a link in the comments to a download of the first Half Man Half Biscuit track I ever heard (thanks to John Peel) called 'Paintball's Coming Home'. Inspired by Stuart's entry about a particularly dodgy quiz to determine how middle class you are, the track is the perfect accompaniment. There's a second version of this track with different lyrics which you can also download from the site I added to the linklog a few weeks ago. Last week's Mixing It on Radio 3 had a collection of tracks from bands based in Montreal. It was a fantastic show and you've got until tomorrow night to exploit the 'listen again' option on the BBC web site. Tracks to listen out for are the curious Le tresor de la langue by Rene Lussier, which '...was written as a celebration of the Québécois French language, and features some of his improvising colleagues following the speech patterns.'; also the breathtaking Le Projet Ulysse by Christian Calon. Christian has this to say about his work:

The architectural dimension of sound and a reflection on the narrative processes are the main focus of my present work centered around the ideas of Time, presence and transformation. Through various forms including spatial sound installations, acousmatic or radio pieces, my recent pieces explore the modality of the audible and of the listening experience. Space, at the heart of my reflection, has become today an essential way through to the central question of Time.

It seems the values V, A and t are important to him too. It also seems plausible that he had a hand in writing the design code I'm working with at the moment, perhaps whilst he was travelling along a non-linear canal. Pensively.

notes:

1. £7
2. I've captured this view before in the sketches category
3. My family often jokes that my grandfather's grave stone should start with the words 'When I was in the desert...' due to the way his stories about the war would always start. I'm beginning to wonder if mine should say 'I once attended a lecture on...'
4. I learnt this week that this is a word ill suited to describing a radio show, it comes from the latin legendum, which means 'to read about'.

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guitarchitecture tags: guitarchitecture, music, nightmare, dream

Buildings that rock: Architectural nightmare no. 666

I'm trapped in a building by Satriani. It's suffocating and claustrophobic with nowhere to stand back and view the spaces. If there were you'd realise there are no spaces to view. An architecture whose rhythm is drowned out by the relentless onslaught of over-hand tapped out details on a specialist instrument tuned in a way only the designer and small handful of specialists can understand. Occasionally saved by ironic Hendrix references that provide relief, the neo-classic-rock juxtapositions draw from the collective memory a tantalising moment of populist richness, before disappearing again in a purple haze of drop-D to the power of ten. Bill and Ted's phone booth lands in the foyer. Visitors from the Ry Cooder school of New Urbanism are being held hostage behind impenetrable walls of speed-metal. A flock of students try to mimic the building in the popular new CAD program - AirGuitarUp.

Joe Satriani. Breathtaking, virtuoso guitarist - terrible architect. (Will the nightmares continue? See previous dreams: 654, 1256 and n=total)

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I like smoke and lightening I learnt something interesting this morning. Forgive me if you already know this, it's possible I'm the only one who wasn't aware of it. The term 'heavy metal' was given to us by Steppenwolf; it's from the lyric Heavy metal thunder, in their song 'Born to be Wild'. What's doubly interesting (for me), is that I was pondering over the source of the phrase only last week.

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guitarchitecture

Buildings that rock funk: Architectural dream no. 654

To make a building whose entrance is as flawless as the beginning of Stevie Wonder's Superstition. Walking in the door and down the hall during the first thirty seconds would put a spring in everyone's step. (see previous dream no. 1256)

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Pimping turntables If anybody is in the market for a turntable, you could do a lot worse than the Bush MTT1, which is currently on sale at Richer Sounds for £39.95. It got a blazing review and 5 stars from What Hi-Fi magazine. I bought one this afternoon. I just dropped Frank Zappa's Hot Rats on to test it and it sounds sweet.

I'm a little pimp
With my hair gassed back
Pair a khaki pants
With my shoe shined black
I got a little lady
And she walks that street
Tellin’ all the boys
That she can’t be beat

Willie the Pimp - Frank Zappa, Hot Rats

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U2 on tour The Edge:

"Touring will always be a very important aspect of what we do. When we're in the studio, getting close to finishing a song, you inevitably start thinking about how it's going to be performed. A song you don't think you'd play live, that's not a good song."

Interesting. That's exactly what I was thinking about when The Killers left the stage and U2 came on at the recent gig in Cardiff I went to. How could The Killers have ever imagined they'd be supporting U2 when they were writing Hot Fuss? The quote is from an interesting piece in Wired by William Gibson.

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Poetics électronique At the suggestion of my father-in-law, I've just been listening to Radio 3's Late Junction. It's fantastic. Some beautiful stuff. The most beautiful of which, from Monday's show, was a piece called Poem électronique by Edgard Varèse. Unknown to me until now, it turns out he was the Father of electronic music. Poem électronique sounds like it could be Aphex Twin's latest project, yet it was written in 1958.

"I long for instruments obedient to my thought and whim, with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, which will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm." - June 1917

The interconnectedness of this morning's browsing is a treat. I spent the weekend clearing out my cellar in preparation for it being waterproofed and becoming my study. When I opened my copy of The Poetics of Space on the tram, he talked of the phemonological impact of the cellar and the inhabitant as a diagram of all the houses previously lived in. On the Varèse site I visited there is a diagram he sketched of Poem électronique, which is now my desktop wallpaper. It replaced the album cover I had found a couple of weeks ago at franklarosa.com of a 1950's LP of electronic music.

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3 years on

Praise for the wardens ready to find,
Anyone caught saying graphic design.

Time for the annual return to one of my very first posts. To my surprise, it turns out I've been doing this for three years now. Don't forget (as I have this year) the maple syrup. Going for bonus points:

Look what came up on shuffle during the tram ride home: If I Had Possesion Over Pancake Day (mp3 link)

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affordable housing Tags: housing,conference A quick note to announce that I'll be attending the AJ Designing Affordable Housing conference tomorrow. If you're going to be there too, drop me a line.

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Hi honey, I'm home Is there a cake in the world that can rival the Eccles cake? I doubt it. I'm back. It's been a busy few weeks. Thanks go out to Alfie for keeping the motor running with a couple of entries whilst I was away. If you're a lazy aRSSe who tunes in via the newsfeed, you should have received a few image transmissions from me too. In the intervening time I have...

• stumbled across a curious piece of domestic delight in Chelsea (did you get my postcard?).
• put my piece of domestic delight up for sale. SOLD!
• reinstated - despite a worrying story once told to me by a scholar in Georgian architecture - my National Trust membership.
• stumbled across the delightfully curious domestic residence by FAT - it works even better in the flesh than it does on the pages of a magazine.
• missed a party in a squat in Hackney, simply because I was too tired from a weeks parenting (old age: 1 - hippy credibility: 0)
• revisited Jane Jacobs' 'Death and Life of Great American Cities'
• self administered the Jacobs antidote - Gordon Cullen's 'Townscape'.
• left both books on the bookshelf and ventured out onto failing 50s housing estates and tried to convince the people that lived there that I could deliver the changes they've needed for the past 20 years.

This last one was the trickiest.

Building Design magazine ran an article this week called 'Impact 100', it's a chart of the top 100 architects that have had the most impact on the industry in the last year. By combining a number of factors - total value of projects, number of prizes won and number press column inches - they created an impact rating and constructed a chart. Norman Foster came out on top. No surprises there then.

I wasn't on the list. No surprise there either, but as I sat in the living room of a resident who'd lived in his house since it was first built in 1953, raised a family, lost a wife, ended up alone; I couldn't help thinking that he'd probably put me pretty high on the impact list as I asked him to give up his home for the good of the community. I'll remember that next time Foster makes another wobbly bridge or tower block shaped like a vegetable. George Ferguson, President of the RIBA has suggested this week that the future winners of the Stirling Prize, of which the tower block shaped vegetable was one, should be made to wait a year before being allowed to enter. A defect in 300 of the 'gherkin's' windows sent a sheet of glass crashing to street this week. It's a good idea, it should at least get out of the standard defects liability period before we all bow down and pay homage. Maybe it should be even longer. Maybe we should wait until a generation of people have used it. Maybe we should ask the people of that generation if it should win. Coming up: sketches and photos exploring the contents of the aforementioned 'Townscape' book. It's nice to be back.

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Back in the RSS Hello. I'm back in the saddle after a little time away from work and information technology. The office is a little quieter than usual at the moment; partly due to a touch of autumnal melancholy, partly due to the fact that we're a man down. My colleague, friend and axe mentor, Alan Morrissey, has jumped ship and taken a job with the new Birmingham outpost of Ken Shuttleworth's practice Make. He'll be working on the new extension to the Mailbox development that I mentioned a few months ago. Good luck Al, I'll be thinking of you every time a Loudon Wainwright track shuffles to the top of the office Wurlitzer. He doesn't have a web site, but you could still join me in wishing him good luck, as I've just caught him posting a comment over at City Of Sound: Paper buildings force the return of maintenance? I'm sure Dan won't mind us hijacking his thread for well wishing. For the next few entries you and I are going to get out and about more. We'll get some fresh air, be more haptic and allow our eyes to be bigger than our bellies. During my break I've seen some stuff and made some stuff worth sharing. Here's the agenda:

• Simeon Solomon & the Pre-Raphaelites
• Chinese Woodblock Printing
• Weather Guitar
• Eve's Pudding
• How to get felt
• Pumpkin Pie
• Architecture, you and me
• Climbing to stand still

I'll add links as we go and with a bit of luck we'll also catch a couple of long neglected entry categories along the way. Somewhere in the midst of all that I suppose I'll have to stop shirking and say something about the Stirling Prize. No promises though.

p.s. - Great news: Joel is back. Bad news: I've had to switch comments off temporarily while I deal with some spam. V. Bad news: Comment spam continues - mail me instead.

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base camp tags: help, competition, everest I need some help. Does anybody know anybody who has been to the Mount Everest base camp? I need to know about prevailing winds or indeed whether there is such a thing in that climate/topography.

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whale beats 13lb of T.N.T I'm at my father's house today, posting this via e-mail. It's his 60th birthday this week and I've come home to give him his gift. He's unearthed a copy of the Daily Express from the day he was born and on the front cover, amid news about the destruction of Budapest, is a piece about a stranded whale. It seems animal rights have changed somewhat in the last 60 years.

Thirteen pounds of T.N.T failed yesterday to move a giant whale stranded on the Mull of Kintyre. A naval squad wearing gas masks then hacked the carcase with axes and played a strong jet of water on it. It slowly broke up and lime will complete the destruction.

Let's hope the poor chap was dead before they got to him. Perhaps if he had been an ordinary size whale, rather than a giant, they would have simply picked him up and put him back in the water.

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so it goes [blur.jpg:centre2] salvaged from my photo archive after reading about BSAG's musings on the most metaphysically slippery of all abstract systems - time.

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boring John Hill points out that the latest online edition of Icon includes an article about what has become boring in the world of architecture and design.

Sustainable Design: The only design project that’s really sustainable is the one you don’t do. The idea that you can save the planet by consuming resources is absurd. If you want to be really sustainable, buy an old house, fill it with antiques and walk everywhere.

It's good. We fell about laughing in our office when we read it a few weeks ago. I'd intended to write to the letters page about it, but never got round to it (because I'm busy reading too many blogs). It would have gone something like this:

Dear Icon, We love your magazine and can barely contain ourselves with excitement during the month long wait for the next edition. You really are the best and I hope my gushing enthusiasm ensures me a mention on your letters page. The article about things that are boring was particularly good. I have one further addition to the list: Sycophantic praise: OK, OK, so the magazine is proving to be popular. Is it really necessary to fill two thirds of your letters page with people who have little else to say other than 'I love you'? Ignoring the opportunity to have some lively debate in favour of the ad nauseum repetition of sycophantic groupies lining up outside your dressing room door is BORING.

Do you think they'd have printed it? Of course I've done my fair share of praising the magazine myself in the past, but I'd like to think it was accompanied by some useful critique*. Although I daren't scroll to the bottom of this page to use the search box to find out.

* obviously, I'm claiming this very entry to be useful critique too. Feel free to disagree in the comments. Or just tell me how great I am.

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boring response Lifted from the comments (I nearly missed it due to spam shenanigins) - Icon editor responds to my entry on 'Boring' article:

Of course we would have printed your letter Robert. Trouble is, most of the letters we get are from sycophantic groupies lining up outside our dressing room to say 'I love you'. If people actually got worked up enough to send us the type of letter you're talking about, we'd be delighted. Which is partly why we did the 'boring' piece in the first place... Marcus, editor, icon

Your mission, should you choose to accept it ... get worked up enough!

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cafe venue [venue.jpg:centre3]

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connect me up

Wanted: pointers and advice about making an RGB/scart video cable.

I have the cable, the RGB connectors for one end and the scart plug for the other - I just need a HOWTO and a diagram to help me wire it up. Anybody know any good links? Alternatively, if you have to skills to do it for me, you're more than welcome to come and work for food/drinks.

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answer machine So a client phones the office this morning and asks for some advice about how best to fill in a three foot hole under his flat. We adminster advice. The phone goes down and we realise that he said he lived in the first floor flat. Odd. Perhaps the three foot hole beneath him is the flat below. This gets us thinking about filling the inside of a flat with concrete, which reminds us (again) of Rachael Whiteread's Turner/KLF prize winning cast of a Victorian house, which turns into a discussion about the latest development in the Saatchi inferno, which prompts us to share our memories of the 1997 Sensations exhibition at the Royal Academy, which leads us back to Whiteread's casts of the underside of chairs, which helps us to wander around the pieces in our mind and think about how crap the Chapman brothers are, how good Richard Billingham is and how indifferent we are to Tracey Emin, until, finally, we agree unanimously, grinning like fools, that Ron Muek's Dead Dad was the most breathtaking experience of the whole collection. I hope we get a phone call like that tomorrow. Mercifully, there is yet to be any report of Dead Dad's cremation.

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dumped By the looks of the latest BBC report, it seems I'm not the only one who feels indifferent to the work of Tracey Emin.

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another image Here's another example of Muek's work: Big Boy

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deep purple

Fashion crisis: I need a pair of purple, velvet, flared trousers. I need them by 2000 GMT tomorrow. Help.

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deposit of fat Depositing notes from mind and pockets; climbing confluences from the last few weeks.

Visiting: wolfmountain.co.uk

A new indoor climbing wall has recently opened in Wolverhampton. £6 registration and the £5 peak / £4 off peak. Visited for a brief look last week - still some construction going on but looks like there are some promising routes. Due for a re-grade as some are too easy for the stated grade. Price of entry may suffer from similar problem as (the now closed) Rock Face in Birmingham - needs a smaller price bracket for guys like me who want to get in and out quickly having blitzed the bouldering wall.

Reading: Primo Levi, The Periodic Table, chapter entitled Iron

Sandro climbed the rocks more by instinct than technique, trusting the strength of his hands and saluting ironically, in the projecting rock to which he clung, the silicon, calcium, and magnesium he had learned to recognise in the course on mineralogy. He seemed to feel that he had wasted a day if he had not in some way gotten to the bottom of his reserve of energy, and then even his eyes became brighter and he explained to me that, with a sedantary life, a deposit of fat forms behind the eyes, which is not healthy; by working hard the fat is consumed and the eyes sink back into their sockets and become keener.

Training: climbtherock

A short review of the Climb The Rock training machine, to formalise my thoughts so that my approach to it might be more focused next time I use one. I found one lying dormant in a gym and had fun covering its virgin holds with chalk.

• Focus on the centre of the wall as the conveyor is about 6 inches too short for someone with my reach - too distracted by worrying about catching the sensors at the top or running out of room at the bottom.
• 2 most useful options: a) aggressively overhung, steady pace, to focus on getting stronger or b) vertical at high speed to work on technique only.
• Unexpected benefit of conveyor: it removes the need to process any thoughts about planning the route itself, delivering the holds to you while you focus on technique. Climbing as meditation? Reminds me of discussion with Matt Webb regarding meditation techniques that help you to create mental freedom by introducing a gap between you and your body.

Related entries: diagramming, crimping and cranking and foot where?

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diagramming I found this map today and decided to diagram my interaction with it. The green and blue lines are the marks I made on it. Ten points to the first person who guesses its identity and purpose correctly. [diagram.jpg:centre2]

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and the answer is... As I suspected he would, Bobby H read the map correctly (see comments). Ten points to him. Here's the answer (quicktime video link).

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Do(h!)main Oops. The site (and my e-mail) was down for most of yesterday as I committed the cardinal sin of forgetting to renew my domain name. Luckily this isn't a commercial venture with an address that people are queuing up to wrestle from my grip. It wasn't claimed by another Annable. In my defence, I never received an e-mail reminder from my site host UK Web Solutions. They're forgiven though, as this has been the first the glitch in an otherwise impressive service. I get a lot of stuff for a small amount of money and their tech support is very fast. I'm happy to recommend them to anyone searching for a new home. The only downside is that I can't telnet or ssh into the account like I can with freeshell.

