no2self.net

Times are hard. Your credit is being crunched and there’s nothing you can do about it. Your value is being chamfered. Open the door and run. Run like the wind. Jump. Jump up. Jump up, jump up and get down. Nobody can take that from us, it’ll always be ours. Everything else has gone to [...]

More notes from Architecture, You and Me by Siegfried Giedion (found in a second hand bookshop in 2005). This time it’s the recounting of a delightful list of important urban design developments since 1850 – books and building – according to Mr Giedion. The New Urbanists amongst you may find the regular appearance of Corb [...]

Still here. Like a Norwegian Blue, I’ve just been resting. I return with some summer frippery. First, another day in the life post, since the past one proved quite popular. This time delivered via twitter, an offering made even more poignant perhaps by yesterday’s news that they’ve pulled the plug on the UK. So, from [...]

Time to put my money where my mouth is, as they say. Here’s the fourth and concluding part of the ‘architecture re-housed’ trilogy – photos of the completed houses. Of course, although I’ve been quoted on the Building web site this week about the need to focus on existing housing, that doesn’t mean I’m not [...]

Here in Birmingham we await the results of the competition to see which starchitect will be delivering us their iconic vision for the future of the city’s library. As you can imagine, we’re all jolly excited about it *cough*. Before we get to this bright new future, the previous one has to be dealt with. [...]

Radio 3 interviews are ripe for the picking of architectural metaphors. In the time honoured blogging tradition of curating x and pointing out that it’s a bit like y, here’s a quote from Booker Prize winning author Anne Enright that got me thinking about spatial comparisons and architectural narratives (my emphasis). A short story is [...]

Despite booking my tickets late, the session on reducing carbon emissions in existing housing was one of the few that still had some places. A few days later, when the proceedings were kicked off by Alan Simpson MP, there were still some empty chairs. Perhaps, I twittered, refurbishment work just isn’t glamorous enough. If that’s [...]

John Hill over at Archidose has tagged me with this refreshingly simple meme. 1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages). 2. Open the book to page 123. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the next three sentences. 5. Tag five people. John’s Gibson quoting choice talks of ‘…the hopes of [...]

The final part of the story about the design of half a dozen houses in the West Midlands… The next day, exhibition and obligatory drink with fellow bloggers over, I headed back to the office. As I’m recounting to colleagues the story of my discovery of a reference to a similar housing layout in the [...]

Proving that blogging can be a slow medium too, here’s the second part to an entry written almost a year ago… December 2006, London, RIBA HQ. Flicking through the pages of the book to accompany the Eric Lyons exhibition at the RIBA, I send a text to Rod: In the RIBA cafe, muffins are terrible. [...]