Archive for June, 2010
Chinese Mortar
How do you make Mortar the traditional way in China? Just add Rice Soup. “Analytical study shows that the ancient masonry mortar is a kind of special organic-inorganic composite material,” Zhang said. “The inorganic component is calcium carbonate, and the organic component is amylopectin, which comes from the sticky rice soup added to the mortar.”
Scandinavian Summer
Detail of Wigert Summerhouse in Brekkestø, Norway by Wenche Selmer (taken from the book Norwegian Wood – the Thoughful architecture of Wenche Selmer / photography by Frode Larsen) (via) This photo of a beautiful detail sums up something of the Scandinavian Summer, long days by the water, living with nature, escape from the burdens of [...]
Walking the Line
There is an old railway line that leads from the shore to the centre of Helsinki. I remember talking about it while on a little Architectural trip in Helsinki during the summer with some friends. So last autumn when I saw on flickr that vornaskoti had walked it and knew that with the closing in [...]
Roundabout
I was invited to make a guest post on Life of an Architect, it’s here so please go and visit it and then have a look around Bobs’ place its a great blog. If you have landed here from Life of an Architect please feel free to have a look around. I can recommend a few [...]
View from Stockholm
Johnathan Glancey in a recent article stated that Stockholm and Helsinki are under threat of getting the ‘world class city’ treatment. This of course is a bad thing because it means a kind of internationalized blandness in the pursuit of some imagined advertisers dream. I was just in Stockholm for the first time a couple of [...]