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Hunter's Moon It's 3am. I was warned that there would be cloud but I chose to get out of bed and see for myself since tonight would be the last total lunar eclipse for two and a half years. I imagine that even the bubbly Mr Jack Horkheimer (Real Player link) is a little less jovial this morning as technology has let us down as well as nature. None of the webcasts are working. It's raining on the East Antrim camera. It's raining on the University of North Dakota. The camera in Iran that I was relying on to be clear? Parssky.net could not be found. Please check the name and try again. Even NASA is timing out. White light hits the atmosphere, blue light scatters, the red light of every sunrise and sunset simultaneously strikes October's Hunter's Moon. It's the Blood Moon. Or so I'm told. All this talk of hunters and moons reminds me of a book I scribbled about on a paper bag. I'm going to take a walk down the street for one last look.

And it revolted me. Because it was a thing that, though you couldn't understand what it was made of, or perhaps precisely because you couldn't understand, seemed different from all the things in our life, our good things of plastic, of nylon, of chrome-plated steel, duco, synthetic resins, plexiglass, aluminium, vinyl, formica, zinc, asphalt, asbestos, cement, the old things among which we were born and bred. It was something incompatible, extraneous. ... It spread out, imposing on our familiar landscape not only its light of an unsuitable colour, but also its volume, its weight, its incongruous substantiality. And then, all over the face of the Earth - the surfaces of the metal plating, iron armatures, rubber pavements, glass domes - over every part of us that was exposed, I felt a shudder pass.

The Soft Moon, TimeAndTheHunter by Italo Calvino

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when the moon hits your eye The second trip outdoors only provided more clouds. I never saw the eclipse, unlike Joel and all these smug people. The next night the Hunter's Moon was out and as bright as I've ever seen it. I took some photos to make myself feel better.

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euston to wolverhampton [handwritten.gif:centre2]

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suicide is painless This entry is best read to the sound of Loudon Wainwright's song, Donations (2Mb mp3 link).

When they go through my wallet and
fish out my license,
they'll learn my D.O.B
and my eyes were blue. As for my corneas
I don't care who gets 'em,
but all other organs and parts
are for you.

Back in early July, after reading an interesting article by Jacob Shwirtz on the perils of a persistent online legacy that will easily outlive your own feeble mortality, I decided that I should try and tidy up a little before I go. Surely I could spare my next of kin the trouble of deleting numerous online profiles by closing down all those that I no longer use? The first candidate that came to mind was an account I started a couple of years ago so that I could take part in my first MUD. Growing up playing text only adventure games on a Sinclair Spectrum gave me a natural curiosity about the world of Multi User Dungeons and I had promised myself for some time that I'd give it a try one day. It seems a little perverse spending your time playing a text based game not long after you get your first broadband connection, but I couldn't resist finding out about the structure and content of some of the games on offer. I chose Achaea. Mostly because it had the greatest number of positive reviews but also because a brief glance at the game description suggested that it was one of the most complex, having been running for a number of years. It proved to be a good choice, the complexity of the spaces and relationships surpassed all my expectations. It has its own dynamic and evolving economy, politics, theology, weather, conflicts and romances. The users all play an integral part in shaping both the spaces and events. It's backed up by sophisticated methods of interaction and messaging. There's a system of learning that helps you acquire new skills and encourage the use of mentors. You even get presented with your own journal to write your in-game memoirs in. They've been blogging in Achaea longer than most of us. I got quite enthusiastic for a while. I'd been given a new collection of complex urban spaces to crawl around and there was an equally complex cultural system to enrich it. However, the shine began to wear off after a few weeks. With all that content that I've just described there was only one common denominator that seemed to be the primary interest for a lot of the users and a lot of the story making (the administrators develop an ongoing narrative to help construct patterns of events). That common denominator was learning how to get better at kicking each other's butt. Rising to the top meant being the best at delivering the deadliest key bindings. You looking at me? I'm gonna k1-k3-p4 your skinny ass! I've got a black belt in macro commands! You get the picture; my interest quickly faded. Combine that with the fact that it seems impossible for anyone to envisage a MUD that doesn't involve Wizards wielding big staffs and Dark Lords of some description and the genre soon starts to get a little dull. Why isn't anyone interested in creating a MUD that takes normal, contemporary environments and lets the stories develop without any unnecessary Dungeons and/or Dragons? No, wait, we have that - it's called Real Life. Witness the following quote from the Achaea site news in April 2002. Bloody J.R.R.Tolkien has a lot to answer for.

Sartan Triumphant! Sartan, the Malevolent, the embodiment of Evil, consolidated his power today on the Isle of Evil. He raised Mount Mhaldor under the Baelgrim Fortress, which served as a magnet to any Evil influence within Sapience. As such, he gained control over the Ruby Sphinx, Thoth's Bough, the Demon mirror, the Garden of Midnight, the Stygian Totem, the Valley of Shadow, and Blood Falls. He further destroyed the one landmark most closely representing Chaos, the Cave of Golgotha (and with it, the Crystal Cave). Finally, he renamed the Fist of Dameron to the Fist of Sartan. In a gesture of spite, he forever cut the flow of essence to the Occultists Guild.

Enough already! It would have to go. The first of my attempts to tidy up my online estate. I logged on and checked my location.

The bright sun shines down, blanketing you with its life-giving warmth. Some graffiti has been scrawled here. It reads, "Don't not feed the humgii." The Ratman stands here quietly. A sewer grate looms darkly beneath your feet. A cute little humgii is sitting here placidly, attached to a leash. A runic totem is planted solidly in the ground. The corpse of Trevorp is here, impaled by a narrow bone. A note on it reads, 'This is the end of those who would trifle with Indrani.' There are 2 mounted archers here. Casually causing electricity to dance across the iron gauntlet worn on her right hand, a War Witch of Ashtan smirks here haughtily in tight red leather.

Seems as good a place as any to shuffle off this mortal coil. I shall end it and join the unfortunate Trevorp, who has clearly decided that he too has had his fill of the Fist of Sartan. I'll soon wipe the smirk from the War Witch's face. Drawing my final text only breath, I type the word SUICIDE and press enter...

We do not allow customers to commit permanent suicide, to protect financial records. Read HELP SUICIDE for alternatives.

Ah, I see.

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It's been too long since I posted an entry of any real substance. By substance I think I probably mean an entry on architecture - I know at least a few of my readers visit mainly for that and could probably do without stories about cyber suicide. In my defense, the main reason for the neglect over the last few weeks is because I've been too busy making it to write about it. We've made the shortlist for the competition I mentioned a couple of weeks ago and the workload is pretty heavy for stage 2. Next week I shall be offline and on holiday. I shall be accompanied by Peter Eisenman's Diagram Diaries and a copy of Postmodernism for Beginners. Oh, and my wife and kids too. Not exactly holiday books but I've been thinking about Eisenman's ideas on architecture's 'interiority' ever since I read Peter's entry on Fred Brooks, so I want to revisit the text and see if there is any connection. Book number two is Peter's fault too, I dug it out from under the book pile to post to him and then decided I'd better read it one last time. This is all rather neat, as they are perfect companions. If I decide to blog anything else before the holiday, you'll be the first to know.

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farewell my friend It's been a year and a half since we met and since then we've been together everyday; inseperable, living in each other's pockets. We've seen so much together. Shared so many sights. I remember it all as if it was yesterday. The highlights, the low lights, the traffic lights, the tea lights.

We've had our head in the clouds but kept our feet on the ground. There were mood swings, there were head spins.

We've been underground, overground, wombling, free.

Off like a rocket and back to earth with a splash. Took time to reflect. Let off some steam.

We've reached the summit, hit the tarmac but remembered to roll with it. ¹ But despite all that, or perhaps even because of all that, I've decided to move on. I've been seeing someone else. I can't help it, I'm seduced by her promise to show me the world more clearly and widen my horizon.

And her digital zoom.

Farewell, Nokia 6230.²

Hello, Ericsson k750i

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notes:
1.quicktime movies
2.For the full, gory details of our relationship, view our diary of the past year and half on moblog.co.uk

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Farewell URL tags: no2self, blog, admin Hello 2007. Hello new blog address: no2self.net When you have a blog that's named so as to remind you not write posts that are too self centred, using your own name as the URL is a little daft. After 3 years I finally got round to re-launching under a proper address. The RSS feed will continue to be the feedburner address (http://feeds.feedburner.com/no2self) so it should be a seamless transition for most, but please check your subscription as anyone who came along some time ago may still be running on a previous address. I shall also be swimming with the tide of conformity and switching to Wordpress. Blosxom has served me very well - with just the right amount of geekery involved in keeping it trim and the basic txt file format to avoid locked in content - but the comments options and spam has always been a problem. People who know much more about this than me tell me that Wordpress 2 does a great job with preventing spam. That's good enough for me. A huge thank you is owed to Brett O'Connor who has very generously put up with me nagging him over the last few years for help to keep the del.icio.us linklog script running. With perfect timing he's just this minute e-mailed me with the latest version. I'll be continuing to use it for behind-the-scenes blosxom blogs I use. Can anybody recommend a good del.icio.us daily log plugin for Wordpress? Layout at the new blog is currently based on the One Column theme but I imagine I'll be tweaking it over the coming weeks. Underneath the main content is the latest trail left by my data shadow, with various highlights from the other key sites I use. All the usual suspects. So, farewell http://rob.annable.co.uk, we're all off to http://no2self.net.

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favcollage Wait a minute, if we put Matt and Paul's favcol project together with Geoff's landscape printer we might at least get a colour reference for the 'molten rivers of the city'. Tag: favcol+wolverhampton = #625E5E

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All clear Lunch. Yesterday. Conspicuously, I sit in the shade on the north side of St.Phillips cathedral watching as the rest of the city basks in the sun. It makes sense to stay in the dark when you're only a few hours away from picking up the biopsy results on a suspicious mole on your back. The attraction of a green, landscaped space in the centre of an otherwise gray, urban environment, seems to be enough to allow people to overlook that they're eating, drinking and sunbathing on a graveyard. Waiting for an event to come my way, I stare across the square and remember something I was once told about the design of town squares. Location and author are now forgotten, but I vaguely recall somebody telling me that, historically, the size of many squares in towns and villages have a direct relationship with eye sight. The distance across a square being best defined by the ability to recognize someone on the opposite side. If you have 20/20 vision, the square that St.Phillips cathedral sits on just about works. I don't recognize anyone across the square, so I move on. It turns out that the event was waiting for me in the coffee shop. Well, events, actually. I pick up a booklet advertising a festival called Fierce and find some interesting stuff.

• World Tea Party - tea as a meeting point for different cultures.
• Urban D:tour - street theatre at the Bullring, including irational.org urban climbing dtour.
• Uncle Roy All Around You - real time game played online and onstreet.

Just a selection of stuff that interests me. There are a bunch of other projects happening in the Midlands over the coming months. The results of the biopsy came back that afternoon. I'm in the clear. Although the consultant tells me that I have moles that are architecturally dysplastic, which seemed rather fitting. I'm back there in a few weeks to have another removed. Spending so much time with stitches in my back is doing nothing for my fencing and climbing practice.

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Play it again Mr Crick I spent Saturday night dining with a bunch of doctors. Even the partners of the doctors invited were doctors. The conversation was mostly about other doctors who weren't fortunate enough to attend the party of doctors and doctors partners. Thankfully this is an environment I've spent may years training for so for the most part I managed to keep up and had a very enjoyable evening. At one point the discussion turned to the topic of teaching (aren't teachers lucky having so many weeks off?) and discipline (it's impossible to control kids today!), giving me the opportunity to tell the following story passed to me some years ago by Peter Godber, a fellow architecture student from my time at BSA. I'd asked him to remind me of it a few weeks ago and since he went to the trouble of writing it out the least I can do is pass it on. Take note all those who are planning to commence a career in teaching...

From first hand experience I can now vouch for the need for any school-teacher to gain the attention and respect of a new class from the moment of entrance at the very first lesson. There are many varied ways to do this but I don't think any could be as singular as the first five minutes of my brother's first English lesson at Tonbridge School when he was fifteen. Joe and his class were sitting and waiting for their new English teacher, Mr. Crick, for ten minutes after the bell signifying the beginning of the session had sounded. This gave them time to recover their breath for the classroom was situated in Room 15 which occupied the top floor of the School's main tower (5 stories up). What breath they had recovered soon left them when Mr. Crick strode into the room, making up for with garment any stature that nature may have deprived him in height. Mr. Crick at that time adopted the atire of a 16th Century Polish priest; this consisted of a long black gown topped with a wide-brimmed, and when I say wide-brimmed I mean a good foot of brim, circular black felt hat. In one hand he had a large silver portable Hitachi HiFi and in the other a Sainsbury's bag. Without a word of greeting, or even acknowledgement of their presence, to the class Mr. Crick walked the length of the room to his desk where he unloaded himself of his burden. Having plugged in the HiFi and opened the cassette deck he reached into the Sainsbury's bag and produced a large white fish. Mr. Crick frowned at the fish. I have been unable to ascertain the type of fish, all I know is that it was reasonably large, white and was causing the good school teacher some kind of upset. Anyway Mr. Crick now pressed play on the HiFi and proceeded to jam the fish's head into the tapedeck. This did not seem to appease Mr. Crick as he began muttering to himself and trying to force the rest of the fish into the HiFi which was making a low but faintly unhealthy sound whilst all the time being covered in more and more fishy matter. After about a minute of this activity Mr. Crick became frustrated, shouting "Stupid bloody thing, never works!!" and promptly threw the whole assembly of fish, HiFi and bag out the window. After a couple of seconds there was a crashing sound far below. Mr. Crick now turned to the class, appearing now to be aware of them for the first time and introduced himself formally to the class and took the register. Fortunately no-one was walking through the tower, the bottom of which was an arched thoroughfare crowded with students out of lesson time, when the fishy HiFi crashed to the ground but my brother assures me that Mr. Crick neither checked before or after throwing them. All I do know by way of ending this little tale is that Mr. Crick never raised his voice with the class for the rest of the year, he also never felt the need to punish them and he experienced no classroom management difficulties from any of his charges.

You'd never manage that with an iPod. Peter moved on from architecture and took up a career in teaching a few years ago. As far as I'm aware this has yet to involve torturing any fish with audio devices. Early days yet though.

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folksonomic zeitgeist At work, we're in the midst of another design code led competition and when the project began I launched a website for the design team using the impressive CMS from drupal.org. So far it's been very successful. So when Friday's copy of BD landed on the desk and I skipped straight to Ian Martin's column on the back page, I couldn't help but be impressed by his impeccable timing.

Friday:

A few weeks ago, I foolishly agreed to join a team working pro bono on a community centre extension. Geoff, the semi-retired architect and churchwarden who agreed to maintain the project website, seemed full of energy, and jokes. The first warning bell went off when the homepage acquired an intro, featuring a Flash-animated cartoon version of Geoff in a hard hat asking you where you wanted to go. Original buttons - Latest Drawings, Planning Update, Treasurer's Report and Team Contact Details - had been turned into a History Of The Community Centre, Have Your Say, Meet The Parishioners and Geoff's Worldwide Wonderful Web. The past month has been fairly quiet - waiting for the planners, fundraising, continuing, etc. Geoff, though, abhors a vacuum. A weekly digest of "project news" appeared in the form of an email newsletter, which now includes a section called Geoff's Go-Tos: "I challenge anyone to find a weirder collection of knitted bungalows on the net!" ... From today the weekly project newsletter will be supplemented, says Geoff, "by a daily blog, with podcasts and moblogs. The RSS is fulltext. Trackbacks and comments are on and unmoderated. Keywords are tracked and shuffled in a folksonomic zeitgeist. Technorati link cosmoses are constellated in real time..."

Saturday:

It turns out that the community centre extension had been built without anyone noticing.

Sunday:

Turn self into podcast, in the recliner.

Thomas Vanderwal, inventor of the word 'folksonomy', might be pleased to see his creation spread from the pages of the Observer into other magazines.

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4 Despite responding with this:

Curse you Mottram! It’ll give me something to do on the tram at least.

I shall take a leaf out of Anne's book and show the latest meme some love. Why get grumpy when somebody takes the time to reach out and say hello?

Four jobs I've had:

1. Dish washer in a cafe that sold Stotties (£15 a week!)
2. Elderflower collector for a wine maker (not too smart for a hayfever sufferer)
3. mobile phone salesman (sales - best training for my career I ever had)
4. ride operator in an amusement park (Gee, I like your accent. Are you from Australia?)

Four films I can watch repeatedly:

1. Back to the Future I (What did I tell you?! 88mph!!!!)
2. Canonball Run (God is our co-pilot? Remember our car? 2 seats? Where's he gonna sit?)
3. Any of the Indiana Jones movies (Ah, snake suprise!)
4. Fight Club (The first rule of...blah, blah, blah)

Four places I've lived:

1. oddly named places in the English countryside, such as: Bottesford in the Vale of Belvoir
2. in the shadow of the Aston Villa football ground
3. on the beach front in Santa Cruz (fond memories of the women's beach volleyball tour)
4. a series of late Victorian terraces - thanks to my childhood fascination with Mr Benn.

