Architects Journal
Sutherland Lyall

'A promiscuous cornucopia, a daily smorgasbord of undifferentiated images'

28-Jan-2010
Architecture on the internet is a riot of diffuse ideas, but that’s not all bad news, says Sutherland Lyall
William Smith Building, Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, by Pick Everard

8-Jun-2009
Pick Everard’s design for the British Geological Survey busts BREEAM’s ‘Excellent’ standard using natural materials and the UK’s first timber-supported TermoDeck system, writes Sutherland Lyall
Centre for Endemic, Emerging and Exotic Diseases, Hatfield, Hertfordshire by Architecture PLB

25-Mar-2009
A strict budget and onerous contractual conditions didn’t prevent Architecture PLB’s success in creating the Centre for Endemic, Emerging and Exotic Diseases at the Royal Veterinary College, writes Sutherland Lyall
7-10 Old Bailey, London, by Sidell Gibson Architects with Avery Associates Architects

25-Mar-2009
Sutherland Lyall talks to Sidell Gibson Architects about the unique diagonal atrium and frameless bays of its office in the City of London
Stud Farm Conversion, Berkshire, by Leroy Street Studio

24-Feb-2009
Sutherland Lyall talks to Leroy Street Studio about bringing ambitious Manhattanite modernity to a Berkshire stud farm estate
Darwin Centre, London, by C F Møller Architects

24-Feb-2009
Sutherland Lyall puts C F Møller’s Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum under the microscope
Five things to do: 4 February

4-Feb-2009
Wind generators - StarCraft - Pavillon de l’Arsenale - Palladio - robotic vacuuming
Five things to do today: 28 January

28-Jan-2009
Little Chef - The Place - Emperor Workstation - kids' lit - Motley fool
Five things to do today - January 27

27-Jan-2009
iPhone sniper - Bubblewrap 2.0 - Herzog who? - inflatable window - Scrabble keyboard
Five things to do today - 22 January

22-Jan-2009
Free drink - plane sailing - snitch - London mime - new bike
Five things to do today - 20 January

20-Jan-2009
Chalk 3D - thewholeearth.pdf - Nomadic urban living - holographic meetings - virtual bubblewrap
Five things to do - 12th January

9-Jan-2009
Vegitecture - Organised photos - More architecture predictions - 3D scanning - a very swanky lawnmower
Five things to do today: 17 December

17-Dec-2008
Grace Jones - misconceptions - Wired in Japan - solid site - flat speed bumps
Ornamenting the Northwest

15-Dec-2008
Pb Elemental Architecture is a Seattle practice which seems to also engage in construction as well as development. They 'are blazing the trail for a new model of design-build in the northwest' opines one commentator
Tiny knots

15-Dec-2008
This column has had a perhaps unhealthy preoccupation with very small computers
Standards? Graphics?

15-Dec-2008
I guess most architects will at least have heard of Architectural Graphics Standards, that big US reference book on drafting conventions which also contained a great pot pouri of miscellaneous architectural information
All aboard the Greenline

30-Nov-2008
'Our mission is to collect and share news and information' say the authors of Greenlineblog
Touch me

30-Nov-2008
Ever since those videos of New York's Jeff Han doing two handed manipulation of items on a giant screen and Johnny Lee's brilliant DIY videos of experiments with Nintendo Wii controllers, the geek community has had multitouch screens on the radar long before the multitouch iPhone or Microsoft's multitouch Surface ...
Near perfection?

30-Nov-2008
Is Metropolis the ultimate ‘Don't Make Me Think’ website? Almost
Daily dose

20-Nov-2008
I can't believe I haven't mentioned before the blog Arch Daily. As with all interesting websites you take out a free subscription rather than actually visiting the site so there are RSS, FaceBook and even YouTube feeds, plus daily emails.
Chasing the image

20-Nov-2008
'I usually think you are too grumpy about slideshows, I don't mind them, but if you click on a project [Amsterdam practice Concrete Architectural] you get an unstoppable slideshow. Only one of the slides has the information on it. But the slide changes before you can read more than a sentence. You have to wait for it to recycle to read the next sentence, and so on. Mad, mad, mad.' Writes a reader.
Displacement marketing

20-Nov-2008
You feel someone steered the branding strategy down a too-intriguing path when the practice website has to explain how to pronounce its name. And then feels the need to explain what the name means.
Blog therapy

14-Nov-2008
You have to have a really big winge build-up inside you to do a blog for more than a couple of trys
Linux still nixes dualhead

14-Nov-2008
I did my regular bi-annual Linux installation with the same result as all the last times
Do I know your name?

14-Nov-2008
How do you arrange your wares on a website so that potential punters can best scan them?
Tiny tot-up

11-Nov-2008
This is my last word on the tiny Elonex ONEt netbook which started off at £99.99, had a total redesign and now costs around £165. I've given it a fortnight's mild workout in various parts of the Ionian Sea
Go PTEA, go!

11-Nov-2008
So your web designers are moaning about how difficult it is load big coloured pictures up fast. Tell them to take a look at Pollard Thomas Edwards Architects' website
Slow chutzpah

11-Nov-2008
The intriguing web address eggfarkarch belongs to the more prosaic Seattle-based Eggleston Farkas Architects. They do quirky, really interesting buildings
Corby Business Academy, Northamptonshire, by Foster + Partners

10-Nov-2008
Workshops between the architect and the contractor encouraged openess - a lesson that can be seen in the design. Photography by Nigel Young
Corby Business Academy, Corby, Northamptonshire, by Foster + Partners

5-Nov-2008
At Foster + Partners’ Corby Business Academy, workshops between the architect and the contractor encouraged openess - a lesson that can be seen in the design.
How it should be done

3-Nov-2008
Ever susceptible to flattery and offers of cheese I was still a tad cautious when Tom Holbrook of 5th Studio emailed with news of the practice's new site
Anything but pedestrian

3-Nov-2008
Christopher Seddon is a bit of a polymath as you might divine from his blog 's title Sid's Knowledge Emporium: 'everything you ever wanted to know about just about anything'.
Up and over the top

