bottom drawer

Silvio Berlusconi's wife has written a public letter to the newspaper asking her husband to apologise to her for chatting up other women at a recent event, "not having received one privately". Go girl! Though I'm not sure I would really advise marrying Berlusconi in the first place. But apparently in a recent interview he praised her for being "lenient"; I'm not sure he will now feel the same way.

That was a curveball - with everyone putting bets on Blackpool or London (at the Dome), Manchester took everyone by surprise. Apparently Howard Bernstein was just too convincing. Greenwich’s bid partner was Anschutz Entertainment Group, owned by US billionaire and Prescott-schmoozing Philip Anchutz, who said in advance that it would take legal action against the government if it lost the bid. Blackpool will also fight on, reports said. The winning bid group said it would regenerate a poor area of east Manchester, promising a £265m investment and 2,700 direct and indirect jobs. The casino would be based at Sportcity in the Beswick area of Manchester, close to the City of Manchester Stadium. The Casino Advisory Panel recommended that large casinos should be licensed at Great Yarmouth, Kingston-upon-Hull, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Newham, Solihull and Southampton. Small casinos are to be located in the following areas: Bath and North East Somerset; Dumfries and Galloway; East L...

I have a couple of new things on WC - belated, I know. Here is the write-up of when I met Mark Shorrock, CEO of the Low Carbon Accelerator investment fund. I have to say I found his energy totally inspiring and had a bit of a reality distortion field moment. Luckily it's worn off and I can be a bit more measured! And here's a quick piece on Zedfactory's Jubilee Wharf in Cornwall - an example of what every town probably needs.

I have a couple of new things on WC - belated, I know. Here is the write-up of when I met Mark Shorrock, CEO of the Low Carbon Accelerator investment fund. I have to say I found his energy totally inspiring and had a bit of a reality distortion field moment. Luckily it's worn off and I can be a bit more measured! And here's a quick piece on Zedfactory's Jubilee Wharf in Cornwall - an example of what every town probably needs.

Hmm. the much-vaunted wind turbines on top of Palestra (now home to the LDA and TfL) have gone missing , actually removed at the manufacturer's request after a fault was found with a turbine elsewhere. CABE and English Heritage have launched their draft tall buildings strategy. EP reckons it could raise £10bn from institutional City investors once it merges with the Housing Corp. Nick Ebbs, director of the regeneration investment fund Blueprint, said there was a large appetite in the City for housing and regeneration investment. “The Treasury has come to the conclusion that there’s a huge weight of money that wants to find ways of investing in property. It’s the way forward." Newcastle wants to host one of those very C20 events, a housing expo. Get ready for a retro-fest. And Peter Bishop, new head of Design for London, gave an interview where he unsurprisingly said that he was going to take a fresh look at all the programmes that the AUU has been running. Because BD doesn...

This is an interesting one: it is suggested that the need to develop local renewable energy networks and to ensure that householders use them may spell the end of freeholds, as only a clause in a lease may be enough to prevent owners from switching to non-renewable energy. Brian Mark, director of Fulcrum Consulting, said the onus on housebuilders was to ensure that electricity came from renewable sources to meet the zero carbon homes target by 2016. “Developers will have to set up their own distribution networks to bring electricity from renewable sources into the project, but EU energy rules dictate that once a system is set up, the owner is obliged to offer its use to other suppliers. This means that any electricity supplier could use the network to supply residents on the zero carbon development with non-renewable electricity.” However, this would only apply to electric energy, not heat if that was supplied via district heating which is a closed-loop system. I think there may be oth...

The Policy Exchange's recent paper [pdf], show their pronouncements have gone from a bit over-zealous to just plain mad. If it was the Onion , or Private Eye, I might accept their latest 'findings' as good satire: "the planning system" is apparently to blame for everything from being muscled off your restaurant table for a second sitting to the loss of manufacturing jobs to interest rate rises to lack of consumer choice. No, seriously. And in conclusion, get rid of the green belt, decide big things by acts of Parliament and small things by incentivising local communities to say yes through glorified bribery, and introduce zones where only outline permission would be required. I don't want to go into all the detail of why this paper has got it so wrong - I'll leave that to the RTPI instead. The trouble is, I don't believe in the green belt much either, and I'm all in favour of ecological low-density rural development. But I do care about quality -...