Four television programmes I like to watch:

1. anything on BBC4
2. most things on MTV2
3. Coupling
4. Duck Dodgers

Four places I've been to on holiday:

1. Turkey
2. Barcelona
3. Tuscany
4. Florida

Four of my favourite dishes:

1. pancakes
2. any dessert prepared by my Mother
3. rice pudding
4. cheesecake

(main courses are mererly a vehicle to get you to dessert)

Four websites I visit daily:

1. mybloglog.com (I'm watching you!)
2. bloglines (I'm reading you!)
3. biroco.com
4. my wiki

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. in bed with Sarah
2. a world that hadn't invented the internet yet
3. a world where independent coffee shops with big sofas and their own library could survive
4. climbing some rock

Four bloggers I am annoying:

1. Peter
2. John
3. Anon
4. Javier

Cheerio. AutoCAD is calling me.

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G It's my turn now. Gmail are obviously starting to relax about numbers for their beta test, as I've now got 6 invites to give away. Mail me if you'd like one.

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Going green Today's the day I start shopping here, instead of here. Wish me luck.

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Good Gift tags: advent, gift

Architectural Advent day 18:

Our office Christmas card is provided this year by goodgifts.org.

Merry Christmas!

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gothicjoinery.co.uk

Seen from the window of the tram this morning - must investigate further.

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Grey album mp3

You should all go here: http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/grey.html

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wish you were here [postcard_front.jpg:centre3] [postcard_back.jpg:centre3]

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tidy up A little housekeeping before I go away for the weekend. It's been quite rightly pointed out to me that I'm guilty of something I swore I'd never do: neglecting the humble 56k modem. Apologies to any readers who've been cursing at the number of graphics on the page of late and the time it takes to download. I couldn't resist posting the paper bag as a GIF file so that I could use transparency around the edges - I've commented enough about the perils of form over function, so you'd think I'd have the good sense to follow my own advice. Anyway, I've adjusted it to a JPEG now so it should move a little quicker (Peter - the one you have directly linked is still in place so your post will not be broken). Notes from the stats:

1. I hope that the 22 people who've downloaded my RIBA exam paper have taken heed of the warning I posted with it.
2. Somebody got here via a Google search for Alexis Butterfield - friend and fellow author of the Deconstruction and Tea entry. Alexis, if that's you Ego-Googling, shame on you - drop me a line and say hello.
3. My error log tells me that quite a few people have been frustrated by some broken links in my Pigs in Space project site - all fixed now, do your worst.

Except for the automated linklog in an hour or so, I shall be offline until Monday. See you* next week.

* metaphorically speaking of course, since this damned online existence means I never actually see anyone. Ask Joel if you don't believe me, he'll back me up.

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notes from the housekeeper Weirdness continues. Cut me some slack while I get to grips with the aggregator that pulls together the words and pictures. Comments are back on with better anti-spam measures thanks to help from Bill Ward. Currently naked due to lack of CSS but it's a start. Unfortunately the widget that tells me you posted a comment is broke, so if you really need me to reply quick mail me instead. I'm now filtering my linklog from del.icio.us more carefully so that you only get the choice cuts. Everybody say thank you to Brett for adjusting his deloxom plugin for me. Normal service will resume shortly.

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hypertextualisation I was hoping to finish a 'proper' blog entry this evening, but once again the hours have slipped through my fingers and I'm left with only minutes. Gone are the days when I would just ignore the natural desire for sleep and work on into the night. Instead I shall quickly hypertextualise my day.

(I must be tired. I just got up to pour some boiling water onto some white tea and reached for the iron instead of the kettle.)

One of the reasons for this evening's disappearance is that I got a text message from a friend reminding me that Channel 4 were broadcasting the documentary 'Fight for Ground Zero'. My pizza and I watched it together. It charts the design development of Libeskind's masterplan for the WTC site. It also charts the way the project has been completely hijacked by the land owner and his architect David Childs. I've had disparaging things to say about Libeskind in the past, but this time it's pretty clear that he was right and everyone else was wrong. Whilst he was agonising over the grain of the masterplan, Childs was only interested in pumping his erection up to new heights. The old cliche about male architects and towers was writ large throughout the program. I also got a running commentary throughout from my friend via text message (who was well placed to critique it from a distance, being neither a male or an architect). Highlights included; Bet you like the short fella's design and Typical architect...wearing all black. She was right on both counts. [m9.jpg:out] Flashback to lunch. A trip to the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery to see 'Life on the Vale' - an exhibition that shows work inspired by the the Castle Vale housing estate in Castle Bromwich. We've been working on the estate in various roles for about ten years. I'm still very proud of some of the new housing that we designed there. So I was delighted to find that one of our projects featured in the photographic work of Richard Harris. That particular project is quite dear to me, as the CAD model I made in the early stages of the design was used as part of a study on consultation and virtual reality. I've had fun touting it at seminars in the past. And so to the remainder of this evening. Revisiting the link that Matt sent me, I've been listening to some radio interviews whilst drawing a cross section. One of the most interesting being David Adjaye, in conversation with Isabel Hilton.

Hilton: What do you like about having artists as clients? Adjaye: Artist's vision and artist's clarity. An artist struggles to resolve something clearly because they have to manifest it very clearly. Architects, generally, have to manifest things but they are embroiled with the business of technique and problem solving and I think it can sometimes be a problem in itself and a resolution in itself; and the art of architecture, I think, sometimes gets lost in this process.

Note to self: That's me, that is. I lose site of the art in all the process and technique. This is exactly why my love of Anish Kapoor's work feels so dirty. In the middle of all that lot, a photo on moblog.co.uk got me thinking about euclidean space. Which, in turn, lead me to axiomatic systems.

In mathematics, an axiomatic system is any set of axioms from which some or all axioms can be used in conjunction to logically derive theorems. A mathematical theory consists of an axiomatic system and all its derived theorems. An axiomatic system that is completely described is a special kind of formal system; usually though the effort towards complete formalisation brings diminishing returns in certainty, and a lack of readability for humans.

Do you see how those two quotes collide with each other? Boom! As my friend Bobby H would say (ask him for the full story when he pops up on the comments later). Finally, you should all watch for tonights linklog as it has a couple of great discoveries. Two links from entirely different ends of the musical spectrum, sharing a medium as common ground - both are flash movies. With this in mind it's quite possible that they are so far apart that they meet up, like communism and fascism, somewhere round the back. As I once heard Lars Spuybroek say at an RIBA lecture, A Straight Line Is Just A Badly Informed Curve. A rather neat axiom to finish this euclidean (data)space with.

Message for Joel: Check out the intersite references on that! Also, here is another leg for you.

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I C U The weekly check on my web stats tells me that someone from d5architects has been reading me of late - if that's you, feel free to drop me a line and say hi. I just paid a visit to your site, it's looking good. I'm pleased to see that it hasn't been flashed to death. I took a trip to Compton Verney today and as luck would have it, there was an exhibition by Peter Greenaway about his new film trilogy The Tulse Luper Suitcases. I don't have time to write it up today though, as I've got several hours worth of working drawings to do for Brandwood End. I'm supposed to be on holiday.

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iDisappointed I bought my first Apple product yesterday. A big part of the attraction with Apple products is the quality of the design, right? A comprehensive approach that gets all the details just right, right?

Rob: 'I'd like a 60Gb iPod in black* please.'
Apple: 'That'll be £299 please.'
Rob: 'I assume the headphones that come with that are black as well.'
Apple: 'Er, no, they're white.'
Rob: 'What?! That's rubbish.'
Apple: 'Well, the iPod's s'posed to be white, innit?'

I bought the white one instead. I've been deliberating for months about what mp3 player to get and at one time had seriously thought about a DIY project. In the end, the temptation to be able to carry everything I have was just too great. The Beethoven/Slipknot/Otis Redding/Ozric Tentacles shuffle induced train wrecks were irresistable. To the point of this entry (the last thing the world needs is another blog entry on iPods): I'm looking for suggestions on good podcasts to add to my Odeo subscriptions. What do you listen to?

* architects dig black, right?

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Ig Nobel tour dates Coming to Birmingham on the 20th March, to be held at Millennium Point. There will apparently be guest appearances by members of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. Could be worth the entrance fee just for that.

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ISO 216

The ISO paper size concept In the ISO paper size system, the height-to-width ratio of all pages is the square root of two (1.4142 : 1). In other words, the width and the height of a page relate to each other like the side and the diagonal of a square. This aspect ratio is especially convenient for a paper size. If you put two such pages next to each other, or equivalently cut one parallel to its shorter side into two equal pieces, then the resulting page will have again the same width/height ratio. The ISO paper sizes are based on the metric system. The square-root-of-two ratio does not permit both the height and width of the pages to be nicely rounded metric lengths. Therefore, the area of the pages has been defined to have round metric values. As paper is usually specified in g/m², this simplifies calculation of the mass of a document if the format and number of pages are known.

Ah, I see.

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is written down in rings of grain Weblogging continues to work for me. My last moblog post delivered a Larkin poem in the comments from Phoenix.

The Trees Philip Larkin The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

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Lines from the tram [Picture_8.jpg]I'm about to step on the tram that I catch to and from work for the last time; tonight I collect my new car. I'd rather ride on public transport - it's one of the few times in the day that I get chance to read - but I need to have a car for work, so it's back to the traffic jams for me. Despite being hampered by endless technical problems* (vandalised ticket machines, power cuts, doors that won't shut) and numerous social issues (people refusing to pay, violence towards the conductors who were employed to replace the vandalised ticket machines and BMW drivers who meet a grisly end after shooting the lights in front of a moving tram), it's been a good service that has served me well.[Picture_9.jpg] I suppose that a certain amount of technical problems were inevitable, since I hear that the firm who built the line and supplied the trams, returned to their home country upon completion leaving only a few sheets of instructions; all of which were in Italian. The images posted here (along with others posted in my gallery) were taken during various trips over the last year. Some of which were used to make the graphic at the top of the site. * just as I was writing the words 'technical problems' the driver announced that there is a power cut that meant the tram will only be going as far as St. Pauls. Luckily, that's my stop.

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layers 7:45 am. Arrive at office. Stand outside feeling stupid - brought wrong keys. Walk in to the city while I wait for colleagues to arrive. Coffee. Sunshine. Crisp morning air. Long shadows. Earth from the air exhibition on Victoria Square. I learnt that: the rapid prototyped versions (carved from plastic) of the photographs on display are often more interesting than the originals, a small section of the corten steel on Anthony Gormley's Iron Man sculpture has been worn smooth by passing fingers, the circular housing developments in Copenhagen seem to make some of the same mistakes that the British Radburn planning system did in the 50's, and one of the reasons I love the city is that only an urban environment could deliver such rich layers of...stuff. For example, where else might you find a vista that includes waste, art, moving images, the industrial aesthetic and Corinthian column capitals? [layers.jpg:centre2]

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a call to the lazyweb About a year ago I found a project that used a flash file to record network traffic and then allow you to shape the data in a graphical format. I think it was called Cannibal. I'd like to take a look at it again but I've had no luck Googling for it. It was an arts project of some description and possibly the winner of a competition. I'm paging the lazyweb blog for help to find the link. Add a comment if you know the project I'm looking for.

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loosen up tags: sketch, drawing, technique I spent most of today encouraging a colleague to loosen up, pick up a pencil and push aside the CAD software for a while. After lunch I finally succeeded. The next challange was to get her to loosen up her drawing technique and enagage with the action of drawing before worrying about the final result. It's not a means to an end, it's a process. You've heard me say that before. I didn't have much success, but then it's only day 1. Perhaps I'd have done better if I'd seen the recent post over at 37signals.com: "Forget the detail" and other animation inspired lessons Quoting from notes posted at animationmeat.com:

The artist, when he first gets an inspiration or tackles a pose in an action analysis class, sees the pose, is struck by its clarity, its expressiveness, then after working on it for a while that first impression is gone and with it goes any chance of capturing it on paper. That’s the reason. we should learn to get that first impression down right away – while it’s fresh, while it’s still in that first impression stage – before it starts to fade...

Much to be learnt - go read. A great compliment to the second section entitled Abstracting the essence would be Rod's recent sketches at a Brian Eno lecture. Let's hope I have more success tomorrow.

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mint sauce I've just been out in the garden with the kids. My son has been pestering me for months to drag my bike out from the back of the shed so that he can look at it. Tonight I gave in. Of course, after one push round the garden he'd had enough; a short attention span is acceptable when you're only 3 years old. I always had a slightly uncomfortable relationship with my bike. It probably has something to do with the girl I fancied when I was 12 - she laughed and told me I looked stupid when she first saw me riding it. I shrugged it off at the time, but I suspect the wound never really healed. Buying a drop-handle-bar racer, the very week that fat tyred mountain bikes came into fashion in the UK, probably didn't help either. That said, I had years of pleasure out of it and the two of us clocked up some serious mileage around the Vale of Belvoir in the years that followed. If it wasn't for the sticker on the frame that caught my eye as I was putting it away again, the memories would have passed quickly. The sticker says 'Ride and find where all the freedom has gone' and it was written by Jo Burt, the author of the wonderful Mint Sauce comic strip. Published every month in the back of Mountain Biking UK magazine, it was a beautiful, captivating story that was worth the price of the magazine alone. Actually it was worth more. I would buy the occasional copy just for Mint Sauce, and would always read the ones that belonged to friends who actually had mountain bikes. It didn't really matter whether you had fat tyres or thin tyres, nothing inspired you to get out on your bike as much as reading about the latest exploits of this existential sheep. I dashed inside and did some Googling to share with you. A disappointing haul so far but there are a few images and words to be had here and here. Does anybody have anything else? I use to have a couple of old magazines and a poster but I think they've long since passed away.

p.s - tonights de.licio.us links will be slightly less fresh than usual, I've been playing with the set up and it was broken for the last couple of nights.

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mobclubbing You might remember that I previously wrote an entry about the flash mob event in Birmingham that happened last summer, this year the meme seems to have evolved into something called mobile clubbing. There was dancing at Euston station on Friday night. [mobclubbing.jpg:out]It looks like a pretty cathartic experience, I wish I'd been there. I'd expected someone to provide the music when I first heard about it, but from the looks of the pictures, everyone just moved to the beat of their own drum using headphones. This must have been an even more striking sight for the casual passer-by, as the dancers gyrated around the station to an implied rythym. I've been talking to a friend earlier this week about the possibility of using an iTrip for broadcasting improptu sets at street parties, but somehow the thought of people dancing to different music instead of a single sound track is even more appealing. The web site is mobile-clubbing.com and events are organised via a Yahoo group

image supplied by misternavid

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press coverage A copy of an article in The Independant from June 4th 2004 can be found here. It has an interesting quote, cited as being taken from a web site somewhere.

This was raw. There was no night, no unison, (except in self awareness). No way to defuse one's silent twitching with a laugh/joke/anecdote/drink. It was an awkward, slippery affair that made me think about the mechanical factors of a good night out. And watching pop videos with the sound off.

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More tea Mr.Bond? More stuff to give away. Sending a couple of books to biroco.com has spurred me on to further acts of altruism. Buried beneath some Connect 4 pieces, inside a pen holder I made from clay when I was eleven, I found the key that opens doors at MI5. [tea_key.jpg]I've been looking for it for months. Ever since I heard that Jessica could give it a good home. It's over a year since we moved house, and I'm still unpacking boxes, still finding things that make me smile/frown. This one provides the links to memories that will keep me smiling all day. Thanks must largely be paid to Tom. It was he who salvaged it from the empty shell of the old MI5 headquarters in London, during a foray into dereliction (PDF link) as part of his work at the Bartlett. Left behind in the empty shell that used to house the secrets of the Nations security, was a key to supplies that must have been crucial to the day to day life of any self respecting British intelligence officer; the tea cupboard. The description embossed on the copper plate key-ring, says that it belongs to 'tea station 1901a'. Perhaps there were at least 1900 other tea stations. If you include the alphabetical variations A through Z, that makes a total of 49,426 tea stations. That's a nice image - think of all the sugar cubes. In a satisfying, circular fashion, this takes us back to biroco.com. Although I landed at Joel Biroco's site via research into flash mobs, it was a story about keys and going places you're not supposed to, that convinced me I'd finally found a web log worth bookmarking. Sadly (for us), he's moved on to other projects now. Archives are still accessible though, here's the link to the entry about keys.

