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Once Upon a Geodesic Dome
A few weeks back I helped a friend construct a geodesic dome for an islamic art workshop at the V&A in London. There are various ways of triangulating a dome or sphere (I believe the Bucky method produced a dome entirely of equilaterals) and I was not responsible for the calculations in this instance but […]
Posted in: Architecture, Buckminster Fuller
Their Time Will Come
July 24, 2010
It always amuses me to see the way in which we ‘allow’ nature into our cities. Always with boundries and constraints; ‘you can live on our streets but you can never leave this three foot square’. I love to see nature breaking these rules, it gives me great pleasure to see a cantankerous old Plane […]
Edge of Arabia – Berlin
July 15, 2010
Edge of Arabia is an exhibition organised by community interest company ‘Offscreen’. It is a unique collection of contemporary art from Saudi Arabia, from an art community that is historically non-existent and is now trying to find it’s feet and break through. After the impressive world debut of the Edge of Arabia exhibition in the Palazzo […]
Pink and Green
June 23, 2010
Contrary to popular belief multicoloured balconies are not some kind of definitive answer to designing social housing. Just as multicoloured fins are not all you need for an award winning office façade. It would seem that a multitude of ears perked up when somebody suggested that fluorescent colours might improve our collective disposition. Is this […]
Posted in: Architecture
Rural British Architecture – The Crisis
June 15, 2010
In my opinion there is a national (at the least) crisis in rural and sub-rural architecture. At some point in time we must have completely lost our way to reach our current, bleak, standpoint. The problem that I am referring to is encapsulated and realised in new housing developments just outside of towns all over […]
Posted in: Architecture, Britain
Dry Stone Walling – Somerset
May 12, 2010
On a clear and mild day towards the end of last year I started a dry stone walling course in the Mendip hills in Somerset. From the shadow of Wells’ famous cathedral a steep road climbs the edge of a wooded combe to a small pastoral farm. It’s here that a group of volunteers are […]
Reading Ruskin
April 30, 2010
I’m currently reading John Ruskin’s ‘The Stones of Venice’. Naturally, I skipped straight to the famous essay, ‘The Nature of Gothic’. I’m sure I will write a more conclusive post on the essay but until then something worth considering: Ruskin observes that Architecture is not received by the public with the same excitement of, say, […]
Posted in: Architecture, John Ruskin
Parlez-vous Français
April 21, 2010
Mid-April and I find myself grounded in a remote area of the beautiful French countryside. As much as I am enjoying my disconnected status (it’s amazing how quickly one can cultivate technophobia under the right conditions), I felt I ought to make at least one entry while I’m away. So, a brief, topical (to me) […]
Posted in: Language
The Art of Den
April 7, 2010
Building Dens is one of my fondest and most integral childhood memories. The vision that most prominently springs to mind is one of a roof constructed from harvested sweetcorn stalks beneath the late summer cover of a Crab Apple tree. The fruit of which is a fantastic source of ammunition to repel any way-fairing little […]
Djenné – Behind the Facade
April 6, 2010
Another talk on Djenne, this time by Charlotte Joy, an anthropologist at Cambridge, offering something quite different to the architectural perspective I have occupied so far. The many talks I have been to invariably open with an introduction on Mali, where it is etc, as one tends to to avoid any presumption of knowledge. Immediately […]
Occasionally Architectural 
September 19, 2010
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