bottom drawer

I'm not going to be able to blog for the rest of the week so here's a quick round-up of a few interesting leftovers: London Remade, the capital's recycling agency, plans to deliver 20 new recycling facilities over the next 3-5 years, with the aim of London processing 85% of its own waste by 2020. Useful article in Building on the legal frameworks for zero-carbon housing. According to Mel , Building has downed some of its firewalls so maybe this article is accessible sans password - can someone let me know? if this is really true, I applaud them. I totally agree with ippr's Dermot Finch on Borough Market and the silly hysteria being whipped up by the campaign at sabmac . To make it all clear: the market is not going to close of be destroyed by the much-needed Thameslink upgrade. IT WILL STILL BE THERE if you want to buy overpriced artichokes. A few buildings will be demolished but hardly any - I know, I worked right there until a few months ago. And we need Thameslink...

I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow account of Ecobuild as Phil Clark is doing just that and I'm tired. For the discouraging view of the whole shebang, worth reading Mark Brinkley too. But I just sorted through the vast pile of trade literature that I picked up and have one thing to say: heat pumps. How many heat pump models does the world really need? Ground source and, new this year, air source (the latter don't seem to give particularly worthwhile efficiency, for my money), coming out of one's ears. Meanwhile the one product I really want to see come off, a compact domestic-scale gas-fired micro-CHP unit, is still in development from Baxi. Looks good in the pictures but won't be out till 2008 - yawn. Other stuff: the UK Green Building Council launch; my personal jury's still out on this one and I will wait to see what results it brings before covering it in more detail. I do wonder, however, how many more 'knowledge sharing' forums and so forth we ...

While I was away...the following happened. In a sign of the times, its all about the environment. Zero-carbon mania reached new heights, with Wales deciding to make all new buildings zero-carbon within five years. When will people realise that carbon isn't the only thing we need to worry about? but that's for another post. Feilden Clegg, with Crest and Bioregional, won planning permisison for the "UK's greenest tower", the 'most environmentally advanced development in the UK'. The scheme has 172 apartments, including 54 affordable units, and aims to be a truly zero-carbon development. It will include an on-site woodchip biomass boiler, which will be operated by a community-owned energy company, eight roof-top turbines, and an array of photovoltaic panels. Residents will be able to grow their own food on site, through rooftop mini allotment areas, which will be automatically irrigated. The latter sounds like a bit of a joke, I know, but apparently all tru...

I'm back from a gloriously internet-free week in the Alps. OK, we succumbed to the internet cafe once, but the Blackberry stayed resolutely off and our media intake was limited to reading weather reports in the local papers (not enough snow, spring arriving a month early) and watching a Champions League match in a local bar. This bar is actually part of a complex, in the small town where my partner's family have a flat, which readily illustrates some lessons that rural English towns could learn from the Swiss. It is a small town of around 3,000 permanent inhabitants and a low-key but faithful set of skiing and walking visitors - many with a small flat. Around 2 hours train ride from Geneva, it is properly rural, with cows in barns on the slopes and not an apres-ski bar in sight. But what it does have, in spades, is fantastic social infrastructure. The centrepiece is a bowling alley with bar, cafe and arcade machines, on two floors underneath and overlooking an ice-rink which is...

Some of you might remember my sadly neglected food blog , which was initially titled 'Kitchen Fascist', a label that the boy had given me for my bossiness in the kitchen and insistence on very particular ways of doing things. So I read this and found a new label for myself - "alpha cook". Read and laugh, or weep, depending. I'm just glad I buck the trend in that article by being a female alpha, not a male one. I'm off on holiday for a week. See y'all.

I'm going to be off on a proper holiday - no mobile phone, no email, no internet access - from tomorrow for a week. Back on the 26th!

Six 'young' architecture practices have been invited to participate in a competition for a site in South London, in one of Design for London's first projects. If this is an example of 'start as you mean to go on', it is both encouraging and a little disappointing. The invited practices are all good, characterful designers who aren't on every developer's speed-dial at present, so that's got to be a good thing. But they are not particularly risky or even small - of S333 , de Rijke Marsh Morgan , FAT , Brisac Gonzalez and 6a , perhaps only the last two are at a stage where they need this kind of push up. And there is also no guarantee that the winning architect will actually get to build the project - "A preferred design will be chosen in April and that architect will work up its plans to detailed planning application stage. Subject to a successful planning application, the winning architect might work with an LDA development partner to see the projec...

