lewism

University Oath

lewism — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:35:31 +0000

I propose that Aalto University should stand for …..an unconditional respect for life, and for the conditions that support life. (via)

John Thackara proposes a new kind of oath for the forthcoming Aalto University based on a viewpoint that we are part of the Earths’ biological system not apart from it, and that the whole understanding of our development should shift to being sustainable in a wider sense. Read his excellent article fully to get an idea that what John means and how design and learning should contribute to more resilient and adaptive systems.

Pixel City

lewism — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:47:17 +0000

A procedurally generated city or in other words a city generated purely by code by Seamus Young. Click on the image above to watch the video.

Powerkiss

lewism — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:10:57 +0000

Powerkiss is a Finnish Startup which integrates power charging of your mobile phones and other gadgets into pieces of furniture with no requirement for cables. The future for this should be huge just put your laptop or mobile down on a table to charge it, you will no longer have to think about charging your devices, they will just power up when you put them down. Powerkiss are quite far down the road of integration as well, they have collaborated with Martela which is bringing to market a couple of tables later in 2009 with wireless charging integrated into them, as you can see from the photo below it looks almost boringly normal except for the graphics on the top informing you how to use the table.

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Read the rest of Powerkiss (28 words)

County of London Plan 1945

lewism — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:51:16 +0000

I found a set of images from the County of London Plan 1945 booklet which marks a milestone in visualising and planning for cities. Already being produced before the end of WWII when it came out in 1945 the brainchild of Patrick Abercrombie. The set on flickr is however missing a great map of Social and Functional analysis of London which probably prefigures the common idea that the city is made up of a ‘city of villages’ , also worth noting the ideas about redeveloping the South Bank, an area which is still being struggled with today.

Gaming the City

lewism — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:15:10 +0000

Did SimCity programme a whole load of computer geeks with the failed assumptions of 60’s planning? Me, I think the idea is good but the wrong way around. Actually getting lots of people thinking about urban design or gaming the city is a fantastic concept and each iteration of the game has added complexity and difficulty. Maybe SimCity is the best thing that happened to planning? Personal disclaimer: I was addicted to simcity2000 back in the day….

Harvesting the Air

lewism — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:16:28 +0000

What if our buildings could harvest power from the air, not wind or solar but literally out of thin air? Its not as crazy as it first sounds with cities literally spewing out electromagnetic radiation from TV, Radio, and Mobile phones constantly. That’s just what Nokia is doing right now, actively researching this for future generations of Mobile phones.

It’s also not a new idea, in fact the first station to harvest the power from the atmosphere has already been built and now stands derelict in a plot on Long Island for sale for $1.6 million. (map)

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Read the rest of Harvesting the Air (375 words)

Map: Wardenclyffe Tower

USA Flood control system Should Go Dutch

lewism — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:00:23 +0000

Flood control systems in the Netherlands are built to withstand storms of a severity seen once in 10,000 years, in the US the levees are built to stand up to storms of a severity anticipated once in a century. (via)

As storm season comes around in the USA Mary Landrieu a Senator from New Orleans wants the USA to move over to a sytem like in the Netherlands of managing water instead of just building levees. It’s really most about a change in mindset, from merely opposing nature to trying to manage it and cope with it where possible. Where all urban design incorporates water management into its basic structure. Louisiana, Florida and Georgia could all benefit from such a change. But I won’t be holding my breath.

update: mammoth took this post and wrote an excellent article about the Dutch water management system, bulwarks and flux.

Down 20

lewism — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:39:20 +0000

The construction of new buildings fell in Finland by 19 per cent in January-March. (sigh) I have a feeling it’s going to get worse before it gets better. (via)

Unsung Hero

lewism — Sat, 16 May 2009 18:13:21 +0000

And now MPs are feeling morose. Tough! They’ve had plenty of opportunities to do the right thing by parliament and by the people. At every juncture they behaved in the worst possible way. They refused legitimate requests, they wasted public money going to the high court, they delayed publication, they tried to exempt themselves from their own law, they succeeded in passing a law to keep secret their addresses from their constituents so as to hide the house flipping scandal … (via)

Remember a democratic society is an open society, so we’ve got to keep watching those bastards. Thanks to Heather and the other journalists who pursued this story.

Jørn Utzon Lecture Report

lewism — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:48:29 +0000

Last Thursday night I went to see Adrian Carter give a lecture about Jørn Utzon. It was a warm and poignant lecture given by a friend and colleague and I can’t think of a better tribute to Utzon that he could have given. It provided a timely reminder that Architecture is the power to stir emotion and create relationships between people and places, and that Utzon had that ability above most, so not much more need be said.

Some things I didn’t know also came up of course, that Utzon went to work for Aalto but after only six short weeks found out his wife was pregnant with their child and had to go back to Denmark. I did know already that it was Eero Saarinen who arriving late for the jury on the Sydney Opera House competition picked Utzon’s entry from the rejected pile and said it was the winner. I didn’t know however that so possessed he was with the project that he went back to his hotel that night and drew the perspective view of the building from the harbour that Utzon himself had neglected to submit, in an effort to persuade his colleagues that it was the winning project.

Utzon doubtless pursued a kind of purity of design that had it’s kindred spirit in nature and tried to engineer his projects in the way nature evolves form. Its clear to me many of his spaces and places he made are analogous to natural spaces, of clouds passing overhead, of the roof as tent or enclosure with a kind of bottom up philosophy of served and servant spaces that provided an order that was natural rather than preconceived. That he wasn’t designing buildings in the same way as say Gehry does is clear, and it’s part of what makes his Architecture timeless and so hard to emulate today.

The drawings Utzon’s studio made of the structural solution that was found after two years of fruitless calculations are beautiful and by Rafael Moneo (photo) a then newly qualified Spanish Architect, it makes me wonder what is the Architectural Equivalent of the Bacon number? In the Modernist movement you could use Aalto quite easily to map the connections between Architects the world over. Here the connection is tangible both in a personal and professional form.

The issues of the Opera house budget came up and the tensions between Utzon and Arup the structural engineers, first over the authorship of the structural solution something that Cecil Balmond would know something about and then on their continuing role in the project once Utzon had resigned. Although the Opera House made his name it also broke it in terms of his ability to get further work, there was some, but it could have been so much more.

Adrian Carter instigated and now runs the Utzon Centre which tries to promote the ideas of Jørn Utzon.

The photo above is of the sketch made by Saarinen that helped Utzon win the competition and can be found online at Yale’s Saarinen database here.

Amsterdam weekend

lewism — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:03:15 +0000

We spent a weekend a couple of weeks ago in Amsterdam, so I was back in the city I lived in for two years after being away for seven. It struck me being back there again how strong the memories came back. From the pea shooter rat-a-tat of the old bike coming up the street behind you. To the smell of the streets, briney, dirty and rough. I remembered again how busy Amsterdam was compared to the comparative emptiness of Helsinki and the organic quality of the city at eye level. Hardly any building line is straight, or repeated. It feels like the city sways with the canals, moves with the muddy earth beneath on imperceptably slow waves. Contrasted with Helsinki which feels planted motionless on the hard rock beneath. The shabby chique of the nine canals seemed a little more chique this time around but otherwise everything was mostly as it was. A beautiful city full of the undiscovered around every corner.

Jørn Utzon Lecture in Helsinki

lewism — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:14:20 +0000

There is going to be a Jørn Utzon Lecture in the Atheneum on 14th May at 5pm given by Adrian Carter the Director of the Utzon centre. Drop me a line if you are going to be there.

Svenskar

lewism — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:38:42 +0000

The Swedish speaking finns or Svenskar constitute an important minority in Finland, but their genetic origins are a little uncertain (see wikipedia), there being much argument about how much immigration from Sweden happened and how much assimilation into the language of government was made. A study just made appears to confirm that there was a significant amount of immigration into Western Finland to the Swedish speaking areas. (via)

The Finnish population in Northern Europe has been a target of extensive genetic studies during the last decades. The population is considered as a homogeneous isolate, well suited for gene mapping studies because of its reduced diversity and homogeneity. However, several studies have shown substantial differences between the eastern and western parts of the country, especially in the male-mediated Y chromosome. This divergence is evident in non-neutral genetic variation also and it is usually explained to stem from founder effects occurring in the settlement of eastern Finland as late as in the 16th century. Here, we have reassessed this population historical scenario using Y-chromosomal, mitochondrial and autosomal markers and geographical sampling covering entire Finland. The obtained results suggest substantial Scandinavian gene flow into south-western, but not into the eastern, Finland.Male-biased Scandinavian gene flow into the south-western parts of the country would plausibly explain the large inter-regional differences observed in the Y-chromosome, and the relative homogeneity in the mitochondrial and autosomal data. On the basis of these results, we suggest that the expression of ‘Finnish Disease Heritage’ illnesses, more common in the eastern/north-eastern Finland, stems from long-term drift, rather than from relatively recent founder effects. (link)

Finland Heroin Country

lewism — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:45:27 +0000

That little old granny crossing Mannerheimintie infront of you may just have been a heroin addict. Between 1930 and 1950 Finland consumed more heroin per capita than anywhere else on earth.

In Northern Europe we were really the odd men out. Finnish heroin consumption was many times higher than that of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland – and just to put that into perspective, we are talking the combined figure of those four countries.

It was given liberally out during WWII also, see the amazing story of Aimo Koivunen a commando during the war and one of the first Finns to overdose on speed. The reason for there being so much use of Heroin in Finland is because it was a prescription drug present in many popular medicines of the time. But when Finland wanted to join the UN it phased out use of the drug quite quickly.

The Skate House

lewism — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:05:42 +0000

The Skate House by Archivirus is a penthouse apartment in Athens turned into a skateable home. The ramp is fully integrated into the home creating a spatial flow for skating or walking (via).

New Finnish Embassy in Japan

lewism — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:02:13 +0000

external view (images copyright Lahdelma & Mahlamäki)

Architects Lahdelma & Mahlamäki have won the design competition for a new Finnish Embassy in Tokyo. The project is notable for the semi-opaque all glass facade which is patterned. In so much as it conveys an atmosphere or even an imagined landscape by a layering through the different glazing it could be a great project. Here is a link to the embassy page which annouced the winner, but it leaves a little questionmark as to when the project will be completed.

Dynamic Helsinki Website

lewism — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:35:49 +0000

The international real estate industry will gather in Cannes, March 10-13 for the MIPIM fair, I’d imagine it will be a sombre affair taking place as it is agaisnt a backdrop of a projected world recession. But Greater Helsinki is bringing an exhibition stand there and it is a historic time for the city as the largest change in Helsinkis’ structure is going on now. When the cargo ports were transferred in 2008 from the city centre to Vuosaari, some 250 hectares of waterfront area were vacated, and here Helsinki will build 4,5 million floor sqm for housing and almost 2,5 million floor sqm of commercial space. This means homes for about 100 000 people and jobs for tens of thousands. Six urban development projects will be on display at MIPIM. They are Jätkäsaari, Kruunuvuorenranta, Kalasatama, Arabianranta, Finlandiapark and Pasila, and there is website that covers them called Dynamic Helsinki and you can download the pdf brochure too.

Taken seperately most of these urban projects detailed would be a little uninspiring but together they form a coherent whole which has shortcomings but I think acts as a good basic blueprint for modern urbanisation as opposed to the indiscreet suburbanisation that we see mostly in Helsinki. However against the backdrop of what will probably turn into the first great world depression, it is hard to see at the moment how this vision will be achieved. No doubt the general urbanisation seen in Finland since WWII and continuing since may actually accelerate as Finlands’ traditional industries like the paper and timber industry continue to shrink. This means that the plans for greater Helsinki may not be affected much even as smaller towns and cities in Finland bear the brunt of the economic pain.

Regardless the marketing of dynamic helsinki of which Richard Florida would no doubt approve has started to take place. I’m partially optimistic the vision is achieveable even if we are yet to see the pain first.