3-Nov-2008
In the hyperbolic, scam-strewn world of ‘Green’, you can never be sure. So I offer the AeroCam wind-powered horizontal axis turbine with a degree of diffidence
Fields of gold

27-Oct-2008
Fieldoffice is the site of two tutors at Clemson university school of architecture, Douglas Hecker and Martha Skinner.
The curse of flash

27-Oct-2008
I'm not against bewildering sites providing the proprietors aren't under the impression that the special effects, or whatever contributes to the bewilderedness of the auditor, will draw in new clients.
Fancy Fridges

27-Oct-2008
Ever since the invention of the ice box the cry has come down the ages, 'You've left the effing door open again.'
Floating dreams

17-Oct-2008
All you old Modernists out there moaning away about how Zaha and Greg Lyn and Frank Gehry and suchlike are doing proper architecture should take a look at Pointclickhome's feature, 'Gravity Defying Homes'
The theatre of architecture

17-Oct-2008
Last week I promised a look at Squint/Opera which operates anywhere between architecture and film.
Press for green

17-Oct-2008
Apparently, the EcoButton will let you switch your PC to 'ecomode' at the press of a, er, button, although exactly what it is and how it differs from your usual sleep or hibernation mode is a bit of a mystery. Neither of these modes necessarily saves a lot of energy. Although switching off at the mains does.
Sitejam

13-Oct-2008
The Building Centre continues its terrific run of evening lectures directed by the man with a thousand contacts, the ever-youthful P. Cook, knight of this realm.
Not that Forbes. Nicer

13-Oct-2008
You sign up for the Studio Forbes newsletter here. It's based on the blog of San Francisco design entrepreneur, Rob Forbes.
The year of the rat

13-Oct-2008
There we were imagining there was not a lot of point in the Intel v AMD chip race because significant increases in central processor speeds have recently been matched by scarcely noticeable improvements in hands-on performance.
Bollocks to architects

26-Sep-2008
No this isn't the famous blogsite of a similar but not the same name. This is House 2.0, 'the online ramblings of the [biannual] Housebuilder's Bible author, Mark Brinkley.' which you can use to bypass booksellers.
Light fantastic

26-Sep-2008
You may be well ahead of me on this, but according to Phillips the next big thing is organic light.
Protect your name

26-Sep-2008
The callsign for California-based Rios Clementi Hale Studios is http://rchstudios.com. It's probably not intentional but this is perilously close to the name of Italian practice Archstudios. Add an 'A' or lose an 'A' and you get the other's site.
Heathfield Children's Centre and Nursery, London, by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects

24-Sep-2008
Sarah Wigglesworth Architects is using a timber roof structure and brightly coloured detailing to create a vibrant and accessible children’s centre.
Unsung glory of Branson Coates

22-Sep-2008
A respected correspondent, grumpy with my recent severe view of the Venturi Scott-Brown website, urged me to take a look at the Branson Coates Architecture site. I think it was s a bit of a test.
Architectural snappers go underground

22-Sep-2008
Meet the people who visit, often very illegally, deserted, uninhabited buildings, from asylums to industrial ruins.
More trouble with Elonex

22-Sep-2008
Following my posting last week about the trouble with my tiny laptop, eventually Elonex did call back and arranged for two replacements of the OneT, the Small Cheap Computer with the seven inch screen and light as a feather.
Second Life comes of age

15-Sep-2008
In the past this column has been a tad lukewarm about the virtual world, Second Life (SL). There is that stuff regularly hauled out for inspection by journalists scraping the story barrel, about virtual naughtinesses and how exciting that is. But Second Life's blocky graphics structure and lack of interesting things to do have failed to impress. Now however at the Serpentine Gallery you can see Chinese artist, Cao Fei, and her RMB City, an experimental art community on an island in ...
Cheap not cheerful

15-Sep-2008
Last year the titchy ASUS Eee PC hit the trad notebook market in the solar plexus when it sold millions. It also gutted the PR flacks. What were they to call this miniature beast - and the several dozen putative me-toos about which their clients were making frantic announcements? Even now, nobody knows: notbook,[sic] laptot [sic], nettop, lillipad,(aaargh) liliputer (Guardian's Jack Schofield), ...
Grand union

15-Sep-2008
Richard Vaughan who's currently running AJ's newsdesk sent me Union North's site with the warning: 'You could literally spend hours on the homepage.' 'Bone idle newso.' I thought. Twenty minutes later I decided I'd better stop bouncing the components of the practice's name about a black screen and take a serous look at the rest of the site. It also occurred to me that the site had already achieved the primary goal of all commercial sites: making ...
Great in aggregate

9-Sep-2008
Design Observer is an aggregator blog, which is to say that it has a certain amount of its own material but is mainly a collection of interesting stuff from elsewhere on the Web.
Pachydermous posturing

9-Sep-2008
Absurd playwright Eugene Ionesco's best play was Rhinoceros. Plot? Everyone turns into rhinoceroses.
Cookie-cutter cities

9-Sep-2008
I ran a story about a 3D building printer a couple of years ago, but now Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California's project has been picked up by Caterpillar, the earth-moving globcorp, and soon we may really see whole apartment blocks being printed.
Tickertape genius

1-Sep-2008
Ay-architects... Look this lower case stuff was en vogue years ago. But modern wordprocessors almost always uppercase the first word in a sentence - as has happened in the previous sentence. You are on a hiding to nothing however cool it looks. Still, you might point out that urls are case in-sensitive and So? Whatever when you type in the site name up comes 'ay-architects' and the four section headings 'Studio', 'Projects', 'News' and 'Contact' ...
Modest mae

1-Sep-2008
Mae is a US rock group but mae architects, if you're looking for them on Google, are the London practice. I'm not sure about the two blokes in black suits down the bottom right corner of the home page. Despite the absence of Lord Norm-style shaven skulls, what else could they be but architects? So overkill then. However Alex Ely and Michael Howe, for it is they, later turn up as posterised monochrome mugshots which, oddly, adds gravitas to their solemn ...
Champions of speed

1-Sep-2008
Riches Hawley Mikhail Architects has a home page that opens with the practice name zapping across the screen as a myiad of tiny images. It assembles itself into a square underneath and the navigation unrolls down the left hand side. It's wonderfully brief: 'housing', 'houses', 'public' and, and here's a happy substitute for 'other': 'none of the above.'. Naturally, because this puts you in a good mood, it's 'none of the above' which you click ...
Small isn't beautiful - or legible

26-Aug-2008
My interlocutor began 'I usually think you are making a fuss about nothing when you complain about type being too small, but this one is really really tiny.' The interlocutor in question is possessed of youthful and excellent eyesight and the site in question is that of Consarc . She added 'Don't you find that when things are difficult to read, it's more of a challenge and makes you concentrate harder? Which isn't always worthwhile, ...
Succeeding the mouse?