I started this blog, as a side project, nearly a year ago because I felt there was no accessible online resource for news and discussion around the built environment; policy, planning, regeneration, economics, environmentalism, all the stuff that isn't about the aesthetics and design. What there was, was hidden behind subscriber-only firewalls, and still largely is. The trade press hasn't embraced open-source, it is fair to say. I felt that architects and others who don't want to pay for, or trawl through, a stack of journals each week should have somewhere online that brought that stuff to them. It's nice to see recently that a few more toes have been dipped into the world of blogging. By far the most interesting effort has come from Phil Clark , former deputy editor of Building Magazine (which now has a good set of RSS feeds and a blog section ) and now digital community editor at the Builder Group, which owns Building among others. He's writing exclusively about ...

OK. I resisted it for a really long time. But now I've given in to myspace and can be found, currently looking like Billy No-Mates, here . I really hate having something owned by Murdoch owning stuff about me, but in pursuit of my alternative career path as a hillbillly fiddle player (someone, make me a star, please!) I've gone and done it. Please can you add me to your friends, though, so I don't look so sad and lonely...

Sadly they are neither eighteenth-century in style, nor zippy modernist masterpieces, but nonetheless, I thought this article on how an Amish family makes ranch-style modular homes without using electricity, computers, phones or even billing customers until the house is done, was quite amazing.

I attended the launch last week of an interesting MORI report, commissioned by Sponge , which demonstrated the overwhelming shift in public opinion towards the environment. 64% of homeowners want sustainable features to be compulsory for all new homes, and, more significantly, a majority are willing to actually pay more on the price of a new home and more in service charges for what the report labelled "sustainability services" - green power, car clubs, better communal recycling facilities, apparently. Most people aren't willing to pay that much more on the price of a house - the most popular band being between £2-£5,000 - but nearly 40% would be willing to pay up to an extra £25 per month. Interestingly, it seems that the economic impact of rising energy prices is having an impact on the public's desire for what the report labelled a 'sustainable' home (a slight misnomer, I think, as the methodology got rather dubious when it came to issues such as public tr...

CABE has published the third of its regional housing design audits this week, and the usual critique of design quality that comes whenever the watchdog mentions housing. It claims that nearly a third of all housing should never have been given planning permission, and a staggering 82% of all housing is failing to reach a 'good' standard. “The task is not one of doubling the number of exemplar schemes, but eradicating the unacceptable.” We have heard this so often from CABE that, unfortunately, the message is now irritating those at the head of the big housebuilders. While Barratt performed third worst out of the big players, its recently-retired chief executive David Pretty came out citing the many awards they have won. For the record, the worst was Bellway and second-worst Wimpey, while the best was Berkeley Homes. Strangely, none of Crest Nicholson's schemes were examined, providing no evidence to assess its continual claims to 'design excellence'. Recognising ...

I actually knew about this a while back but - discreet as I am - didn't tell you all about it. But a version of Ricky Burdett's Venice Biennale exhibition is coming to the Tate Modern in the summer, and apparently to be augmented by some special commissions from big-name architects. Itself in a sense a public version of the research Ricky did over the last two years for the Deustche Bank-sponsored Urban Age project, the Biennale exhibition was criticised by some parochial corners of the archi-press for not having any architecture in it (untrue, for the record) but was actually a fascinating and important expose of the state of cities around the globe. Although perhaps too much like a book-on-the-walls to be a truly successful 'exhibition', the content was dense, interesting and original; if only the catalogue had treated us to the same amount of sheer information. It clearly articulated the context that architects must respond to in order to remain relevant, as well ...

West Ham's Olympic dreams die as they won't be allowed to take over the stadium after the games, when it will become primarily an athletics venue. Its design is also being scaled back, according to Building magazine, with only one covered stand. Good job that by 2012 global warming will mean that rather than worrying about rain, we will all be getting sunburn skin cancers while watching athletes sweat their way around the track. Galliford Try have completed the takeover of Linden Homes, which will propel it into the top ten housebuilders with around 3000 annual completions. And apparently housebuilding has risen to the highest levels since the late 1980s, yet despite this, somehow homes are still completely unaffordable for the many. Hence yet another first time buyers initiative from DCLG. Design for London was officially launched and you can read some Ken quotes here . It's not just central government - the GLA and Liverpool City Council are also going to bring in addi...