No New Building In Finland

lewism — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:28:22 +0000

No new private apartment building projects were started in Helsinki , and the equivalent of only three apartment blocks in the whole of Finland were begun between October last year and February this year according to HS. There is a cold wind blowing so button up!

Bad British Architecture

lewism — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:20:46 +0000

Bad British Architecture a new blog saying things that need to be said, really rudely, a new must read.

I hate how noone ever talks about how bad British architecture really is. I hate the bastards who make these buildings. So here I am, taking the piss out of them.

Simulated Ice Field

lewism — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:29:37 +0000

Korkeasaari the island that is Helsinki Zoo the most northerly zoo in the world has made a very ambitious 100 million euro redevelopment plan designed by Beckmann-N’Thepe who have a great track record of innovative zoo design. Just look at their simulated environment for Vincennes, France. The photos show a kind of simulated ice field or glacier, and while it could be seen as a little bit of a cliche to design the thing like a giant piece of ice in Finland we haven’t got one of those yet so why not? The interior shots are particularly enticing. Oh and I love the idea of putting a cablecar from the shore over to the island they should put a whole system of those around in Helsinki. All Images by B N’T. (via)

Map:

Ola Kolehmainen, member of the Helsinki School a loose collective of artists, has an exhibition on at Kiasma at the moment. His work consists of heavily cropped photos of Modern Architecture, that instantly abstracts them and concentrates the qualities of space, light and surface. What I like about the pictures in particular is that by forcing an abstracted view on the you Ola reveals details you wouldn’t otherwise see.

Click on the above image for a slideshow. (All photos are from Kiasma website and copyright Ola Kolehmainen.) A building is not a building at Kiasma 26.02.2009 – 26.04.2009

How To Design

lewism — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:20:47 +0000

Always design a thing by considering it in its next largest context…a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. Eliel Saarinen

Goodbye Dubai, Hello Dubai

lewism — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:45:06 +0000

A fantastic rant against Dubai and an eloquant rebuttal ( it’s along time since I’ve read such good comments on a blog post).

Genetic Map of Europe 2

lewism — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:22:25 +0000

Another map and model of predicting where a person will come from in europe based on his genetics.(via) It is only based on common variations and not rare ones so the chances are that the map can be made more accurate in the future at least until the genetic pool gets more mixed up with the increasingly common sight of mixed nationality marriages (even in Finland!).

Tegnestuen Vandkunsten win Alvar Aalto Medal

lewism — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:08:26 +0000

The tenth Alvar Aalto Medal was awarded to the Danish architectural practice Tegnestuen Vandkunsten on 03.02.2009. I took a few photos of their conversion of a torpedo factory a little while ago. (via)

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

lewism — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:10:12 +0000

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
Amazon.com | uk
Compare a bacteria with a human, with a city, with the planet. Weave in two personal stories and the clash of ideas and of the inherrant messiness of progress, and you may get the outline of this book. The Ghost Map is at once a real map, but also a metaphor for progress, for navigation of the future using the past. The scale at which this book is written jumps all the time and could have collapsed in on itself because it constantly pans and zooms through its subject matter, yet it always stays focused and gripping.

The books main story are the events around an outbreak of Cholera in London in 1854 around Broad Street, Soho. Two very different people, John Snow and Henry Whitehead, became entangled in the outbreak and eventually through their efforts the battle against Cholera was won, mega cities became possible and the foundations for modern epidemiology were laid. But to sum it up thus would be to rob this book of its layered approach and the way it branches out to touch on lots of other subjects.

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Read the rest of The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson (461 words)

Map: #

Learning and Drawing

lewism — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:43:48 +0000

Drawing itself is a part of learning: learning to use oneâ€™s eyes to see more intensely -Henry Moore (via)

Jump London

lewism — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:17:08 +0000

A documentary of Sebastien Foucan the originator of parkour or free running jumping London. (via)

Snow Angels

lewism — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:50:49 +0000

We went up to Levi in Lapland last weekend. Being in the last great European wilderness was breathtaking, it’s a beautiful place a different world away from the bustle of typical human existence.

The thing though that will stick most in my mind most was when we were just outside the hotel lobby on the town square and saw a couple in their mid-thirties. The woman was lying in the snow making a snow angel and the man was taking photos of her. They were smiling and laughing in a state of innocent excitement I’m not used to seeing in adults. It made me smile, it makes me smile every time I think about it actually. The man told us they were from South Africa and had never seen snow before. Photos of the trip are here. The photo above is ofÂ St.Marias’ Chapel bell tower beside the ski slope.

Map: #

White Paint

lewism — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:24:20 +0000

Could the answer to global warming be white paint? I’m really partial to this idea but also a little worried it’s a bit like the ‘if we all jumped off the ground at the same time’ thing.

Holmenkollen Ski Jump

lewism — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:17:40 +0000

Holmenkollen Ski Jump by JDS Architects is very much alive and onsite. I previously reported the project was in trouble. But it should be ready for 2011. (via)

Click on inmage above for slideshow of the latest renders.

Map: #

Renewable Energy and Housing

lewism — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:56:04 +0000

I’m actively trying to seek out new information about designing as environmentally sustainable buildings and systems as possible so I dug up something I’d tagged a long time ago meaning to write it up but somehow never managed to do until now.

The Vaasa Housing Fair which ran from 11.07.08 to 10.08.08 last year is very interesting because it putÂ sustainable living at the top of it’s agenda. The housing fair consisted ofÂ 3 blocks of flats and many detached and semi-detached houses, and was almost entirely self sufficient in power and heating using two key strategies.

The first was that of a heat pump system linked to a set of seabed pipes which help to heat the houses in winter and cool them in summer.

The average temperature of the sediment at a depth of a couple of metres was measured at 8-9Â°C, even in the middle of winter. This was twice as high compared with sediments on dry land. The seabed sediment stores the sunâ€™s warmth efficiently, thanks to its composition and the body of water on top of it…. In the summer, the devised system can be used conversely to cool down buildings.

The second isÂ an energy plant for the new housing that is the first SOFC fuel cell power plant in the world and it is powered by methane gas from an nearby rubbish dump. 30% of the energy from the plant is converted into electricity and some 60% into heat. WÃ¤rtsilÃ¤ the company that makes the new system hope to be selling them on the market by 2010.

Map: #

Minature Concrete Buildings

lewism — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:32:43 +0000

Cute miniature concrete buildings by push+pull. (via) I love the fake drain planter.

White Death by Robert Edwards

lewism — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:21:07 +0000

White Death by Robert Edwards

Amazon uk | usa

As a British citizen I was brought up with the popular blockbuster WWII films and jingoistic historical notion ofÂ WWII being a kind of good versus evil battle. The idea is still somewhat preserved now with the Third Reich being the last word in totalitarian regimes, in the West at any rate. Added to this theÂ Eastern Front and the allies vital alliance with Russia is so little remembered in these notions of that war. (...)
Read the rest of White Death by Robert Edwards (602 words)

2008 Roundup

lewism — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:23:52 +0000

Every year Building Design publish their top 100 world Architectural practises. 2008s’ top 10 in the list is exactly the same as in 2007, but they have made a nice map this time.

Slussen Proposal

lewism — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:14:12 +0000

BIG Architects andÂ NOD Landscape Architects have made a major proposal for the Slussen in Stockholm. This area one of the busiest transport interchanges in the city has become increasingly run down and inaccessible to cyclists and pedestrians. But the new proposal would reverse that completely. Watch the video below to see how the proposal would work in practise.

It’s an interesting comparison to make between the Slussen proposal and Helsinkis’ Koivusaari schemes.

Links:

watch the video
NOD
BIG
SLUSSEN
AMNP
DavidReport – an excellent summary.

Map: #

Koivusaari Ideas Competition

lewism — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:34:31 +0000

Browse and comment on over 100 proposals for Koivusaari at the Laituri website. Part of the redevelopment going along with the expansion of the Metro West into Espoo.

Espoo Hospital

lewism — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:57:52 +0000

A new Espoo hospital wing by K2S. The building consists of a set of courtyard blocks in freeform shapes with beds facing out into the landscape and services and living (not sure what these are but maybe social spaces away from the ward areas matbe?) facing back into the courtyards. A hospital design with patient environment human scale and wellbeing in the widest sense considered makes this a rare and very welcome project in my opinion.

Map: #

Curbed goes to Moscow

lewism — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:02:51 +0000

Joey: That’s about 5 buildings in one.

Lockhart: And 6 of them are ugly.

(via)

Better Mortgage Systems

lewism — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:43:00 +0000

I have bought houses in Scotland (it’s quite different to England) and in Finland, and thought seriously about buying in Amsterdam when we lived there. Having at least a taste of the different systems and seen the U.S. problems with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae it would be reasonable to go looking for an improved house buying and repaying system and the Danish system looks pretty good to me.

…The second feature of the Danish system is that mortgage-holders can also buy the bonds in the market and use them to redeem their mortgages. This is useful if a rise in interest rates (or a fall in house prices) causes mortgage-backed bonds to trade at a discount. Redeeming their bonds allows homeowners to reduce the amount they owe.

The comments in the Economist article are also worth looking at.

Its interesting to me as a kind of multiple expat how certain systems in countries are seen as unassailable when they can and should be updated regularly to try to improve them. Maybe they should be more like computer software?

My Music 2008

lewism — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:10:46 +0000

I thought I’d try to quantify my music listening for 2008 which was a year of big changes for me as I downloaded more music this year than bought physical copies for the first time.

The total number of tracks I listened to through last fm in 2008 was 5679.

I still listen at home almost exclusively through my Hi-Fi, so it’s mostly not scrobbled,Â and comparing even 320 kbit/s through my ipod connected to my amp is a different experience from a cd through same amp and speakers, so tracking my listening and fully enjoying uncompromised audio still don’t seem to me to be able to be satisfactorily brought together.

My lastfm profile is therefore a little skewed towards electronica than my actual real listening although if you look at the list below of what I bought last year you will see it still makes up the majority of my purchases.

A list of the records, in all formats, I bought last year (deep breath!), there must be some I’ve missed and I’ll update if I ever spot them.

(...)
Read the rest of My Music 2008 (820 words)

Where is the good new Architecture?

lewism — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:22:58 +0000

The New York Times has a list of the 10 best buildings of 2008. The AR has an as ever excellent list of emerging architecture for 2008 which is more interesting the NYT good but slightly vanilla list.

Varnelis asks where the good new Architecture of the 21st Century is, but I think it’s too early to say, a quick look at the emerging Architecture lists from AR for example and you will see much interesting work which maybe hasn’t had the exposure the they deserve yet…

For 2008 inÂ Scandinavia the biggest and most important project was probably the Oslo Opera House by SnÃ¸hetta (photo above). The next few years though big projects will be fewer and more thinly spread, but as ever I believe some of the best Architecture being produced now is not necessarily budget related.

Sennett and the city

lewism — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:17:52 +0000

A great article about Richard Sennets’ thinking about cities, his big insight and equally large oversight.

Star Wars a New Heap

lewism — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:48:51 +0000

Thirty years after the premiere of Star Wars, the strange chimpanzee crossed another threshold. For the first time in fifty-five hundred years of building cities, more of humanity now lives in them than in rural settlements. In the coming years there will be countless master plans for new mega-cities in Africa, Asia, and South America. We can only hope that these plans will be drawn by disciples of Jane Jacobs, students of Robert Morris, admirers of Robert Smithson, and fans of Star Wars. (link)

Antikythera Mechanism

lewism — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:08:36 +0000

Decoding the Heavens is a book about the Antikythera mechanism a 2000 year old device that could conceivably be called the worlds first computer. There is a nice short video of the man responsible for rebuilding it describing what it does.

Religious Debates

lewism — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:20:51 +0000

A huge page of links to debates about the existence of god.

Facebook Fear

lewism — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:19:42 +0000

Last week I took the plunge and joined facebook although maybe I shouldn’t have ( & it’s strangely addictive!).