26-Aug-2008
A sucker for novel input devices, I've ended up with a cabled, half-inch-thick credit card-sized mouse and a loose gel wrist rest. Minimalist or what? Actually just trailing edge and rather flat. But, driven mad with novo-philia, I recently bought a desktop-based 3dConnexion Space Navigator for around £40. It looks like a solid, inverted school-desk inkwell.
French architects embrace simplicity

26-Aug-2008
French practice DLW Architects , or dlwarchitects as they lower-casely and confusingly prefer it, consists of a group of guys in Nantes who are great and simple. You click unsuccessfully on the 'accéder au site' which slides across under the logo and eventually the page clears and eight rectangles ( Golden Sections naturally, this being an architectural site) shuffle into place at the bottom and then fan out to form a collage of what ...
Twist and turn

18-Aug-2008
Architects who are fascinated by non-orthogonal architectural forms regularly feel the lash of knotted cords wielded by white-faced monks of the Old Modernism. One of the big complaints from the Calvinists is that their forms are either whimsical and irrational, or self indulgent and artsy, having foundation in neither science nor logic.
Block and tackle

18-Aug-2008
'Here, steady on.' I said, 'you're just being snobby'. 'Double glazing', she spat, having just vilified the site as 'possibly the worst architect's web site ever' And this from a non-architect.
Surfing in Helsinki

18-Aug-2008
I was looking for Architecture in Helsinki. Yes I know they are an Australian band currently touring the world, clinging on to the coat tails of that word 'architecture' and apparently doing very well from it. What I got instead was what looked a bit like the beginning of a movie reel with those flashing countdowns, but which turned out to be flashing variations in scale and orientation on the letters ALA. Gotta look at this, I say and as I click randomly ...
Tricking the eye

11-Aug-2008
If you thought those pavement tromp l'oeil chalk drawings were a bit too streetscapey, here is some more of the genre more suited to serous architectural interiors. You ...
Looking again

11-Aug-2008
I was very courteously taken to task by the 3DReid people for only looking last week at the front end of their site. They wrote, 'If you look above the 'slides' there is a navigation bar with ...
Castles in the air

11-Aug-2008
I'm not sure that you need to subscribe to the Point Click Home blog. I did. But only for a couple of days. Reason was disappointment that subsequent email feeds didn't have much in common with the Gravity Defying Homes feed here . This is a consumer blog and that means its mind set is different. Nothing wrong with that. We like pretty pictures of new architecture. Point Click Home subscribers like pretty pictures of ...
Return to Second Life

4-Aug-2008
I think it has been over-translated, certainly over-written but Archidemo is billed as 'the experimental demonstration for enhancing of the possibility of the architecture and environmental design in the 3DInternet (3Di) space.' Actually it's about translating real space into virtual space and flying avatars about in it. At least initially, this site has something to do with building a complicated ...
On the slide

4-Aug-2008
Talking of slide shows on architectural websites. Please. No. Bigged up holiday snap shows. Atavistic of the grim architecture school lecture. Just say no. OK at least abandon the grim click, yawn, click, yawn.
Better search?

4-Aug-2008
You may have heard of last Monday's Cuil launch. Cuil, apparently pronounced 'cool', is a new search engine of Google-like scope except that, unlike 'Do no evil' Google, it really does respect the privacy of users.
Discombobulate!

28-Jul-2008
There is an indistinct button down the bottom of last week's super-cool Fearon Hay site. So I pressed it. Up comes the modest explanation 'Site by Fracture'. And then a big piece of brightly coloured torn paper with the word 'Fracture' in really nasty type plasters across the middle of the screen... and then the nightmare emerges. A cloaked and tattooed wrestler in green tights and a ghastly painted balaclava postures ferociously away behind ...
Going up? More fun down

28-Jul-2008
Just in case you missed it here's the stop frame version of the construction of Frank Gehry's Serpentine pavilion .
Furry future

28-Jul-2008
I don't think I have adequately mentioned that quite famous blog, Jetson Green. You get a daily email or, if you prefer, an RSS feed. Either way it's free and normally interesting and informative. Don't be put off by the Green bit, as if you would, because the site's manifesto also talks about liking 'stunning buildings and market innovation.' It's run by Preston Koerner, a Utah lawyer so it can be a bit over the top language-wise. For example, ...
Bottom-up demolition - watch the video

21-Jul-2008
Here, from a recent Materialicious, is an astonishing video of the demolition of a Japanese building. Look at the stills, watch the video of a multistorey building being demolished floor by floor with the columns sinking into the ground as each level is cleared out. It seems impossible. To save your sanity, because an explanation really is called for, take ...
Cool Kiwis

21-Jul-2008
If Google's watchphrase is 'Do no evil', the architectural website designer's is 'Do no more than absolutely necessary'. But I think the proprietors of an Eric Morehouse Webcandy site have gone over the edge of minimalism with their site . They form the ultra-cool New Zealand practice Fearonhay – I guess they are sick of jokes about that name (but rural romps interrupted by a monster horse come to mind). Type in the minimalist fearonhay in the ...
Holiday snaps go 3D

21-Jul-2008
The number of architectural snaps in existence in the world must be in the high millions. Do the maths: a million architects by an average of 30 holidays per lifetime by say 200 snaps per holiday. Lots and lots. I mention this because it surely explains why the Photosynth demos are mostly architectural. Last year Norman Blogster alerted me to its potentially amazing abilities following Microsoft's acquisition of the company. Now there's what Microsoft ...
Curtain twitching

