oma meets the barbican

my review of the full-of-surprises oma/progress exhibition at the barbican for blueprint magazine can now be [read] online

join the geeks!

lottery-funded british architecture

delighted to have another story grace the cover of blueprint... this feature, which i nurtured from the very beginning, steps into the curiously left-alone world of the heritage lottery fund and how its decisions become our architecture

the piece is accompanied by superbly colourful illustrations of familiar icons - old and new, loved and scorned - by people will always need plates

matzine in the limelight

our very own matzine is currently sitting among 60 architectural publications being exhibited at the aa, until 14 december, as part of archizines : all shapes + sizes, all lovingly crafted, non-architects embracing architecture and architects looking beyond the peripheries of their profession : there is a year's worth of reading in this one room and ideas that stretch even further

who asked you?

a collaboration between stephen and i for matzine #10 concerning a rather sad neighbour of ours on Dalston Lane [click to enlarge illustration] :

I’m tired.
I have seen three centuries and the years did not escape me, no, they piled on top and squeezed my spine.
Age pushes my weary body downwards, stuck in limbo between upright elevation and a squelchy subterranean world.
I was wide-eyed with excitement when the first train rolled into the Junction, and exuded a showy appearance.
But now my eyes are heavy, my looks embarrassingly dishevelled.
Four generations of George gave me my name as London stretched its arms and rolled out into the East End.
I protectively enveloped the families that followed the fresh lines.
A healthy dose of extra weight made room for business ambitions and new futures.
The energy of their experiences punched through the front door and rushed through my mortar veins.
Bombs have dropped around me and old friends were swept away in tiny particles.
Yet I stood resilient and proud.
I was energetic and stood tall, now my smallness wears me out.
I suffered the rash of government corruption, and played the victim in a helpless jam.
The rough orangey tongue burnt my bones right after I mistook resentment for love.
Secret instructions and greedy dreams caught me off-guard.
My walls once felt like they could survive hurricanes, and they did, now the brick feels inky, seeping into the earth.
To score some political points, my guts were torn out and my strength was debilitated with an ‘accidental’ punch to the kidney.
Stinging senses have exhausted me, as shifting moralities whirl around the grid.
I’m slumping, slowly leaning, and looking for somewhere to rest the weight of my fatigue.
Money has been exchanged between hands on my behalf, but never reached the final transaction.
There’s been talk discussing my future, I’m sick of being centre of attention, the subject line in conversations branching either side of the Atlantic.
I’m tired but my eyes are stitched open by metal bars, bruises shine from playing the rope in a tug of war.
I need to rest my trembling muscles for warping limbs cause me to trip.
The warm smell of bread, piercing floral colours and thudding music used to drum my heartbeat.
But these loyal friends were torn away and locked out by green hoarding.
Now a handful of fragile humans protect me, humiliated by the last remaining few that care.
Demolish, restore, demolish, restore, I’m tired of waiting for a decision that sticks.
Steel skeletons prop me up, or else they are performing a stop motion demolition.
I would like to go to sleep now, if someone only thought to ask me.