Oldies

The last post got me looking at old photographs when i first bought my first analogue camera. Badly scanned but you get the picture.

for Patrick

Anti-nuclear weapons march, Glasgow, circa 2007

the beautification of building components for climatic control

The easiest method of unraveling solutions to building habitable environments in any country is to look at how the locals built, or at least how they once built. Slow advances in construction and the limitations of pre-globalised economies mould the vernacular in a way that always allowed for climate control via local means. The new constructions of the twentieth century brought unparalleled scales and densities using imported materials (wherever the buildings may have been) that subsequently demand intensive ventilation, heating and air conditioning not helped by the modern preoccupation with transparency.

We are seeing a resurgence in the appropriation of vernacular elements as well as new methods of non-assisted control but these aren't always holistically designed and often bolt on products. Wind cowls, brise soleil and other such items often appear as composite in their physical addition as one could perceive their cohesive integration during the design process.

A recent applied technology project required our team to produce an aid storage facility in Hyderabad, Pakistan. One look at a picture from 1890 tells quite a lot about how they deal with the heat.

When making a windcatcher using the same set of parts and junctions as the main structure, a cohesive arrangement appears to emerge.

One should ask when the designers are going to start playing with these parts of buildings? Tom Dixon cowls? Ron Arad brise soleil? I joke, but the real task is for these to be integrated with the composition of all the other building elements, which is harder with the removal of services and sustainability design from the architects responsibility and into the hands of specialists. Specialists without our concerns.

the best way to find out how something works

Last night i destroyed a book which felt in some way blasphemous, but it was in the name of discovering how books are constructed. This act was prompted by the inadequate resources found on the net, only finding awfully presented american websites and bookbinding equipment suppliers.

The book in question was The Trachtenberg Speed System of Basic Mathematics which was acquired from a trip around the house of the mole manof hackney, a man of local folklore, who once lived at 121 Mortimer Road at which he created an underground network of tunnels without any from of reason other than the extension of his wine cellar. Since then he has fled the house, been fined, the tunnels filled with concrete by the council and earlier this year he died. I would suggest to anyone to google him and I'm sure Ian Sinclair writes about him. Passing the house recently I noticed the roof has collapsed and will continue to fade from existence. Much like the book.

After crudely pulling various layers apart, I realised the intricacies of the objects would not reveal itself, so from then the forced decay proceeded through a more methodical removal and proved somewhat calming.

This new understanding will result in the production of a book.
Don't expect a novel, but expect.

release

I remember corresponding with Rachel Farricker - the editor of this new book, Pennine Lancashire Squared - about Neu Architects contribution as winner of the Bacup square, but i always assumed it would be confined to a small circulation and I have been thankfully corrected. Hopefully its inclusion in the RIBA bookstore will raise the presence of the competition and the practice. Go NEU!

back in the day

At a talk at this years Serpentine Pavillion, this kid had the most inexhaustible interest in an injured bee and had no fear of letting it dance around in his hand, superpowers obviously! The little man proved to be pictured more than this years evidently photogenic pavillion.

film roll returns

Lonely perfect intruder

This melancholic box came around to check your security. You weren't home so he broke in!

So i'm gonna say it...

I propose that Zaha Hadid won the Stirling Prize because it was "her turn".

The title of the award winning building is to be one that "gives the greatest contribution to British architecture in that year". Initially I can't see how many foreign projects can have a vivid impact on the state of play back on this island, and results in the reading of the project through plans and a limited number of choreographed photos. I ask how much influence can that have on a young student or the average architect flicking through pages of the Architects Journal? Or whether it produces a valuable influence beyond the visual treat that can be used to foster seeds of thought back in Britain? Without visiting I would judge that it's not her best stirling entry, her transformative and directional formality I thought married to the BMW factory programme with effortless cooperation, but that it might be the last of her buildings completed in the heavy, shifting rectilinear family as the newer fluid methods have gained favour in her office.

Evidently Zaha thrives in our ocular-centric culture and she has been met warmly by an artistic community that see a tangible riot of expression in her forms that stir more in some people than the subtle wit of dutch rationalist brick details. My eyes are still swayed, but I find more interest in her small scale items. Their purity of her language shines and overrides my distaste for the ostentation of superfluous gestures and at times vapid programmes. Who knows what it teaches us that the most important building of the year is devoted to a collection that has yet to be even set into gestation. This is still an artefact of an era where high art and it's gestures are held in the highest regard, able to disregard social agendas, urban contexts and the boundaries of economic means.

A very closed circle appears to be taking shape in amongst the upper echelons of the architectural crowd. With awards, jury positions, serpentine pavilions and curation roles swapping to and fro like classroom notes amongst friends. This isn't to denounce their talent, my question is to ask whether that talent is so concentrated within the pool of the worlds young and established practitioners?

Amanda Bailieu belated in her blog the lack of overt voting or discussion between the judges or infact anyone in the programme featured on the BBC. Would it be the worst thing in the world to have an argument on TV? Where are the caricatures? Architecture is big enough to have violent opposing sides! There are heated critiques and debates in the colleges across the country yet there is polite fence sitting at the top? Do we need to invite Will Alsop to get things stirred up?

Designing for overt opportunities

AA series from HC Wang

Pennine triumphs

So after a long time under the floorboards, Neu Architect's competition win in Bacup has finally been announced and broadcast to the architectural broadsheets here and here.

These Lowry-esque images show our peppering of improvements linked to local historical references, winking in the direction of knowledge that is slowly disappearing. Although i did want to do something so very sinister and awkward as this is League of Gentlemen country.

Regeneration, but not as we know it!

The last thing I remember about Nottingham was being driven to school by my dad in the back of army land rovers, but the place has far since from moved on from rogue fathers and that time my neightbours car was set on fire, or at least i hope so. Basically what i'm trying to say is Nottingham has a new centre for contemporary arts that finished a few weeks ago by London-based Caruso St John.

Tom Dyckoff talked on the culture show about it being a move of recession styled architecture, but really this sounds like he's never seen a Caruso St John building before, This is much more than current penchant for shabby-chic. They've always made buildings in this vein. They have always been in search of an architecture of a contingent nature, they thrive in the found space, the residual charged space that forever carries the baggage of life and years. They leave these places touched by marks that are formally and historically cohesive to themselves, avoiding the contrast of new and old they aim to continue past moves and play the games of expression and suppression. Obviously this game is much more difficult with a blank site, and no existing fabric to play with, but they manage to pull off spaces that possess the familarity and chance similar to that found in abandoned houses or factories. It bodes well that the team organising Nottingham CCA have pushed the extent the project to bring a wholeness that connects curation, architecture, product, food and graphics.

They lock at odds with the wider architectural community, creating buildings that relate to people at a tangible scale and that are locally legible yet complex enough to avoid a catchphrase silhouette.