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lost! jessicapierce says

"Oh! I meant to tell you yesterday - it did come, only it didn't... I received one of those dreaded over-envelopes from the post office, marked on the outside with "we screwed this up, sorry" - and inside was your envelope, almost ripped in half, mangled and empty except for a bit of paper and a bit of bubble-wrap. This is why I trust the post office NEVER. Dammit"

My reply went something along the lines of Nooooooooooooo!!!!

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die spammers

I've had to switch off the comments again until I sort out the spam coming in. Lately there has been some discussion on the blosxom mailing list about how best to deal with it, so I'll take a look and try and tackle it. Mail me if you want to get in touch.

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you're dead The anti-spam device is in place. I've got everything crossed. More comments please.

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I'm dead Ok, that almost went according to plan. The changes I've implemented mean that all the previous comments on the site are now broke. Arse. I'll fix them all but it'll take a few days.

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new tribe They redesigned the profile page of tribe.net. Here's me:

http://people.tribe.net/eversion

First reaction, after about 60 seconds of scrolling/clicking, is that it's looking pretty good. I might have to start using it again. Or at the very least return the compliment to all the people I owe testimonials to.

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quick one off the wrist Tags: sketches,drawing,CAD 'Design software weakens classic drawing skills' says Jim Christie in the Washington Post (via ArchNewsNow). Abso-bloody-lutely says I. Agree with the article whole heartedly, however, this section championing the role of CAD, actually does the opposite.

Computer graphics allow artists to move briskly. By contrast, drawing on paper can be frustrating, forcing concentration, introspection and revision as an idea or vision takes shape.

Firstly, there's not a way made that I can get my PC to move as fast as the speed I need things to move from my brain to the page. Briskly maybe, but not nearly briskly enough. Secondly, frustration, forced concentration, introspection and revisions of an idea or vision are all conditions that should be sought out and embraced. Not eradicated with ctrl-z.

Related categories: sketches.

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concept Tags: sketches,drawing,CAD I should explain my choice of image. I'm talking primarily about the early diagrammatic, conceptual level of idea exploration. The level at which the softness (4B) of the pencil and the amount of pressure you apply through your fingertips has a direct influence on the outcome. The sketch is from a house design I was recently working on and represents a key turning point in the process. The action of drawing those ellipses (having chosen to rotate my thoughts and the client's actions through 45 degrees) some slowly, some fast, some darker, some lighter, was as important as the result itself. Months later, I still remember the action as much as the image and if the project goes ahead the memory will still be there to call upon when I'm stood on site talking about where to put the plug sockets. It seemed important to say this, as that evening I went home and had fun briskly drawing up some ideas in Sketchup. Drawing up. Jack understands the value of pencils too.

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get messy More on the value of the hand crafted by Luke Chandresinghe - take a look at his breathtaking Bartlett thesis project.

I think the computer is one reason why many drawings today are so lifeless and empty. There is no soul. It would be nice to see the blood, the sweat, the tears on the page, but you just don’t see that very much anymore. It’s an important process, to get messy, try, and test things on the page. I see an empty sheet of paper as an empty construction site – a test site for architectural constructions.

Found via the always interesting Anne Galloway linklog.

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Philip Johnson's new job After the recent news that architect Philip Johnson has decided to retire, I was a little surprised to find this in my inbox a few minutes ago. It seems he has found himself a new vocation.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: revphiljohnson1@tiscali.it
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 13:02:19 +0100
Subject: RESPONDS
To: Calvary Greetings, I am a preacher with the Seed Harvest Ministry, and I will like to get advice from you. I believe the advice I need is secular to some extent, but do have the patience to understand my intention. A few year's ago I was in Liberia were I had established a little congregation where I preached regularly, but the civil war escalated and the church was converted to a hospital of soughs. On one faithful day three Nigerian Soldiers came to me and left trunks of Money with me and swore to come back for it....

I think you can guess the rest of the message.

I will be glad to get a response from you to show your interest.
My Regards,
PHILIP JOHNSON
philjohnson01@mail.com

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Dear AJ It's probably best if I leave my name off any planning applications at work for a while. The AJ published my response to the article they wrote the week before about Philip Singleton, the new head of Birmingham City Council's urban design unit.

Dear AJ, "University applications are up in both our universities and I have a hunch it is because of this building." - Philip Singleton, AJ number 17/219 Dare I ask which of Birmingham's three universities was left out of the discussion during the interview about Philip Singleton's new role at the City Council? Since applications for the undergraduate course at Birmingham School of Architecture are currently down (perhaps because of this building?), it would appear that the University of Central England is the one that doesn't make the cut. Good luck to both Birmingham and Aston University*. Yours sincerely, Rob Annable

*who, by the way, don't have any architecture courses

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PDA

I've got you in the palm of my hand. I resurrected my old Handspring Visor today to use for this journal. Speeding between stations (when the doors aren't jammed), I scrawl the strange symbols that represent letters.

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permabroke tags: housekeeping

I've just realised that the site permalinks are broken. I upgraded my Blosxom install last week so I imagine that's the cause. If you've been looking for a particular entry and getting a blank page then it'll need a a little more info. Just add a .txt suffix to the until I get it fixed.

Update: fixed by returning to previous version of Blosxom. Bloody upgrades, eh?

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phrase jamming A friend of mine has a fantastic talent for unwittingly mashing up well known phrases. Unbeknown to him I've been jotting them down over the last few months. Here are a few of my favourites. Time period of indeterminate length:

...it's like waiting for a piece of string...

Warning! Heinous violence towards fruit:

...this is our first stab at the cherry...

Double negative:

...it could be one of my mistyping errors...

Are you a dogsworth?

...I'm the office jobsbody...

The pastry is the key:

...as light as pie...

Do you believe in reincarnation?

...I suspect that one is gonna die a duck...

And finally, my personal favourite because of the image it conjours up:

...Well, we spent the first half of the meeting just finding each others feet...

If you can beat any of those, be sure to add them in the comments.

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Pillow fight club Flash mob variation number 4: spontaneous pillow fighting outside St. Pauls Cathedral. It's organised by the same guys who brought us mobile clubbing.

Here's how it works: 1. Turn up at the venue with a pillow hidden in a bin liner/Fresh & Wild bag. 2. At the stroke of 4.40pm (see, these people really don't work), pull pillow from bag and fight. 3. Avoid hitting anyone without a pillow. 4. Get a bit bored and retire to the nearby All Bar One. ... Though the organisers claim no motive for these events beyond fun, you could tell a few fighters thought they were "sticking it to the man" in their own sweet way. In much the same manner, part-time nudists flock in their thousands to Spencer Tunick's mass nudity displays, claiming they are exercising some other downtrodden human right (the right to look fat and ugly in the nude?).

taken from Grauniad article (scroll down a bit). There are pictures here. I'm not sure Tyler Durden would approve.

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the first rule Tonight at 18:09, Pillow Fight Club II.

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pin head tags: people, architects, designers, technique A sketch that will make me pause to think every time I include a figure on a drawing from now on:

Stolen from: blackbeltjones.com

I (architect) draw people like the one on the left because... 1) it's all about the body in space, 2) hands are always in pockets where they can't do any damage, 3) heads - and therefore eyes and sight lines - are tightly controlled, and 4) I learnt it at school copying examples handed down from the previous generation. You (interaction designer) draw people like the one on the right because ... [answers on a postcard to the usual address please]

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closed, consensual, directed tags: advent, gift, planning, lecture, urbandesign, pdf

Architectural Advent Day 6:

Making Urban Places lecture 8. Paradigms of change

End state planning / Phased End State planning / Directed Process Planning / Monitored Process Planning (PDF link)

*update: Of course it would help if I actually remembered to upload the file, and it would be even more helpful if I could now remember where I put it. Will fix when I find - thanks for the heads up Bobby H.

** 12th/12th - link fixed

see previous: Mythical City and Typology Matrix

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in motion Thoughts and links from yesterday's National Poetry Day: Wake up call.

1: Ah. I'd like to have an argument, please.
2: Certainly sir. Have you been here before?
1: No, I haven't, this is my first time.
2: I see. Well, do you want to have just one argument, or were you thinking of taking a course?

I'm always jealous of Stuart's ability to write entries that incite comments. His entry on Vachel Lindsay's The Congo (surely the inspiration for Baldrick's The German Guns) was no exception. Thank you, Stuart (today is National Good Manners Day). Lunch. Arthur Dent:

I liked it. Oh, yes. I thought some of the metaphysical imagery was really particularly effective. Oh, and interesting ... rhythmic devices ... which seemed to counterpoint the, er ... Counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the, er ... Vogonity ... Of the poet's compassionate soul, which strives through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other, and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into ... into ... Into whatever the poem was about.

Create your own Vogon poetry on the BBC Hitch Hiker's site. Has Arthur been writing architecture reviews? From the September Architectural Review found on the coffee table, my boss points out this:

...and more curiously a horizontal void, 770mm high, that articulates the the structural division between concrete basement and timber frame; a continuously expressed interstitial datum that lies coincident with the re-entrant cutout.

I'm not sure what's more worrying; the tortuous use of words or the fact that I had to admit that I knew exactly what it meant. Going home.

Word to your Moms, I came to drop bombs.

Zane Lowe was on top of his game last night. Kicking off his 90 minute Fresher's Mix with the poetic sound of the fantastic Arctic Monkeys. Go and listen again - a great, great set.

I bet that you look good on the dance floor,
I don't know if you're looking for romance or,
I don't know what you're looking for.

TV dinner. If Nigel Williams doesn't win an award for his script on Channel 4's Elizabeth I, then surely heads must roll.

The evidence we have of her table talk, poems and speeches shows her also to have been a persuasive and eloquent speaker who, in spite of occasional lapses into Tudor brutality, was also gifted with that rare virtue of supreme rulers – compassion for her fellow creatures.

To sleep, perchance to... fat chance, too much coffee.

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power tool A fellow LUG member on the power of using Linux:

I think Linux is like a power-tool. In the right hands and with plenty of practice it can produce beautifully crafted custom-built furniture but many people would just damage themselves trying to use it without instruction. Linux is for people who are willing to go to woodwork classes and build a few wobbly tables in their pursuit of excellence. The others would be better off buying a flat-pack kit in the full knowledge that it will fall apart after a few months and need to be replaced.

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re-de-construction http://www.house-projects.com More than 50 students, from Fine Art and Architecture at the University of Newcastle and Newcastle College, formed two groups of builders who constructed and de-constructed two identical shells of House simultaneously for 22 hours. The shells were built out of bricks and mortar up to first floor level and juxtaposed with each other in rotational symmetry. The project was synchronized so that the construction and de-construction was choreographed sequentially: the opposite segments of the shells slowly moved around each other until House was completed.

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radio recycle Never let it be said that no, too self is unsustainable. I recycled the Little Nemo post and squeezed another entry out of it this week, and now I've reached back into the archives a little further and dusted off one those architectural anecdotes that I keep harping on about. Radio Bonfi, a project running at the Architectural Association, is into its second week and I've submitted a recording I made last year about the Rietveld House. Go and take a listen to the show and try out the interesting interface they've designed (flash required). My entry is the first section listed as a 'sideshow'.

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a plea To the administrator of the server that broadcasts the contents of biroco.com. Please, will you fix Joel's site soon? It's been too long. He was on the verge of something beautiful and then the lights went out. Joel, if you're out there, give me an update.

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lazy aRSSe If you subscribe to this site using RSS you may have noticed that a few of the entries you've already read have just popped up again. Don't adjust your set, I've moved the newsfeed over to an aggregator that pulls in extra content. Scroll back down the list and you'll see some extra images - it's the feed from my subscription at moblogUK. At the moment the old address is set to redirect, if you want to change your subscription (and I'd appreciate it if you did) simply amend it to: http://rob.annable.co.uk/rss20.xml Don't worry about image size if you're on a dial-up, the photos are all taken with my phonecam and the file size is quite small. If you're made of stronger stuff than most of us (including me), and you've yet to succumb to the lazy attitude that makes syndication so atttractive, you can see the combined feed in your browser at http://rob.annable.co.uk/index.html. Unfortunately it currently has zero formatting and gets delivered as naked as the day it was born, has no comments option and an odd problem with image repetition. This will be remedied in time. A lot of time.

ps - Hello to the handful of new subscribers I've picked up over the last few days, I hope the changes don't put you off!

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*sigh*

The RSS problems continue. Normal service will resume shortly. I hope. If anybody out there is a wizard with the planetplanet aggregator, drop me a line. Ahem. I'm an idiot. The reason the RSS wasn't working correctly is because the redirect command I'd put in place was also redirecting the redirection, hence the repetition of images. In my defense, I'm an architect, not a geek. Both feeds will remain in place but if you'd like to get images as well as text from this point on you'll need to resubscribe to the new address: http://rob.annable.co.uk/rss20.xml.

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burn, baby, burn, disc[o] inferno My timing is a little off. I chose to launch the extra image RSS during the same week that moblogUK had the mother of all disc failures. It's all fixed now and you shouldn't have to see the image the repeats any longer. I knew we'd get there in the end.

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timestamp problem OK, rather predictably, this hasn't gone as smoothly as I'd hoped. There seems to be a problem with the image feed and it's repeating the last picture with every cron job. Bloglines is ignoring it because it recognises the repetition, could somebody who uses a different news reader let me know how it is behaving? Without swearing at me.

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technical glitch The timestamp problem continues. For the moment we shall remain text only until I've got the photo feed to work.

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BArch My friend Sean made this: [sean.jpg:centre2] He just graduated from the University of Liverpool. His favourite phrase right now is gizza job. Let me know if your favourite phrase happens to be you're hired.

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double bluff Er, if that was Sean makes, then this is Sean says.

By the way, this web site of yours.....have you managed to hardwire your cranium to your pc and thus all of your thoughts and activities are automatically monitored and displayed? Otherwise it seems to me that either you must spend at least as much time writing and logging your activities and thoughts as you actually spend undertaking the said activiteis and thoughts, in which case what happens to all the thoughts you had whilst you where logging all of the previous ones, and there seemed to be no section telling us about your time spent typing up the notes - oh it could all get horribly confusing! Either that or you are undertaking a daring and subversive project to undermine imposing and invasive nature of our increasingly monitored lives; the massive and dramatic spread of surveilance and monitoring technology in our cities and towns is built on the premise that we all have information, activities and thoughts that we wish to remain private, but your web page is clever - by proactively displaying and publishing your thoughts and activites, you undermine the theory of privacy, thus convincing the reader/ monitor/ surveillor that they have intimate access to the minutiae of your life, and this is the bit that I like, once you have convinced said observer of this fact you are then at liberty to alter your entries to cover and hide the very activities that you deem to be private - Genius, absolute fucking genius! Rob I admire your devious and underhanded thinking! Well done. A lesson to us all, especially if our friend Dave Blunket gets his way with his little id card proposal.

I've been rumbled.

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Peter Lindberg wrote:

(some correspondence between Peter and I about Paul Shepheard that seemed worth hyperlinking)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262691663 Have you read it? It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on it. Best,
/P.

Dear Peter, First of all I should start with an apology, since my thoughts on your Fred Brooks entry about software architecture still haven't made it from my brain into the computer. It inspired me to go back to some of Peter Eisenman's writing, as it felt as though Brooks' definition of software architecture seemed to have a similar quality to Eisenman's ideas about 'interiority'. Eisenman, however, is rather difficult to read. A few weeks ago the Architect's Journal printed a quote by Libeskind that said Eisenman was '...a hateful person and a terrible academic...' I can't comment on whether he is hateful, but I fear that Libeskind may be right about his academic skills. His writing is almost inpenetrable. You bounce off the surface of each sentence with exactly the same momentum as the last, the rhythm never changing. I shall have to try harder to find my way below the surface. [pm.jpg:out] Luckily I was helped along the way by the book on postmodernism that I promised to send you. After digging it out of one of the boxes that I still haven't unpacked since we moved house nearly two years ago I decided I should read it again before I mail it to you. It proved to be quite timely since the lead figure through most of the book is the infamous Jacques Derrida. He died the week I finished it. I was sat in a Starbucks coffee shop at the time (see attached picture). This seemed quite fitting; the reinvention and re-presentation of a drink that has been with us for centuries, repackaged and delivered as new via the application of some careful branding, skimmed milk and Fair Trade decaffeinated coffee. The postmodern drink. Perhaps this is why I was met with such hostility on the architecture forum at tribe.net when I posted a link to his obituary - people blame Derrida for making all their coffee houses the same. Perhaps they're right. I'll send you the book later today and you can decide for yourself. I haven't read any of Shepheard's work, but from the quotes you posted on your site it looks like fascinating reading. Something about the cover of the book gives me a sense of deja vu; either I've looked at in a book shop before, a lecturer has shown it to me or I'm remembering the time I used to live near an airport and would see the Red Arrows perform every year at the air show. Although this is a little odd as there were never any Egyptian burial tombs in the rural East Midlands when I was growing up. I particularly enjoyed his comment about the '...the unimpeachable natural world.' It reminds me of something we were discussing previously when I said '...There are certain immovable forces in architecture, such as the laws of physics and building control inspectors.' I think Shepheard and I would get along quite well. It has been duly added to my Amazon Wish List. The problem with blogging is that I keep promising things and then running away. Based on past commitments I still owe my blog (and/or Aq) some words on usability vs. beauty, a write up of Compton Verney, a half baked idea about IT and koans and of course the aforementioned Mr Brooks. The list, like the one at Amazon, gets ever longer. Hope you are well. Regards, Rob p.s - I enjoyed your webstats assessment. It was infinitely more useful than my bad poetry. The interesting thing about posts like that is that they are iterative, I've been wondering whether I should carefully mould the results by reposting occasionally and introducing a new word each time.