We went down to Pallant House in Chichester last weekend for the opening of their new exhibition of William Roberts paintings, and to snoop around their new wing, designed by Long & Kentish with MJ Long's life partner Colin St John Wilson as a collaborator. Sandy Wilson, as he is universally known, is best known as the architect of the British Library, a magum opus that took up virtually his whole working career. He recently donated his fantastic 20th century British art collection to Pallant House, and the new wing is great, with a lovely courtyard cafe. Pallant House has a really interesting history , founded as a gallery when the Dean of the cathedral donated his collection to the city and demanded that they house it in a rather magnificent Queen Anne town house right in the centre. Now about three times larger than the original house, it has an impressively serious collection and programme, really positioning itself as a resource for the town and truthfully rivalling many ...

I'm just discovered that my previously failsafe blogging software has in fact not been posting stuff up for the last week. Hence a spate of posts. This is just a round-up of various small ut In a situation that would never have happened a decade ago before density became an excuse for developers to up their profits, CABE has warned BDP that it risks repeating the mistakes of the past unless it revises its plans for a huge residential-led project in the Lee Valley, north-east London. The scheme for developer Lee Valley Estates, which CABE has now seen twice, would create around 1,250 new homes, student housing, offices, a hotel, shops, a health centre, a crèche, and a new primary school. The developer wants to cash in on the nearby tube, bus and rail links by building a high-density development. CABE is not convinced that the plot is suitable for such a large scheme. The Twentieth Century Society has launched a survey of 1970s buildings to reveal those from the era that should be li...

The Grand Olympic Project now has a "behind-the-scenes" blog , which last week even featured the on-site chaplain writing about his role. It seems that 'locals' just love Gehry's controversial new scheme for Hove, after a poll by "independent research group ICM" but commissioned by the developers Karis found that for every opponent in their 1000-strong sample, there were three supporters. After the government announced a competition for a new embassy in Tblisi, Georgia, here comes another one - well, a high commission anyway, and for Abuja, capital of Nigeria. It's on OJEU at www.ted.europa.eu, reference: OJEU 2007/S 14-016171. And lastly, rare mushrooms have stopped development near Cardiff. No, not those ones, whoever's sniggering at the back...

The Olympic Delivery Authority last week unveiled its plans to stage the ‘greenest’ Olympics to date, with conveniently 2,012 days to go until the London 2012 Games. It is launching the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, which will ‘monitor and verify’ London’s pledge to host the ‘most sustainable games ever’, was also unveiled. It will be chaired by sustainable business expert Shaun McCarthy. But it has not been without the inevitable accusations of greenwash. In a late surge of enthusiasm, Jack Pringle (RIBA president) has castigated them for not going far enough, with a few dodgy sporting metaphors. Pringle said: ‘The ODA should be going for gold with its green targets for the Olympic Village. This is a perfect opportunity to provide the most environmentally friendly homes possible, and show what Britain is capable of. ‘Instead, the government and the ODA have been lapped by their own targets. They’re not even in the race.’ The ODA sustainability strategy states that the Oly...

None of the flats and houses in Stratford City will meet the government’s proposed upper standards for sustainable homes. Westfield’s planning application last week makes it clear that the project will fall short of the government’s carbon reduction targets within six months of its completion. The present designs for Stratford City will meet the 25% reduction standard in 2012, when the Games are held, but within months will fall nearly 20% behind targets that have been put in place to meet total carbon-neutrality by 2016. Westfield had previously pledged to unveil stringent environmental targets in the strategy in order to counter criticism of its low renewable energy target on the development. A spokesperson for Westfield said: “We are building to current Part L standards and to what the planning application requires.” Private schemes are not obliged to meet the carbon reduction targets. However, Tessa Jowell has said that greater public funding for the Olympic village needs to be sec...

