Just wondering if there has ever been a more depressing govt than the UK’s current one. For sure there have been worse and more demonstrably revolting ones, but for sheer, supine, aimless and amoral stupidity this one is hard to beat.

According to the Guardian, “Keir Starmer will warn the Labour party that history will not forgive his government if it fails to confront and defeat Reform. No need to project so far into the future. No one forgives him now.

Routine pearl clutching and attacks of the vapours from middle brow conservationists is so boring. Objecting to any kind of infrastructure by self-confessed admirers of Victorian industry is the only thing that gets half the people in this country out of bed.

At what cost? Well, I’d be happy to pay this one myself. Brontë country FFS.

Dear Mr Bluesky! Lazy ass researching here but any recommendations for 20th onwards school buildings in UK gratefully received.

Halsey Ricardo’s (sadly demolished) 8 George Street office building, 1888. A little rational beauty. Stuff like this makes current trad arguments about ‘fitting in’ seem particularly silly. A gem, partly because it differs so much from its neighbour with entirely different rhythms and proportions.

A tribute to Robert Venturi on the centenary of his birth. His work continues to inspire me and I recently wrote an essay exploring his use of mirrors, doubling and copies. Here is the sublime Trubek House, a complex, awkward and difficult little object, but also beautiful and perfectly realised.

As a follow on, a friend remarked the other day that they didn’t think that they had ever really been taught design as such in five years of studying architecture. They had learnt loads, explored ideas, read endlessly but not actually been taught directly about design. Kind of extraordinary.

Been reading Vincent Scully’s The Shingle Style. Struck me that literally nobody writes this kind of formal analysis of architecture any more. The slow unpacking of design decisions in relation to historical precedent, contemporary habit, aesthetic evolution etc.

Labour are pitiful. Really far more awful than I could have imagined. Stupid, timid, offensive, dull and nasty all in one package.

Invoking the desire of “the British people” is always. A prelude to air some truly obnoxious views. As if nationalising racism makes it ok.

So good….

Join me, Cat Rossi and a host of brilliant speakers at the School of Architecture and Design, UCA on 25.02.25 for a discussion on BEAUTY. Free and open to all, in person or online. Register here: events.teams.microsoft.com/event/839546...

Pretty much correct on every count (though I thought Guy Pierce was pretty dreadful). The Brutalist demystified by Owen Hatherley.

Has there been an architect more destructive of other architects work than Herbert Baker? He managed to ruin buildings by Soane (bank of England) and Voysey (Greyfriars) and did his best to ruin Lutyens’ Viceroy’s Palace. A bizarre legacy.

Here’s some more up-to the-minute architectural advice. The decorative possibilities of antlers…from Clive Aslet’s book The Edwardian Country House.

Just about to complete that competiton entry when: www.instagram.com/reel/DCxCtAF...

Piers Gough’s Jacuzzi in Charles Jencks’ Cosmic House turned upside and repurposed as a dome by Borromini.

Some Cosmic Morning

They don’t make ‘em like this anymore, Part 2. Unit P70 by Foster Associates, home to the Milton Keynes architects department. (And yes, I know how much it informs 6As MK Gallery).

Shaken, not stirred. Me on good old Roger Moore.

They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Or, perhaps, they do. Anyway, this is cool. Peter Walden, House In Hampshire, 1980

The current state of UK housing supply is clear in this image. Because house builders develop one field at a time and because no one is actually planning where and how housing happens, it ends up like this, fenced off, oblivious to its surroundings and without any sense of what comes next.

Got Owen Hatherley’s Modern Buildings in Britain for Xmas, and boy is it good. Not only an extraordinary achievement in its scale and scope but consistently brilliant in its observations. Describing Peter Cook’s Bournemouth Art School building as “Rave Grandad”, merely one of many favourites.

England’s Green Belt Labour’s headline housing policy is to loosen it in 2 ways But that won’t get its 1.5 million houses built. Here’s why www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/society/hous...

I reviewed Home at Last, a new book on Adam Richards Architects’ Nithurst Farm. www.bdonline.co.uk/briefing/nit...

Fairly extraordinary bubble diagram by Herman Czech *explaining* various meanings of the gravestone floor in the Kleines Cafe:

Ernest Trobridge’s frankly nuts Ozonia Hotel, built in Canvey Island in 1937 and demolished some time in the post war period.

One of my favourite details. Here’s the bathroom window in Frank Gehry’s house in Santa Monica. Basically, he smashed a hole in the cladding and stuck some glazing on the inside.

Here’s another one, this is by Rhys Preston and I’ve impudently given it the title Barber-ism begins At Home.

This year, the MArch design studio that I teach at UCA, Canterbury is focusing again on housing, this time in the Kent Downs. Alongside exploring the downs we have been developing formal and compositional ideas for a new rural modernist vernacular. Here’s some early WIP:

Herman Czech’s pre-aged step designed to simulate centuries of use.

Niche question but why were all films made by Lew Grade so utterly abysmally dreadful?

I can confirm that Alien Romulus is mostly rubbish. Enjoyably grotesque etc but makes no sense in terms of timeline…creatures gestate, get born and grow to maturity in a matter of minutes.

Roswidden Cottage, Tryarnon Bay, Cornwall by C C Voysey (son of the far more famous C F Voysey)….currently at risk of being demolished and part of an enclave of arts and crafts houses. A very good example of the popular ‘butterfly’ plan.

First post so here goes….one of my favourite plans but someone fast becoming one of my favourite architects. Dominioni’s apartment building in Milan…a sweet and delightful arrangement of residential space.