Archinect T-Shirts

lewism — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:01:52 +0000

Archinect has a new set of t-shirt designs just out and I just ordered my steel on asphalt. I like the latest designs alot more than the ‘architecture sucks’ design which ’sucks’ and has been around since forever. Archinect T-shirts.

20 Worst album covers of 2008

lewism — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:35:28 +0000

It’s the season for lists and this years 20 worst album covers is a set of terrible album covers, with some brilliant one line put downs.

Waterfront Hotel Approved

lewism — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:49:39 +0000

According to HS the proposed waterfront hotel by Herzog and DeMeuron has been approved and it’s almost all over for the objectors. The mayor stated that it was nice to get a major building financed by private money, and I guess they thought that the project would inject some life into the whole harbour regeneration which is needed. I’m sure this will remain the most controversial building project in Finland for many years whatever happens next. (HS article) (previously)

Old Maps

lewism — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:54:51 +0000

A beautiful set of very early world maps and nice article about them. From a time when a map was just as much about your world view, religious convictions and contacts, as about your map making ability.

A New Nation

lewism — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:47:33 +0000

Greenland Population of 57,000 has voted for independence from Denmark, although full independence is probably about 10 years away.

Climate Change made by man

lewism — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:45:51 +0000

OK so unfortunately the web is full of crazy people with their zombie arguments, where loudly worded statements seem to drown out careful investigation into a subject. Particularly if it doesn’t correspond with your worldview. A good example of this is Climate change. Evidence for climate change caused by man is overwhelming full stop. Watch these two videos. Then try playing global warming sceptic bingo. There are plenty of deniers (comments in this article are worthy of reading carefuly) out their but read their sources and the way they have made their calculations and it soon becomes apparent how biased they are. Better we try to get on with fixing our own problem don’t you think!

NimipÃ¤ivÃ¤

lewism — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:44:07 +0000

It’s our Daughter’s Name Day today (NimipÃ¤ivÃ¤), something only our neighbour remembered because coming from the U.K. the practice of name days has died out (if it was ever alive!). When I was growing up I associated it with saints days in predominately Catholic countries. It seems I was slightly wrong and at least Orthodox Christian countries also celebrate this which I guess might indicate pre christian origins.

Anyway the official Name Days of Finland is published by the Almanac Office at the University of and contains all Finnish official Name Days lists (Finnish, Swedish, Sami and Greek Catholic).

So I thought I’d try to establish the name day for our son whose name is not ‘Finnish’ and therefore not covered in the official Finnish list. Wikipedia name day also gives an American name day calendar which started in 1982. Interestingly the 1982 and 2008 days for my son’s birthday are different, but the latest one seems good enough for us. That’s January 21st.

Another thing worth mentioning, that the more I looked at these lists, their differences and indeed similarities, the Swedish and Finnish ones seem totally aligned for instance, I can’t help thinking this is all mostly based on nothing more than precedence.

Waterfront Hotel

lewism — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:49:16 +0000

Herzog and DeMeurons’ proposed Waterfront Hotel on Katajanokka will be opposed it seems tooth and nail by the Finnish Architectural Establishment. Last Thursday a Revised Scheme was handed in to the City Plannning Authority , while a couple of hours earlier a petition from 34 Architetcure and Planning Professors lead by Juha LeiviskÃ¤ oppposing the scheme was handed in.

I’m not really surprised by this opposition, since I first posted about this project it seems to be that the tide of professional opinion in Finland has turned almost totally against it, and while I think the cladding design is innovative and potentially world class the planning of the building into the public waterfront space appears missing among other concerns, in what is the most controversial building plot in the whole of Finland.

Lost America

lewism — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:32:38 +0000

Lost America is night photography of the abandoned west.

Buildings as Skateparks

lewism — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:54:11 +0000

Following on from my review of Skateboarding, Space and the City, Wired has a nice article about some recently finished buildings in which the Architects have conciously included for skate design. The Oslo Opera House by SnÃ¸hetta where skateboarders were consulted;

“We spoke to them about surface textures and the areas they prefer,” architect Simon Ewings.

Also the Phaeno Science centre by Zaha Hadid and a park in Barcelona by FOA were designed with skaters in mind. Read the full article in Wired.

Open Source Food

lewism — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:16:34 +0000

Lots of great recipies, and a nice user interface it must beÂ open source food yum yum.

Venice Floods

lewism — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:38:03 +0000

Yesterday Venice was being hit by the biggest flood it has had in the last 20 years (1.56m). An underwater dam called the MOSE project to help protect the city is due for 2011. The dam consists of a series of gates 20 metres wide and up to 30 metres high which lie at the bottom of the lagoon and would be inflated to prevent a flood. Why we should save a city which threatens to become no more than a ghost town you can see by watching Francesco da Mostos’ Venice.

Jørn Utzon dies aged 90

lewism — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:51:43 +0000

Jørn Utzon RIP you will be missed.

update: Deyan Sudjic has a well written obituary in The Guardian & The Economist.

Site Change

lewism — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:17:48 +0000

I have just updated this site with a new theme which I made myself. It’s heavily inspired by Openswitchs’ theme of about six months ago which he moved on from pretty quickly but I really loved. I however saw similar designs by Extralogical, eightface, and binarybonsai all which have in some part inspired me to go to a single column layout.

This being a blog its really about the content and writing and I hope the new theme will help focus everyone on that, well me at least.Â The format should help me also make asides in a better way and differentiate between shorter link posts and proper articles. The sidebars are at the bottom with a thinner one for shorter lists and wider one for text and longer more structured lists.

Also I wanted to have a go and do a little CSS, I also got pulled into some PHP as well, and it made me realise how much like a building a webpage can be, I could go off on one with a debate about structure/decoration compared to php/css rant but I’ll refrain from proving to you all my own madness.

The Design is called Rorschach, for a few reasons, and it’s a Sandbox theme with a couple of tweaks. It’s unfinished at the moment and comments and single page in particular are legible but not set out that well. Spacing is a bit wonky in explorer, I’ll fix and tweak this over time though and try to clean up the css as I go. So pay a visit to this site, have a poke around and please tell me what you think.

Some sandbox Resources:

Check out op111.net for a great starter on how to choose your minimalist design.
Plaintxt of course for THE sandbox.
Themeshaper the blog is a great resource and Thematic should be on everyones shortlist for a theme.

Phew! this monkey has been on my shoulder for a while, glad that’s out of the way. Oh and thanks to kickflop for the php code for the date alteration and everyone on the sandbox forum.

RIP Palast der Republik

lewism — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:09:17 +0000

RIP Palast der Republik. A strange and unwanted temple to communism has been demolished. There is a great short film which will tell you why the Palast der Republik and its demolition is important and divides opinion so strongly.

21st Century Atlas of World Architecture

lewism — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:52:35 +0000

The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century Architecture is out for Christmas (isn’t it about 92years early?). The Times does a nice little review of this coffee table bound volume. I particularly like the bit about the Nordics, although Sweden is conspicuously absent.

Norway, Finland and Denmark: for consistent quality, these three are always in the top ten: wealthy, design-literate nations, with quality buildings, though their architecture, heavy on sublime engagement with nature, can lack passion.

Job Cuts

lewism — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:21:27 +0000

Construction company Skanska to cut 600 jobs in Finland, YIT is doing the same. I sense the ground about to disappear below our feet as the construction industry approaches a state of coma. The signs are not good.

Architectionary

lewism — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:18:57 +0000

Architectionary for definitions, CAD blocks and Sketch up tutorials. (via)

Sundsvall Art Centre

lewism — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:59:55 +0000

Harri MÃ¤kiaho a Finnish Architect has just won a competition for a new Art Centre and Theatre in Sundsvall, Sweden. The entry was called KrÃ¤fta. The Swedish Architects Association has a page on it with some good images and plans. It’s a really nice project and deserved winner, and the jury description is mostly quite accurate.

However rather that the jury calling it completely original I believe it as a strong development of recent themes in Finnish Architecture, JKMM’s Verkatehdas springs to mind as do a couple of recent schools. This does not detract from the scheme, actually in my view it adds to it. By developing successful methodology and adapting them you have a blueprint for an excellent building without having to raise it to the level of virtuoso artistic creation wholly original. Anyway Sundsvall is getting an excellent building.

Kim HÃ¸ltermand

lewism — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:14:06 +0000

Some really great non figuritive photography here by Kim HÃ¸ltermand Lots of contemporary Danish Architecture I’m really enjoying looking through his site, trying to pick my next desktop background. (via)

Stair Porn

lewism — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:06:55 +0000

Stair Porn oooh yes baby!

Locating Helsinki

lewism — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:10:43 +0000

The serendipity of the web lead me to Locating Helsinki, an excellent blog that documents urban Helsinki in all its quirks and small wonders. My favoutrite so far is the rather roughly built ski jump that sits on a hillside between two big developments.

Helsinki Biennale 2008

lewism — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:42:40 +0000

Helsinki Biennale 2008 is going to be a World Fair. We have secretly built pavillions and all that shit in the cellar of Design Museum Helsinki. The World Fair will take place 25.10.2008â€“25.1.2009. It will be noisy, magnificent, and Ã¼ber gigantic. More than 50 most interesting artists from Finland and over 100 of our favorite artists from abroad. If sleep is the new black, Helsinki Biennale 2008 is wearing all white!

Aki-Pekka Sinikoski, Head of Helsinki Biennale

Skateboarding, Space and the City

lewism — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 16:35:24 +0000

Skateboarding, Space and the City

by Iain Borden

amazon.com|.uk

Iain Borden effectively tells the history of the rise of skateboarding, board and boardpark history and the evolution of skateboarding itself. Lefebvre’s The Production of Space is the main jumping off point for this book but necessarily reinterpreted through the attitude of skateboarders to the city. Actually its better than that because it really well explains how space is a personal production by necessity in a city whether actively engaged in or not.

The effective telling of skateboarding subculture also gives this book the edge and authority to challenge the politics of city planning at the most basic level. I like it particularly because its theory rooted in practice, not just a post-modern abstract philosophical theory bootstrapped onto architectural thought like so many post-modern theories over the last 20 years. Its not often that this tightrope between theory and reality is so deftly navigated in Architectural discourses and the result is a book that has something to say to everyone.

Saarinen Under Threat

lewism — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:43:50 +0000

Gabion has an article on Saarinen’s London Embassy and how it is under possible threat (via). But the support is by no means unequivocal, and that’s par for the course in the UK especially where most Architectural critics still can’t seem quite to escape from the Pevsner monologue whispering to them in their heads.

It contrasts greatly with the gushing over Corbusier provoked recently by a big retrospective of his work in Liverpool. I don’t buy it. Corb was great but also greatly flawed, as David Byrne wrote really well about in his journal.

It’s not even that le Corb’s form of Cartesian logic in design was fundamentally formulaic but that it also misrepresented itself. Corbusiers image of modernism doesn’t match up to Saarinens enquiry from fundamentals that go into his buildings, which unlike Corb’s, unite technology and engineering into the Architetcure not merely subsuming them.

Le Corbs buildings in other words speak eloquently of an imagined machine-made rational future while being mostly hand built with traditional technology. While Saarinens buildings really did investigate and innovate with technology while conveying the aspirations of what was required and appropriate for the building.

Don’t get me wrong Le Corbs legacy can be picked over but his place as a great Architect is undeniable, its just I’d take Aalto over Corb, and Saarinen over Mies any day of the week……OK I feel much better now I got that off my chest, rant over.

Other Links – Yale’s Archive of drawings for the US Embassy. The photo above is from that Archive and is a set of alternative sketch’s made of the elevation.

update: only U.S. firms will be eligible to design the new U.S. embassy.