Well: it was always going to happen: after issuing high court proceedings and many other political machinations, Croydon Council have gone nuclear and issued a CPO for the Stanhope/Schroders land at Croydon Gateway so they can keep their strange 20 year dream alive, of building an arena with their development partner Arrowcroft. This saga has been one of the strangest and longest running in the capital. Croydon own none of the land: but have signed up with Arrowcroft and committed to the arena scheme a long time ago. They've awarded themselves planning permission, rejected Stanhope's scheme , seen the latter pushed through by an inquiry and central government, etc, etc. The strangest move was that recently, Croydon pulled the plug on their funding for the leading fringe Warehouse Theatre on the site: allegedly politically motivated , because it is written into Stanhope's redevelopment plans but incompatible with the arena scheme. William Hill, Head of Property at Schroder...

Last night I went to a preview of The Atheist , here on its UK premiere after having been performed off-Broadway. Excellent, rhythmic writing from Ronan Noone, excellent one-man performance from Ben Porter, directed by my old friend Ari Edelson. But despite the connection, definitely worth seeing. It's the self-told story of a tabloid journalist in the States, whose fierce lust for fame and rejection of God bring - well, is it amorality? The post-show Q&A was good on this, topical in these days of the Big Brother controversy. Particularly when the writer (who lives in the States) told a great story of switching on the TV late at night in the friends' flat he is staying in here, to see grainy, dark pictures of two girls snuggling up together and thought his play had come to life. I won't tell you more in fear of spoilers.

On the site of the ill-fated Picketts' Lock scheme, the £16m Lee Valley Athletics Centre has finally opened . Crest Nicholson is recommending to its shareholders the takeover bid from Castle Bidco of £713m. Apparently Grand Designs is to blame for an oak shortage in Britain, as now everyone wants timber-framed houses and wooden floors. We're having to import it from the dreaded Continent. Comment on Bill Dunster's latest development in Cornwall.

DCLG made an announcement . "The proposed agency - Communities England - will bring together the functions of English Partnerships, the Housing Corporation, and a range of work carried out by the Department, including delivery in the areas of decent homes, housing market renewal, housing PFI, housing growth and urban regeneration." It will have around £4bn to spend per annum.

Every series of BB has impacted on the question of bullying, with claiming past bullying having been virtually a calling card of participants. Jade Goody even represented a bullying charity until they dropped her this week. But the real nature of bullying, discrimination and the group mentality that underlies them has never been examined in such detail as now, when white female contestants are accused of racist bullying of the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty. India's foreign ministry is probing the allegations and likely to make an official statement to the UK, while Gordon Brown is currently on an official visit to the country. There are reports of effigies being burnt on the streets and Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt is quoted by Reuters as saying "What is happening on Big Brother is just holding the mirror to the western society. This is the real, discriminating face of the West you can see on the streets of London or New York." The racism row has boosted flagging rat...

Apparently it is Frei Otto for the next pavilion. But I was a bit surprise by this as although technically it may be his first project in the UK (all the pavilions are done by those who have never built here before) he has actually done a building in Britain - the workshop at Hooke Park , formerly John Makepeace's wood research campus in Dorset and now belonging to the AA . He collaborated with ABK and Buro Happold to create the Workshop, which experiments with bending greenwood and carrying loads across large spans on small-diameter roundwood beams, and the Refectory, which is meant as a prototype for a house, in which the structure hangs like a tent on four A-frames. But the Workshop is definitely considered one of his important works. Still I'm a big fan of his experimental and construction-led approach, so I can't wait. Especially after the downer of Rem's attempt last year.

Yet again, in band practice this evening I was asked if, really, wouldn't I sing just a bit? I answered, as I always do, that no, I have a voice like a crow and haven't sung in public since I was around 11 and in the school carol service. But singing is in the news rather a lot at the moment, what with funding announced specifically to get kids in schools to sing more. And as this commentator says , why stop there? don't we all like singing, secretly, even if we think we are terrible at it? It is relaxing, cathartic, healthy. I'm sure one of the reasons I love going to the Arsenal is because I get to sing at the top of my voice with lots of other people and no-one worries about their vocal qualities. As Liverpudlians will say there is no greater sound than the Kop choir singing 'You will never walk alone', I will claim there is nothing that equals the Arsenal 'library' suddenly roaring to life as a chant starts up and ripples round the ground until in s...

