no2self.net

A rather off-topic post, but hopefully of value to some fellow parents… This is Josh. He’s ten years old. He can light up a rugby pitch, climb to about grade 5c/6a and strike a cricket ball with such Gower-like sublime beauty I get tearful. What he can’t do very well, or at least doesn’t really [...]

Some threads worth tying together…. Thingsmagazine.net recently covered the plight of MVRDV, who appear to have unwittingly (?) upset a lot of people (again) by designing a pair of towers complete with their own explosion of structure billowing out from their mid rift. Things magazine cuts through the possible conceptual justifications by suggesting Minecraft as the [...]

(The Isolator found via Anne Galloway’s always brilliant tumblr) We’ve been using 37signals products at the office for years now. I’m a big fan of their products and their philosophy. For some reason though I remained dismissive regarding the business self-help book Rework they published last year. Probably the fault of that usual suspect: ego. A [...]

Taking the time to write something considered and share it online is not easy, so getting reminded why it’s worth it is always welcome.  I’ve certainly appreciated all the supportive comments about my first submission to the housing blog over at bdonline.co.uk and much more importantly I’ve learnt lots in return from people sending links [...]

A couple of announcements: blogging My hope of getting back in the blogging saddle has resulted in agreeing to try the occasional entry for bdonline.co.uk and their new housing blog. I’ve kicked off by relying on some fairly classic texts for comfort and expanded on what began as a twitter message musing on the value [...]

As you may have noticed from all the (t)wittering a few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be offered a place on a field trip to Germany to study Passivhaus construction principles. As my practice continues to try and raise the energy efficiency bar in the social housing sector and travel along the seemingly [...]

My name is Rob Annable. I’m an architect, a father, a husband, a rock climber, a blogger and wannabe geek. Although not necessarily in that order. I’m a director at Axis Design Architects. We’re architects and urban designers in Birmingham, UK. We mostly make housing  and we are leaders in the field of online methods [...]

A long time ago I wrote a blog entry on the back of a paper bag. It was a review of a chapter from a Calvino book – the author who, as Kieran Long once twittered, architects always turn to when they want to appear arty and sensitive. At the risk of further proving that [...]

I’ve been itching to tell you about this for months, ever since Matt last put me up for the night at Hotel Webb and gave me a sneak preview. The other half of the ever-inspirational Schulze & Webb has published the results of his Bendy Maps research and the finished product is even more beautiful [...]

I hinted at one the projects I’ve been working on in a recent post and followed it up with a presentation at Ecobuild. The full write up is on the new BSD blog and images available at Slideshare, but I should offer an excerpt and some further notes here. Vision-lozells.org represents my first attempt to [...]