Close Encounters

lewism — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:49:40 +0000

Timothy Ryback had a closer encounter than he would have liked with the subject of his new bookHitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life. While Looking through an Architectural History of Berlin he recounts what he discovered between pages 160 & 161

a wiry inch long black hair that appears to be from a moustache

Enough to give you the shivers. (via)

Shanghai Expo 2010 Finnish Pavillion

lewism — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:34:08 +0000

The Finnish Pavillion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 will be built to a design by JKMM. Called ‘Kirnu’ which I think translates as (milk?) churn. A somewhat understated iconic design with a really promising internal space that opens out to the sky. I quite like it but……

I wonder however how relevant expos are to the Architectural debate nowadays in the age of starchitects, blogs and the international media. With national borders never lower for Architects at least in these big projects there seems little differentiation or dialogue in the expo buildings of the last 20 years.

I can think of only a handfull of expo buildings in that time that have been remebered when the expo closes its doors. Whereas some of the buildings of the prewar expos have been hugely influential even while no longer existing. They probably serve a different function nowadays anyway being basically stage settings for countries as buisnesses.

Open House Helsinki 2008

lewism — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:12:28 +0000

Open House Helsinki is on 02.10.2008 this year. A good Finnish and English programme also. Highlights for me look to beÂ the visit to the ‘Bunkkeri’ and Lecture by Bjarke Ingels of (BIG).

Fortress Finland

lewism — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:20:45 +0000

When the Russians controlled Finland they built a nationwide network of fortifications. Afraid of a Barbarossa style attack and capture of the then Capitol St. Petersburg. Helsinki was also fortified although most of these fortifications were never used. Now much is destroyed or ignored, while some houses have old fortifications running through their gardens.

Links

Krepost Sveaborg – A great site to find out about the Helsinki Fortifications in particular.

HS has taken some photos (list) of how they are now – zoom out on the map to about 10km and you will see what I mean.

Finland for Thought there are some good comments here too.

hugovk has some good photos.

Genetic Map of Europe

lewism — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:46:20 +0000

Biologists have made a genetic map of Europe which as you can see roughly resembles Europe Geographically.

The map also identifies the existence of two genetic barriers within Europe. One is between the Finns (light blue, upper right) and other Europeans. It arose because the Finnish population was at one time very small and then expanded, bearing the atypical genetics of its few founders.

A couple of things come to my mind on seeing this map. One is the surprising genetic distance between Sweden and Finland, although Finland was part of the Swedish Empire for over 400 years, suggesting that Swedish immigration over that time really was small. Also that Poland faces Finland on the map but where do the Eastern Eurpean states figure, countries like Estonia for example, and it would be really interesting to map Russia onto this too.

ViaÂ actHeliski & NYT

Also found a periodic table of Europeans.

Tactile Maps

lewism — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:14:34 +0000

The image above is of a tactile map made by the Inuit of parts of the coast of Greenland. It seems the Inuit mapped their territory by songs, legends and these tactile maps. It also shows how the empirical world of space as the empty side of a binary relationship with place is badly flawed.

The Inuit like the Aboriginal songlines show in these artifacts that place can equate to person hood and space. That they are embodied in a personal and spatial relationship to a whole.

I saw these hand maps and also thought of my mobile phone which has gps built in. Now wouldn’t it be possible to make gps phones become like tactile maps buzzing and vibrating when you take a wrong turn for instance. Moving through space would become an experience of touch not just vision.

via tightgrid & middlesavagery (& the images)

Is It Feasable?

lewism — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:07:11 +0000

A great sketch of The Architects from Smack the pony (via). Maybe its a bit too close for comfort watching if you are an Architect or engineer!

Nightlands

lewism — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:21:57 +0000

Nightlands Nordic building by Christian Norberg-Schulz.

Amazon (uk|us)

A tip off from a reader of this blog sent me to this book for which I will be eternally grateful. First I should start with a warning you that this is not a coffee table publication, the pictures are sparse and in black and white. However if you want to really get a feel for Scandinavian Architecture, indeed to really get under the skin of the differences between Scandinavian Architecture and the rest of the world then this is the book to start with. Not only does it give a convincing picture of ‘northerness’ but it paints a credible narrative of not only the primordial origins of Scandinavian Architecture but the differences within the Scandinavian countries too. It’s theory but unlike much Architectural theory it strives to be to the point and understandable. It’s well written too with some great, almost poetic texts. If you like theory but may not be immediately interested in Scandinavian Architecture get it anyway as it is often able to eloquently speak of the universalities of Architecture, for example;

Architecture, in other words, is a form of understanding of the given environment. As such, it consists in explanation of the unity of life and place, in order that we may understand where we are, how we are, what we are. When successful, architecture becomes the art of building and thereby representation of an inhabited landscape.

This books grand conceit is the construction of a narrative of the different Architectures of the Scandinavian countries, and that it basically succeeds in its aim to show the unifying and differing gestalts in Scandinavia is a credit to the author.

One question that arises, that the book doesn’t cover, is what about in this post-modern age where Architects roam a lot more freely across national boundaries and Architectural internships are often served abroad how are national architectures affected? Finland for example seems very much inward looking still, with almost all of the emerging Architects offices having served out their apprenticeships for better or for worse in Finland. But what about Denmark for example which seems so influenced at the moment by Dutch Architecture with people like Bjarke Ingels having worked for Rem Koolhaas in the Netherlands? The sort of national architectural historical arc that Architects are described as being within in this book may already be about to be a thing of the past.

Wuxi Opera House

lewism — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:44:13 +0000

Finnish Architects PES, have beaten 3XN from Denmark, von Gerkan, Marg und Partner (GMP) from Germany, M.A.O. from Japan and Architecture-Studio from France to the new Wuxi Opera House. The project should be completed by 2010, I guess they want it ready for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.

Finnish Pavillion 1900

lewism — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:36:24 +0000

The Finnish Pavillion at the 1900 Paris World Fair has been recreated digitally by the Media Lab at the University of Art and Design Helsinki (TaiK). The building was drawn by architects Eliel Saarinen, Herman Gesellius, and Armas Lindgren.

Wearing circular polarization glasses and using a mouse the visitor is able to access a space created using stereoscopic a display. The virtual model of the pavilion can be examined both inside and outside. Spatial sounds make the experience feel real, as if one would be moving inside a historical building. Inside the pavilion model there are digital three-dimensional replicas of some artifacts that were exhibited in Paris.

You can visit the virtual reconstruction in Helsinki in Design Museum Fennofolk â€“ New Nordic Oddity exhibition during 11 June â€“ 28 September 2008. Makes me wonder if there is an Uncanny Valley for immersive 3d visualisations. Its a certainly a step up from the Recreation of Aalto’s 1939 Pavillion which seems now to be offline.

Aalto University

lewism — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:23:03 +0000

The Aalto University has been created in Helsinki. Made up of the current Helsinki University of Technology, the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Art and Design, its doors will open August of 2009. Its quite big news because of the groupings these represent. Design, Technology and Economics meaning that policy makers in Finland clearly think that for Finland economically the way ahead is with technology based design in different disciplines.

Apart form being forward thinking to take this attitude, its of course a little controversial, how influential will the economics department be on the artists so to speak, and how well can they or should they integrate? I think there is probably a deeper underlying trend also and that is not only design as a key economic leader but that design and high technology are more and more integrated subconsciously into our daily lives and this is a common theme universally across disciplines.

Deadlines

lewism — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:24:34 +0000

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by. -Douglas Adams

If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow. -Mario Andretti

Living Room for Helsinki

lewism — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:31:07 +0000

Juha Ilionen a Finnish Architect has a website of 31 proposals for the centre of Helsinki. Living room Helsinki is all in Finnish but covers a series of different interventions into the fabric of the centre to improve it and create or add to existing public space with a variety of functions. Some are larger proposals and some are little vignettes which would add almost imperceptibly except for the very immediate residents around. Overall I love this series of proposals and hope and wish someone in the planning office in the city has the foresight to implement at least some of them.

Most Liveable Cities 2008

lewism — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:25:28 +0000

Monocle a magazine I like (wish I could love it, but can’t just yet) has published their annual review of most liveable cities (also see this ft article). Helsinki is up to no.5 (I think it was something like no.12 last year).(...)
Read the rest of Most Liveable Cities 2008 (40 words)

Mapping the Invisible

lewism — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:28:47 +0000

The Norwegian Collection of Potential Architecture is beautiful idea about preserving and distributing the unrealised projects of Norweigian Architects. Like ruined Simulacra.

Archigramâ€™s Walking Cities, Koolhaasâ€™s Parc de la Villette, Mies van der Roheâ€™s Project for an Office Building in Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, BoullÃ©eâ€™s Newtonâ€™s Cenotaph, Le Courbusierâ€™s Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants and Sverre Fehnâ€™s Royal Theatre in Copenhagen are all examples of unrealised projects that have influenced the world in different ways. Never built, but still representing significant contributions to the development of the discipline, of cities and of society.

Laituri

lewism — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:31:38 +0000

Helsinki City Planning Department has a new public exhibition space, cafe and forum in the Centre of Helsinki called Laituri on Narinka square. The city which really boomed once after WWII is changing again over the next few years drastically and there are massive plans being made. This is a place where they can be shown, and debated which is really great, hopefully it can be a great forum for debate on the future of the city.

Finnish Architecture 0607

lewism — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:52:15 +0000

Every two years the Museum of Finnish Architecture (MFA) puts on an exhibition of the best 25 buildings by Finnish Architects over the previous two years. 0607 Started last week in Helsinki and is shortly opening in Paris in their Architecture centre also, but I have assembled a guide to each building in the exhibition just in case you aren’t in Helsinki or Paris this summer, or are in Finland and actually want to visit a building or two. Its a kml which you can download in google earth or view in google maps (see the links at the bottom of this post). I have visited some of the buildings already and thought to write a few words about it before I go.

Firstly I think its a fair reflection of where Finnish Architecture is today and the only building I know about and that I’m surprised is not in is the Kotilo or Seashell house by house by Olavi Koponen. Private houses and public competition lead schemes provide most of the best work with Sandels Cultural Centre by Juha LeiviskÃ¤ being one that stands out for me in particular, maybe because I have visited it.

Housing is again the week link in the exhibition, and shows up I would say are major weaknesses in the housing market in Finland. Apartment blocks here really are basically terribly boring. Both the construction method which is universally precast elemental block design and the conceptualisation of these designs is monotonous in the extreme non of the invention and risk taking evident in Danish housing at the moment are on show here. Even a cursory look at 0607 and then the previous buildings published in the previous two exhibitions in 0504 and 0302 would show you that in this area Finnish design is stagnant, staid and doesn’t serve the public well at all. A notable exception is the Triadi apartments by Huttunenâ€“Lipastiâ€“Pakkanen architects, was it a private commission? – I’ll see if I can find out .

Also why not a proper website for this exhibition and the previous ones? If you want to market Finnish Architecture design to the world you must include this method. It was actually done better previously see Finland Bygger website which covers Finnish Architetcure between the years 1992-97 before this current bi-annual format was launched. This format is, I think, an excellent way to provide a continuously updating overview of the Architecture scene here, the missing exhibition website is a big oversight however if you want to push Finnish Architecture internationally.

The kml I have made is a network link so when I update locations and descriptions after I see the exhibition in person, the file will also update automatically, in the meantime I hope you find it interesting. I will also at some point soon add the previous two exhibitions to the file. It is also worth noting that at the moment Google Earth has surprisingly bad imaging outside of Helsinki. Tampere and Turku Finland’s next biggest cities and with populations approaching 200,000 have no good satelite data at all, please google I hope you can change this soon.

