no2self.net

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

• 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)

I’ve never read any Jasper Fforde, but having just visited his web site and stumbled upon such delights as his ‘book upgrade centre’ it’s become clear I have no choice but to add all his work to my wish list.

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3: If you are running your library on the outdated SCROLL V7.3 or PAPYRUS 2.8, please upgrade immediately to BOOK 7.3 which is available by downloading HERE and is now bundled with PageGlow^TM and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:

…

Comes complete with a link to a label to download and add to your book once you’re done. Wonderful.

Hugh Pearman on one of my favourite firms, Caruso St.John:

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.

Synopsis from the ICA Philadelphia exhibition showing the work of one of my other favourite firms, UN Studio:

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.

Perhaps it’s time for me to choose which side of the fence I sit on.

Related entries: Walsall Art gallery (with embedded link to yet another 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)

‘400,000 new homes for West Midlands’ … Hold all my calls, it looks like I’m gonna be busy.

(link) [no, 2 self photos]

• 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)

Found outside the toilets at a Japanese restaurant - early Zaha Hadid?

(link) [no, 2 self photos]

(link) [no, 2 self photos]

Oh dear. I was beginning to wonder why The Public building was taking a while to finish. Here’s the answer:

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.