crossing streams

Some work on a lecture I recently gave about Secured by Design (more on that coming up) produced a spin-off diagram worth sharing. Unashamedly following the Indexed model (what’s the formal name for this diagram type?), it pitches three elements of urban design (accommodation, people, transport) against each other and marks intersections, inputs and outputs. …

bum note

I’ve made some disparaging comments about Daniel Libeskind in the past, but their critical value was admittedly low as I’d never visited one of his projects in person. A recent trip to Manchester gave me the opportunity to put that right by visiting the Imperial War museum. So here’s the thing; no matter what you …

Architecture Week Open Practice Day

Architecture Week is upon us and we’ll be taking part in Open Practice in Birmingham again this year. Axis Design will be opening it’s doors to the public on Friday 22nd June to talk about our latest work; the topic this year is How Green Is Our Space? We’ve had a very successful year developing a number of projects with a strong green agenda and I’m excited about the opportunity to get some comments and input from visitors.

Unfortunately, to my bitter disappointment, we weren’t included in this year’s paper catalogue. After a few moments of cursing and wondering whether to call it off for fear of lack of advertising I gathered my thoughts and realised I had a secret weapon: You.

Please, help me spread the word and flex my Google muscles a little. Pass it on, tell your friends, link me up – I’ve put an entry on the office web site with more details, please drop it into whatever blogging, bookmarking, digging, tumbling tools you have at your command:

Architecture Week Open Practice Day

Better yet, come and see me next week, I’d love to show you some of the work we’ve been doing. Failing that, I have a shiny new digital whiteboard to play with and if you’re lucky I’ll get some biscuits in.

Axis Design Open Practice

Continuing in the yearly tradition, I’ve picked out a few items (after the jump) from the Architecture Week events list for the West Midlands. Work your way through as many as you can and then come and tell me about them when you visit next Friday! Last year’s podcasts and Google Earth route is still available to help you find your way to the office.
Continue readingArchitecture Week Open Practice Day

vacant space

You’ve missed Janek Schaefer’s Vacant Space. Fortunately, I visited on your behalf. 1 A video installation at Birmingham’s MAC, it’s a white box containing 360 degree panoramic images of interiors projected on the wall. They scroll, scrape and judder past with transitions between images that feel like a fight for supremacy between the wildly different …

theory about practice

Rod, knowing I’ve finally started reading Thousand Plateaus, flicks his del.icio.us wrist and points me towards the sweetest spot of the latest BLDGBLOG interview with Mark Wigley. It’s too good not to repeat at length here: BLDGBLOG: There also seems to be a huge reliance today on extra-architectural theory, like Gilles Deleuze. But if students …

Here and There

From the introduction to Townscape by Gordon Cullen: One building standing alone in the countryside is experienced as a work of architecture, but bring half a dozen buildings together and an art other than architecture is made possible. Several things begin to happen in the group which would be impossible for the isolated building. We …