FINNISH ARCHITECTURE 0607 is at the MFA between (4.6.2008 – 28.9.2008)

0607KML (GoogleEarth network link)(Googlemaps)

Going, going, gone.

lewism — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:31:48 +0000

In the last ten years nearly 200,000 Britons have emigrated away from the UK (including me!). I guess most of them have gone to the English speaking new world somewhere , but where should they have gone?Â Of course the answer is Iceland which is currently first in the UN index of human development making them the happiest people on earth. Finland is 11th just ahead of the USA at 12 and the UK at 16. But why Iceland, personally the weather would put me off, but quoting this guardian article there are some pretty strong reasons for making the case for Iceland;

It is the country with the sixth highest GDP per ca pita in the world; where people buy the most books; where life expectancy for men is the highest in the world, and not far behind for women; it’s the only country in Nato with no armed forces (they were banned 700 years ago); the highest ratio of mobile telephones to population; the fastest-expanding banking system in the world; rocketing export business; crystal-pure air; hot water delivered to all Icelandic households straight from the earth’s volcanic bowels; and so on and so forth.

So there you go plenty of reasons to move if you need them!

40 under 40 2008

lewism — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:23:41 +0000

The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies has announced the winners of its annual trawl of Europe for this continents upcoming talent 40 under 40 2008.

A Tribute to Jørn Utzon

lewism — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:49:54 +0000

Jørn Utzon is 90 years old this year and the Danish Architectural Press’s Architectural Magazine dk asked some Architects to send him a sketch greeting and they obliged. The result is dk 2008 02 a fantastic issue given over mostly to sketchs of Utzon’s some never seen before, and to sketches and letters to the Architect by other leading Architects, the issue I guess will be hard to get hold of for most people but arcspace has a small excert of some of them that is wonderful to look at. Someone has also put up a gallery of his work on flickr (via). So Jørn Utzon happy birthday and thank you.

Housing Prototypes

lewism — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:04:36 +0000

A realy nice web resource for Housing Prototypes, each project has extensive text, images, drawings, and references. You can also search by Architect, location and building type. I’ve seen and used this site a few times but kept loosing the address, buried deep in my del.icio.us links no doubt.

Frank Lloyd Wright Interview ‘57

lewism — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:44:35 +0000

An interview with Frank Lloyd Wright from 1957. Not so much interesting from the point of view of any Architectural insight so much as social commentary. Fifty years ago now Wright who in his time was socially anti-establishment seems much more in tune with modern times than the intervewee, who sponsored by a cigarette company tries to get Wright to say something bad about McCarthy and good about Chaplin, and who believes that the youth of America are going to shit.

The Age of The Cube is over

lewism — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:57:41 +0000

Paola Antonelli and Benoit Mandelbrot talk about the end of the age of the cube and fractal architecture;

This has been for me an extraordinary pleasure because it means a certain misuse of Euclid is dead. Now, of course, I think that Euclid is marvelous, he produced one of the masterpieces of the human mind. But it was not meant to be used as a textbook by millions of students century after century. ….I don’t feel that Euclid is the way to start learning mathematics. Learning mathematics should begin by learning the geometry of mountains, of humans. In a certain sense, the geometry of…well, of Mother Nature, and also of buildings, of great architecture. (via)

Magnetic North

lewism — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:02:08 +0000

Johnathan Meades is surely a great contemporary commentator on art and culture. His latest programme Magnetic North is an engaging look at what makes Northern Europe distinct from Southern Europe and why we shouldn’t always automatically look south for our inspiration. The last part covers Helsinki really nicely but its worth watching through in its entirity. You can see both episodes on you tube at the moment as well as many other shows by Meades. (via)

Living on Purpose

lewism — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:06:27 +0000

My Dad has a new book out on 24th April 2008, called Living on purpose. I was back over at my parents a few weeks ago and Dad was kind enough to give me a copy which I have read already. It’s really excellent and if you are interested at all in life’s bigger questions, like the current clash of science and religion, the theories of consciousness, and the existence of good and evil this book I thoroughly recommend.

Although I don’t agree with everything in the book I think its major strength apart from the excellent quality of the writing, is that it offers an alternative perspective to the clash between organised religion (most of them plainly ridiculous in their base beliefs) and the scientific materialists view of this world as purely a giant machine with no purpose.

Its a life affirming and thought provoking book so order it now.

Buy your copy from floris or amazon |uk|com.

Nuage Vert

lewism — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:58:50 +0000

Nuage Vert the industrial size art installation and visualisation over the centre of Helsinki over the Ruohlahti power station came to the end in February. The concept was simple, to project a light onto the smoke stack of this coal fired power station, the greater the wattage consumed the smaller the visual image. The artwork not only was a visual success but some data from Helsinki Energy shows it was effective in reducing consumption so well done to them.(...)
Read the rest of Nuage Vert (132 words)

Erik Asmussen Lecture

lewism — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:08:37 +0000

A Lecture on Erik Asmussen by Gary J. Coates hosted by the Alvar Aalto foundation (details here) is on the 9th April 5pm at the Ateneum. I would love to know more about the Architectural ideas developed from Rudolf Steiner theories he used, but I’m not sure if I can make it, so if anyone is definitely going and wants to report back let me know.

Germany’s Great Pyramid

lewism — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:11:01 +0000

A new global monument is being planned in Dessau Germany its a giant pyramid that could be 150m high, but it wil be built with human remains, it has a capacity of millions of people, and will take people of all faiths. Obviously there is a website where you can already sign up and reserve your plot for your death.

South Harbour

lewism — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:55:21 +0000

ALA architects have produced a new masterplan for the South Harbour. This area really should be the centrepiece of Helsinki for the visitor as well as contributing to the urban centre for the average resident. The connection to the sea established by the original plan and somewhat undermined since will be improved greatly by the ALA masterplan by bringing the park down to the sea and making a new bridge connection with new facilities on either side of the harbour, its all pretty sensible and should add up to a smooth but large transformation of the area. Also included is a plan for a luxury hotel by Herzog and DeMeuron which will probably draw more headlines and which looks like a bit of shiny transplanted nationalism (on plan it looks like the a swiss cross), its hard to tell if it will be any good but I generally really like H&DM projects so hopefully will get built also. Its the shiny building in the image above.

As an aside the plans for Helsinki over the next few years when looked at together are quite staggering, I’ll need to make a post here soon about this slow drip of new projects and what we can expect greater Helsinki to be like in ten years time. There are no real Supermodernist signature buildings by the Starchitects but much smaller scale building which will add up to quite big changes for Helsinki.

(All images are copright ALA Architects)

Oslo Ski Jump Push Needed

lewism — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 11:18:18 +0000

Julien De Smedt’s competition win for Oslo’s new ski jump (previous article) needs a little push to help it get off the ground. The Architectural Record reported that the project is in jeopardy. JDS have set up a petition website and are due to make final presentations to the city to try and save the scheme. I really hope they can build it, as I think it should be a magnificent project. Go here to find out more and add your name to the petition.

City Library

lewism — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:46:51 +0000

On Friday 29.02.2008 Anttinen Oiva Architects won the competition to build a city centre campus library for the University of Helsinki completion is slated as 2011-12. It looks pretty good to me. I Really like the dynamic facades using brick and glass, to match the materials of the street but also conform to the location and program. Its a bit more lively than standard for a big project in Finland which is good too, and I’m waiting to see how they link up with the existing sublevel strees around the metro there.

Childs Colours

lewism — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:48:20 +0000

Babies see colour differently than adults researchers have found, babies brains process colour information in pre-linguistic parts of the brain, but adults process colour in linguiostic parts of the brain, which means adults see colour filtered through language. It also means at some point there is a change over in our perceptions of colour. (via)

“As an adult, color categorization is influenced by linguistic categories. It differs as the language differs,” said Kay, who is renowned for his studies on the ways that different cultures classify colors. He cited recent research on the ability of Russian speakers to detect shades of blue [pdf] that English speakers classify as a single color.

Page 123

lewism — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:16:40 +0000

John Hill of A Daily Dose of Architecture Tagged me with this meme;

1. Pick up the nearset book (of at least 123 pages).

2. Open the book on page 123.

3. Find the Fifth Sentance.

4. Post the next three sentences.

5. Tag five people.

Due to my daughters age and strong hands, all books which I used to leave in (not so) neat piles around the house when not in their proper place on the bookshelf are precariously on the shelf in the living room, waiting only for an addition like S, M, L, XL to wrench the shelf off its brackets. The nearest three piles you see in the photo are all being read by me at the moment. They are The Winter Book by Tove Jansson , White Death by Robert Edwards, and Mart Stam’s Trousers by Crimson edited by Michael Speaks and Gerard Hadders published by 010.

So to keep to Architecture my usual blog topic the quote from Mart Stam’s Trousers follows;

Everybody knows what everybody else was doing. It was an extremely small community of architects contaminating one another. Eventually you get an outbreak like the 1927 Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart.

I’m not actually really reading this book at the moment but got it out because of the threat of demolition of the Smithsons seminal Robin Hood Gardens. There is an interview made for this book with Peter Smithson and I wanted to reread and see if he mentioned Robin Hood Gardens (he doesn’t). The quote interetingly is from that conversation and is actually Peter Smithson speaking about the birth of modernism, however, out of context it could serve as a description of the Architecture blogging community if you know what I mean.

Tagged by me are;

Jukka, darren, Sarno, Igor, Christoph

36

lewism — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:52:07 +0000

36 9 today, thanks to everyone that has sent a card or sms especially the friends with whom I haven’t been in touch with recently.

Transport Live

lewism — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:11:46 +0000

Live transport on google maps, so far I know of Helsinki, Swiss Train system (via), Dublin. It’s pretty obvious this will be ubiquitous in the very near future.

Artic Seed Vault Opens

lewism — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:16:28 +0000

The first world seed ‘doomsday’ vault opens in Svalbard Norway to protect biodiversity (see previous post). There are about 1500 seed vaults worldwide but this is the only one buried under a polar glacier.

Amsterdam 360Â°

lewism — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:19:28 +0000

Dutch graphic artist Frank DresmÃ© has made a series of psychogeographic collages of routes through Amsterdam. They are quite stunning images by themselves but also interesting as they present the city as a kind of unified whole, somehow for me capturing the quality of the city in a way that single images or map for example can’t, and that seems unique to me. Franks work is really fresh and I should also note I found this through Serial Consign, a site well worth checking out.

Brutalism under threat

lewism — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:18:03 +0000

Peter and Alison Smithson’s brutalist masterpiece Robin Hood Gardens looks set to be Demolished. But BD has launched a last minute attempt to save it. Go here to sign the online petition but you only have until march 7th to sign. I posted last summer about another brutalist masterpiece that is now demolished, they may be mostly unloved, but they are often dedicated attempts at real social housing, and they can be made to work properly if looked after, for example the Trellic tower also in London.

Update: I looked at the petition this morning to see how big it was already, and I was interested to note a few of the names already down; Hugh Pearman, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Louisa Hutton, Carme PinÃ³s, Alain de Botton were just a few of the more notable names, interestingly they form a diverse set of viewpoints but all call for the saving of Robin Hood Gardens. I noted a few bloggers names down too.

Subterranean Amsterdam

lewism — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:19:52 +0000

The office of Zwarts and Jansma came up with an intriguing idea. To build a new underground Amsterdam under the the existing one. The structural solution is what makes uit interesting and unique;

Amsterdam has a 30m layer of waterproof clay which will be used together with concrete and sand to make new walls. We will then be able to work underneath them and pour the water back into the canals. Itâ€™s an easy technique and it doesnâ€™t create issues with drilling noises on the streets.

I guess it makes for a pretty much totally seperate structure too. Having lived in Amsterdam I am at once thrillled and appalled by this idea. Maybe they should jsut make it a big road and carpark and then they could take all the cars from the centre of Amsterdam and leave it to the bikes and the pedestrians.

(All images from Swart&Jansma) Originally seen at bd but also them posted at bldgblog.

EfficienCity

lewism — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:09:10 +0000

Efficiencity by Greepeace shows how we can make our cities and infrastructure more ecological with the technology we already have now. Well worth a walk through.

