no2self.net

I’ve managed to snaffle a copy of the reading list from the MA Urban Design course at UCE. I offer it here as inspiration to anyone looking for new stuff to put on their Amazon wish list:

PDF link: MA_UrbanDesign_ReadingList_2005.pdf

It seems that post-modernity is the theme du jour. I can help out with a couple of books on the list - see my previous post on ‘Postmodernism for Beginners’ and the subsequent (more useful and more academic) notes by Peter.

My visit to the London a couple of weeks ago was poorly timed and I missed the Open House event last weekend. Don’t panic, I can still deliver the goods - I dispatched my colleague Yumiko to bring back news and photos.

Actually that’s not strictly true, I didn’t dispatch anybody, she went of her own free will, as she has been for several years, which is more than I can claim. Yumiko - 1, Rob - 0.

She returned to the office on Monday talking enthusiastically about a house in Hackney that she’d visited, and handed me a little hand drawn booklet with sketches in that had been issued by the architect.

The drawing style looked familiar, and sure enough, it turned out that she’d unwittingly visited the home of one of my ex-tutors, Ed Frith from MovingArchitecture.com.

I got to tell her all about Ed and what an inspiration/surprise he’d been to all the year 1 students he’d taught and what a loss it had been when he left Birmingham and jumped ship to Greenwich School of Architecture. Yumiko - 1, Rob - 1.

It looks like his house is finished now, or at least a lot more finished then it was when I last saw some pictures a few years ago. Looking at some of the detailing made me realise how a good teacher can have subtle influences on you without you even realising it. Aesthetic preferences, material sensibilities, detailing seductions. Approach.

Here’s part of the detailing of Ed’s kitchen:

And here’s some furniture I made a couple of years after Ed left:

Yumiko - 1, Rob - 1, Ed - 1.

Exposed plywood is such a deliciously honest detail.

As usual, there are more photos on my flickr account.

It seems that the last 12 months has indeed been the year that the WWW finally got useful. Ten years on and we finally got there. Blosxom, Bloglines, Usemod, Flickr, PlanetPlanet, Moblog.co.uk and now Librarything¹ (and of course, del.icio.us²).

We all need structure and I think I need it more than others thanks to my restless scatterbrain. I started adding things to my catalogue and must have been at least 3 or 4 books in before I’d actually worked out how librarything could be most useful to me - pending/unfinished reading lists controlled with tags. I can syphon off groups using combinations of tags: nonfiction, philosophy, unfinished (for when I’m feeling serious); or fiction, humour, unread (for when I’m not).

A great idea that can surely only get better, go and take a look.

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.

Staring back at me from the kitchen table this morning - the totally unprecedented new look?

Elsewhere, the editors summarise: Berliner: the blogs react

Ok, so that won’t have been a lot of use to you if you read it via RSS - visit the entry in your browser to see the full librarything.

I’ve been trying out librarything.com…

The public speaks. Or perhaps just a bunch of architects. Who knows what the visitor list consists of at the New London Architecture exhibition? Is it just gaining interest from people in the trade (and related trades) or is it pulling people in off the street?

Whoever they are, they’re certainly proving to be a perceptive and outspoken bunch as the wall of postcards containing comments demonstrates.

Here’s my submission:

I was in the mood for a simple expression of preference and support. I managed to squeeze in a visit last week for about twenty minutes, in between attending the opening night of the We’re Not Afraid exhibition, meeting with Avril to discuss how to deliver a world tour and running across Euston Station to dive on the 11:40 Pendolino back to Birmingham.

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

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.

Thus begins the preface to Victor Papanek’s Design For the Real World, first published in 1971. With a battle cry such as that, you’re quickly drawn in; marching the streets with him, fist raised in the righteous name of morally responsible design. Right up until your next trip to Ikea.

It’s an important and influential book, you should read it. Beyond the preface its contents is constructive rather than simply polemic and the theory is backed up by many examples of environmentally/socially conscious designs. One example is this project to design artificial burrs that prevent erosion, deliver plant seeds and are produced using recycled material (click for the full scale scan).

This entry is brought to you thanks to a link that jogged my memory on the always-brilliant We Make Money Not Art:

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.

Just received this via the Michael Moore mailing list:

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).

The subject of children’s play provision comes up in our office quite a lot. You may remember a previous post from last year that quoted landscape architect, Helle Nebelong, about the perils of standardisation - here’s an excerpt:

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.

Delivering anything other than dull, lifeless, off-the-shelf equipment that can be found everywhere you look across our cities is always a challenge. Not because of a lack of imagination on my part you understand, rather because it’s difficult to find a client prepared to experiment with something without a clear health and safety precedent.

Which is why I was delighted to discover this design for some swings when I took the kids to the Telford Town Park a few weeks ago.

It’s simple, cheap, eco-friendly (due to the re-use of tyres), robust and most importantly - bloody exciting.

Car tyres that have been fixed to standard swings are arranged in an octogan on a frame made from telegraph poles. You start swinging. The battle commences. Initially it’s difficult to tell whether it’s been constructed so that it’s impossible for the tyres to collide. The adults around the edges can’t resist adjusting the pace of their pushing to try and find out. The swings opposite each other come tantalisingly close. Tension mounts. The kids adjacent to each other start to size each other up.

A few more near misses and then riots of laughter all round - a glancing blow from the side as two of the swings reach the top simultaneously.

Brilliant.

Congratulations to whoever designed it. I wish it had been me. I took a mental note of the construction and sketched it later. We should build more of these.