14-Jul-2008
The Register's Lewis Page obviously trained as an engineer – or at least in close proximity to the local architecture school. His report on the solar-harvesting curtains devised by Sheila Kennedy and her partner Frano Violich starts: ' Heavens be praised - the energy security/climate/fuel-price crisis has been solved by an MIT professor. Remarkably, not a professor of engineering or science either - ...
Twitching the curtains

14-Jul-2008
The Register's Lewis Page obviously trained as an engineer – or at least in close proximity to the local architecture school. His report on the solar-harvesting curtains devised by Sheila Kennedy and her partner Frano Violich starts: 'Heavens be praised - the energy security/climate/fuel-price crisis has been solved by an MIT professor. Remarkably, not a professor of engineering or science either - ...
The new king of graffiti

14-Jul-2008
OK forget Banksy, graffiti has been on the cultural agenda ever since Pentagram co-founder Mervyn Kurlansky's 1974 Watching my Name go By, a book about graffiti on New York subway carriages. It doesn't count as cultural agenda, of course, when the graffiti is on your latest building. But here's an extraordinary movie, Muto . An animated graffito, it starts with a tracking shot along a graffiti-covered brick wall. A brick ...
When more is less

14-Jul-2008
Outsiders puzzle at the fact that, despite their Pritzker prize and honours from every conceivable direction, ground-breaking books and lectures, the Venturis have never made the RIBA gold medal final list. Is this down to a cadre of sour old Modernists at Portland Place? Very probably.
In the eye of the beholder

7-Jul-2008
Oddly enough I found the Snohetta site in a specialist web-design magazine. It's not often you find architectural sites discussed in such places. The comment drools, 'It's hard to know whether this URL captivates you for the site design or merely the jaw-dropping architectural achievements.'
In your pocket

7-Jul-2008
In the long-term cause of de-screening the office desk and the subsequent introduction of hi-resolution head-mounted displays, gesture control and space-economical CAD-monkey work-bunks, I've been watching the development of the pico projector. OK, also pocket projectors.
Jack the dripper

7-Jul-2008
Don't know what the estate of that great abstract expressionist, Jackson Pollock, is going to say about this site . It's designed by Miltos Manetas, that Greek multimedia artist currently working in north London. It's billed as as being based on an original design by Stamen which I think is Stamen, the ace San Francisco interactive studio. So to the site. As soon as you move your cursor you realise you're already in. And totally immersed in ...
Flushing ninjas

30-Jun-2008
Architecture.MNP was the first microsite for the MyNinjaPlease online network. No, I don't get it either. Other microsites include such topics as green, music, politricks , robotninja, an art store, a Spanish edition and what's called the Pimp's Store. Hoping the latter might be happening ninja street patois for 'architectural design' I clicked, only to be disappointed by such heads as Crack is Wack!!!! and Halloween was sumthin else!!!!.
Don't make me hunt

30-Jun-2008
Actually make that herd, because your cursor arrow turns into a lasso at Studio Elastico and you find yourself in the sky watching the herding of a lot of cattle.
Popular and prolific

23-Jun-2008
You can't not look at a site called Popular Architecture. I'm fairly certain it's a blog because of the simple and effective two column layout – images in the big one on the left, text in the narrow one on the right. There are short cuts directly to projects – via big thumbnails at the beginning. But the rest of the site is one very long page. So not very sophisticated and because or should it be despite that, almost a Don't-Make-Me-Think ...
Prototyping gets cheaper

23-Jun-2008
No self respecting architect's model workshop is without a 3D printer for making CAD-generated models and objects. OK, make that big-time product designers as well.
Not so dopey

23-Jun-2008
It may have been that word 'hemp' which triggered a subconscious interest. But there it was, the Suffolk Housing Society's site. And 'Suffolk', whence, in the early 70s, a lot of the old metropolitan hippie community decamped to run smallholdings, smoke their gardens and lead the righteous life.
The hard hat you never knew you needed

16-Jun-2008
The idea is that you will be seeing the ProActive safety helmet on your site visits from now on. Or not .Designed by Norwegian, Tore Christian Bjørsvik Storholmen, this 'smart' helmet has an interior which turns on impact from soft and flexible to rock hard. Ear protectors are made from 'smart materials that can conduct electricity'. The shape is apparently inspired by the baseball cap. The squishy stuff inside ...
Tailing out into exhaustion...

16-Jun-2008
Splat. Right across the screen. Green. A big four letter logo. EM2N How's this for an understated home page? Not. Click anywhere on one of the characters. Ohhh. A bit of a tail-off here: shopping list of dim images and hard to read type. Click on an image anyway. Jolt. There is the story suddenly taking up two thirds of the screen. You look up and see from the word in the big grey block at the top that this is the News section. Click on the next one: ...
The real purpose of shipping containers

16-Jun-2008
BUILD blog is obviously easy enough to confuse with the name of last week's Bldgblog which is reckoned to be the more cerebral, at least more writerly of the two. But BUILD blog, 'A discussion of design from the NW' is, in its own more conventional way, really good. In the issue I've just been sent (you subscribe free ) there is this piece on containers: 'Shipping containers...were originally invented in the 1990s to help architects to achieve ...
Blogs vs Websites: the gap narrows

9-Jun-2008
It's getting increasingly difficult to tell websites from blogs. So sophisticated have the latter become. Technically, I suppose, a blog is defined by the fact that it is hosted via such as Xanga, Blogger, Blogspot, Livejournal, and WordPress. Look at Wikipedia for a simple definition and you're lost because they range from Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffingtion's impressive Huffington Post to the more traditional musings by adolescents in darkened bedrooms about the Nature Of Life. And ...
Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

9-Jun-2008
No, it's trompe l'oeil and it's at that oddly fascinating site Mighty Optical Illusions which brought you 3D sidewalk art and Cardiff Bay Baragge Illusion by Felice Verini (yup that's a double g, though not, of course the official spelling) . But I think the most impressive trompe l'oeil on the site so ...
Striking lucky with black cats

2-Jun-2008
The designer of the site of Sao Paulo practice, Andrade Morettin Arquitetos islocal practice Fiveblackcats, whose Lucia Dossin is a former architect who fell in love with Flash.
Inspiration from Japan

2-Jun-2008
PingMag is this really nice Japanese design blog which has an architecture section. Take a look at the 'Transmaterial2 ' interview. The link is the 'Recent Articles' column on the right. It's about new materials and technologies such as luminescent gravel, light-distributing curtains and that old chestnut, light-transmitting concrete.
Back in the arms of the enemy

2-Jun-2008
Ever since that recent announcement about how you can now run Linux programs under Windows, people all over the world have been asking the big question 'Why bother?'. Especially when you can run Windows and Linux side by side or, perhaps more sensibly, run Linux under its own steam.
Snap happy?