Monospace

lewism — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:26:36 +0000

I started reading this article in the Guradian without realising the profundity of it until some way through. It is actually a fascinating piece about a music critic Nick Coleman who had a sudden total hearing loss in one ear, and what happened after that. Particularly interesting was the fact that before he lost his hearing he experienced music as architecture;

I don’t know how you hear music. I imagine that if you like music at all then it has, in your head, some kind of third dimension to it, a dimension suggesting space as well as surface, depth of field as well as texture. Speaking for myself, I used to hear “buildings”… three-dimensional forms of architectural substance and tension. I did not “see” these buildings in the classic synaesthetic way so much as sense them. These forms had “floors”, “walls”, “roofs”, “windows”, “cellars”.

This is what happened to him after his hearing loss;

What I hear now when I listen to music is a flat, two-dimensional representation. Where I used to get buildings, I now only get architectural drawings. I can interpret what the drawings show, but I don’t get the actual structure: I can’t enter music and I can’t perceive its inner spaces. I’ve never got much of an emotional hit from technical drawings. Here is what really hurts: I no longer respond to music emotionally.

He then met Oliver Sacks the famous neuroscientist who had personally lost his ability of stereoscopy something he has treasured all his life. Both these losses made these people experience forms of space in mono….. monospace.

It proves to me the link that I’ve always felt between the experience of space and music, and that as an Architect and fan of music I find their pleasures somehow equivalent. While not hearing building I definetly sense space, and in Architecture while not experiencing tunes I definetly think of space as being somehow musical. The article is also touching to me as perhaps I am on the brink of loosing this feeling to, that my right ear hears at about 50% of normal I’ve felt that my brain somehow makes up for that when I listen to my ipod forinstance, but for how long?

Reading List 2008

lewism — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:01:01 +0000

Archinect has a great reading list for 2008, and dysturb has a good post on 010’s upcoming publications of 2008. 010 really has been one of the great Architectural Publishing houses over the last few years, and it looks like 2008 will be no exception.

Japanese House

lewism — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:25:47 +0000

Houses in Japan typically last for 30 years and are never sold before they are demolished. This article in the economist explains the economic reasons behind this but I instantly remembered that at least some Japanese temples like the Ise Shrine are remade every few years. The ideas of time, ageing and solidity seem tantalisingly different in Japan.

Energy Awareness Visualisations

lewism — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:48:42 +0000

We don’t really think about it day to day but we live in an energy grid, a complex system of infrastructure and activity of which we know only the vaguest details and definetly rarely think about beyond plugging the light in when its dark. But that really has to change soon, if we are going to understand, manage and limit our energy consumption and change our behaviours. We can all be a little more responsible if we are given the information and tools to do something. Following this way of thinking a few new projects and ideas which cover this same ground have come up recently. Click through to read further.

(...)
Read the rest of Energy Awareness Visualisations (248 words)

Europan 9 Results

lewism — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:19:06 +0000

The results of Europan9 in Finland are out. With three competition areas in Finland Kotka, Vantaa, and Espoo, it was the winner of the Espoo site which stood out for me as being able to create a real quality set of shoreline spaces without being twee or contrived. Clear connections to the existing infrastructure and reuse of some of the industrial buildings, make really good gritty urban design, I would love to see this get built. It is so that although the Europan competition has some weaknesses, I’ve seen plenty of projects which don’t ake into account the Finnish weather for example it continuues to channel and generate good ideas both experimental and practical and I hope is an ongoing engine of change and experimentation in urbanism. I’d love to see it expanded to look at projects forinstance in Asia where urban growth is a great threat and opportunity. A global competition with the teeth or Europan to even get some visionary projects actually off the drawing board however patchily would be great.

The Winning Espoo project was by Julien Ventalon, and Laura Bartolon both of France, images are from their winning entry. (Also found a post about the kotka entry here which is pretty nice too.) Click through for a slideshow of the espoo winners entry.

Jjimjilbang

lewism — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:22:51 +0000

I’d never heard of a Jjimjilbang before I’d read Adam Greenfield write about inspaworld in New York, an outpost of this Korean take on the sauna. It seems a little different from the Finnish version though, which is usually quite private and dark and more intimate. Inspaworld is like the sauna meets Disney on Ice. Another interesting thing is its use of RFID technology which means once through the door you have a seamless experience inside.

Learning Finnish # 2

lewism — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:11:26 +0000

I’ve started my new course at the university again learning Finnish, trying to do some basic following of the Finnish Media so below is a kind of part Linkdump part commentary on whats out there.

A couple of daily free papers you get on your commute are uutislehti100 and metro (which you can download in pdf format the latest edition). The big paper in Helsinki is Helsingin Sanomat but maybe thats too advanced for me yet. There is a weekly printed newspaper printed in easy Finnish called selkouutiset or clearness news, you can get from the academic bookshop can’t find a web link at the moment.

There is a simplifed news podcast released every day by TLE which I’m finding really useful.

A great links page at the university site.

Also see my first post about Learning Finnish.

We Have a Winner!

lewism — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:15:38 +0000

My Friend Nick O’Neill just won the 2007 BD/Zumtobal photography competition with the entry above. You have to take the photos with a disposable camera and then send it in o the organisers before its developed, the results can be great. There were some other good photos there too so its worth checking out all the shortlisted entries at the article.

Aalto Database

lewism — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:12:28 +0000

The Aalto Database is now open in Engish and Finnish, based on Dr GÃ¶ran Schildtâ€™s book Alvar Aalto. A lifeâ€™s Work. Architecture, Design and Art (1994). It covers built and unbuilt work, competitions and masterplans and gives a summary of each building with a photo. Locations, dates and type are easily searchable. But I would like to see them all mapped, a kml link or drawn on a googlemap or suchlike which would be a great adddition. Also more than one illustration but a set of all illustrations and some photos of each project would be good. However as a starting point for a visit to Finland on an Architectural tour or for an Architectural student this is a great first point of call.

Changing Themes

lewism — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:45:19 +0000

I’m changing the theme of lewism because I wanted a change and to freshen up the look of the site a bit having been using the fauna theme since I moved to wordpress. Also I want to be able to change the look of the site a little bit easier and that means using the excellent sandbox so I can learn a little css but not have to mess with any php. I’ll start with a small mod of Will’s moopoint style which is my favourite skin for the sandbox, and we’ll see how it goes from there. If you are reading from a rss feed swing over and take a look and tell me what you think.

Construction Graph

lewism — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:44:26 +0000

Beautiful graph of Construction Activity in the U.S.A. by Bill Rankin of Radical Cartography (via). Note the dips during winter.

2007 Roundup

lewism — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:46:31 +0000

As part of their review of 2007, Building Designs top 100 practices by size is out. Compared to last year itsÂ only a shuffling at the top really;

1. Gensler

2. HOK

3. Nikken Sekkei

4. Aedas

5. Foster & Partners

6. SOM

7. BDP

8. RMJM

9. HKS

10. Atkins

Last years list.

There is another list siteÂ at BaunetzÂ butÂ it looks at media coverage of practices,Â with its mega projects in all corners of the earthÂ Fosters is the only practice that makes both lists.

JunichirÃ³ Tanizaki In Praise of Shadows

lewism — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:08:35 +0000

JunichirÃ³ Tanizaki – In Praise of Shadows

In the West we chase light, air and openness, as naturally as a flower turns towards the sun. However JunichirÃ³ Tanizaki writes about a Japanese sensibility for shadows, or the interior in its widest sense. He writes with the touch of the great writer he was and with the air of a mourner. Even when he wrote this book back in 1933 his delicate world was being hidden by the electric light bulb. This essay however, brings a poetry to life to the culture of shadows he describes that sets the mind and senses racing even in a person who has not experienced that which he writes about. A beautiful poetic book which is a must read on the subject of aesthetics.

2nd Cycle

lewism — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:37:34 +0000

Artek and Tom Dixon have a new range / recycling strategy for their furniture. It’s called 2ndcycle and it is reselling used Artek furniture again. But in addition they add an RFID tag, this tag has information for access to a website which then gives the history of that item, when it was made where and how Artek found it again etc.. The item that’s new to you can then be updated by the new owner with additional information, text, photos etc, which can be in turn passed on to a new owner in the future. As well as being sustainable, its a beautiful implimentation of a real use for virtual information. It also gets to the point of what often gives antiques and design classics their value. It’s their histories and how often they tie in to your family so intimately, or have a fantastic tale to tell, which ultimately gives them their individuality and their value. (via). You can pretty much do this with your own things too with the help of thinglink.

Also see; interview with Tom Dixon, inhabitat, onefloorup.

Oscar Niemeyer 100 today

lewism — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:06:43 +0000

Congratulations to Oscar Niemeyer who is 100 today. Listen to an interview by Jonathan Glancey with him on the BBC. Truly one of the great 20th Century Architects. (Thanks to Bifta for the heads up!)

Estonian Embassy in Second Life

lewism — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 06:00:58 +0000

Estonia has just opened an embassy in second life, being the second country to do it officially behind Sweden. Interestingly Estonia’s official second life embassy is different from Swedens offering in a few subtle ways that seem to me to make it a more thoughtful offering. The Architecture is especially of interest to me, while Sweden plonked down a copy of their real life Embassy in America, Estonia have had a purpose designed building by Scope Cleaver. Aleister Kronos an Avatar in SL has visited it and posted some photos and I quite like it. Check out the Estonian Embassy blog. You can’t really call this building a simulacrum but I think it should be appreciated on its own terms in the context of Second Life, and its tempting to speculate as to whether the next real life Estonian Embassy somewhere in the world might borrow design elements from this one.

Image above by alkronos. (who has a great set of photos covering the building)

Giant Moose

lewism — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:08:27 +0000

Storalgen has permission to build giant 45m high moose in Sweden to boost tourism. Check out the video, and look at the full story on Eikongraphia, then shake your head wondering briefly what the f### they were thinking of, and then go back to what you were doing.

Frontiers of Architecture 1 – Cecil Balmond

lewism — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:02:18 +0000

Some weeks ago our office went to Copenhagen on an Architecture excursion and I’ve been sitting on a few posts about my time there because of lots of other things were taking priority, but I have a little time now so first post up is about a wonderful exhibition about the most influential man in modern architecture who you don’t know!

Frontiers of Architecture 1 – Cecil Balmond (flckr set)

Click through to read further.(...)
Read the rest of Frontiers of Architecture 1 – Cecil Balmond (694 words)

Superspatial

lewism — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:30:27 +0000

I just posted for the first time on Superspatial a collaborative weblog (myself and kosmograd so far) and jumping off point for urbanism of all kind. Posting on urbanisation issues will really focus there. We have entered a couple of competitions already so if you are interested in joining in then please get in touch. We don’t just write about this stuff you know.

Some great past posts by kosmograd include;

06. The Manhattanisation of Bilbao

05. The City Destroyed by its own Beauty

Kiln Dusker

lewism — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:06:11 +0000

A really beautiful ambient album full of warmth, space, and texture. I’ve become enchanted by it over the last few days , lovely melodies but with big beats and good balance between producing tracks and soundscapes, maybe a little like Boards of Canada. Try listening to fyrepond courtesy of paperthinwalls and see what you think.

Dusker by Kiln is on ghostly records and also check them out on their my space page.

Museum of Horses***t

lewism — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:30:30 +0000

I haven’t laughed so much for a long time….

It is what it is: An attractive and diverting repository for a massive load of horseshit. And, well, letâ€™s be realists: That load of horseshitâ€™s not going away anytime soon. Might as put it somewhere that itâ€™s out of everyone elseâ€™s way. The Creation Museum manages that well enough. (via whatever)

Buildings to Suit your Mood

lewism — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 10:29:10 +0000

Yesterday it started snowing here and already in the afternoon the landscape had flipped from earthy autumn colours to white. Everything, the grass, the roads, the buildings look different, especially those white prefab concrete block apartments now so ubiquitous in our fair nordic capitol. And last night I couldn’t help think about how it would be great if buildings could change colour to suit the weather, a white building in summer, maybe turning yellow in autumn and finishing red in winter, before blossoming again for spring . Whole neighbourhoods could slowly transform in waves of complex changing geometries of colour. Maybe not as crazy as it sounds, as paramagnetic paint is being developed that with a flick of the switch can change colour. This article talks about the paint in regard to automobiles but why not buildings? It would really open up a whole new way in which building facades could interact with the landscape and with people. (via)

Baltia

lewism — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:15:30 +0000

A new quarterly magazine is due to come to Finland soon called Baltia covering Architecture, Urbanism and Design. Published in Russian and English it is based in St.Petersberg with a brief to cover Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and NW Russia, around the St.Petersberg area including Kallingrad. Why Poland, Germany and say Sweden are not covered I’m not sure but the focus looks definetly to be on the Eastern Baltic. It’s already been published in Russia, and it should be coming to Finland anytime now, I haven’t seen it yet but I will pick up a copy when it comes out here. Many of these areas are not covered generally by more well known publications so there is a chance to uncover some good obscure Architecture hopefully.

