lwsdm

A rubbish spoiler article in the Scotsman follows the nomination of the scottish parliament in the Stirling prize shortlist. The new Scottish parliament really is a great work of architecture and is not iconic in the authors (Miles Glendinning) sense of the word. Also his example of good town planning, the New Town would not be my first choice even in Edinburgh. Give me the Old town any day of the week over the overblown socially exclusive and reductive grandeur of the New Town. The depressing negativity of the article from someone who should know better contrasts nicely with Enric Miralles’s optimistic pluralistic vision for Scotland!

Buy the best in architetural homes worldwide with architectureforsale and at 13.5 million dollars the Campbell cliffs could be the one, only one little problem (note to self call the bank manager!).
from (Jukka Rajala)

My friend Jurgen is coming to visit us in Finland next month. Great to see you mate! It’s a small detour from the main event where he is going to build an earthship in Sweden. NL branch is here. I really believe the future of architecture will be designing in ecological thinking and technology of different levels into all building types. But having said that look at the treehugger entry for earthship and you will see the problem! The buildings themselves signal to me the kind of eco architecture I’m a little sceptical of, namely that of a building template that ‘looks’ right and is applied in all situations no matter where in the globe and what the site is. Also what about designing in the city environment where more and more of the worlds population will end up living? Anyway the Cult thing mentioned in treehugger is maybe a little overblown but Jurgen try not to listen to too much Grateful Dead and I’ll see you soon!

Up today the 2005 shortlist is,

BMW Central Building, Leipzig, Germany - Zaha Hadid Architects
Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College, Cork, Ireland – O’Donnell + Tuomey
The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh - EMBT / RMJM Ltd
McLaren Technology Centre, Woking, Surrey - Foster and Partners
Jubilee Library, Brighton, Sussex - Bennetts Associates with Lomax Cassidy + Edwards
Fawood Children’s Centre, Harlesden, NW10 - Alsop Design Ltd

Stirling Prize homepage

Syrup finland is a design agency that I really like. They did all the Koneiesto graphics etc which I loved, but not for this year unfortuneately! Anyway hopefully this year Kirsi and me can go to at least one of the days and relive our ‘youth’.
Syrupnyc

Title: Delta ‘Overgrowth4000px2′ Screenprint
Designer: Delta

The above is a sample of whats on offer at analogue, possibly my favourite shop in Edinburgh. I Could browse there forever and check out their merchandise. t-shirts design and graphic books and some CD’s there website is not too bad either.

In Helsinki’s Korkeasaari zoo by Ville Hara is a really beautiful viewing tower.
It was written up in the March 2005 Techniques & Architecture, and when I went there last I took a few photos. I love it because it creates a sense of place from a view and is a marker for the zoo although it is really small. 1541 took a great photo of it too.

I am on holiday from today until 24th July. So no posting, but as this blog has just started, I assume very few people will notice…..see you soon.

update
I’m back in Hesinki and back at work. My holiday coinsided with my one year anniversary in Finland.

Chris Heathcote in his anti-mega blog has a really interesting application combining google maps & Flickr.
He’s mapped it to New York, San Fransisco, London, Copenhagen, and Helsinki so far. I love this idea and it extends the useability of both really well. Its great fun but also I can imagine some very serious uses and although this is the first step in combining internet applications with the online community this could become a great tool for architects also. Imagine instantly looking at a map of a site, moving to satellite image zooming in, assessing the site and prototyping the design against any sort of customiseable settings, like time of day or season etc. Then keep track day to day of progress onsite. There are probably many more things as well that I just haven’t thought of yet….

The Pinchouse(s) is not really a flatpack house but a predesigned and partly premade set of different house designs, a template house I guess. None of these are twee and just a short look through the website shows they embody high design principals. I am particularly interested by the blackhouse update to the viking longhouse design (pictured). As it should have the option of double space heights and more interesting if linear internal layouts. Its also a really cool update of at least a thousand year old house ‘template’. From Sweden but definetly targeted at Finland specifically and the rest of the world generally!