The competition that launches a thousand dreams of your face in El Croquis, Europan has launched and given aspiring urban designers everywhere three sites in the UK to choose from: an enticing green field next to Milton Keynes, a canal-side bit of Stoke now sadly without the potteries shown in one fantastic image, or a Sheffield site with the lovely name of Skye Edge. The jury includes Peter St John, Christine Hawley, and the wonderful Neave Brown, alongside one of the Urbed directors, the head of architecture at MK council and an Amsterdam planner, among others. There are three 'free evening seminars at CABE on 8, 15 and 22 March 2007 on sustainability, urban realm and dealing with cars, with tips on how to win' to kick everything off [does anyone actually go to these? does anyone think that CABE's tips are going to win it for them?] and then it is registration by the end of May and submissions by end June. Ooh, I can hardly wait...are you all entering?

Via diamond geezer , I found this current Space Sytax project for a London pedestrian route map. AS DG says, London isn't always that hard to navigate on foot, and the Underground map means plenty of non-Londoners have a warped sense of geography and proximity, so at first sight this seems like a great idea. When I look at it, however, it struck me that this really isn't the answer. Well, an answer maybe - but what Space Syntax have produced - through an entirely logical methodology - is essentially just a very simplified version of a street map with only the main roads marked. There is the addition of some park paths and the riverside walkways, but apart from that, it implies that the easiest walking route from Marble Arch to Holborn is along Oxford Street, and so on. These routes are indeed the most direct, and currently most people do walk along main roads, but that doesn't always make these the best routes. For a start, they aren't quicker, because they are so cro...

In case you avoided the barrage of media yesterday, the Olympics has submitted its 15-volume, 10,000 planning application. So much for being green; that's a fair chunk of tree, even not counting the draft copies they chucked away. Hope they specified recycled, but I doubt it. Kevin McCloud is continuing where Alain de Botton has taken a dive; his HAB (Happiness, Architecture, Beauty - goodness AdB must fume) has shortlisted the unlikely trio of David Chipperfield, DSDHA and Wright & Wright for his inaugural development. More unexpectedly still, he's got Isabel Allen, AJ editor, to come on board as design director from April. A stunningly ugly-looking £70m masterplan has got the go-ahead in Bury. And the Royal Borough of K&C has approved another stunningly ugly 27-storey, 400 unit tower by Woods Bagot, despite it being understandably slammed by CABE. Apparently the scheme is worth £200m, which gives some idea of the disparity between Bury and K&C. And it looks like D...

The eco rush is so fast that each day seems to bring a welter of press releases and comment. Here's a brief round-up of some relevant ones: Ruth Kelly has announced 'Carbon Challenge', an international challenge for housebuilders to design and build flagship zero-carbon and low carbon communities. The competition will be run by EP who are asking developers to bid for certain sites and to set "high standards of design, construction, energy and water use and waste disposal so that these techniques can be used in the future as a benchmark for mainstream development." It also seeks to address rising expectations from the public for more sustainable houses which offer them reduced bills and better design (of which more soon, I went to an interesting event the other day on this.) The first two sites are Hanham Hall near Bristol and Glebe Road in Peterborough. Three further public and private sector sites are expected to be added to the Challenge within a year. The Chal...

I was at the launch of the Demos and friends Future Planners report this morning. All interesting stuff, somewhat preaching to the converted when it comes to my opinions, but with some good meta-points about global value, local value, public and private, and the role of the planner essentially as mediator between these competing perspectives. The most interesting and practical idea I saw in the report was the idea for citizens' juries in the planning process. Lessons could be learnt from some of the stuff my ex-Demos friend Peter MacLeod is talking about currently re citizen assemblies in Canada and other good stuff. I wished the report did have slightly more concrete recommendations that could get taken up by the RTPI or the government, although I understand why the authors were trying to steer away from simply more policy recommendations. I think their 'changing the story' point could have been made more forcefully: we need planners to have an image change, and that is ...

