no2self.net

Found by pressing the ‘related feeds’ button in bloglines.com to get a list of blogs similar to my own:

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…”

(my emphasis)

Architectural Advent day 14:

The changing face of Architectural Review magazine - batch 1: the 1960s.

Architectural Advent day 13:

Romance, courting, marriage, old age. All in one Letraset sheet. Now that’s value for money.

Note to self: when wearing a sweater jauntily over your shoulders, always hook your thumb over the top your belt.

Architectural Advent day 12:

We might as well continue the theme from day 11 with an alternative proposal that takes the full width of the plot. This project is part of the work I did with two colleagues just after graduating. My only bit of advice should you choose to try this layout is to go for underfloor heating. We tried a trench heating solution along the glazing which proved to be tricky and probably doesn’t provide sufficient heating load. Under the current, more environmentally aware regulations, the extent of glazing might raise some eyebrows. In our case we were able to demonstrate that the solar gain outweighed the fabric loss over the course of a year.

Only for use in south facing sites!

This one comes with a photo of the finished product - the full set, including concept sketches by Tom can be found on flickr.

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

After several years of housing market boom here in the UK, there are lots of people drawing down on mortgages and extending their home. I’ve been involved in a few over recent years, and in a city who’s housing stock is largely made up of Victorian terraces there is often a pattern to the house type that people wish to extend. The outrigger of a standard terrace usually struggles to deliver what people want from a contemporary kicthen. There’s never quite enough room for all the appliances and the breakfast bar as well. Leaving nowhere to put your Starck lemon juicer.

The honest truth is that, for me, it’s tough to get a project of this scale to be economically viable, as the input involved usually outweighs the fees that you can sensibly propose without screwing the clients budget. So if you happen to live in a property like this and you’re thinking about extending your kitchen, here’s a few sketches I did for a simple replacement of the coal shed / outside toilet.

Just employ someone to draw it up for planning and building regulations. It’ll save you some money.

This particular project was sent to the client by post card - the full set can be found on flickr.

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…

“…This particular project was sent to the client by post card…” - As an initial proposal! The back-of-a-knapkin drawing is such a cliche. I’d have drawn it up had it gone ahead. On a paper bag perhaps.

Architectural Advent Day 10:

Party people. Partying. Not sure about the date on this one, but it has a certain Abigail’s Party quality to it that suggests the late 70s. Check out the lecherous dude in the centre and the girl to his right who seems to be smiling with relief now that he’s heading to the chocolate fondue fountain.

Architectural Advent Day 9:

An excerpt from a 1976 edition of AD (entitled Whatever happened to the systems approach?) containing an interview with Terry Farrell and Nick Grimshaw discussing their work with timber frame housing:

Farrell-Grimshaw interviewed by James Meller (PDF link)

(Sample from cover and image from interview topic)

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.

Terry Farrell:

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.

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.

Found via Adam’s del.icio.us links - Aggregät 4/5/6

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.

Added straight into the ever-growing bloglines list.

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