Another image for those in Norwich who have direct influence over what gets built in our fine city.
This is a house in London.
www.crawfordpartnership.co.uk
Originally uploaded by Crawford Partnership
Does this building look out of keeping? Not at all!
Today I finally decided to get an Independent on Sunday after betraying them for some considerable time by getting the Observer.
The Independent on Sunday comes in a tabloid format with just one section containing all the other sections yet it doesn’t appear to be as thick as it ought to with all those sections contained within it - less paper? And the magazine isn’t super glossy like the Observer’s.
Thing is that it’s only me reading it (at the moment) so we decided not to get a Sunday paper at all. That should save us nearly £100 a year which can go towards the summer holiday.
The TV listings were a significant improvement since we last got an IoS - shame we deceided not to get it anymore!
I was returning from a meeting in the city when I spied ahead Steve Morphew with Brian Morey. Perhaps they were furtively discussing the implications of the recent Norwich local elections where Adrian Ramsey’s Green Party overtook my former party as being the largest opposition party. It seems that Labour will continue to lead a minority administration with just 2 seats ahead of the Greens.
How the mighty have fallen; back in 2003 the Lib Dems had 30 seats and now they have 6!
For the first time since I got involved in local politics I actually had a proper chat with Steve. We talked about the old times and about the current situation vis-a-viz the Greens. When I said that the only thing that would tempt me back into local politics was to be on the planning committee again Steve jokingly suggested that I join the Labour Party. Or was he? I remarked that trying to win a seat in Norwich South from the Greens would be a monumental task - certainly in my ward Nelson. If I heard Steve correctly he seemed to indicate that Labour had some secret strategy to oust the Greens from a ward…
I asked Steve if he knew who ‘Comrade’ was. I have come across Comrade on some of the local political blogs. Comrade seems to know me and I’ve been curious to know who he / she is. Comrade it seems has recently defected to the Lib Dems. Steve told me that former Labour councillor Daniel Roper had joined the Lib Dems and was seen canvassing on their behalf. Surely Daniel Roper must be Comrade? I remember Daniel from my councillor days. I never spoke with him but he did have a baby at about the same time as we did and he & I would acknowledge each other across the council chamber by nodding our heads.
While I had the ear of the leader of the council I impressed on him that we needed to do something about the mediocre residential architecture (I’m being too kind with that adjective) that seems to be endemic in Norwich.
Just read an article on the BBC online news about a bakery at Everest Basecamp. The younger me would have been quite bemused by this; the purist in me would have seen this as some concession to those that weren’t real hikers! But actually I felt that there was some kind of inevitability about it and that it was actually good that Dawa Sherpa is able to make money out of those Western tourists who can throw money at getting to Everest Base Camp. Apparently the profits will go to into a trust fund that will help local villages prepare for the worst effects of climate change.
I remember the first time I ascended Snowdon in Wales to find some dingy cafe just below the summit to cater for tourists who took the easy way up by the Snowdon railway. The coffee was dreadful, but then that was in the dark ages when the British hadn’t a clue about coffee.
Taking the tourist route up Ben Nevis there’s a metal bridge spanning a gully. Bloody Hell I thought when I first encountered it! This makes it too easy. But then Ben Nevis is going to attract people with zero experience in hill walking and the bridge is there to minimise accidents. But then if you’re a novice on the summit of Ben Nevis in June and the cloud is down, visibility is bad and it’s freezing then that bridge hasn’t really helped you much!
While I’m at it I’ll get something else off my chest. Cadair Idris in mid-Wales is a really nice mountain that I’ve been up numerous times. As you emerge from the woodland above the Minffordd car park, to your right (going up), is a fast flowing stream. It’s quite easy to get across and for years walkers were left to decide for themselves about whether they should cross the stream. But the powers that be decided that a bridge should be built to make life nice and easy for everybody. As far as I’m concerned if you’ve come down the side of the mountain that meant you needed to cross the stream to get to your car in the carpark then tough!
Our eldest [8] read my small collection of Tintin books very quickly. She would read them after her bedtime story and we would hear giggles emanating from her room.
The character she found most amusing (unsurprisingly?) is Captain Haddock followed by Thomson & Thompson. What really tickled her was ‘Ten thousand thundering typhoons’ and ‘Billions of blue blistering barnacles’!
Her favourite storey is the Castafiore Emerald. I think mine has to be Tintin and the Picaros.
FKDA architects based in Manchester have developed this great modular house system…
In fact looking at all their projects it’s all good stuff.
I’m constantly amazed at how stunning these photo-realistic visualisations are. The one above was done by shove - superb!
I’ve added a link to the architecture group at Flickr.
Lots of images of buildings and detail to drool over!
Oh! and also east coast Architecture review, oube and CABE.
Something that irritates me a little, usually when there is a news report about some ‘climber’ who has either died or had to be rescued from some mountain, is ‘was that person actually climbing’?
For me, as a rock climber, climbing is where there is some serious vertically involved.
Some years ago I walked up Mt Kinabalu. I didn’t climb, I walked. It was one huge slog. But no doubt most people would have said that they climbed the mountain!
…sure when you consider what’s happening globally there’s a lot of interesting architecture going on… but somehow not in Norwich…?
[maybe I've got some weird psychological thing going on with Norwich - about being stuck here for the rest of my life. Does the UEA Sainsbury Centre make life bearable here!] The Higsons founded themselves at UEA back in 1980. I got into them when I was 15/16; still got some of their vinyl.
I came across these guys - axis design architects. I think I really like this Eco-Housing scheme they have just got planning approval on…
images by axis design architects
Flagship (yes I know you’ve just done GreenGauge at Lingwood), Steve Morphew Leader of Norwich City Council, volume house builders… please this stuff is the future not pastiche.
I had an idea for a post the other day but I got bogged down in trying to find a license free image for it.
I was looking for an image of the Teletubbies’ house but ended up finding out that a building in Pembrokeshire, Wales has been nicknamed the Teletubby House by the locals…
image by Cered
This is the ‘House in Wales’ by Future Systems. Future Systems have designed some good buildings but some of their stuff is a bit wacky. They’re part of a movement that has been called Blobitecture of which their Selfridges department store in Birmingham is an example…
Image by Brian Norman
I found an article by the Independent that described the Teletubby house as ‘futuristic’. Why is this house ‘futuristic’? Why does contemporary architecture attract this description that somehow conveys an idea that buildings like this are unobtainable for most of us. There is nothing futuristic about this house. It is very much of our time and as previously (boringly!) stated in this blog contemporary architecture should be common place and available to everyone.