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extra, extra, extra

More here: What is Architecture? And here: Better than a blog?

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sketchmore and more Tags: sketches, CAD, drawing More on sketching vs. CAD - Edwin Heathcote in the FT (via ArchNewsNow).

Computers may be efficient at processing complex data, but they are far from efficient in the creative process. Sketching is not only practical but essential. It is the quickest, most accessible way to find out if a space, a vista, a progression can work and also to communicate it to others.

Related entry: quick on off the wrist.

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blows own trumpet <smug> Ahem. I won. First prize in the recent competition at moblog.co.uk for the Hard Copy competition has been shared between myself and Helen. Oh, and my old entry on h2g2.com (which you've also read here) was up on the front page this weekend. </smug> Help me celebrate over some pancakes and maple syrup this evening.

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spamback Comments have been temporarily turned off until my first comment spammer gets bored and goes away. WHOIS tells me that it could be the same guy who left a mark on the Waffle blog a few days ago.

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spam, spam, spam, spam Comments are off again. I've just been nailed with 244 spam entries.

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fresh start Comments are back on. I've deleted all the previous comments - it's the best way to tidy up at the moment, I'll remount the non-spam ones as soon as I've filtered out the rubbish. If you've uttered something enlightening here in the past, sorry but you'll have to say it again.

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A squirrel and a mole Yesterday morning I got an e-mail from Joel at biroco.com to tell me that he'd posted a new entry to his journal. This is great news. It's one of the few sites I actually read, rather than scan as you spin the wheel on your mouse. You should all pay him a visit. Four hours, or so, later (yes, I get up at 5am) I was walking across town for a 9am appointment with the doctor, thinking about the contents of his journal entry as I walked. It wasn't until I was passing Bantock Park that I realised the odd confluence of events that was taking place. My trip to the doctor's was brought about by the changing appearance of a mole on my back, which my wife thought I should have examined by a dermatologist. As you'll see when you visit his site, Joel's latest entry is about a trip to the doctor to have a mole on his hand examined. It's not so much that the commonality is odd, rather that it took me about half a mile to spot it. Perhaps I saw a squirrel in my peripheral vision as I walked past the park. Nuts. I've been reffered on to have it examined properly. I'll probably need a biopsy as it's looking a little suspicious. Nuts. Other news is that I've finally started to make use of moblogUK - here's a link to my page: http://moblg.net/blogs.php?show=75 Al has also sent me a link to an interesting blog that I'm looking forward to reading more of - http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/

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on strike

As you've probably noticed, <strike>strike</strike> is my favourite HTML tag

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t610 I've finally upgraded my camera phone. My Ericsson T610 is getting replaced later this week with a Nokia 6230, which should give me a much better picture quality. To commemorate the passing of my first phone camera, I've compiled all the shots I've submitted to MoblogUK over the last few months (a site I've blogged about previously). Having a camera with me every day has been an interesting experience and I'm quite proud of the results. I've noodled about with photography quite a bit over the years, cutting my teeth on a Canon AE-1 whilst I was studying. These days my photography is almost all digital. Two main points about mobile phone photography strike me as important; firstly, the well documented and discussed issues around being encouraged to look more closely at what's around you, and secondly, the fact that convergence with another inconspicuous everyday object* (the mobile phone) makes people much less self concious about being 'photographers'. Some of the results I've seen from the users on moblogUK have been stunning and I've enjoyed taking part. I suspect that a very small number of those users would have previously called themselves 'photographers'. [contactsheet.jpg:centre2]

* the current ownership figures of mobile phones means that they are becoming inconspicuous ojects of the everyday due to their sheer number, of course some people actually use them in a somewhat less than inconspicuous fashion

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If you don't shit for Christmas Before we all pack the decorations away and begin the laborious task of vacuuming pine needles out of the carpet, let's have a final Christmas related journal entry. This post is mostly for the attention of boingboing.net subscribers who read the story about the Catalan caganer tradition and the caga tio character. Excerpt:

Customs surrounding caga tio differ, but all agree, caga tio means "shit log." Here I relay to you what I think is the full blown caga tio ritual. Fifteen days before Christmas, caga tio makes his appearance in the dining room, where he must be fed at least once every day. He likes oranges, crackers and sweet wine. In some families, caga tio starts small, but grows as the days progress toward Christmas. At some point, caga tio is moved out of the dining room, into the living room, and covered with a blanket to keep him warm. On Christmas Eve, before the traditional Christmas dinner, the kids are sent to their rooms to say three Our Fathers, which gives the elders enough time to stash presents under caga tio's blanket. After their prayers are done, the kids return to the living room and start beating the hell out of poor caga tio with big sticks. And they sing a song. One version goes "Shit, log, shit! If you don't shit well, we will whack you again!" Another goes "Log, log, shit candy! If you don't shit for Christmas, we will whack you once more!" After the children have gotten their fill of flogging the log, the blanket is removed to determine caga tio's state of digestion. Typically, a miracle has occurred, and the log has pooped wrapped gifts, which are called "the shits." Often one of the shits will be something weird, like an egg, to let everyone know that it was the last one deposited by caga tio.

I'm indebted to Dave Thau for submitting this information. For the last three years I've been witnessing this ritual with neither an explanation or subtitles to help me get to grips with it. If you're a parent with a child who likes watching the Teletubbies then it's quite possible you've been witnessing it too, since the whole event can be seen on the video Teletubbies and the Snow. As well as the usual high jinks that take place around the Teletubbie house, the video is interspersed with footage of children from around the world celebrating Christmas. About half way through the video you can see a group of Catalan children thoroughly enjoying their assault of the shit log. Twice. Again, again, again! shout the Teletubbies. On reflection I'm glad that neither my children or I had the faintest idea what was going on or being said. It's nearly as bad as the time that Auntie Mabel and her dog, Pippin, visited the sewage plant. At 6:30am. Whilst I was eating my breakfast. Look Pippin! Look at all that poo! Can you see your's? For those of you eager to experience the abuse of caga tio I've uploaded some screen captures onto flickr.com and made use of the slideshow feature: The Caga Tio Show (and I've added notes to the photo set). Ho, ho, ho.

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the last apple I had a delightful weekend enjoying the autumn at my parents house. The horse chesnut tree had dropped all it's conkers but I climbed it anyway, swinging from the branches as the harvest went on below me. [last_apple.jpg:out] A single apple remained on the apple tree so we claimed it before it fell to the ground and was carted off by the ants. It's time my kids learnt how to climb trees and it's also time that they learnt how to play conkers, since it's looking increasingly like it will be banned in the UK when they start school. Madness. We strung a few up and I took my best one to work this morning; it's now a one'er after quickly dismissing it's first opponent. Challenge me if you dare. A book bought by my Mother at the local library provided this:

If I could be an architect
I'd draw up new designs
With ears and tails and curly bits
Not angles, corners, lines,
And then, instead of boring flats
And houses shaped like boxes,
We'd live in brick sheep, tiger towns
And rows of terraced foxes.

It's from If Only by Richard Edwards, a children's book of short poems along with ink illustrations by Alison Claire Darke. Mothers seem to be a running theme on this blog lately. Craft has also been a theme of late, and this will continue in my next entry. This is merely an intermission, typed to pass the time as I record (ahem) the Radio 3 program about pottery and ceramics I heard on Sunday evening as I drove around Ironbridge in the dark, completely failing to find the hotel that was hosting Matthew's wedding reception (sorry Matt!). It's an interview with Edmund de Waal about his career as a potter. The whole interview is brimming with Ideas and it crosses many of the fields of thought that I've journeyed across here over the last few months. I shall transcribe my favourite bits and post them over the next few days. In the meantime go and have a listen via the BBC's 'listen again' feature. When I've finished the typography course I think I shall take up pottery.

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Touche Predictably, my comments in the AJ a few weeks ago prompted a response in this weeks edition from Thom Gorst.

Yes, the University of Central England in Birmingham is likely to be the university that Phillip Singleton left out when implying that the city had only two universities (AJ 29.04.04). We are the university that hosts the region's only school of architecture, and I was also disappointed that Rob Annable in his follow-up letter (AJ 6.5.04) should associate us with poor recruitment. If anyone should want to see for themselves just what has been happening in the Birmingham School of Architecture and Landscape during the past year, then please visit our show at the Arts cafe in St Martins at the Bullring (opposite 'that' building) from 21-24 June. The school is buzzing with a new energy, and has been greatly strengthened by a healthy relationship with our colleagues in practice. Professor Thom Gorst, head of the Birmingham School of Architecture and Landscape

Well done Thom. A balanced response that managed to back up my original point, reprimand me for doing the school a disservice, get in a plug for the upcoming show and flatter the visiting tutors. Not bad for a couple of paragraphs. The good news is that a couple of e-mails between us earlier this week has hopefully put us all square, and I've been invited to the private viewing of the show next month.

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Tony Goodall 1939-2006 tags: tony, tonygoodall, architect It's with a heavy heart that I return to this journal. On Thursday of last week at 4am, my friend Tony Goodall lost his fight with an illness that had hospitalized him a few weeks earlier. It all happened much quicker than any of us expected and at the time I was on holiday, camping in North Devon. To begin with I felt guilty about being away from the office, but I know that Tony would have heartily approved of me spending the week under canvas, drinking red wine, reading Proust and watching kites being flown on the beach. Upon my return to the office this week I wrote a few words about him in my notebook (click for larger versions or get the PDFs). Since his influence resulted in many past journal entries I'm going to post it here followed by some links to a few relevant pieces that you and I owe to his wisdom and creativity.

Links: Death of a Drawing Board, Brighton Memory Palace and Concrete Evidence.

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UCEless

Q: Where can we explore the complex to make things clear? @:UCE

The University of Central England has excelled itself once more. Not only does the latest advert look as bad as all the previous ones, it barely even makes sense the first time you read it. The colour balance is wrong, the composition is clumsy and the typography is abismal. Even from 10 feet away, on the lower level of the tram, I can tell exactly what the problem is. It's not the poor sucker who designed it, it's the marketing department of UCE Inc. A few years ago, Tris, Tom and I were asked to design a new poster for the School of Housing. We were given a set of rules that were not be broken: the image must be x number of millimetres from top and y from the bottom, the text must be z points tall and Frutiger etc. We tried to bend rather than break, blurred the boundaries here and there, adjusted it to make it work. Initially the client was happy, but when it was passed up the line for approval it came straight back with the instruction to change it. You can see the results in our gallery. The irony is that the cheeky monkey twins featured in the advert (who look as confused as I am) are from the Fine Art school and could probably do a better job with a few potato prints.

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UOGB Free concert, March 30th, at the MAC in Birmingham. The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. Dare you miss it?

Purists: prepare to do battle. The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain challenge the complex world with their simplicity and prove that both anything can be played on the uke, and that the uke can play anything. Their latest CD, The Secret of Life, is a tour de force of all music from the early baroque period onwards; held together with a common instrument and a lot of laughs. source - http://www.longman-records.com/

Send an e-mail to nick@cgstudio.freeserve.co.uk to apply for the tickets. Their web site is http://www.ukuleleorchestra.com.

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Vanity project The name of this blog is born of the recognition that all blogs are to some extent a vanity project (and the fact that I need somewhere to store ideas and links); No, too self / Note to self. Palmpixel over at MoblogUK agrees, adding;

Vanity project or abjectly yet self referentially depressed goth pointing out the shortcomings of others.

Hello to all the goths out there.

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PDAlfie ooh, I just checked out palmpixels.com, veerrry interesting. Downloadable content and links for your PDA, I'm off to dig deeper...

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*waves* It's always good for the ego when a blog you've been enjoying for a while takes the time to wave back at you from their side of the information superhighway*. Hello to anyone who got here via the always informative thingsmagazine.net. I've posted an entry about the name of this blog before, but reading the entry at things has highlighted a new way of writing it. It started life as Note to Self, since it's goal was to make a record of ideas that might come in handy later on. Then, feeling uncomfortable about whether or not the world needed another blog, I changed it to No, too self in recognition of the fact that every blog is, at least in part, a navel gazing vanity project. Then for some reason, as I was typing the title section of the HTML, I decided to write No, 2 self. Perhaps I was just too lazy to write too. Now, thanks to thingsmagazine.net, I've just realised that No.2 Self is equally fitting; welcome to my second self, my alter ego, my number 2. Just when I thought the word play was perhaps a little infantile and overly ambiguous, it's now beginning to seem suitably robust. I leave it up to you to decide whether this blog is waving or sticking two fingers up.

* I decided to blow the dust off that phrase just for old times sake

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Weetabix Club no longer exists Found in an old box and posted here for posterity (with additional hyperlinks) before I consign it to the waste basket. The date is the 7th November 1988...

Dear Robert, Thank you for your letter regarding the Weetabix Club. Since we started the Club in 1983, it has grown so quickly that it is now very, very hard to keep a record of our members and where thery live. In view of this, we are sorry but we have to tell you that the Weetabix Club no longer exists. You will still see the Weetabix characters on current Weetabix packs, television and in the children's comics. Watch out for them as they continue fighting and beating the titchy breakfasts. Yours sincerely, A.D.Lee - Sales Promotion and Development Manager

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wish you were here

[more]

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writeback Since a few visitors to the site have recently commented on my lack of comments, I've decided to add the necessary plugin to allow people to write responses and leave trackback connections. The result - writebacks - can be seen at the bottom of each entry and you can click on it to read or leave a comment. There are two reasons I didn't implement this from the beginning. When I first started this log book, it was designed to be an ideas/links dump for myself; it wasn't my intention to use it as a discussion forum. Since then, as its content, role and worth have begun to take shape, I've become more interested in its ability to spark debate. With this in mind it seemed a comments section would be useful. The second reason is that there are few things as depressing as visiting a site that says 'there are 0 writebacks' across all the entries. Let's hope that doesn't happen here. Note: for some reason it isn't working with the linklogs that get delivered by de.licio.us, it may be something to do with the numeric titles. I'll get it fixed soon, but doubt that many people will need to comment on links anyway.

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can we fix it? I just fixed the writeback option on the de.licio.us links - I was right, it had something to do with the numeric file titles

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king kong in brum Inspired by the latest entry at thingsmagazine.net, a link to Keith Berry's wonderful photos of old Birmingham has reminded about some photos I uploaded last year.

King Kong on the move. He used to live in the city centre, then ended up on a car sales forecourt for a few years until the students at the architecture school rescued him for a party sometime during the 70's. I understand he is still alive and kicking and stands guard over a market place up north somewhere. I'll double check the story when I get to the office and speak to the photographer himself. More Birmingham photo archives here: the car park on the roof.

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flickrmap tags: mapping, photography, gps

Flickrmap have just announced version 2 of their photo/map mash up service. They've improved the Google Earth network connection that you use to tag photos with GPS and also introduced a Google map rendered option as well as their own stylised version.

Here's mine: (which, of course, doesn't appear in the RSS feed)

And I've set up a Google map version here: Google Flickrmap The subscription rate has gone up, but at $9.75 for a year it's difficult to grumble. Worth a look if you want to easily tag your photos with GPS info and spit out a map easily at the other end. This is the system I used to quickly tag the photos to accompany podcast episode 2 - ArchWeekWalk.

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60k house winner
(link) [no, 2 self photos]

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and it burns, burns, burns the ring of fire.

(link) [no, 2 self photos]

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as lucky can be Winter camera hibernation is officially over, finally there's some light worth capturing.
(link) [no, 2 self photos]

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brown field silver porsche
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coming soon
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Denys Lasdun's arse ...once enjoyed these chairs. And now they're mine. AHAHAHAHAHA!! A 1962 Robin Day design for Hille. More on Denys: wikipedia, BBC audio, Open University, Archinform. this entry has more images
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early zaha? Found outside the toilets at a Japanese restaurant - early Zaha Hadid?
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Europan 8 This should have won. Disappointing set of chosen entries. Winner has already won 3 times before - major embarrassment for CABE.
(link) [no, 2 self photos]

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Europan winner 1st place. For the 3rd time.
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falling tags: photography, moblog

(link:) [no, 2 self photos]

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from Birmingham Post '400,000 new homes for West Midlands' ... Hold all my calls, it looks like I'm gonna be busy.
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from today's Observer
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join the travelator
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life of grime

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look out

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Mash up
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Merry Christmas!

