Archive for 2010
How to Live
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook [...]
Berlin Dip (Index)
Our Office went on an Architectural trip to Berlin in the Autumn and I have started to sort out my photos and impressions of the city, with the idea of posting some of these things over the coming weeks. Overall impressions of the city though were great. I saw a city which has a life [...]
Bifurcation
Bivio a small town in Switzerland has just over two hundred inhabitants but the town speaks three languages, each in several different dialects. Because it is an isolated town most linguists believe it to be a relic of the multilinguistic norm in history. As today is world language day its a wonderful highlight of how [...]
Allure of the Seas
The STX shipyard in Turku, Finland has just delivered the world’s largest cruise liner ever built. Called The Allure of the Seas it’s capable of housing 6,300 passengers and 2,100 staff, and at approximately five times the size of the Titanic, it is in effect the largest self contained mobile town in the world. Everything [...]
Libeskind in Tampere
Daniel Libeskind has been chosen to design the new Tampere central arena, this follows on from his masterplanning of the arena and business park and commercial deck for the centre of Tampere which he had already made. Foreign Architects have really not had an easy time of building in Finland although some competitions have been [...]
Cities at Audiolab
Audiolab is one of my favourite podcasts, but the Cities episode is wonderful. Go listen now.
Finnish Architecture 0809
Finnish Architecture stages a Biennial Exhibition of the best in Finnish Architecture and this year 0809 starts its tour in Helsinki before going around the globe. It’s a good chance to look at some great projects, photos and models, step back and survey the progress made and the potential going forward. The exhibition catalogue this [...]
Helsinki Infoshare
Helsinki region now has a website Helsinki Region Infoshare which is going to be a hub for publishing information about the city region over the next few years until I guess the cities and regions take this job over for themselves. Statistical information of all kind will be published here , so it should be [...]
The Architectural Gap
Charles Holland in a great short article about the Sterling Prize talks about the problem of Architecture versus Building. There is an enormous gap between the process of designing and the physical reality of building. Architects get so used to equating drawings and models with buildings – despite the vast scale, material and factual differences [...]
Finnish Building Regulations to be Updated
The Finnish Building Regulations are going to be updated from 2012, the main thrust being improving energy efficiency. I believe that Finnish Regulations in this area are somewhat behind those of the rest of Scandinavia. I will see if I can get up to date examples it might make an interesting comparison. Anyway the stated [...]
The City Through Time
Photos of New York and Berlin by Michael Wesely using extremely long exposures in some cases over a year. They have the quality of old photos, a ghostly presence that seem at first glance almost ephemeral the reverse of what they actually are in many ways, as they show the additional layer of time and [...]
Architects Foot in Mouth #1
K: We need more washing powder (shaking empty box in my general direction). Me: Colour or Black and White?
House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore
House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore Amazon (.com) (.uk). This is an interesting book because it is by a British author but the novel is set in pre-revolution Finland. As such the author faces the challenge of making the characters and settings both believable and accurate without bogging down the story with too much detail. [...]
Open House Helsinki 2010
Open House Helsinki 2010 is running from 1st to 4th September, again it’s part of Helsinki Design Week which looks better than ever.
Back to Finland
So I’m back at work and in Finland after a very long summer which took me and my family to Italy and Scotland. It was nice to arrive back after many weeks to the news that Finland is the best place in the world to live. These polls or surveys of best places like the [...]
City 2.0 to Europe
Living PlanIT and Cisco systems have announced a collaboration to build the next generation city in Northern Portugal. It is going to integrate IT into the fabric of the city, we will see if unlike Dongtan this project can make it off the drawing board.