27-May-2008
It's not just the boys and girls at English Heritage and their fellow travelers who want to preserve anything built a hundred years ago. Recently I reported the new amorphochromatic dye crystal-based Polaroid printer for digital snaps. It was predicated on the February demise of the old, smelly paper-waving Polaroid process.
Hybrid publication

27-May-2008
Norman Blogster recently mused about the future of publication, which he reckoned lay somewhere between the traditional journal and the blog. 'Editors' he said, 'will morph into curators who pick and choose the best online features and package them up for you [individually] alongside specifically targeted adverts.' Specifically targeted ads? Ad salesmen are likelier to start walking on water. And editor-curators? ...
Regionalism takes on the world

27-May-2008
BUILD Blog has a wide following and last year, I think, topped one of those silly top 10 lists. Started 'with the intention of providing a communication hub for modern design in the [United States] northwest', it is in that nice, comfy, non-aggressive, regionalist tradition which the US can do so well. It's not exactly Norman Rockwell-homespun, more Graham Morrison-non-iconic.
Gather together

20-May-2008
I had archiblog down as a generic heading. But no. It's actually a blogsite, technically an aggregator because it 'collects articles from architecture blogs and includes them in [a] daily digest.' It trawls English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French blogs. So take your pick.
Travellers' guides

20-May-2008
A couple of weeks ago I was a tad dismissive of Pavillon de l'Arsenal's Internet database of contemporary Parisian architecture. It still has those two text buttons which follow your cursor around like a puppy watching your hand rather than the stick you've just thrown, and it's still pretty rough and ready...Maybe it's all an ironic reference to the Situationist derive first devised by Guy Laborde an arrondissement or ...
New direction

20-May-2008
A few weeks ago I took ironic issue here with a video director friend about architects making their own videos on the grounds of citizen-journalism, podcasting and all that YouTube stuff. Just as citizen-Grand-Designing is encroaching on the profession's preserve...
Director's cut

20-May-2008
A few weeks ago I took ironic issue here with a video director friend about architects making their own videos on the grounds of citizen-journalism, podcasting and all that YouTube stuff. Just as citizen-Grand-Designing is encroaching on the profession's preserve...
Client facing

12-May-2008
What's not to like about Moxon Architects' site? What is to like is full screen images of wildly imaginative designs. Hold it there. Full screen images? And more or less instant?. When often-unreadable, quick-loading and expandable thumbnails is the style du jour. You can imagine the impact on a big widescreen monitor. There's quite a lot of text here and there. But hey, you are given the option of hiding text. Which you do because it's in ...
Doing your dirty work for you

12-May-2008
The idea of horde/cloud robots is not exactly new. I can remember positing the notion of doing building surveys by taking along a suitcase full of micro robots, letting a cloud of them loose in the building and plotting their search-n-hit data as a 3D model on your laptop. Land and site surveys too. Don't tell the client that it takes ten minutes and charge 'em a mint.
Blog with brains

12-May-2008
Quite a lot of blogs are aggregators. Which is to say, they aggregate stories and information from other sites and blogs and news feeds. But it seems that a456 (aggregat456) is the work of Enrique Ramirez, currently a Ph.D student in History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University and, like most blogs, started up as 'a place to post unformed (and half-formed) thoughts about architecture.' The one I'm looking at now is titled 'The ...
New flowering for mobile phones

6-May-2008
This looked like one for the Ignobel awards. No, not the Darwin Awards which commemorate those who improve our gene pool by killing themselves in really stupid ways. The Igs are those annual awards for 'discoveries that cannot, or should not, be reproduced'. OK stupid too. Last year, for example, Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles won the linguistics Ignobel for determining that rats sometimes can't distinguish between recordings of Japanese and Dutch played ...
Victory to the cheapest

6-May-2008
Incidentally on the subject of Phooey there is a Hong Kong Phooey blog. Neither architectural nor cartoonish, it is actually based in Hong Kong where most computer stuff seems to start out. ...
Another clutch of tiny computers

28-Apr-2008
I don't want to keep banging on about tiny sub-notebooks just because I'm nervous about the tenner deposit I put down on a June delivery for a £100 Elonex One sub-notebook.
A great green blog

28-Apr-2008
If you're a greenie you'll probably know Jetson Green the daily mix, confluence, they call it, of 'modernism and environmentalism in the built environment.' It's the work of lawyer Preston Koerner with a group of like-minded mates and despite 'confluence' it's not all that self-important – the acuter appreciation of their own importance being the Achilles heel of the otherwise entirely virtuous green movement.
Time to chill

28-Apr-2008
I tried to subscribe to The Cool Hunter Architecture [www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/architecture] but kept on getting a message 'The email address entered is invalid'. Maybe they are oversubscribed. It's irritating not to be able to 'save a fortune on magazines' as the strapline suggests but there we are. And anyway trawling this cornucopia site sans subscription is great. Think Dezeen and Materialicious but with much ...
Explosion of colour

24-Apr-2008
No doubt at all that 'Newseum' is a seriously crap name for the new museum of news which opened recently in Washington, the US federal capital. Something to do with an equally smelly word, infotainment.
Movie magic

24-Apr-2008
In search of an architectural practice movie on YouTube , it suddenly struck me that architects should use YouTube as a repository for movies of their projects and buildings. A video director mate of mine shook his head disbelievingly. And he has a point. Just because you spent five years at architecture school it doesn't mean you are likely to produce anything better than the next owner of a camcorder.
Malaysia speeds ahead

