no2self.net

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.

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.

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: 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 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!

The RIBA President’s Medals results have just been announced. This year I’m particularly interested in a couple of the dissertation awards.

A commendation went to Angela Hatherell from Oxford Brookes University for her piece Who do they think we are? Perceptions of Architects in Twenty First Century Britain.

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?

I’m curious to know what her conclusion is. I have a friend who goes to Oxford Brookes, I’ll see if he can get a copy. Alternatively, you could just tell me what you think of me and my profession in the comments.

The dissertation prize winner was Olivia Gordon from The Bartlett School of Architecture. The title of her work is Word-robe.

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.

I see that Derrida’s influence lives on. Unfortunately there are no illustrations on the web site, but this week’s AJ magazine shows some wonderful drawings of subtly adjusted anthropometric diagrams involving people moving a wardrobe.

Both look worthy of further examination, I’ll see if I can get hold of them. Let me know if you know someone who knows someone who knows where to get them.

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.

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’.

For more on the relationship between craft and design, see Peter’s entry – Art, Craft, and Design in Software Development.