This article (on the generally patchy Comment is free 'blog' - 5000 word pieces are NOT blog posts, guys) addresses the massive and hidden poverty of the USA, which I saw first-hand and was shocked by in Alabama. Apparently around 25m Americans are dependent on charity food banks to stop them literally going hungry, and a further 13m are going hungry and aren't yet plugged into any support network. This being the States, of course there is no state help for the poor. The federal minimum wage is still stuck at $5.15 an hour, as it has been for the last ten years, meaning that if you worked full-time you would still end up with less than $10,000 a year. The degrees of poverty that exist in the States are truly shocking - in Alabama, not only the traps of low wages, disability and ill health, but shanty town housing of shacks with no sewage systems, resembling more the photos of Africa than what you would expect of the world's richest nation. Indeed, at one point early on...

This really brings a new meaning to 'living above the shop'. Tesco has long been building housing above its big-box stores in London, and had been building affordable housing too, as required by the Mayor. But now it's going a step further and allocating some of the flats above its new store in Streatham to its staff. Tesco has historically been under-represented in London and the move to create for homes for its staff is part of the strategy to counter this. Tesco hope the scheme will be "beneficial for staff retention" in London, where they suffer from a fast turnover of workers. It is certainly interesting that they feel the need to trial this approach. Are their staff really leaving them because they can't find an affordable house to live in? I presume it will be only management-level staff who get to live in these flats, as those are they only ones Tesco will be keen to retain. The flats will be sold to a housing association and staff will not be treated...

This week we finally expect the launch of the EP/Housing Corp merged body, likely to be named Communities England. Decent Guardian comment here . Last week Arup finally submitted their planning application for Stratford City. Inner Court, Joseph Rykwert's last remaining building in the UK, is being threatened with demolition - to make way for a development designed by Norman Foster. The luxury development of 22 flats would replace the modernist housing. The mega-practice Gensler has accused CABE of not being able to understand its designs - in a row over its proposals for the Blackpool supercasino. Kensington and Chelsea is set to rethink its controversial 'locals only' policy towards new houses in the borough, after the 'local homes only option' only garnered 24% support in a recent consultation. They recently proposed that all new dewllings could only be inhabited by people who already live in the borough, or who have a connection to it.

Last week a well-publicised 'summit' took place between the Home Builders Federation and Yvette Cooper to discuss how housebuilders will meet her demands for all housebuilding becoming zero-carbon within ten years. The housebuilders big demand was for action to develop local energy markets. These would involve local renewable sources, the management of local plants and their regulation. I think they are actually entirely right. As anyone who has tried to meet even the current 10% on-site renewables demand in London will know, dealing with renewable energy on a site-by-site basis is virtually impossible for small urban sites. On the other hand, the kind of radical thinking that Southwark is demonstrating with its creation of a Multi-Utility Service Company for Elephant and Castle, seems to be the way to get the cost down and provide the infrastructure needed for mass-market zero-carbon homes that even the small local developers can plug into. And just to up the ante, the Nati...

As the author of this photo series says "The roadside bus stop serves a simple purpose – to show where the bus will stop and to provide some comfort and shelter for waiting passengers. One would think that the Soviets would have come up with one universal design for this community structure – simple, functional and cheap to mass produce." But no: he shows a series of fantastical, figurative and folly-like designs from all over the former Soviet Union, some of which look like first-year architecture projects, and some of which like small temples.

This video of DJ Eric Prydz 's remix of Pink Floyd's track Another Brick in the Wall is doing the rounds: chiefly because of its loud-and-clear environmental message. He says a bit about his ethics and ideas here in an interview.

Extraordinary to read today that by 2020 China will have around 30 million more men of marriageable age than women. According to the State Population and Family Planning Commission this may lead to social instability, which seems to be an understatement. The mind only boggles at 30 million single men running around and what that will result in. Around 118 boys are born for every 100 girls in China at the moment. And the number of 60-year-olds and over will jump from the current 143 million to 430 million by 2040, 30% of the total population.

Of course, it had to happen this way - because it always does. Whenever I buy a new gadget, it always seems to be just before MacWorld, when Apple brings out something that makes me immediately want to throw all my money at them and buy another one. So I bought a new iPod to replace my old broke one, and I went freelance and celebrated by getting myself a BlackBerry (ugh, I know). So this was therefore preordained to be the year when all those iPhone rumours really came true at MacWorld - and they did . And I am a slave to Apple, but I love it and want it now. IT IS PERFECT. When can I give you my money, Steve? does it work in the UK? Phew. It won't be out in Europe till the last quarter of this year. Gives me time to save up and, erm, enjoy my crap BlackBerry glitches and six-month contract lock-in...