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No idea
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or aura

this entry has more images

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Paris mosque this entry has more images
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park up

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Pei pyramid this entry has more images
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picture this

Found in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham - an alternate plane of reality that only aligns with ours from one particular coordinate.

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Pompi-done
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spacebox

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steely glare
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the end is nigh this entry has more images
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To the heavens
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tower crane

more BT tower posted for Kozika

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traffic light

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twinkle twinkle

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urban splashed Rotunda refurbed and resold

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wood blocks

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thrown away Damn it. I missed an opportunity to enter a photography competition in BD magazine. The winners have just been published.

Developing nicely - 27 January 2006 What you see ... is the fruit of the ninth BD/Zumtobel photo competition which gives Building Design readers the chance to show off their photo skills with nothing more than a disposable camera. Because you sent in your cameras unprocessed, you don't know how your snaps turned out, but our judges do. This is the cream of the crop.

Related entries: kids with cameras - 1 and 2. (two disposable camera photo comps I've helped run recently)

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bleu Tags: Proust,Paris,blue

"How nice he is! How gallant! Why the boy's a bit of a ladies' man already: he takes after his uncle. He'll be a perfect gentleman,", she added, clenching her teeth to give the phrase a slightly British accent. "Couldn't he come have a cup of tea with me sometime, as our neighbours the English say? He need only send me a 'blue' in the morning."

Travelled to Paris. Sent you some pictures. Visited the Shakespeare and Company book shop.

Bought some Proust. Seemed like I had little choice.

Learnt, on the tram home today, via the footnotes to the above quote, that a 'blue' was an express letter transmitted by pneumatic tube within Paris. Learnt, later, at my desk thirty minutes ago, via bloglines.com, that Matt Webb's latest post - a wonderful collection of slides from some recent teaching he did - covers the very same topic. See slide 26 of Fictional Futures. Better yet, read the whole thing, it's a rich seam of ideas.

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There'll be more on Paris. Probably more Proust. In the meantime you're welcome to peruse some of the other pictures I took: Paris, April 2006.

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Bournville, Birmingham article submitted to everything2.com Each of the houses in Bournville were planted with six fruit trees. George Cadbury would visit personally every once in a while, to ensure that the gardens of his properties were being properly tended for. This was no vision of sustainability, his primary goal was to ensure that his staff were kept busy during their 'leisure' time; thus keeping them away from the Gin and the bedroom.

The Bournville Village Trust have a specific colour that all the external woodwork on the houses must be painted in. The British Standard for it is BS 10 B 15.

William Morris and his merry band of pre-Raphaelites were one of the major influences on domestic architectural style of the time. Their interest in the medieval period was born of a desire to return to a time of perceived simplicity and moral righteousness. The fact that they were often busy bedding each other's wives didn't seem to prevent them from being both prolific and influential. I would advise that anyone who is in the area of Birmingham should take the time to at least go through Bournville once, to see an example of some fantastic social engineering, and experience an architectural vision that was to influence the aesthetic of City Council estates in Britain for years to come.

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cave man? Are you still trying decide what to buy this Christmas for that friend who has everything? Time's running out, so here's a suggestion; how about a cave house in Spain? My good friend, regular inspiration and fellow architect, Tom Booker (who you may remember from the entry about the key to the MI5 tea cupboard) and his partner Claire Johnson recently teamed up with some friends to buy and renovate a cave cut into the limestone of the hills of Andalusia. The first of two is now complete and available to buy, full details are at www.visionremota.org/cuevas. We paid them a visit just over a year ago during the construction and the transformation is startling. Here's a picture of Tom shortly after the completion of one of the fire places. Here's the plan of the house. In some primal, long forgotten memory of our prehistoric ancestors, the layout of the rooms and passages is so seductive that it seems you could sell it on the strength of this drawing alone. The front of property, rebuilt after the interior has been cut into the hillside, looks like this: You can click on all the images to see them at full size. From what I saw mid-construction and from what I know of Tom and Claire (who's also an architect), the finished product will be beautiful. Find an architect with good design skills who's also prepared to get his hands dirty and craft it himself and you're on to a winner. Of course if you do buy it as a gift this Christmas, you may need some help from Christo when it comes to wrapping it.

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Merry Christmas to you all, I'll be back next week. I've got to go and buy a tree before it's too late.

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Venturi, Scott-Brown and Walt A sample from the excellent article in Metropolis Magazine by Robert Venturi, discussing Disney's Pop Century resort. The full article is here.

But let us remember that throughout the history of architecture and urbanism, iconography has always dominated the scene, instructing and persuading us with its religious and civic content in ways no different from today?s vigorous (and despised) commercial iconography. Let us acknowledge the validity of those signs as a flourishing element within that vital, generic American scene, as well as within the great tradition of architecture and urbanism! Let us today transfer the murals from the inside to the outside of the buildings! Let us not be limited by the intimidations of taste and a Modernist revival that promotes decadent/dramatique abstract expressionism and industrial rocaille for the postindustrial age. Let us be stimulated by the vigor of iconography appropriate for our information/electronic age!

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Travel tips tags: travel, dublin I'm spending this coming weekend in Dublin. Anybody have any good suggestions for places/spaces/buildings/restaurants to visit?

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uneven territory I just got back from a weekend in York. Spoils from the trip include a copy of Ted Hughes' Hawk in the Rain (which I first encountered on a previous trip to York whilst dining in The Tasting Room) and some sneaky phonecam photos of the inside of Fairfax House. It's a beautifully restored 18th century townhouse with a mind blowing collection of Georgian furniture and clocks. One of which was apparently worth £750,000 when valued some years ago. Every piece had at least three different functions and numerous secret compartments - a vital requirement back in the days before password protected zip files and .htaccess controlled folders were available. Take the time to visit if you are ever near York. One word of advice though; avoid visiting Fairfax House, the medieval Clifford's Tower and the nearby Cafe 31 in the same morning. All three are suffering from settlement and movement to some degree and there isn't a perfect right angle to be found anywhere. Result: dizzyness and mild nausea until you find some flat ground again.

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flickr + google maps + birmingham Chris Heathcote over at anti-mega.com has put together a neat little hack between Google maps and Flickr. Photos tagged with gps info are located and previewed over a map or satellite image. He's published the perl so I couldn't resist the temptation to try a page for myself. Here's the city where I work and (occasionally) play:

http://rob.annable.co.uk/flickrcity/birmingham.html

I'm an architect first and a geek much later, so there are still plenty of teething problems with it. I haven't really worked out how to do a proper job yet but I've sent Chris a message so I'm hoping he'll be able to help. It's a static page at the moment that I've manually renamed as I haven't managed to get it to spit out the file with a suffix that a browser will render. I think it's supposed to work on the fly rather than with a cron job. I'm also short of a way to distinguish Birmingham in the UK with other Birminghams around the world; some of the links take you off around the planet. The other teething problem is the rather frustrating discovery that the satellite imagery for the UK's second city isn't up to scratch yet. The higher res stuff ends just at the edge of the city centre. Perhaps by the time I've worked it out there will have been time for the satellite to make a few more passes...

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crimping and cranking In an effort to wash away the rage that was building inside me after too many car journeys to work, I paid a visit to the climbing wall at Aston University last week. I really need to start getting on the tram again. Hatred for your fellow motorist hops from car to car like headlice in a school assembly and you quickly become infected. Last week I leant on the horn and hurled abuse at someone only to realise a few minutes later that they had been completely in the right and I, and my horn, had been wrong. [climb.jpg:out] Something had to be done and one of the best ways I know to empty your mind and relax is to potter about on a bouldering wall. Climbing is one of the most laid back sports I've ever done, both mentally and socially - getting uptight about a move is the best way to guarantee you'll fall off and I've never met anything but warmth and friendliness from a fellow climber. Once, during a 3 month stay in Santa Cruz in California, I tried to learn how to surf. You know, that easy going, not-a-care-in-the-world, life's a beach, kinda sport. Rubbish. I met nothing but aggression. On one occasion I got told to f**! off before I'd even got in the water. Aside from that, a ten foot wall of water bearing down on you like a freight train is significantly more frightening than slipping from a rock and sailing gracefully and silently through the air. More dangerous too; I have the dislocated clavicle to prove it, but that's another story. I've mentioned an indoor wall in Stourbridge in a previous entry; this time I had only my lunch break to fit in a session on the rock resin. If you're going to climb indoors in Birmingham, there are a couple of choices. You could choose to go and tackle the 70 foot high walls at The Rock Face, but you'll not have time to tackle many of those feet during your lunch hour and it's quite expensive unless you put aside a whole day. The alternative is to spend £2.50 and practice your crimping ¹ at the wall in the Gem Sports Hall at Aston University. It's small but quite well formed - technically challenging in some places, all muscle in others. A few minutes cranking hard ² whilst listening to the haunting soundscapes of the group I mentioned in the linklog a few days ago and I was soon forgetting about both car and horn. I'm not quite in the shape I used to be when I was climbing 10 years ago, but then, who is? If anybody is looking for a climbing buddy in Birmingham and can deal with the fact that I'll be in and out again in no more than about 25 minutes, before dashing back to the office, let me know. Tomorrow I shall be embarking on my first outing with the skateboard I've just finished building. It's been 15 years since I last got on a board, you may expect stories that involve both broken limbs and broken pride. I wonder if they have WiFi at the hospital?

1. come with me one lunch break and I'll explain what that means.
2. Ibid.

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more sky Tags:art,skyspace,photography More Skyspace details from Neil:

A couple of extra observations: I was in there on Sunday. We had a really grim weekend with stacks of rain, and the floor was all grimed up, plenty of mud and water in the drainage channels. The roofhole /is/ open to the elements, and it's actually quite nice when it's drizzling. I hadn't noticed them before, but there are lights installed on top of the side-bench things. Significantly less ambient light on Sunday, so they were visible although it's only a slight glow. Can't see them, but I'd guess they're fluorescent tubes and the light they give off is slightly peachy. Maybe that's just in contrast to the very- white walls, though.

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a panoply Tags: panoplee,freecycle,community A local post for local people. This is the height of laziness, but I'm going to let Matthew announce a new project I'm involved in since he's already done such a good job on his own blog...

Wolverhampton Freeycle has quietly been building up over the past few months. With virtually no promotion, there are now 601 of us giving away useful items and benefitting from the things that other members no longer need. It's great to get rid of something and know that someone else can make use of it, when it would otherwise go in the dump. Rob and I have been thinking, for a while, that we'd like to build something more out of the community that has developed around Wolves Freecycle. The Freecycle group itself works best when dedicated to messages offering or requesting items. Also, the original American Freecycle group is very specific about how its trademark should be used. Freecycle groups are run using the Yahoo Groups system, which is a mailing-list/forum hybrid. Several other Freecycle groups have created what they call their cafe group, also using the Yahoo system. We felt that was too limiting: not only are you bound to accept Yahoo's advertising but you have no room for future growth, when people have good ideas for new features. A couple of weeks ago, we set up panoplee.com and began looking for suitable forum software. It's frustrating that almost all forum software is virtually identical, in terms of clunky user experience, despite their authors' protestations to the contrary. Vanilla, however, is clean, fast and user-friendly. We're now telling people about panoplee.com. I'm surprised that a city the size of Wolverhampton doesn't already have something similar.

Wolverhampton community website.

Local or not, we'd welcome your thoughts/links.

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For Al, Joseph and Nikos My friend Al just got back from a weekend in Paris but he didn't have time to visit Parc de la Villete; Joseph Clarke of That Brutal Joint is in Paris this week and has just posted his thoughts on Parc de la Villette; and for all I know Nikos Salingaros may even be in Parc de la Villete right now. Even if this isn't the case I thought he might like to know a little bit about how a text he believes can only convey messages of violence resulted in such an enjoyable park. Also, since, according to Salingaros, my previous entry on Tschumi '...unwittingly gave us a poignant cinematic characterization...' and nothing more, I thought it best to flesh out the whole dead/alive zombie thing (pun completely intended). In other words, Al, this is what you didn't see; Joseph, here's a little more about what you did see; Nikos, here's a little something that I wish you could see. So, disassembled and reassembled from some past writing, I give you...

Parc de la Villette

Situated in north-east Paris in the 19ème arrondissement, Parc de la Villette was built during the 1980's to redevelop an area of the city once used as an abattoir. As a collaboration between architect and philosopher, it was one of the first examples of a genre that would influence both architectural education and cutting edge practice throughout the remainder of the 20th century.

To achieve architecture without resorting to design is an ambition often in the minds of those who go through the incredible effort of putting together buildings. Behind this objective is the desire to achieve the obvious clarity of the inevitable; a structure in which the concept becomes architecture itself. In this approach there is no need to design ‘new' abstract shapes or historically grounded forms...according to ones ideological allegiance. Here the idea or concept would result in all the architectural, social, or urbanistic effects one could dream of without reliance on proportion, style, or aesthetics. Instead of designing seductive shapes or forms, one would posit an axiom or principle from which everything would derive.

This statement by French architect Bernard Tschumi, is both the essence of his architectural quest, and a bridge between present day contemporary theory and its predecessor - poststructuralism. We’ll begin by examining the essence of his ideology and then look at how this became the design rational behind one of Paris’ grande projet.

architecture without resorting to design...

A singular obsession can be read between the lines of Bernard Tschumi's work since the publication of 'The Manhattan Transcripts' and the later 'Architecture and Disjunction'. His search for the almost indefinable 'in-between' or interstitial existence was the beginning of architecture's intellectual cross fertilisation with poststructuralist philosophy. The previous structuralist manifesto of a world consisting of signs and its concept of 'signifier' / 'signified', was accused of being too rigid and ignorant of time or place. In poststructuralism the notion of these binary oppositions - such as up/down, male/female or alive/dead - are challenged in an attempt to break down accepted hierarchies. One of the most important figures in this movement was Jaques Derrida. His written disassembly of structuralist work, such as that by Claude Levi-Strauss, became known as 'deconstruction'. Here his connection with Tschumi begins in their work together for Parc de la Villette.

Our aims were to displace the traditional opposition between program and architecture, and to extend questioning of other architectural conventions through operations of superimposition, permutation, and substitution to achieve "a reversal of the classical oppositions and a general displacement of the system," as Jaques Derrida has written, in another context, in 'Marges'.¹

Parc de la Villette consisted of the collision/superimposition of three separate programs - 'system of points', 'system of lines' and 'system of surfaces'. Their pre-collision exclusivity is an expression of the notion of working 'within' a preconceived order and the production of a flat hierarchy. The superimposition is then administered arbitrarily and any form of controlled composition is avoided. The Parc expresses two vital parts of the Tschumi/Derrida technique or 'pharmakon': That of the creation of an unpredictable 'event' at the point of superimposition, derived from the critique/construction occurring 'in between' the texts/programs; and (as already seen in the opening quote) the desire for complete objectivity during the creative act.

Although each is determined by the architect as 'subject', when one system is superimposed on another, the subject - the architect - is erased.²

Two further Tschumi projects demonstrate his desire to erase his subjective persona from his architecture. The glass video gallery at Groningen in the Netherlands, and Le Fresnoy, the Centre for Art and Media at Tourcoing in France ³. Le Fresnoy, a re-inhabitation of an old school building, is perhaps the complete distillation of all Tschumi's desires into one project. The combination of the old and new programs producing the most physical manifestation of his quest for 'interstitial' or 'event' space. The placing of the roof plane over the existing buildings generates a new circulation space between the two.

How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person! Style, taste, individual philosophy, subjectivity, cultural background, real experience, psychology, talent, tricks of the trade: all the elements that make what I write recognizable as mine seem to me a cage that restricts my possibilities. If I were only a hand, a severed hand that grasps a pen and writes... ⁴

visiting Parc de la Villette...

Get there by taking the metro to Porte de Pantin or Porte de Villette. If you’re in Paris during the summer, all the better, the park comes to life when the sun is shining. The structure of surfaces, lines and points laid out by Tschumi is inhabited by numerous spaces designed with different themes. Look for the bamboo garden for some sensory delight and try not to be too disappointed by the discovery that the aural treats are just recordings. Other things to look for include the chairs by Phillipe Starck and the huge pop art sculptures by Claes Oldenburg.

references:

1. Tschumi, Bernard (1996) Architecture and Disjunction , MIT Press.
2. Ibid.
3. see the projects section of tschumi.com.
4. Calvino, Italo. (1981) If on a winter's night a traveller , Minerva. (see previous post also)

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folly Link to an image of Tschumi's constructivist follies: courtesy of Dave Morris' flickr photostream.