24-Apr-2008
BT and the rest of the internet service providers (ISPs) – including Virgin with its optical-fibre network - have been moaning away about how difficult it all is, and how wretched customers who have paid premium rates for 'fast' broadband should read that phrase 'up to' in the fine print before they complain that they never get anywhere near the promised speed.
Blogging lessons

14-Apr-2008
Has blogging come to this, that Core77 needs to publish a guide for architects and designers about how to get their stuff on a blog? Obviously it has. The piece in question is called 'How to Work the Design Blogosphere: Design Blog Editors Teach You How to Get Your Shit Published Online'. In the best aggregating blog fashion, it simply canvasses a bunch of blog editors for their advice. One editor, who has obviously ...
Pics and bricks

14-Apr-2008
Maybe this ranks as a solution to a problem you never knew you had, but the technology has emerged for the first time which allows you to render a digital image on to a brick wall. It's the work of VgL which does those amazing building-high (and articulated-lorry-long) images you see on a lot of building developments around town and on the motorways. Now you can do big images directly on to brick walls using a heat process. It's called Surface View. ...
World goes to Barcelona

7-Apr-2008
OK it's a bit of a house ad and www.worldarchitecturefestival.com is a bit of a fingersfull even when you cut (as you can) www and .com from the typing.
Good to be green

7-Apr-2008
As its name suggests, Treehugger is a site which keeps us in touch with our architectural inner green.
Sunny outlook

7-Apr-2008
This coming August Southern California Edison (SCE) will start a five year programme generating electricity using an eventual 250 MW of photovoltaic technology.
Cheap as chips – the latest on little laptops

1-Apr-2008
You may have given it to the kids already but you can at least claim early adopter status in having bought the Asus EeePC before anybody else.
Modest ambitions

31-Mar-2008
Last week's Japanese godfather sites were examples of the Famous Architect Website.
Sense of direction

31-Mar-2008
Mimoa has been going for a bit more than a year. It's a tad chaotic but you sense that it's the consequence of its promoters, two young Amsterdam architects, Mieke and Naomi, having new ideas for the site and bolting them on.
Snap! It's a polaroid

27-Mar-2008
The great thing about Polaroid instant prints used to be that you could have your snaps now. Or at least after a minute of waving smelly rectangles of sticky paper about in the air.
Emergency appeal

27-Mar-2008
I sense that Norman Blogster is getting tired/too-busy/feeling-unappreciated to continue his Partiv site.
Japanese perfection

27-Mar-2008
Kenzo Tange, Kisho Kurokawa and Arata Isozaki are the three godfathers who dominated the Japanese architectural mafia and whose names fell so expertly from the lips of architects all over the world even when they weren't too sure about the precise spelling.
Slim pickings and cool

17-Mar-2008
People are swooning over that stunningly beautiful MacBook Air notebook.
Czech mate

17-Mar-2008
Any architect wanting the world to take his craft seriously must hate that ubiquitous prefix archi. Archithis, archithat.
Just what the doctor ordered

17-Mar-2008
Quite as good as last week's Materialicious is A Daily Dose of Architecture.
Fan club

7-Mar-2008
Green geeks planning to slip over to Hanover this week for the monster CeBIT electronics orgy have been getting really excited about a computer processor fan which runs itself.
False positive?

7-Mar-2008
I have to declared an interest in that Studio Egret West's website is by a mate of mine, Joel Baumann, of Tomato .
Surf's up

7-Mar-2008
There's this bloke, ex-architecture student Nick Blair, standing on the roof of a lift-slab warehouse somewhere in the US dropping named eggs on to the pavement below. Named eggs?
Surf's up

7-Mar-2008
There's this bloke, ex-architecture student Nick Blair, standing on the roof of a lift-slab warehouse somewhere in the US dropping named eggs on to the pavement below. Named eggs?
Cornucopian delights

29-Feb-2008
Another tip from the wonderful Eric Morehouse was the Materialicious blog. That is materialicious as in 'delicious' rather than 'malicious'.
Mindless pleasure

28-Feb-2008
Eric Morehouse sent me the Murdock Young website by New York company exhibit-E, claiming that it has special Don't-Make-Me-Think virtues.
The power of thought

25-Feb-2008
In a few months teenagers will be controlling their computer games sans mice, joysticks, gamers input devices or even Wii remotes.
Kiss, mate

22-Feb-2008
Here's the Stutchbury and Pape site from Oz courtesy of that Architectural Web Living Treasure, Eric Moorhouse.
Fletcher Christian responds to his environment

22-Feb-2008
A456 is run by Enrique.Gualberto Ramirez - although that could well be a pseudonym.
Gutter talk

22-Feb-2008
Our slow old broadband relies on either the telephone wiring system or, and it's the reason the reason we all have broken pavements, fibre-optic cable.
Organised chaos

19-Feb-2008
As is frequently the case I'm indebted to Norman Blogster for the Hema site.
Soho flashers

19-Feb-2008
You are sitting in you favorite Soho caff WiFi-ing the Web. From the corner of your eye you suddenly notice that the T-shirt of the guy in the street outside has gone ballistic.
Don't make me think

7-Feb-2008
I've been told to lighten up about architectural websites so I thought I'd set out my stall about some basic criteria for website criticism.
Why architects don't blog

7-Feb-2008
People complain about the blogosphere as a zone of pain, unpleasantness, solipsism, solitary revenge and audiences of five.
Gizmo hypeware

7-Feb-2008
The Asus EeePC, that sub-sub-laptop with the difficult-to-use keyboard and tiny flash memory instead of a hard drive, which runs on the free Linux operating system and whose price has veered from the vapourware figure of £100 to the real, current £220+, is having its PR mill ground gratis by the Eee geeks, er, aficionados.
Tickling the eyeballs

30-Jan-2008
OK, content is king.I bang on about website immediacy and usability. Not much chance of that changing. But it does so help when a site grabs you by the eyeballs and sucks you in to find more.
Exemplary dexign