I've never, ever had a functioning television set in a house I have lived in. Until tonight when a non-functioning one, that the boy brought with him when he moved in, finally got an aerial. I watched...a few minutes of a grim C4 Dispatches from Afghanistan (some macho reporter going out with the troops) and, of course, Celebrity Big Brother. I am pleased to report that the latter was phenomenally boring, so there is no risk of me getting hooked. Unfortunately, my TV-less existence had already got me hooked on 'watching' BB on the internet, via the Channel 4 site and, of course, the forums on DigitalSpy , source of all good gossip, much funnier than watching it in real life, and with 'WHATM' (What's Happening At The Moment) threads that are kept up to date by some dangerously committed subscription viewers. Compared to the DS banter, the TV show (what? I can't fast-forward the adverts?) was dull. And generally, YouTube definitely wins out due to lack of ad...

Erick van Egeraat has won the masterplanning job for Canning Town Centre. I worked on stuff there for the UDC a while back, and I have to say I am a bit disappointed by the choice. Not that I would have rather EDAW et al got the job, but the perma-tanned E is - well - a bit too flash. Surprise, surprise, BSF is behind schedule. Ken is using his powers to stop Tory-controlled Hammersmith & Fulham approving a scheme without sufficient affordable housing. In a typically good bit of rhetoric, he said "This Christmas H&F has had more than 2,000 homeless families living in temporary accommodation, yet it has decided to cut back on...homes for these families. Hammersmith's actions have the stench of Shirley Porter's regime at Westminster Council in the 1980s." Lovely local journalism about this here . And in a spate of competitions for the new year, there's one for a new British Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, and the one I want to do - new homes for Letchworth ...

The government has announced funding for Barker and Coutts Architects ' [who?] schemes for floodplain housing after having seen what they've been up to as part of their LiFE project. This project has apparently been done with BRE, English Partnerships, LDA Design, Fulcrum Consulting, HR Wallingford and Cyrill Sweett to "devise and disseminate a set of principles for an integrated approach to planning and design that can be replicated in a range of conditions around the UK and are potentially transferable to other parts of the world." I have to admit that this is the first I've heard about this project (although it was featured in one of the RIBA's exhibitions last year). The designs aren't particularly my style, but the ideas are certainly interesting. This scheme will be one of six pilots as part of the Making Space for Water Innovation Fund - others include farming on floodplains and how woodlands can help soak up floodwaters.

Well no sweat. (Sorry for the needless sarcasm.) Cooper came out talking the other day about her mission to get us to zero-carbon housing in ten years and how that means we need to do things differently. "Whether it be turf on the roof, wind turbines in the garden, heat pumps below the basement or micro boilers, the homes of the future will need to be powered in a completely different way." Well, I'm not sure how green roofs help generate electricity, but anyway, we'll let that one slip for now. Meanwhile Ken has commissioned Arup to produce a report on how planning in the capital should respond to the accelerating threat of global warming. The study will range from domestic generation all the way up to city-wide planning strategy and look at the feasibility of introducing various new policies into the London Plan revisions due out later this year. Should be interesting, as Ken tried to put his 'exemplar climate-change city' pledge into action.

OK. It's been a long time since I posted. Apologies. But I just went back to working freelance in December and have been trying to figure out whether and/or how I might want to adapt my blogging life. I decided I wanted a bit more flexibility, to collaborate with new people and to be able to branch out a bit more (not to mention, a little time for my personal projects, writing, etc). I'm already surprisingly busy with new projects, but if anyone has any interesting work out there, let me know! I'm also slowly revamping my personal website so take a look and see what you think. Meanwhile, I'm going to go back to logging stuff I read and that interests me here, as much to continue compiling my own resource as for y'all. But keep reading, I like having the company!

I've been intermittently pressing 'refresh' on the annual discussion at the Well between writer and self-styled "literal, no-kidding 'Visionary'" Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky ( WorldChanging guru among other hats) about what the new year holds. A bit like eavesdropping on a really interesting conversation at the table next to you, it is raising some provocative points.