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For Pat We'd journey, seemingly forever, from the town to the country. Darkness would fall, the headlights of the car only just winning the battle against the rural pitch black. Sleep. Breakfast in a farmhouse kitchen. Tea towels draped over the handles of the range. Spot, the farmhouse dog whose name is all that's necessary to describe his appearance, darts frantically around at your feet. A Jack Russell's demeanour never seems to change. Out to the yard to fetch the sheepdog, between the barns there's a mist trying hard to be fog. In the back of a Land Rover dog and I climb, I perch on the wheel arch, this is his space not mine. He eyes me suspiciously, I'm not his master; he suspects I am quick but he knows he is faster. The four by four vehicle forces dirt tracks to yield. Supermarket? School run? No. Sheep in a field. He's given the order and carefully slinks. Slowly at first then a whistle says FLY! Surgical precision. Away. COME BY! I fill pockets with stones that I find on the field. There are millions, they're worthless, I'm told it's called flint. They can make sparks and fires - now that's worth a mint. My memory grows hazy, it's a new time of year. I climb on a tractor - a Ford? A John Deere? Lambs I would later be able to eat - so cute, so cuddly - now my favourite meat. Some fed on bottles, I feel no remorse, knowing little of gravy, spuds or mint sauce. Here comes the harvest, a barn full of grain, protected from splashes of autumnal rain. I ride on the trailer towed by the tractor; it's bumpy, hilarious, dangerous even - but all thoughts of accidents don't seem to factor. Marks from the tractor scribed on the mud, straight lines and arcs, circles round trees, I'd repeat their perfection with a pen if I could. Back at the farmhouse a pheasant's our feed. Shot by the farmer, he carves it in tweed. A pipe. Pipe cleaners. The smell of tobacco. Spot jumps. We go home.

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I learnt last night that my Mother's best friend - whose husband was my Father's best man at their wedding and whose daughter was born on the same day as me - died this week of a heart attack. As a child I would visit their farm and, unsurprisingly, images of the place began to return when I heard the news. Tainted by the passing of time, some may be idealised fabrications; most are as vivid as if they were only days old. The slightly bouncy rhythm I'm going to blame on the fact that I was recalling a time when everything was a form of play. Every child deserves to have the opportunity to see the life blood of all of us - the products of working the earth - nutured and harvested. Yet I doubt I'll even be able to provide that experience for my own kids today. How many of you know someone who works with the land? Not many of you I'll wager.

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as early as you please An article I was reading about the current exhibition at the V&A in London reminded me of a book I have by John Ruskin, which, in turn, reminded me of some photos I took during a trip to Tuscany. Returning to the 101 year old book and the 3 year old digital photos, it seemed only fair to bring them together and share them with you. Here's a brief excerpt to wet your appetite. If you ever travel to Florence, let me know and I'll lend you the book.

Mornings in Florence by John Ruskin (1904)

Today, as early as you please, and at all events before doing anything else, let us go to Giotto's own parish-church, Santa Maria Novella. If, walking from the Strozzi Palace, you look on your right for the 'Way of the Beautiful Ladies,' it will take you quickly there.

Do not let anything get in the way of acquaintance, sacristan, or chance sight, stop you in doing what I tell you. Walk straight up to the church, into the apse of it; - (you may let your eyes rest, as you walk, on the glow of its glass, only mind the step, half way;) - and lift the curtain; and go in behind the grand marble altar, giving anybody who follows you anything they want, to hold their tongues or go away.

You know, most probably, already, that the frescoes on each side of you are Ghirlandajo's. You have been told they are fine, and if you know anything of painting, you know the portraits in them are so. Nevertheless, somehow, you don't really enjoy these frescoes, nor come here often do you? The reason of which is, that if you are a nice person, they are not nice enough for you; and if you are a vulgar person, not vulgar enough. ... Well, now you must ask for the Sacristan, who is civil and nice enough; and get him to let you into the green cloister, and then into the less cloister opening out of it on the right, as you go down the steps; and you must ask for the tomb of the Marchesa Strozzi Rifoldi; and in the recess behind the Marchesa's tomb - very close to the ground, and in excellent light, if the day is fine, - you will see two small frescos, only about four feet wide each, in odd-shaped bits of wall - quarters of circles; representing - that on the left, the Meeting of Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate; and on the right, the Birth of the Virgin¹. No flourish of trumpets here, at any rate, you think! No gold on the gate; and, for the birth of the Virgin - is this all! Goodness! - nothing to be seen , whatever of bas-reliefs, nor fine dresses, nor graceful pourings out of water, nor processions of visitors? No. But there's one thing you can see, here, which you didn't in Ghirlandajo's fresco, unless you were very clever and looked hard for it - the Baby! And you are never likely to see a more true piece of Giotto's work in this world.

If, however, you no longer have a single romantic bone in your body and you have no interest in holding the slightly yellowed pages of the original in your hand - unable to turn the pages due to the blisters on your mouse finger - you could simply download the whole thing from the Gutenberg project.

notes:
1. this image doesn't appear to be the one Ruskin is describing as the details are slightly different, the general theme is the same though and it's all I've been able to find so far - I'll have to go back again!

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skyspace Tags: jamesturrell, art, installation, photography, concrete Friday. A long day of CAD drafting ahead of me. My spirits are lifted briefly by the latest article by Hugh Pearman about James Turrell's installation, Skyspace. I get to the links at the bottom and realise that it's at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Hooray for the interweb! I know someone nearby...

From: Rob
To: Neil
Date: 28-Apr-2006 09:54
Subject: in the name of art Dear Neil, Need a big favour. Please could you fix it for me to see some photos of this: http://www.hughpearman.com/2006/13.html I know you've got the skills to nail it. All the best, Rob

A couple of e-mail exchanges later...

From: Neil
To: Rob
Date: 30-Apr-2006 14:44
Subject: Re: in the name of art Rob, Mission accomplished! Here's all the pics I took today, smallenised down for easy emailage: let me know if you want particular ones biggerified. I picked a busy time, Sunday afternoon, so that The Art Guards would have more people to bother with, and I was all hoodied-up for some sneaky phonecam action. Rather disappointed, then, that there isn't a member of staff /in there/, just one on the door. And I knew him. People were taking photos in there with normal cameras quite openly - in flagrant disregard of the rules - so I joined in. Don't get me started on the two incredibly loud women...

Then there was a lull in the traffic and it was just me in there for a while, so I got some architecturally bits and pieces that I thought you might be interested in: since the roof is open to the sky it seems to be designed a little bit like a wetroom, with channels in the concrete sides and a sort of drainage ditch running around the edge of the floor.

It's very calm in there, provided there aren't any talking people (quite an echo). It's a perfect square in plan, and I wouldn't be too surprised if the height of the room was the same, too. The sky-window seems to have almost no lip to it - it's a frame, not a shaft. Quite cloudy but bright today, so the sky was a big glow of white rather than blue. The walls and the ceiling around the frame are white, the sides/benches are that sort of smooth concrete stuff they seem to like using in modern builds these days and the floor is a rougher concrete-eqsue stuff. The sides and particularly the door frame with its slab of lintel lend the place a tomblike feel. The sides are sloped back at just the right angle to gaze upwards. Apparently they're going to open it at night sometime, which will be /so/ cool. I'll probably sneak back in during the week when there are less tourists about, and get some realcam pictures. Enjoy! Neil

Like I said, hooray for the interweb. And hooray for folks like Neil. I was a little skeptical when I first started reading the Hugh Pearman piece, much less so by the time I finished it. Now I'm entirely sold on the idea. It looks like an absolute delight for eyes and fingers. Anyone for a trip to the YSP?

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lost and found

18 KIs
National
Museum,
1977, cou

Tidying the office, looking for a missing drawing, found this photocopy of a book with the annotation just off the edge of the page...my boss can't remember the name of the architect, any takers? Beautiful, isn't it?

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Foot Where? At the climbing wall this evening. Chalk from my fingers infiltrating my PDA, each letter taking three attempts to write - my tendons sluggish from the lactic acid pouring into my forearms. A single missing trainer/sneaker/pump/dap¹ meant I had to retreat to the resin rockface instead of my usual Thursday night trip to the Fencing Club. For those interested in details, Crystal Leisure Centre in Stourbridge has a small climbing wall that's good for bouldering. It's £2.70 to get in and they're open till 11pm. The wall has a good overhanging roof which, sadly, is now beyond my strength or skill. I like to stare at it and reminisce.

1. delete as culturally applicable

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the kids are alright tags: modernism, design, serpentine, koolhaas In respectful silence we shuffle around the room. Lips tightly sealed, chins being stroked pensively; nobody daring to appear unaware of the importance of the artefacts on the walls and floor. We're monks in a monastery of modernism. Spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch. Chattering as she goes, my three year old daughter rattles across the floor with her toy buggy and parks herself over the sign that says please do not touch on the plinth carrying a Rietveld chair. Disapproving looks ensue and a stoney faced guard starts to stride towards us. The games commence. The modernism exhibition at the V&A has only a few days left to run. I can't report on the contents in much detail (too busy stopping my daughter sitting on iconic furniture) but I can tell you that the compact layout and the hushed atmosphere that everyone seems to fall into doesn't make it easy to take kids. You win some, you lose some. It's important though, for both us and them, to keep in the habit of going to galleries and exhibitions. In the courtyard outside, free from the clutches of the gallery police, I'm feeling quintessentially British with my trousers rolled up to my knees paddling in the blessed relief of ten inches of cool water. Matt Webb - trousers in a similar state - confesses that he would never have thought to paddle in the V&A courtyard pool had he not seen the kids do it first. You win some, you lose some. We talk about rabbits, neo-cons and perturbations.

Perturbation theory comprises mathematical methods that are used to find an approximate solution to a problem which cannot be solved exactly, by starting from the exact solution of a related problem. Perturbation theory is applicable if the problem at hand can be formulated by adding a 'small' term to the mathematical description of the exactly solvable problem.

Next stop: Hyde Park and the Serpentine Pavilion. As I'm taking some photos of the outside a passer-by notices the golden cover of the Zumbotel photography competition disposable camera in my son Josh's hand and stops to talk for a moment.

He asks about the building and I explain that it's a temporary structure by Rem Koolhaas constructed as one of a series of pavilions that have been erected each summer over recent years. Going for bonus points, I repeat something I'd half read in the press earlier that week about how the up-lift of the inflated roof is roughly equivalent to the weight of the lower section, therefore cancelling each other out.

"So it's a neutral building then?"

Well, yes, I say. I suppose it is. Neutral. Oh dear, this doesn't feel like a good start. We step inside and I deploy my 'small' term to find an approximate solution to a problem which cannot be solved exactly.

Reconfigurable, adaptable, democratic space? Building blocks. Like any other five year old would, he's built an island in the time it takes most adults to realise the foam chunks can even be moved.

Great stuff. Meanwhile, Tom and I wander and take some more pictures. Some nice detailing, shimmering translucent surfaces everywhere and an unexpected form to the underbelly of the balloon. Having completed perturbing the space, Josh is now leaping between foam stepping stones, zig-zagging between visitors.

Neutral. The idea won't budge. If the actions that define its position are cancelled out to zero, what do you have left? Nothing. I'm feeling nothing. Josh takes a tumble and lands in a heap on the sharp holes punched through the stainless steel floor. As I step forward to pick him up a staff member chooses that moment to move in front of me, preventing my progress, and points out that jumping on the blocks is unsafe and the floor is sharp. I thank him for the timely advice. Bloody exhibition police. Can't we create any space today that doesn't need policing?

An approximate solution to a problem which cannot be solved exactly ... If we accept that the quest for the perfect architectural solution is a problem which cannot be solved exactly ... the model or diagram or sketch is the utopian exact solution of a related problem ... so perhaps the final, constructed problem at hand can be formulated by adding a 'small' term to the mathematical description of the exactly solvable problem or diagram ... meaning that we need to admit perturbations by 'small' terms are necessary to move from the idealistic exact solution of a related problem to find an approximate solution to the architectural problem we wisely recognise cannot be solved exactly.

Meaning that a system which denies the possibillity for perturbation by 'small' terms is still just mucking about with the related problem, not the problem. The pavilion feels like the exact solution to a related problem because I can't perturb it with a personal, subjective viewpoint given it's neutrality. Perturbing the foam cubes is fun though. 24 hours later I realise that the emptiness is also to do with the way I feel about actions defining character. We head for the Diana Memorial. An Aussie in a lifeguard t-shirt gets perturbed, waves a walkie-talkie at us and tells us to stop paddling in it. Strewth.

Related entries: Tyred, Fantasy Architecture, Fantastic Architecture, Hands that do fountains. If nothing else I can at least say that I now know how to spell pavillion pavilion correctly. Full flickr set of photos: Serpentine 2006 Elsewhere: Dan Hill, Rod McLaren.

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Pop in for Art A visit to Wolverhampton Art Gallery proved to be, as usual, quite fruitful. Coincidence took me there on the same day the local paper announced the news that the new pop art gallery will go to planning commitee next week. To promote the proposal there is an exhibition in the contemporary gallery of the usual suspects, including quotes on the wall from Andy Warhol and Marshall MacLuhan. At the back of the room is a plan and cut-away aerial view, showing the proposed design by Niall Phillips Architects. I'm encouraged by what I saw and hope Development Control treat it favourably. Although if it's dealt with by whoever approved the monstrosity next to the market; anything could happen. Triangular in plan, the new building sits in an existing courtyard space with one side parallel to the existing buildinq - the other two travelling towards the street and colliding just past the building line of adjacent properties. The wedges of remaining space will provide an interesting tension between old and new. You might describe it as being one third respectful, two thirds cheeky. Which seems like a fitting recipe for a building to house pop-art. Inside, the gallery is top lit and there appears to be some form of internal brise soleil to control the sunlight on the walls. Using natural light in a gallery is notoriously difficult; let's hope Niall Phillips can pull it off. Viewing the work in a triangular space should be interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing the pieces chosen to face each other in the corners. Could be a happy marriage, could be Clash of the Titans. Either way, there is a danger that the form will negate the program. It wouldn't be the first time this had happened with a gallery design, just ask Guggenheim. Often called the 'mother of all arts', Mother Architecture sometimes forgets that her children should be given the space to grow up on their own. [colorado_vi.jpg]The main gallery is currently running an exhibition called 'Forest'. A mixed bag really, but there are one or two items worth a look. Such as, Colorado Impression No. vi by Dan Hays and The Wax Room by Ken Parsons. Hays' work was inspired by Googling for his own name on the internet and finding another Dan Hays who'd published pictures of his home town, Colorado, on a web site. The resulting landscapes are painted pixel by pixel, as if produced by digital rather than analogue means. From across the room their form is quite clear, but as draw nearer you realise they've been heavily compressed; the jpeg algorithm forming new landscapes at the boundaries between objects. It's equally captivating from any distance. [wax_room.jpg]Stepping into Parsons' Wax Room made me wish I'd worn my flares. Psychadelic and hippyesque¹, the walls and ceilings are covered in back-lit, kaleidascope like panels depicting different types of landscapes. Scatter cushions are provided for you to sit on whilst you listen to the voice over tell you about the imagery, in between the rise and fall of atmospheric music. If you have an Afghan coat; wear it. All that aside, the detailing of the panels is a delight and each is executed with care and rigour. [cucumber.jpg:in]Later, in the cafe on the fourth floor, whilst I struggled with the metaphysics of popforestart², my nine month old daughter struggled with the physics of cucumber slices. The beginning of this entry was accompanied by a cup of Gunpowder green tea and a Martin Joseph CD playing on the stereo³. It was a little bitter to begin with, but mellowed after I'd had something to eat. I'll leave you to guess which one I'm talking about.

1. Yes, I made this word up.
2. Yes, I made this word up as well.
3. One of the first CDs I ever bought was by Martin Joseph, it was called Dolphins Make Me Cry. I was clearly a rather melancholy teenager. Strangely, he was on Radio 2 again the morning I posted this entry.

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Wolverhampton Gallery tags: gallery, wolverhampton, critique, architecture Opening (I'm told) in March 2007, here's a preview of the nearly completed extension to my local gallery.

I'm looking forward to reviewing it next year, as the original proposal was the subject of one of my first blog entries in 2004:

Triangular in plan, the new building sits in an existing courtyard space with one side parallel to the existing buildinq - the other two travelling towards the street and colliding just past the building line of adjacent properties. The wedges of remaining space will provide an interesting tension between old and new. You might describe it as being one third respectful, two thirds cheeky. Which seems like a fitting recipe for a building to house pop-art.

You'll note that back then I believed this journal would be all about words with the occasional carefully placed image. Could I have been more wrong?

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icast Tags: podcast, architectureweek, jencks, erskine, events, birmingham

no, 2 self podcast episode 1:

Charles Jencks and Ralph Erskine - Participatory Politics and Organic Design (mp3 file - 17Mb).

It was only a matter of time before I got seduced by the idea of doing a podcast. This will hopefully be a two part program (if I manage to finish part 2 next week!) that will lead us up to Open Practice Day next Friday. The proposal is that you listen to them on the way to the office when you come and visit.