25-Jan-2008
Every week I get a news feed from Dexigner [ http://www.dexigner.com ].Naturally there's quite a lot about design but there is sufficient architecture-related stuff to make it a a good read. It claims 1.2 million unique visitors monthly so obviously a lot of designers read it too.
Exemplary dexign

24-Jan-2008
Every week I get a news feed from Dexigner [ http://www.dexigner.com ].Naturally there's quite a lot about design but there is sufficient architecture-related stuff to make it a a good read. It claims 1.2 million unique visitors monthly so obviously a lot of designers read it too.
Healthy eating and ventilation

18-Jan-2008
There's no way of getting away from architecture's social responsibilities. All right there is. You exclusively design office towers and supermarkets.
Best practice

9-Jan-2008
I got this Andrew Berman practice website from that eminent and persistent discoverer of architectural sites, Eric Morehouse.
Getting it right

9-Jan-2008
I got this Andrew Berman practice website from that eminent and persistent discoverer of architectural sites, Eric Morehouse.
Writing on the floor

3-Jan-2008
For Modernists, trompe l'oeil is edgy beyond acceptability because it seeks to conflate clarity and illusion, materiality and immateriality, real and faux.
Miniatures bring seasonal cheer

12-Dec-2007
I've recently mentioned the EeeePC, that tiny PC with the almost unusable keyboard which has had the press getting over-excited.
Can a leopard change its box?

7-Dec-2007
I see a Register correspondent asking the question 'Can I purchase any Intel box and install Apple's Mac OS X Leopard operating system on it?' The answer seems to be yes – though the Register asks the next important question: 'Why would you?'
On his bike

21-Nov-2007
'I think architecture is a ride, a physical ride...a fascinating journey toward the unexpected.'
Image conscious

16-Nov-2007
‘We thought you might like to look at this wanky website.’ ran the email.
Call in the professionals

8-Nov-2007
Fraser Brown McKenna Architects asked us to take a look at its new site at http://www.fbmarchitects.com/.
Unbearable lightness

25-Oct-2007
Like a lot of people I was getting all excited at the prospect of the Asus Eee PC701 notepad.
Throw off the straitjacket

25-Oct-2007
I bang on about how graphic designers, most still trained as (and certainly by) print people, fail to grasp that graphic design for the screen is a different animal.
EXHIBITION

12-Jul-2007
REVIEW
EXHIBITION

12-Apr-2007
REVIEW
BOOK

15-Mar-2007
REVIEW
NEW THINKING ON ILLUMINATION

1-Nov-2006
FOCUS ON: LIGHTING
BOOK

19-Oct-2006
REVIEW
CLAMPING DOWN ON WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY

14-Sep-2006
WEBWATCH
APPRECIATING THE PLEASURES OF FOUR-PLAY

7-Sep-2006
WEBWATCH
OPENING OPPORTUNITIES

1-Sep-2006
FOCUS ON: DOORS & WINDOWS
BOOK

13-Jul-2006
REVIEW
THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS

16-Mar-2006
WEBWATCH
SITE NEEDS SOME SCHOOLING

16-Feb-2006
WEBWATCH
WHAT IS SIGNIFICANT ABOUT COMPUTER SIZE IS THAT OFFICE DESIGN MAY HAVE TO CHANGE

16-Feb-2006
This is set to be the year of small and twos in the world of IT.
NEVER MIND THE B******S

24-Nov-2005
WEBWATCH
EXHIBITION

29-Sep-2005
REVIEW
BOOK

15-Sep-2005
BOOKS
EVERYTHING HAPPENS SO FAST THAT IT NOW LOOKS SEAMLESS

11-Aug-2005
Since last year when we took an early look at voice over internet (VoIP, the P stands for protocol) things have changed with bewildering speed. Fuelled by the rapid take-up of broadband in the past couple of years, VoIP has a life and a series of internal controversies all of its own. Broadband itself is set to kick off into stratospheric 24 Meg/second speeds, enabling really smooth audio and video. WiMAX, the forthcoming local area wireless network, presages a cellphone-like version ...
EARLY CHOICES ABOUT HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE AFFECT WHAT YOU DO WAY DOWN THE LINE

21-Jul-2005
TECHNICAL & PRACTICE
THE BUILDING RETAINS ITS DISTINCTIVE FORM: A GREAT RECTANGULAR CATENARY ROOF SWOOPING BETWEEN TWO GLASS FACADES

1-Jul-2005
SPECIFIER'S CHOICE / NENE COMMUNITY CENTRE
THE ELUSIVE MR PRICE

30-Jun-2005
AGENDA
'Courteous and cantankerous'

2-Jun-2005
After writing 500 columns for the AJ, ill health has forced Martin Pawley to resign.One of Britain's leading architectural journalists, Pawley's varied career has seen him advise a South American government and battle cockroaches in Tallahassee
Specifier's choice:Roundhouse, London

1-May-2005
Sutherland Lyall talks to John McAslan + Partners project director Adam Brown about the transformation of Camden's Roundhouse - and the benefits of a demanding client
Collaborative strength

21-Apr-2005
With colossal amounts of data, Wilkinson Eyre needed a pretty impressive management system, and seems to have found it
Protection racket

21-Apr-2005
Security experts like to tell us that e-crime has got worse. So what can you do to reduce the risks - without going too far?
ANTI-SPY PAINTS AND FINISHES

1-Apr-2005
Theme: paints and finishes
Lanterns Children's Centre, Winchester

1-Apr-2005
Hampshire County Council project architect Colin Jackson tells Sutherland Lyall how a centre that will be used by children with special needs called for safe but stimulating materials
Slimming the system

17-Mar-2005
The language of technology sometimes defies translation, but the recently revived term 'thin client' turns out to be apt
Specifier's choice:Effra Early Years Centre, Brixton, London

1-Mar-2005
Sutherland Lyall talks with Catherine Harrington, an associate at Architype, who explains the issues involved in specifying environmentally sound and sustainable materials in a design-build contract
Best-kept secrets

17-Feb-2005
architech - Are you protected against the threat of rogue users infiltrating your wireless network?And does it actually matter anyway?
Specifier's choice:Parliament Hill School, Hampstead

