After Effects...

intimidatingly complicated at the start, but I'm gradually getting to grips with it... I don't know if I want to be an architect or a director at the moment... both very easy careers obviously...

The Shard

Is anyone else filled with an impending sense of doom by the inevitable rise of the Shard?  It seems too massive, too dominant, to not have some kind of supernatural power attached to it... I sort of imagine the last double-glazed plate clicking into plate, and some kind of bad-CGI cloud effect emanating from the finished pinnacle, Zuul reborn and the end of the world or something...

Apart from the ridiculous film-set of it, when its finished, it is going to be like some massive Archimedes Heat Ray, the sun reflecting a beam of light grazing over south London... or more appropriately the Eye of Sauron.  Surely with the full sun reflecting off it, and into your window, it'd be a like being under some kind of blowtorch...

all the information is there if you want it...

http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/

Lost in translation

People say architecture is like literature, and if so, then language is crucial.  Which makes you wonder who didn't spot the weird connotations of this development in China...

http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=14744

especially as its designed by a British architect, who you would expect not to be able to keep a straight face while drawing a massive phallic building, called the Kinky Tower...

it reminds me of another Chinese development, this time on a much smaller scale, that I came across drunk one night in Helsinki... funnily enough, the name of the restaurant didn't entice us in (we had a Finnish doner kebab, if memory serves).  I still have that T-shirt.

NASA control

Apology

oh, i am very sorry.  I had a wobble a few weeks ago, and said I needed less technology.  For that, I humbly beg forgiveness.

I've just loaded up the new Wacom drawing pad to my laptop - received from my friends who clubbed together for my birthday (an exceptionally lovely bunch of people)... and I think it may well change my entire working life.  I've only just started but it is... awesome...

Apocalyptic visions, a world in collapse... its got to be... the next year 2 project!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/apr/01/architecture