Otaniemi Expansion

lewism — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:16:27 +0000

A new island forms the centrepiece of an expansion of the Otaniemi campus of Helsinki university in Espoo. The competition won by NRT Architects is for office and teaching space for 1500 people with a further 700 residences. Its a major addition adn improvement to the campus which already contains some world class Architecture.

Designer Labels

lewism — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:58:22 +0000

An excellent gallery of old Finnish Beer labels. Russia and the Baltic are also covered. Too bad we can’t taste them also!

Helsinki Urbanism

lewism — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:09:34 +0000

A couple of events taking place now Megapolis2022 (via) and Hernesaari scheme proposals (via).
Megapolis 2022 is an urban environmental festival and seems like a growing event, the premise is right, that our current environmental problems will be solved in the cities. On Saturday 13th October, there will be a debate about the role of the consumer in this.
With the Hernesaari scheme the City of Helsinki Planning Department is opening up a little to the outside world. Until 21.10.2007 you can look at the different scheme proposals from Anttila & Rusanen, Brunow & Manula, and Helin & Co and comment on them. Image above from Antilla & Rusanen scheme which I really like as it adds a public space of grass and beach with water on either side.

Mimoa

lewism — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:00:00 +0000

An update of sorts on a previous post finding architecture I posted over a year ago now. MIMOA is a new website for finding good Architecture in Europe. A database like nextroom but with a social aspect with the ability to contribute, comment and print off projects when travelling. I have held off mentioning it until I had gone to Copenhagen so I could put it through its paces.

So what was it like then? I found it already covered Copenhagen pretty well, although copenhagenx is the best website for the Danish Capital (maybe for any city), still for its age it has an impressive directory of buildings already. I printed off all the pages on Copenhagen and found it really good at helping to filter the buildings and working out my route. It is linking up also with the magazine A10 so filling up the site with buildings should’nt be a problem.

A couple of issues I had were the current print page doesn’t work that well, with no map showing up and the right sidebar slipping, so a screen dump of the building you want to visit produces a better version which is a hassle. Other than that congratulations on a very nice site which I hope to use and contribute to over the coming years. Oh and here is my list of possible future features that could be added;
Expand to the rest of the world
pdf booklets and ability to plot routes
Ability to upload google sketch up models and videos, and last but maybe most importantly….
Georss feed & kml- how about a kml link like flickr so we can see these buildings on Goggle Earth? & with a georss feed I could be automatically updated if a new building is added in Finland or Copenhagen forinstance.

Open House Helsinki 2007

lewism — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:55:46 +0000

Open House Helsinki is on tomorrow, with some buildings opening up to the public as part of the larger Helsinki Design Week 2007. It could have been a little bigger and more widespread but there are some potentially interesting buildings to visit. The Hotel Katajanokka, a converted Jail for example wets my appetite.

Never Be An Architect

lewism — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:57:55 +0000

You’ll never be an Architect, but aim for a career in journalism!

-Toivo Salervo to Alvar Aalto, who, in the summer of 1916, just before beginning his studies in architecture, was a trainee in Salervo’s architects’ office. #

Oslo Ski Jump Winner

lewism — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:34:43 +0000

The Oslo Ski Jump Competition Winner has been announced. JDS Architects based in Copenhagen won the international competition. It looks great and has a viewing platform at the top so you can get a little of the experience of making a jump yourself. Here is the article about it.(via)

Playing & Learning

lewism — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 09:14:00 +0000

Fuji Kindergarten by Takaharu + Yui Tezuka is a lovely design. An eliptical roof covers the open rooms and encloses a courtyard where the roof also becomes an outside play area. The children come first and the playground is integral to every aspect of the programme and the childs learning.

View the slideshow about it and then read this article about the Thomas Deacon City Academy designed by Norman Foster, at Â£46.4m set to become the most expensive state school in the UK, and it’s without a playground at all! The last playground free school in the UK, failed, and then got itself a playground. When Children become ‘clients’ and have every bit of time structured out they will suffer. Play is integral to everyone, not just children, and unstructured play is just as essential. That’s why the Fuji Kindergarten is so fantastic and though I haven’t seen the Foster School I know that I hate it already.

To Copenhagen

lewism — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:19:05 +0000

I am going to Copenhagen on an office trip in a few weeks time. Lots of Architectural sightseeing to do and maybe just walking round the city enjoying the atmosphere.
So I’ve been doing a bit of research and have to say that CopenhagenX is easily the best Architectural website for any city I have yet to see. Everything is mapped, there are podcast walks of the city, and its all tied up to real life exhibitions and publications. Also some other sites I will be checking out are visitcopenhagen, and the Danish Architecture Centre.

Does anyone have any recommendations places to see, shops to visit, a Danish CD to buy or some particular favourite place?

Buying Records

lewism — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 09:48:53 +0000

I pretty much am immune to shopping with two exceptions, books and music. Now I think I might need to clarify a bit more, it’s not the love of purchasing a new book or record per say, its the actual physical pleasure of being in a good record or bookshop I’m thinking of. Now I live in Helsinki my pleasure in bookshopping is satiated in the Academic bookshop whose interior is by Aalto and which has a great selection of books and a cafe to boot.

Record shopping here is harder, the main shop I know is Stupido. But it’s an activity seems to be dwindling because of more and more online competition. In Edinburgh I used to go to Fopp which recently went bust, although some shops have been sold back to HMV. When I lived in London there was always Berwick Street, but they are having problems too, and the FreeRecord Shop Chain in Finland is leaving (good riddance), the trend appears more and more to be to downloading music. In Amsterdam I loved Concerto with their wide selection and second hand area and Midtown Records with their recommendation boards, they seem both still to be open at least.

So I find myself, as in Architecture, sitting on the cusp of the analogue and digital age with one foot in both camps so to speak. Record listening and shopping has never been easier in the digital age and with websites like scissorkick and hypemachine its truly a fantastic world of music out there. But what happened to my love of shopping for music in a music loving environment? Will this go the way of the Dodo, with real life music shops slowly dying out? I hope that like Stupido real life record shops and online shops can compliment each other and not kill each other off.

Espoo does Tango

lewism — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:17:44 +0000

In Finland few places make a worse case for Architecture or Urbanism as practised then Espoo City Centre. It was supposed to be a modern centre for the post war burgeoning metropolis of Espoo now the second biggest city on Finland. But lets be honest its an embarrassment really, an indictment of all that is wrong in post-war planning across the globe generally. Public places smelling of pee, the best central spaces made into badly planned car parks, average architecture stripped by contractors of even a semblance of elegance or meaning, I could go on but you get the drift right?

However there is a shiny new urban plan for this part of the world, and the Office of Lahdelma & MahlamÃ¤ki recently won a competition for a mixed use scheme shown here which I think is the kind of anchor project for this area. The moniker is Tango which for some unknown reason has a deep psychological resonance in Finnish culture. So its a plucky name, concept and looks nicely worked out. It definitely has a fresher style than much Finnish Architecture of the recent past, and I really quite like it. Can it be delivered without sacrificing too much to commercial pressure, like in the Hanasaari project only time will tell!

The Eyes of the Skin

lewism — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 08:51:34 +0000

The Eyes of the Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa

Rarely is a book about Architecture able to transcend its subject and become a poetic trip that re-evaluates human experience. Rarely as you read, particularly an architecture book, can the ideas as well as prose peel away a fog from your mind. Only a precious few books can spark new lines of thought and ideas in such a fertile way. This book is simply breathtaking.

Vision and Knowledge

The book starts off its premise by showing how in Western Culture Vision and Knowledge are inextricably linked, and how that recently architects have become too reliant on purely visual readings of Architecture. Actually Architecture and space are appreciated in much deeper ways on many different levels. A plea is made for the other four senses in architecture so much left behind in the modern world by sight. All the other senses are dealt with but perhaps the body and haptic world are most pertinent to the Architectural project.

The Body in The Centre

I confront the city with my body; my legs measure the length of the arcade and the width of the square; my gaze unconsciously projects my body onto the facade of the cathedral, where it roams over the mouldings and contours, sensing the size of recesses and projections; my body weight meets the mass of the cathedral door, and my hand grasps the door pull as I enter the dark void behind. I experience myself in the city and the city exists through my embodied experience. The city and the body supplement and define each other. I dwell in the city and the city dwells in me.

The Task of Architecture

The task of Architecture is to design for the whole human experience, the body and the mind as a totality of senses and existance. Stirring, and beautiful stuff, and this book goes down as a must read.

Stirling Prize Shortlist 2007

lewism — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:46:56 +0000

One of the more prestigious and well rewarded Architectural awards The Stirling Prize Shortlist is as follows;

America’s Cup Building, Valencia by David Chipperfield Architects
Casa da Musica, Porto by OMA
Dresden Station Redevelopment, Dresden by Foster + Partners
Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar by David Chipperfield Architects
The Savill Building, Windsor by Glenn Howells Architects
Young Vic Theatre, London by Haworth Tompkins

It used to be for British registered Architects only but it seems they have opened up a place on the shortlist for best European building enabling OMA to get listed. The winner will be announced on 6th October. PartIV is doing a poll so head over there and vote for the unofficial winner, less well rewarded but surely more accurate!

Oh and to help you choose I have the mapped (kml) them using photos from flickr.

2 years today

lewism — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 20:22:54 +0000

The taste of the apple….lies in the contact of the fruit with the palate, not in the fruit itself; in a similar way…poetry lies in the meeting of poem and reader, not in the lines of symbols printed on the pages of a book. What is essential is the aesthetic act, the thrill, the almost physical emotion that comes with each reading. (Jorge Luis Borges)

This blog is two years old today, and the quote above could be read as applying to blogging also. The meeting of the writer and reader makes the thing itself, and of course in blogging of the reply and rewriting as an added dimension! It’s been great fun so far.

Some Brutal Friends of Mine

lewism — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 09:07:24 +0000

There has been alot of news recently about some Brutalist Masterpieces in the UK, and they always seem to touch a raw nerve with everybody. So it seemed useful to make a post covering three of these buildings because of their contrasting fates. (...)
Read the rest of Some Brutal Friends of Mine (465 words)

Northern Shores by Alan Palmer

lewism — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:37:13 +0000

Northern Shores by Alan Palmer, A history of the Baltic Sea and its Peoples.

This book covers a potentially fascinating topic. The Northern Sea of Europe the Baltic compared to the more famous and glamorous Southern Sister the Mediterranean gets overlooked. But Its a worthy topic for a book to try to redress this balance a little. This is the stage of the Northerly crusades, of the Hanseatic league, and a battleground for central Europe and Russia. And this Book covers it all, however I found it mainly really hard work. Up to the Second World War the story is told in an old fashioned plodding style of moves by Kings and Statesmen, of battles, dates and border changes. All great stuff for Insomniacs but where is the more strategic view, where is the story of the influence of the Hanseatic League of how it altered the wealth and culture of Europe. This part of the book is all to worthy and stale.

Only in the run up to the events of World War II and on to the present day you you get a feel for an editorial picture presented to you. Of a view of the War which is sufficiently different and insightful to be of really great interest. There is much to say about the Baltic Republics and indeed Finland and their position between the two tyrannies of USSR and the German Reich. For the last few chapters alone this is a worthwhile read but a more lively and insightful account of the Baltic Sea is still outstanding.

