Posts Tagged ‘architecture’
What is restoration?
In light of the debate stirred by the BBC’s Restoration Home, this seems a good time to think about some of the vocabulary used to describe what we do to old buildings. The general approach to their conservation was established in 1877 when William Morris founded The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB).…
Read MoreRestoration Home
This is not my first blog about old buildings and television but the new BBC2 series Restoration Home can’t be allowed to pass without comment. For those who missed the first episode the series is presented by Caroline Quentin, who “has a deep passion for old buildings”, with the help of architectural expert Kieran Long…
Read MoreView from Tower Bridge
Last Thursday I stood 42 metres above the River Thames on the walkways of London’s Tower Bridge and was struck by the ingenuity that has gone into constructing our built environment. Tower Bridge required two massive piers to be sunk into the river bed and the erection of over 11,000 tons of steel to create…
Read MoreSustainable brick
Bricks are such an integral part of the architectural landscape that it’s hard to imagine building without them, but are they sustainable? Not unsurprisingly, the Brick Development Association, which represents the majority of the United Kingdom and Ireland’s clay brick and paver industries, reckons they are and has now published the Industry’s sustainability credentials in…
Read MoreWolfgang Feist and Passivhaus
Amongst the hubbub of Ecobuild this year I spent an enjoyable hour or so interviewing Wolfgang Feist, the founder of the Passivhaus Institut, for Show House magazine. You can read the resulting article here but, earlier in the day, I’d wandered round the German stands and gathered the thoughts of exhibitors from the birthplace of Passivhaus.…
Read MoreSustainable luxury?
I’ve always been more than a little wary of the contradiction of putting the words ‘luxury resort’ and ‘sustainability’ together but recently I met up with the team behind the 12 Blues Resort & Spa in the Maldives. They claim that this is “destined to become one of the world’s most desirable six star resort…
Read MoreThe restoration question
Repair not restoration has always been my mantra when considering the renovation of old buildings. What do I mean? Well, repair is about mending with minimum loss of fabric and thus retaining character and authenticity; restoration is about returning to a perfect state, a process often based on conjecture and potentially resulting in fakery. Taken…
Read MoreTesting zero carbon
Greenwatt Way, in Slough, Berkshire, is more than a zero carbon Code for Sustainable Homes Level 6 development. It’s a live testbed for, amongst other things, five different types of energy generation. This means it has an energy centre on a scale very different from what I had expected of a ten home scheme made up…
Read MoreLeaf Awards 2010
‘Crossing borders to create excellence in architecture’ is the strap line for The Emirates Glass Leaf Awards 2010 and, at the Awards ceremony in London last Friday evening, I certainly wasn’t disappointed – the event brought together a global cross section of innovative and inspiring schemes. Represented in ten categories, winners ranged from Broadcasting Place,…
Read MoreBrooking appeal
The first time I met Charles Brooking was on an organized walk through the Surrey countryside. In no time at all I was being ushered into a series of nondescript sheds in the garden of his parent’s house below St Martha’s Hill, near Guildford. These were no ordinary sheds full of garden accoutrements. Instead, they…
Read More