Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links
Mr Bricolage. 1991 Find a hero. Read everything about them. Apply it. Find another. Do it again. Those were Jay Potts’ instructions. For someone with the capacity to obsess over something for a short period, they still work perfectly. Jay was my architecture lecturer. Well, he was the one really. Found me a job. Picked […]
Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links
Modules. What happens when I don’t know what to write? I write that. What happens when I feel uninspired? I watch a video about making stuff. Then go make something. Happened yesterday. Last weekend I made a sturdy bench on wheels. The rickety thing I’d been using for the past year — plywood balanced on two […]
Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links
Pretending to be a Monk. There’s something about fishing. In the early morning, heading toward the rising sun, the sea is calm. There’s no wind. A shingle beach is hard to walk on. But waves on stones sound better. The tide is out, and I pick out pockets of flat sand to make the walk […]
Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links
I’m Starting a New School. Lauren found my camera in a field yesterday and earned fifty quid. Pentridge Down sits high above North Dorset, topped by Pembury Knoll — an ancient Iron Age fort looking out across Cranborne Chase. Hardy used it as inspiration for Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Yesterday, it became the final classroom […]
Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links
A Tale of Two Burgers. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of being ripped off; it was the age of not. It was the FA Cup semi-final, it was the last game of the season. It was Wembley Way, it was St Mary’s. We had […]
Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links
Why aren’t houses more fun? We design our houses for sleeping, eating, washing and sitting (toilets and sofas). That’s about it. Oh, a bit of laundry. Is this really the best we can do with human existence? Think about the houses you remember from childhood. Other people’s houses mostly. Your grandmother’s. Your friend’s. The cupboard […]
Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links
The Underpants. Two conversations recently, both drifting from floor plans and kitchen layouts into the state of things. “We need Rupert Lowe. He’s the only one who can save this country,” she said. “The trouble is, this isn’t a superhero movie,” I said. And then, a few days later: “I think we’re heading into a […]
Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links
Dear Prudence. The sun is up, the sky is blue. Spring, I think. Feels like it anyway. Nearly a quarter of the year is gone. GCSE season will be upon us soon. Last time it came round I could recite various English Literature quotes and poems from memory — hours spent rehearsing with my daughter. […]
Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links
What have I done? I’m building a dataset. Late into the night. Night after night. Bleary-eyed, moving from one Rightmove listing to the next. Import the floor plan. Scale it. Draw spaces over the top that link to a database. A pre-formatted A3 sheet populates itself. Export. Done. Next. Over and over again. It started […]
Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links
Two Tribes. I was sitting in the architecture studio yesterday listening to students explain their design ideas when we heard that whirring air-raid siren. I’m too young to remember the Vietnam War, although I do remember the ‘boat people’ at RAF Sopley in the New Forest. My first news memories, alongside the background threat of […]
