Still my favourite music video of all time I think. Incredible shame to have lost someone as talented Adam Yauch / MCA. I spent a lot of my degree in Portsmouth listening to these guys and have a large collection of their back catalogue. I’ve spent all weekend with Ill Communication and Check Your Head on full blast in the van.
RIP MCA.
Superbly shot and edited little video documenting the construction and installation of the Room for London on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Unfortunately embedding isn’t allowed so you’ll have to view it over at Vimeo.
We have our friend’s dog staying with us this weekend. It’s been quite an experience so far. She’s got a lot of energy so we have to play with her to try and tire her out a bit so she sleeps later. The favourite toy seems to be the bee which we drag around the living room and then chase her under the table. She loves it.
She also has quieter moments at times.
Last weekend we headed out with Phil, Sacha and Gav to see Ed run in the Londond Marathon. I was pretty surprised when Ed said he wanted to run but fair play to him and he’s certainly put the hours in training for the event. He was running for Shelter who are a pretty worthy cause. We went to Embankment to see if we could catch a glimpse of him and shout and scream encouragement at him. It’s not real shock that it was pretty crowded and we didn’t actually see him – Phil did catch sight but then doubted himself after. Anyway, plenty of photo opportunities as usual.
Ed, surprised to see us all and pleased with a sub four hour time!
My view of the Marathon.
Dog in the crowd.
Back of the crowd.
We missed him right?
Balloons
I bloody love art on the walls and I love having my work on someone else’s walls too. So what better way to satisfy both desires than swapping a print with someone who also has some nice work to offer? Agree a size, offer a few images, send to your printer of choice and BOOM – print swap!
First one up is this wonderful image from Jim (or Brighton Jim as I call him). It’s quick preview as it’s downstairs at the framing shop being framed ready to go on the wall above my desk.
I swapped him this one but in colour. I’m open to print swap offers.. email me.
Gav is in town this weekend so we popped out in his wonderful van to Swinley with Mr Noble in tow. Surprisingly dry under tyres until the heavens opened later in the ride. Spent plenty of time fiddling around with the GoPro and seeing if we could get some decent footage this time. I’ve thrown a few clips together below. The camera still needs to point further up the trail but it’s much better than the last effort. Still need to work out how to mount of the frame I think but would be good to make sure the camera doesn’t fall off.
I recently got hold of a copy of – John Pawson – A visual inventory – which is incredibly cheap at around £20 on Amazon. After reading a Guardian article about the book I was intrigued as to the quality of the content of the book, essentially a series of snaps and observations from one of the most minimal Architects working in the UK. His last book, which I bought whilst I was still at University, was called Minimum and, as per it’s title, was about as minimal as you could get. If I was entirely honest it wasn’t my thing at the time.
When I got the book I was struck by the richness of the imagery and the sheer variety of images from his travels around the world. In some ways the words and captions as well as his opening text were equally as powerful. The excerpt below from the introduction is for me a great description of the power of imagery as an Architect.
Part of the daily compulsion of photography is that it allows me to see what I saw over and over again. A camera is essentially and eye with a memory and I would be the first to admit that I am obsessive where this facility for recall is concerned. Since first acquiring a digital camera, I have accumulated over a quarter if a million image files. On the one hand, there is an attraction to photography’s speed and immediacy. Where the process of making a building is usually measured in years, an image can be captured in a fraction of a second. But more pressing for me is the sense that if you don’t record everything, moments slip away and are lost forever. Maybe I am particularly sensitive to this because architecture is a relatively permanent medium, involving enduring arrangements of stone, glass, timber and metal. My instinct is to translate things into a form I can hold onto and come back to – even letters and odd lines from books. You never know when a picture capturing the texture of a wall in Syria in the midday sun might be just what you ned as a reference to convey and idea to a client or colleague. When a member of a team returns from a site visit full of enthusiasm for a building or detail they have seen, my reflex response is always, ‘show me the photograph’.
I’m intrigued by the idea of a daily compulsion to photograph, to record, to capture or to retain or even amplify a memory. It’s a theme I have started to become more and more interested in after seeing family albums from my childhood as well as images of my Grandparents as young adults. The recording of images has massive significance in this context for later generations and I’m hoping won’t die. I’ve also tried to engage in this following my 365 project in 2009 and more recently by starting to collate prints of each year in boxes and maybe albums going forward. I like the idea of snaps also and that not too much artistic or overt meaning is overlaid in the first instance which could otherwise stop you taking that photo. Surely better to snap some friends, that interesting light, or that texture on the pavement that would otherwise be missed and entirely forgotten than to hold back as it’s ‘not good enough’. The message I get from this book is almost certainly – take more pictures!
Pawson seems to summarise a unique way of seeing through his book that in some ways I feel only an Architect could do. He’s not a photographer as such but he is using the medium to his advantage and again that medium is informing how he sees, his compulsion makes him see so much more and he has seemingly become acutely aware of his surroundings. He clearly has a real intrigue, eagerness and passion for seeing which is so well described here. It’s incredibly inspiring to read through and delve into the image captions. The work also has all sorts of meaning for an Architect reading and is incredibly thought provoking. I read the book in two sittings to process the first series of images before going back for more. I think I’ll be dipping in again and again in the future.
The smallness of human life is graphically expressed in this graveyard, in the low stubs of the headstones dwarfed by the towering tree trunks. Perhaps unexpectedly, the effect of this monumental contrast of scales is a feeling of comfort – the secure tranquility of the final resting place overseen by these massive forms, whose benign nature seems to be underlined by the little wooden nesting box on the central tree.
An example of one of the short captions that accompanies each image. They’re short enough to not get bogged down in, but long enough to give some background and context to each image and describe what Pawson saw that fascinated him so much. In summary, a beautiful book to own. I think mine will be very tattered before too long. A must purchase for any Architect with even the slightest interest in visual representation or photography.
Updated: A few of the spreads are on the Pawson Tumblr account. avisualinventory.tumblr.com