There's something rather sad about this little blog set up as part of Will Alsop's commission to 'vision' Croydon. The local press have been somewhat lionising his commitment to 'personally attend' workshops with local people and his no-prisoners approach to design. But look at the sketches here and it is rather depressing to see nothing that really strikes me as visionary. As always, ask people what they want and they will respond with cliches; some cafes, a whole street of restaurants, an office building with reflecting glass wall, water features. As always, the ones that betray an architect's or urban designer's hand are far worse than the amateur ones - my favourite being the mysterious sketch of coloured onion domes, and the massive multicoloured meteor explosion that dwarfs a purple splodge labelled 'London', at the edge of the page. The blog is an interesting attempt to get the process out there but - maybe its the fact that they haven...

In the Monopoly world of volume housebuilding, the top dog is buying out the motorcar. Or something. Barratt is buying Wilson Bowden in a £2.2bn deal which will safely put it ahead of great rival Persimmon. Together last year, Barratt and WB built nearly 20,000 houses. Meanwhile, Galliford Try is having exclusive talks with Linden Homes about buying them for £200m. Linden is 1/3 owned by HBOS, which backed a management buyout in 2000.

In a blow to those promoting so-called Modern Methods of Construction, the experimental CASPAR housing in Leeds is being demolished despite being only seven years old. The Joseph Rowntree Trust's award-winning and experimental housing was evacuateda year ago and will be demolished soon as it became potentially unstable in high winds. Its timber-framed superstructure was completed in only three weeks out of a combination of flatpack and modular parts, and the development was hailed as an exemplar of modern, sustainable housing. The projects failure is a blow to the government's support for cheap prefab building, such as the £60,000 house competition, and plays into the hands of developers who may argue that meeting the government's demands for fast, good quality, affordable housing is uncommercial and courting catastrophe. However, a second development with the same name was put up in Birmingham, but using different techniques which have proved lasting. The Leeds site has ...

The saga of Battersea power station continues; after being sold to Treasury Holdings, and after the council had allowed work to start on the site, after changing the planning conditions they had stipulated, it now seems that rumours of Treasury bringing on new designers are correct. Poor Arup, who have been working on the site for over a decade, alongside West 8, Benson & Forsyth and others more recently, seem set to be dumped as Treasury have drawn up a secret shortlist of new masterplanners including Fosters, SOM and Vinoly. This is despite the original masterplan having gained planning consent. It seems that Treasury aren't even talking to the original team and have also frozen out English Heritage, who are still chasing a meeting date, according to the AJ. The rumours are of course that Treasury want to increase the residential element of the scheme to make the financils more appealing. Treasury are, of course, issuing non-commital comments. But whatever, this will only ...

Channel 4 has ditched Alain de Botton's attempts to build the architecture of happiness with Feilden Clegg Bradley. Alsop is building a £250m biomass power station for the centre of Norwich, inclulding a visitor centre, which is already being dubbed a new Eden project. New EU Energy Performance certificate criteria will mean that many new air-conditioned office blocks will get a D rating, affecting their value in property portfolios. And I wrote before about how Liverpool was ignoring the advice of their own design review group, Ludcap; well, it has happened again, with the council approving the £150m plans for Project Jennifer, a new district centre and supermarket, without Ludcap or CABE seeing the proposals. Both groups had previously been extremely critical of the early designs.

For my sins, I have had to register myself for VAT as a self-employed person. All very well, except that it takes a hugely long time for the registration to process. Finally, yesterday I got it through and with it, a CD called 'Getting started in VAT for small businesses'. Great, I thought, that'll be really useful for me as I don't really know much about VAT accounting. So I put it into my laptop, and what do I find? Our great government buereaucracy seems to have forgotten that some people use Macs. The damn thing just has a Windows-compatible .exe file. I can't really believe it: I live in a functioning democracy which discriminates against Mac users, and the people at HM Customs and Excise are smart enough to figure out all sorts of difficult math problems, yet hire ICT marketing guys who don't know about Macs. I pity all small businesses who work in design, media, music. Back to the unintelligible online guides it is; don't blame me if I get my accounti...