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ArchWeekWalk ArchWeekAnecdotes tags: architectureweek, podcast, googleearth, birmingham, events

Following on from the podcast to cover your journey to Birmingham, here's an annotated walk to the office for tomorrow's 'Open Practice' day. Either follow it by walking the streets or be lazy and download a copy of Google Earth then use it to open this file:

http://rob.annable.co.uk/docs/Birmingham-ArchWeekWalk.kmz

Alternatively, add a 'network link' to the above url and get the live version that I may update occasionally.

I've recorded some audio to go with it but I've got to try and reduce some of the wind noise on it before I publish it. Howling gales between the buildings played havoc with my microphone.

Update:

Audio guide to the office:

Podcast Episode 2 - ArchWeekWalk and an ArchWeekAnecdote. Upload to your mp3 player and follow the directions.

Subscribe to this and future episodes in iTunes: no, 2 self podcast

See you tomorrow today!

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The images linked to the Google Earth file are here: ArchWeekWalk flickr set.

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You'll have had your tea My boss has just returned from a weekend in his home country, bringing with him a national delicacy - the Scottish Buttery. He brought a pack into the office this morning and we had them lightly toasted with marmalade. They were absolutely delicious. Especially when washed down with my new tipple - white tea. So I donned my Google goggles and went hunting. As you might imagine, it didn't take long to find something...

The comparison between Aberdeen Rolls and French Croissants, at least in terms of texture if not appearance, has been made by several writers. It has been suggested that rolls and croissants have a common ancestry that dates back to the end of the seventeenth century in Budapest after the defeat of the Turks. It's unclear as to when rolls were first made in Scotland but where ever they came from they have subsequently became an Aberdeen speciality. If you visit the Northeast of Scotland you will find Aberdeen Rolls on sale in every bakery, corner shop and supermarket and if you taste them you will be hooked forever. The names Aberdeen rolls, Butteries and Rowies are interchangeable so take your pick or even use them all, you'll be understood what ever you call them. These quantities will make about 16 rolls.

• 1 lb of plain flour
• 6 oz butter
• 4 oz lard
• 1 heaped teaspoon of salt
• 2 heaped teaspoons of sugar
• half oz fresh yeast
• quarter pint of tepid water

taken from http://www.ifb.net/webit/recipes.htm (there are full instructions on preparation on the site) That's this weekends baking sorted.

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Caipirinha There are probably about a million places on the web that you might find a recipe for the following drink. However, I feel no shame in making it one million and one, as this entry is repeated verbatim from the instructions given to me by work colleagues on my birthday last year (along with a bottle of Cachaca and some limes). I don't want to lose it and I want to be able to find it easily, so here it shall rest.

Caipirinha - a brazillian kick ass cocktail What you need: Cachaca, crushed ice, caster sugar and a plastic mixing jug with a lid (if you are making for more than one person).

1. Crush loads of ice and put in freezer along with Cachaca bottle.
2. Wet and chill glasses in freezer with a sugared rim ready for later.
3. Wash, quarter and juice your limes, 1-2 or more per drink. Don't be fussy about this, try to get as much lime into the cocktail as possible and throw in the bits of skin if you like. The more zing the better. Keep some lime slices for decor in glass.
4. Put crushed ice, a shot of Cachaca and lime juice in mixer. Add caster sugar to taste - start with a tablespoon although the Brazillians like it with about 2.5 per glass. Shake well and pour into chilled glass with more crushed ice if you want.
5. The amount of Cachaca can be varied, start with the normal spirit measure.
6. Sit back, sip, enjoy and think of the Rio Office*.

A slightly odd entry, since I've given up drinking, but I'm sure I'll be able to find a special occasion worthy of a few cocktails and a brief lapse in my alcohol free regime. *The Rio Office is a long held dream by myself and co-workers who find ourselves stuck in an office in the West Midlands.

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spoon the mix into the ring

Libby has asked me to type it up, so here's a wonderfully simple cheescake recipe, passed to me by my father-in-law (who found it online somewhere), that's been impressing everyone I've made it for so far. The original used two lemons and more Mascarpone cheese but it works better by switching one lemon with an orange, using some double cream and reducing the Mascarpone.

The recipes category is feeling neglected. For further justification see the comments of the very useful round up of architecture weblogs over at thingsmagazine.net.

Ingredients:

• 12 digestive biscuits
• 100g butter, softened
• 1 tsp clear honey
• 1 lemon juice
• 1 lemon zest
• 1 orange juice
• 1 orange zest
• 250g Mascarpone
• 1/2 pot whipped double cream
• 150g caster sugar

Method:

1. Crush the biscuits and combine with butter and honey. Place this mixture into a metal ring and press the mix evenly on the bottom of the mould. 2. Add the juice and zest from the orange and lemon, along with the sugar, to the Mascarpone and whipped* double cream. Stir together gently to avoid splitting the mixture. 3. Spoon the mixture over your biscuit base and encourage it to set by putting it in the fridge for a couple of hours. 4. Eat it. 5. Groan with delight.

* I forgot this bit once - still edible but difficult to serve elegantly

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architects and their tools Podcasts I can recommend:

In a moment of extreme generosity and bravery, I let Al Morrissey cut loose with the final part of the latest recipe from Crash Test Kitchen this weekend. Homegrown cookery lessons on video, much easier to learn than reading a list of ingredients: http://crashtestkitchen.com

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Do(ug)h! Still not quite getting the Chinese Dumplings right. Last time I ended up making the dough too thick around the pork and it didn't cook through properly. Next time I'm going to try a different dough recipe that doesn't use oil or egg. Found this one at a different site: Jiaozi dough

• 3 cups flour
• up to 1 1/4 cups cold water
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Filling

• 300 grams fresh Chinese (Napa) cabbage
• 1/2 lb ground meat (pork or beef)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 TB soy sauce
• 1/4 tsp fresh ground white pepper, or to taste
• 1/2 green onion, minced
• 2 slices fresh ginger, minced
• 3 TB sesame oil

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eve's pudding I promised a series of more haptic entries and then disappeared back into the Real World to deal with the all too haptic experience of moving house. So, where were we? Amidst the colours, shapes, sounds and smells of childhood rests the memories of certain TV personalities. Delia Smith, Ken Hom, Madhur Jaffrey - all regulars on our TV thanks to my Mother's interest in cooking. Nestled in there, alongside Delia's half hearted smile, Madhur's sari, and Ken's wok, is the nameless domestic godess from the cover of the Be-Ro recipe book. My mother's cookery skills have long since surpassed the need for recipe books so I recently liberated it in order to share it with you. I tried the 'Eve's pudding' a couple of weeks ago and can report that it's fantastic with custard. Put down your Jamie Oliver and get back to basics.

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Fettuccine spinaci e pollo I cooked this a few weeks ago when Mike and Libby came over one evening, but haven't had chance to write it up until now. Since I've been trying a few dishes from Asia recently, I decided to switch location and move to Italy. I'm a sucker for any pasta dish, and I think Mike probably gets enough Asian food at home and at his parent's house - he's Vietnamese. It was pretty successful but perhaps a little bland, I suspect I should have added more herbs.

Ingredients for 4 :

• 300 g leaf spinach (frozen or fresh)
• 4 freerange chicken breasts
• 8 chopped fresh tomatoes or two cans of chopped tomatoes
• 4 cloves of garlic, finly chopped
• 3 medium sized onions, finely chopped
• red wine (can be of lesser quality, mainly used for the fond)
• olive oil
• pepper, rosemary, basil, oregano, salt
• 500g fettuccine
• creme fraiche

Cube the chicken and heat up a generous amount of olive oil in a solid non-stick or cast-iron pan on maximum heat until it smokes and add the chicken, frying it until it has a tasty golden brown colur. Turn down the heat to medium and add the onions and the garlic, stirring continuously. When the onions are golden and soft, add a generous slosh of red wine and stir furiously to generate a nice fond. Now add the spinach and the chopped tomatoes and a tablespoon each of oregano, rosemary (fresh or rubbed) and basil. Let the sauce simmer for ca 45 on low heat and add salt , pepper to taste and finish with a generous helping of creme fraiche.

Liberated, as always, from the pages of everything2. We have Heisenberg to thank for this one.

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Dont forget the route, Ginger Saturday night's visitors, Simon and Gemma, got to sample my cullinary skills. Inspired by the comical name for the new wine bar on Ludgate Hill in Birmingham - 'Mongolian and Motown' - I decided to try the Mongolian Beef recipe submitted to everything2: Ingredients

• 1 lb fillet or sirloin steak
• 3 tablespoons groundnut oil/vegetable oil
• 2 dried red chillies, halved lengthways
• 4 sping onions, shredded finely
• 2 large fresh red chillies, de-seeded and shredded finely
• 2 tablespoons chicken stock
• 1.5 tablespoons of Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry
• 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil salt
• chopped spring onions (two bunches should be enough)

For the marinade

• 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon rice wine or dry sherry
• 2 teaspoons peeled and finely chopped fresh root ginger
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 0.5 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon cornflour

Marinade the beef, brown it in a wok and then put to one side. Fry the chillis and shredded onions, add the meat and remaining ingredients. Keep the chopped spring onions to add when complete. Don't make my mistake and forget the ginger root. Added this to rice and made some Chinese style dumplings for starters. These are a doddle (minced pork, cabbage, soy sauce - wrapped in dough and deep fried) but my dough could do with some practice. Later, after I'd saved my laptop from a cloud of steam pouring from the microwave, I sent a message to the author of the recipe over at everything2. Got a reply suggesting we try ohagi, but by then we had already polished off a tub of ice cream.

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Pancakes Lifted this recipe from everything2 on Tuesday. Visit the site and do a search for pancakes to see the rest of the write up; it puts forward a pretty convincing case for the delight of making things for yourself. Put down that packet mix and get out the mixing bowl.

• 3 Tsp butter, melted
• 1 ½ cups milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1 ½ cups flour
• 3 Tsp sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder

Last minute shopping in Wolverhampton town centre highlighted a gap in the baking powder market. Tesco Metro were sold out. Marks and Spencers (the only other grocery store in that part of town) have a 'bakery' section, however, upon closer inspection I realised it consisted entirely of ready-made cakes in boxes. The sign appears to be a signal to people who want to avoid bakery. The local Indian supermarket came to the rescue on the way home - replete with baking powder, directly opposite the Halal meat. Oh, and don't forget the Maple Syrup; it's a crucial requirement for this American style pancake.

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blind contour friday Stuck in a terrible traffic jam on the motorway on Friday, I was travelling so slow I could reach for my pen and try my first submission for blind contour Friday run by Inkfinger.

I think I need some practice.

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drawing on the past It's been a busy week. There are a couple of entries waiting to be written, including one about the galleries I've been able to visit over the last few days. In the meantime, I'm posting an image instead of words. Predictably, looking at the art work of others has made me think about my own work. Having revisited some of my old sketchbooks - driven by the guilty admission that it has been too long since I last picked up a pencil instead of a mouse - I've decided to post a few to remind myself whenever I look here, that I should look elsewhere too and record events with more than just words. First up, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, as seen from seat 10, Row K on the 12th February 1998. I don't remember what was being played that evening, but since this was back in the days of Simon Rattle, I imagine it was pretty good. [cbso.jpg:centre2] Curiously, following my recent entry about Tschumi, I note that below the sketch is a comment about pages 205 and 213 in Architecture and Disjunction - I had apparently some interest in the sections on cross programming and rejection.

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crop [chairs.jpg:centre2]

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iron man [iron_man.jpg:centre2] Contrary to my Doctor's advice, I sat in the direct sunlight to draw this a few weeks ago. I think they call that suffering for your art. It's the sculpture by Anthony Gormley in Birmingham's Victoria Square. I mentioned it a while back. Whilst I was sketching this I started to think about some of his other work and a phrase I used on an entry about 'mobile clubbing' came to mind - implied rhythym. More on that later when I find a source for the specific sculptures I have in mind. For the moment I'm more interested in the realisation that my drawings are a device for capturing implied rhythym. Scrutinise them too closely and you'll find that the proportions of the individual parts are somewhat less than accurate. Be patient and wait until the last pencil stroke is finished and somehow the sum of the parts seems to equal the essence of the underlying form; a sort of Platonic ideal that keeps the whole thing together. No. Wait. That can't be right. I don't believe in Platonic ideals. There's no such thing. Aaarrrggghhhhhh! *snap* Anyone want a slightly damaged 4B pencil?

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noric [lines.jpg:centre2]

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meat pei Tags: Paris, Louvre, sketch You may already know, from things I've said in the past, that as a rule, I tend to get excited by process. The cause rather than effect. So, as a rule, I'm not a big fan of rules of form that prejudice the final effect before you've fully understood the cause. Rules can be broken. Standing on one of the upper levels of the foyer under the Pyramide at the Louvre with sketchbook in hand, I realised that I was looking at a pattern book. A pattern book of formal effects that you could point at and say, I'll have a bit of this, a touch of that and smattering of the other. So here it is, the I.M. (Meat) Pie Pei. It's got the lot.

If I were Rod McLaren I'd tell you that you could visit this location by standing at the base of Nelson's Column. See it in full colour in the Paris photo set. Watch for it when The Da Vinci Code movie is released in a few weeks. Related entries: The Dark Arts.

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120 [120.jpg:centre2]

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perspective [britrail.jpg:centre2]

The first thing in painting is that the objects it represents should appear in relief, and that the grounds surrounding them at different distances shall appear within the vertical plane of the foreground of the picture by means of the 3 branches of Perspective, which are: the diminution in the distinctness of the forms of the objects, the diminution in their magnitude; and the diminution in their colour. And of these 3 classes of Perspective the first results from [the structure of] the eye, while the other two are caused by the atmosphere which intervenes between the eye and the objects seen by it.

Quote taken from page 17 of The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Delivered daily by RSS thanks to Matt Webb and Project Gutenberg. Image taken from one of my old sketchbooks.

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signals [signal.jpg:centre2]

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blind-cab

eversion posted a photo:

(link) [sketchmore - eversion's Tagged Photos]

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Pompidou

eversion posted a photo:

(link) [sketchmore - eversion's Tagged Photos]

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terrazzo [honeymoon.jpg:centre2]

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sketchup mashup And here's why I'm really starting to enjoy this blogging business: the web editor

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three streets [natwest.jpg:centre2]

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Here and There From the introduction to Townscape by Gordon Cullen:

One building standing alone in the countryside is experienced as a work of architecture, but bring half a dozen buildings together and an art other than architecture is made possible. Several things begin to happen in the group which would be impossible for the isolated building. We may walk through and past the buildings, and as a corner is turned an unsuspected building is suddenly revealed. We may be surprised, even astonished (a reaction generated by the composition of the group and not by the individual building). ... In fact there is an art of relationship just as there is an art of architecture. Its purpose is to take all the elements that go to create the environment: buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic, advertisements and so on, and weave them together in such a way that drama is released. For a city is a dramatic event in the environment. ... We turn to the faculty of sight, for it is almost entirely through vision that the environment is apprehended.

In exactly the same way that Thom Mayne¹ isn't, Cullen is interested in the formal appreciation of the city. If Jane Jacobs - writing her introduction to Death and Life of Great American Cities in the same year (1959) as Cullen was writing his - writes solutions to the social/cultural problems of urbanity; Gordon Cullen sketches solutions to the formal/visual problems. His proposals are categorized under three main titles: Optics (or Serial Vision), Place and Content. In an effort to better understand his principles and simultaneously revitalize the somewhat neglected sketches category here on no, too self, I'm going to try and explain a few using drawings. As a homage to the originals, they'll be in a Cullenesque stylee, except I'll be using Photoshop instead of Letratone. First up will be examples of Place.

Place...is concerned with our reactions to the position of our body in the environment. This is as simple as it appears to be. It means, for instance, that when you go into a room you utter to yourself the unspoken words 'I am outside IT, I am entering IT, I am in the middle of IT'. At this level of conciousness we are dealing with a range of experience stemming from the major impacts of exposure and enclosure. ... Arising out of this sense of identity or sympathy with the environment ... we discover that no sooner do we postulate a HERE than automatically we must create a THERE, for you cannot have one without the other. Some of the greatest townscape effects are created by a skillful relationship between the two...

Sketch 1: Glebe Place (sight of the previous postcard entry):

showing (click image for flickr notes),

fluctuation: '...the stimulation of our sense of position through moving from the wide to the narrow and out again into some fresh space...'

closure: '...the creation of a break in the street which, whilst containing the eye, does not block out the sense of progression beyond...'

notes:
1. winner of this year's Pritzker Prize - see his lecture at architecture-radio.org for more on his interest in process rather than form: Part 1 | Part 2.

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train to cardiff On the way to a U2 gig on Wednesday. Reading G2.

Notes dump on the reverse as future reminder - book to add to wish list and details of a phonecam competition.