Arctic Seed Vault

lewism — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:42:23 +0000

On the Island of Spitzbergen in Svalbards, a remote archipelago 1000km from the NW coast of Norway a doomsday vault is being built. With over 3 million seeds the world seed bank projects aim is to protect the bio-diversity of the planet against natural or manmade disaster. It is managed by the Global Crop Development Trust.

The location was carefully chosen to guard against all eventualities. Built into the rock of a mountain 120m above sea level so it will not be underwater even if the polar ice sheet melts completely. The permafrost of the island should mean the seeds will survive frozen even without electricity, it is remote and guarded by well trained polar bears. The vault itself is 120m long and 4.5m round, with 1m thick concrete walls.

This reminds me a little of a science fiction story I read when I was younger. An alien race recieved a signal from outer space, which turned out to be a blueprint (dna etc) for an organism. It turned out to be human beings. Quite similar to the film Contact but the implications going much further. How soon before we are archiving the entire planets biosystem not just as a collection of frozen originals but as blueprints and plans to be beamed across the solarsystem. The ultimate Doomsday book if you like.

(All images from Statsbygg)

Apartment on the water

lewism — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:27:09 +0000

YIT are building a development with apartment blocks that tentatively step over the water, the Architects are NRT. This is a first in Finland and it looks like a high quality development. As you can see its a quite suburban in character although so central, so it would be interesting to see the results of a similar approach with a more urban character somewhere in Helsinki. (all photos from YIT)

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GeoRSS

lewism — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:42:46 +0000

OK after some prevaricating, I’ve added the Geopress plugin (by Andrew Turner & Mikel Maron) and updated this blog with the coordinates of all of the previously mapped posts. I now have a georss feed.

This means that anything I locate in this way you can see in google or yahoo maps. Just take a look at my feed in google maps, I have about 30 posts on the map. As far as I know I am the first Architecture blog to enable this, I think it would be great if there were more though.(...)
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Everybody’s doing it!

lewism — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:30:58 +0000

At least I am, eer, blogging that is. My blog was featured in the Virtual Finland website. So thanks to Otto Utti and everybody there for including me on the list of best english language blogs in the finnish blogosphere! You can read the full article here.

There are some new blogs to me on the list too which I will take a look at in the next few days. I would submit a longer list too. Darren has a great blog, its the one I started reading before I came to Helsinki, it was quite reassuring too! Also some really great english language blogs by finns. For example;

Butt ugly/antti.vilpponen/nnyman/ Mika Meskanen, just to name a few off the top of my head. Overall I think the Finnish Blogosphere in all its guises is going pretty strong!

Planet of Slums by Mike Davis

lewism — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:02:22 +0000

The scale and velocity of world population increase over the last fifty years has been unprecedented in human history. Urbanisation, with over a billion people living in cities has become the key signature of this growth, with the urban population for the first time greater than in the country. These facts are startling, if common knowledge, however they are not much examined in the mainstream. Mike Davis’s book looks at this global phenomenon in detail, and shows clearly how the city has been turned into slums, and how poverty has been urbanised.

Slum mega cities have strange geographies, and densities that defy analysis and seeming logic. Here Peri urbanism where city and country are virtually indivisible is covered as is the continual subdivision of wealth and free space by mega slums that turn earthquake prone mountainsides into dense housing. These city slums are where the worlds problems will start, and where they must be solved.

But if you are looking for light reading this is not it, and although global capitalism is firmly blamed for this there are no fixes suggested in this book either. This story though is worth telling and the book is a powerfully argued proof that much of the world is suffering under impossible odds. bldgblog has a great two part interview with Mike Davis worth reading as a follow up.

Helsinki is moving

lewism — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 09:06:01 +0000

Helsinki is moving to the South of Poland by 2071 #
At least if the predictions made by the International Centre for Research on the Environment and Development come true. Something we may have to start to take into account with building design. The triple glazed, highly insulated buildings of Helsinki with large unopenable windows may not be so appropriate in the future.

Torture by another name

lewism — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 09:53:34 +0000

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture – “enhanced interrogation techniques” – is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

-Andrew Sullivan (via)

Street Views

lewism — Thu, 31 May 2007 09:48:47 +0000

A google maps upgrade called street view has just come out. First impressions are quite flash although it may not be that useful, try visiting Frank Gehrys ICA and click on the street view tab. Only a few American cities are covered at the moment but the short list of covered cities will hopefully increase soon.

But maybe more important eventually will be mapplets, which are sort of mini mashups that can go on your mymaps page. Now this is very interesting and already you can combine georss feeds here so mymaps is just starting to become a place where geopositioned information can be aggregated and reorganised almost on the fly!

I think soon some pretty good things will come out of it, although I’m really waiting for reader and google earth to read geo rss directly. I’ve been geolocating posts in this blog for sometime now but not outputting a georss feed, so it’s time I went away and sorted that out.

Citywall

lewism — Fri, 25 May 2007 09:26:27 +0000

I saw the Citywall installation by students at HIIT yesterday which is one of those multi-touch screens hooked up to tagged images of Helsinki from flickr (film). Played around with the photos, the closest I’ll get to a Jeff Han touchscreen for a while I guess. It’s really nice playful installation for the summer, but they should have built it 16m wide infront of the main square.

Nakagin Capsule Tower

lewism — Mon, 21 May 2007 11:15:10 +0000

Built from 1970 and opened in 1972 the Nakagin Capsule Tower was a innovative masterpiece by architect Kisho Kurokawa. Kurokawa developed the technology to install the 2.3m x 3.8m x 2.1m sized capsule units into a concrete core with only 4 high-tension bolts, making the units detachable and replaceable. The capsules were designed to accommodate the individual as either an apartment or studio space, and by connecting units they could also accommodate a family. Complete with appliances and furniture, from audio system to telephone, the capsule interior was pre-assembled in a factory off-site and then hoisted by crane and fastened to the concrete core shaft. -(via)

But now it’s being knocked down. The concept is beautiful just detatch four bolts and bolt in a different prefabricated unit, but it never happened. Not once in its 35 year life was a unit replaced. Also not being space efficient, the next building on the site will have some 60% increase in floor area, I guess the design has failed with the active collusion of the client who has never maintained the building and seems to have no interest in the opportunities the design brought with it. As maybe one of the pre-eminent buildings of the metabolist movement its a shame that the architect’s plan for saving the building and updating it couldn’t have been realised.

However there is also a wider point of interest that these buildings that are designed to be modified are rearely used in that way at all. Lloyds of london by Richard Rogers is another building that is designed to be expanded by adding floors but this has never been done either, if you have to put so much work into changing a ‘changeable’ building anyway why bother in the first place, you can always knock out any wall and add whatever you want later.

(Nakagin geolocated)
treehugger article(with lots of good links)/case study.

For some more photos(...)
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Eurovision07

lewism — Thu, 10 May 2007 09:41:15 +0000

The city has gone eurovision crazy, and its really taken over the whole centre. My favourite thing is the Saunabus which has been drafted in as part of the celebrations, and while I don’t think Finland will win again, they should get in the top 10. Personally I think this new rock music is getting away from the whole terrible schlockness of the event and that when next years is held with every county entering credible rock groups Finland should go back to eurovision basics (isn’t it just the best video you’ve ever seen!)

Rosslyn Chapel Decoded

lewism — Wed, 02 May 2007 10:01:34 +0000

Rosslyn chapel near Edinburgh is a very magical building, not least because I was married there, oh and some famous book and film was set there apparently! However a 600 year old piece of music has (maybe) been discovered encoded into the arches of the building, by a father and son team. There will be a recital of the music in Rosslyn chapel itself in a few days time. See Stuart and Tommy Mitchell’s website for details and to listen to the music they discovered.

Architecture of course a kind of encoding of information into a physical form, but its usually one way, the building itself is a product of explicit codes like the local building code for example and implicit codes, like a cultural value encoded into the decoration of that building. The only modern equivalent of an explicit musical code encased into a building I can think of would be La Tourette by Corbusier who worked with Iannis Xenakis and who may have encoded music into the window fenestration there.

Swedish For…

lewism — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:27:04 +0000

The Magazine for Swedish Architecture is Arkitektur. But they have an excellent weblog which is worth checking out, they name checked me, so thanks guys! Mostly in Swedish, I can get some sort of idea of the content of the site from my desktop translator although it churns out much rubbish, but its worth it because the choice of projects on the blog is really good. It’s quite a refreshing attitude for a mainstream print magazine to experiment with a weblog, something that could be seen as undermining the value of the printed magazine itself. However I think that handled well it should actually improve and enrich the reader experience of the magazine to have a more active presence online than a standard magazine webpage with little content. A weblog is someting ARK over here in Finland should really think about. So much Kudos to Arkitektur I will follow your weblog as best I can, and add to my knowledge of Swedish Architecture.

Artek & Shigeru Ban

lewism — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:53:02 +0000

Above is Artek and Shigeru Ban’s pavillion for the Milan Triennale which uses a wood/plastic composite material partly recycled from UPM the giant Finnish paper manufacturer. A great interview with Ban and an indepth look at the design and construction of the building is at design boom.

The City of Falling Angels

lewism — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:43:48 +0000

The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt takes place in Venice, Berendt arriving just after the fire in the Fenice Opera House. The story of the burning down of the Fenice provides the backbone of the book, but other stories are intertwined, and much like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is part travelogue, part gossip, part history, with a bit of intrigue mixed in. I really liked this book not least because Berendt is a gifted writer, hard researched details and insights are included without distracting from the flow of the book. He dishes the dirt no doubt deservedly on a few people, and he gives a good feeling for the city at least for the casual visitor. How this book will stack up against the other ‘Venice books’ is hard to say is there a more romantic literary city both in spirit or actual fact than Venice? So this book might just fade under the weight of comparison against previous and future tales of Venice. Especially as the Fenice fire is essentially an unfinished outcome, there is plenty of smoke but the real fire behind still remains hidden.

Goodbye Kurt

lewism — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:16:14 +0000

and hello……

Vonnegut’s writing career spanned more than half a century and saw him produce 14 novels…. as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays. He ranged from the conventional science fiction, Cat’s Cradle to the satirical Breakfast of Champions and the semi-autobiographical Slaughterhouse-Five, the catalyst for which was his own experience as a soldier with the US 106th Infantry Division and as a prisoner of war during world war two.

obituary Ä± interview

Hanasaari

lewism — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:12:01 +0000

(image from Arkkitehtitoimisto ALA Oy)

ALA just won the design competition for the new urban plan of Hanasaari. As can be seen from the graphic the new housing blocks are going to make a real statement from the sea, with large balconies and an extended wave like form or possibly boat hulls. This development will start once the Hanasaari powerplant is demolished starting in 2008.
(location in google maps)

Shish Barak

lewism — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 09:05:21 +0000

I don’t often write about food but I would like to more. I was back in Edinburgh over Easter and my brother cooked us all something called Shish Barak a dish from Lebanon. The recipe comes from the excellent book Arabesque by Claudia Roden. Much to my surprise there is even a Lebanese restaurant in Helsinki called Farouge on YrjÃ¶nkatu 6, (+358 9 6123455). Which must be worth investigating. Anyway I copied down the recipe for Shish Barak and now I only have to find somewhere to buy my Pomegranate Molasses.

Shish Barak from Kamal Mouzawak serves 6 as a main course.

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Read the rest of Shish Barak (368 words)

World’s Most Expensive Cities

lewism — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:28:46 +0000

Helsinki is no.10 most expensive city on the planet in the twice yearly report, though its clear using New York and therefore the American Dollar puts European cities automatically at a price disadvantage. However the story of the top 10 is expensive European cities and I think that’s pretty accurate, and that comparisions between Euro currency Cities are probably more accurate again. (via)