“This time, though, Keill avoided those streets. He was looking for a different source of information – local facts, this time, rather than space talk. Every world had its own forms of communications media – holo-screen or the more out-dated ultravid. The media people were the ones most likely to know what he needed to …
Facing up, originally uploaded by eversion. There’s something very satisfying about the way this building keeps facing you as you round the bend. Successfully enfronting the site I think Charles Moore would say. update: Yep, enfronting it is: I should get this out of my system. It must be getting quite dull, all this relentless …
Birmingham City Council launched a major new project today. I spent the afternoon with Director of Housing, Elaine Elkington and Councilor John Lines at the opening of our passive solar experiment in Kings Heath. This marks the beginning of 3 years of post-occupancy monitoring we’ll be doing in collaboration with the guys at Hockerton Housing. …
The dwelling places of Europe have an air of inheritance, or cumulative possession—a hive occupied by generations of bees. In America, the houses seem privately ours, even when we have not built them up, in pine two-by-fours and four-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood, from a poured-concrete foundation. Houses are, as Newland Archer sensed, our fate. The …
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 …
A timely post from the Staufenberger Repository on clip art as I prepare my Powerpoint for next week: Includes an outrageous comment from me suggesting that my old letraset uploads were without precedent. In fact, the very opposite is true. Patrick sent over the direct links for each of these fine collections: store.doverpublications.com/0486273512.html store.doverpublications.com/0486257622.html store.doverpublications.com/048628218x.html …
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 …
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 …