bottom drawer

I sat in on a webinar today run by the DLUHC proptech team showcasing projects from round 1 of the Proptech Engagement Fund. The aim of which is to encourage local authorities to pilot potentially innovative and gamechanging methods for using digital tools to increase and streamline engagement with the planning process. When I was at GCSP my fantastic colleague Nissa won funding from the round but unfortunately we were too far along with the Local Plan consultation work I was doing for that to be eligible, which was a shame. But we had already been piloting a lot of really interesting digital and hybrid approaches over the previous two years so it was with interest that I tuned in to hear what I could learn from others. There were great case studies and it was also good to hear the LPA officers involved being very frank about the downsides as well as the upsides. But one thing that was barely mentioned was what was actually done with the increased amount of feedback, the more streamlin...

On a non-descript street round the back of the Gare du Nord, at first you might wonder how a theatre could sit behind this frontage which looks like any other residential Parisian building – tall windows with metalwork balconies, a café at ground floor. The café was typical Paris –dark bistro chairs, small tables, a traditional bar with a wooden panelled front and mirrored shelves, a menu of cassoulet and steak-frites and salade frisée. It was the front of house for the theatre, but nothing in it spoke of anything that could not be found on any Parisian street. Going through into the theatre was like stepping through the looking glass. The theatre had been found by Brook in a near-derelict state, and he had done the bare minimum to make it work. It was once an incredibly ornate music-hall theatre, with arches and mouldings and balconies arranged in a perfect oval above which a domed ceiling was decorated with fine metalwork. But the gilt was long gone, the plaster falling down,...

I've got to be honest. I've never understood academic architecture or the culture of architecture schools. I've never understood the mysterious process by which some people end up as tutors and then heads of something and then professors, working often simultaneously at multiple universities, on the basis of a body of work which often seems slight, whimsical and irrelevant. I have occasionally taught in a guest capacity, I'm invited onto crit panels maybe once or twice a year, and I've been an external examiner (representing practice) and on a RIBA validation panel, but I've never felt inside the academic club and that club has rarely reached out to me either.  People have often asked if I or we teach, and while my usual answer is that we lack of time and want to focus on the practice, particularly of the truth is I don't know where I would start if I did want to teach or consider an academic post. There seems to be some magical process whereby appointments ...