1-Feb-2005
Improved access, high visual impact and environmental friendliness were the key requirments demanded of Haverstock Architects in designing the Courtyard building.
Specifier's choice:New East Manchester, Beswick

1-Jan-2005
Sutherland Lyall talks to Bowker Sadler Partnership director Paul Jeffrey and project architect Mark Alston about the use of prefabrication and CHP units at a housing development for Lovell in the rundown Berwick district of east Manchester
Tech a look around

20-Dec-2004
From PDA to VoIP, the year of the acronym was upon us in 2004, and the new technology emerged thick and fast
Let there be light

9-Dec-2004
review - Norman Foster: Works 4 Edited by David Jenkins. Prestel, 2004. 568pp. £60
Let there be light

9-Dec-2004
Norman Foster: Works 4
Specifier's choice:EEF building, Leamington Spa

1-Dec-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks to Matt Dawson of Hodder Associates about extending the facilities at the Engineering Employers Federation building, Woodland Grange, Warwickshire
Foster parent: the woman who made 30 St Mary Axe happen

25-Nov-2004
If there was a single driving force behind the realisation of 30 St Mary Axe, it was Sara Fox, Swiss Re’s new-building director, who revels in running things. Sutherland Lyall faces up to her
Shaping up nicely

18-Nov-2004
With an exciting new generation of CAD software on the horizon, parametric design is about to come of age
What's the big idea?

21-Oct-2004
architech - AVATAR at the Bartlett is Neil Spiller's new ideas umbrella aimed at sharing information and proactive problem-solving
Specifier's choice: Pete Sutton's house, Highbury

1-Oct-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks to his neighbour, principal of Pete Sutton Architects, about self-building a house on a tiny end-of-terrace plot on the border of Islington, north London
IT phone home

16-Sep-2004
architech - As the quality and reliablity of internet calls, or VOIP, continues to improve, does this spell the end of the landline?
A half-told tale

2-Sep-2004
review - Richard Neutra's Miller House By Stephen Leet. Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. 200 pp. £26
Specifier's choice:Telford College, Edinburgh

1-Sep-2004
A high level of collaboration left the choice of supplier as flexible as possible against performance specification. Sutherland Lyall reports
Theme: doors, windows and ironmongery

1-Sep-2004
In a diverse and rapidly changing field, we start our survey with a look at the demands a high-profile refurbishment project made on a specialist ironmonger
Network analysis

26-Aug-2004
architech A Cornish practice is benefiting from keeping it in the family with a computer network designed to meet its everyday needs
Specifier's choice:National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, south Wales

1-Aug-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks with Martin Knight, an associate at Wilkinson Eyre, who explains why the practice is on the right track with the National Waterfront Museum scheme at Swansea
Cable or wireless?

15-Jul-2004
Deciding which technologies to design into the buildings of the future is far from straightforward
Specifier's choice:School of Slavonic Studies, UCL

1-Jul-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks to Adam Whiteley, senior associate at Short & Associates, about why the practice is putting the minimum of energy into its design for the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College, London
Hong Kong's next step

24-Jun-2004
METALWORKS
Simple solution for Swansea

24-Jun-2004
METALWORKS
Stockley Academy, Hillingdon, London

1-Jun-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks to Aedas Architects' regional director Sarah Williams about its Stockley Academy, a public/private-financed city academy specialising in science and technology
Theme: doors and windows

1-Jun-2004
Maintenance and meeting Part L have driven the development of doors and windows in recent years. The quest for most materials is to mimic the timber they replace while pushing for greater demands for security and soundproofing There has been no fundamental change in doors and windows recently. There have, of course, been long-term changes, for instance from ply or hardboard-faced flush doors to PVCu, pressed composition board, steel and, if the pundits are correct, increasingly to GRP ...
Tall storeys come true

27-May-2004
TIMBER IN ARCHITECTURE
Views on education

27-May-2004
TIMBER IN ARCHITECTURE
Specifier's choice: Terminal 5, Heathrow Airport

1-May-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks to Richard Rogers Partnership's Mike Davis, the man behind the masterplan for Heathrow's new T5 complex, and Dennis Austin, leader of the roof team
Light fantastic

15-Apr-2004
review - Building with Light: The International History of Architectural Photography By Robert Elwall. Merrell/RIBA, 2004. 240pp. £39.95
Specifier's choice:Cargo Fleet, north London

1-Apr-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks to Stephen Chance of Chance de Silva about the second house that he and partner Wendy de Silva are building for themselves in north London
Specifier's choice:Cargo Fleet, north London

1-Apr-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks to Stephen Chance of Chance de Silva about the second house that he and partner Wendy de Silva are building for themselves in north London
Specifier's choice:Cargo Fleet, north London

1-Apr-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks to Stephen Chance of Chance de Silva about the second house that he and partner Wendy de Silva are building for themselves in north London
Specifier's choice:Cargo Fleet, north London

1-Apr-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks to Stephen Chance of Chance de Silva about the second house that he and partner Wendy de Silva are building for themselves in north London
In at the birth of the Blob

18-Mar-2004
architech
Hidden sources

19-Feb-2004
architech
Specifier's choice: The Sentinel, Glasgow

1-Feb-2004
Sutherland Lyall talks to project architect Reiner Nowak about gordon murray + alan dunlop's new class-A office development in Glasgow's nancial district
Theme: landscape and exterior products

1-Feb-2004
As much landscape design now includes little planting and more architectural elements, we examine developments in street furniture, paving and lighting that allow designers to create complete three-dimensional environments Landscape architects traditionally complain that, because their part of any building project comes last, it is their budgets that are raided to cover construction cost overruns.
Divine intervention

18-Dec-2003
architech
Keep taking the tablets

18-Dec-2003
Despite the lack of enthusiasm in the UK, Skidmore Owings and Merrill has embraced the tablet computer in the US
Specifier's choice: Crown Street Buildings, Leeds

1-Dec-2003
PRODUCTS IN PRACTICE HOUSING -
Paper wait

20-Nov-2003
architech
Able and wireless

16-Oct-2003
architech
Specifier's choice: North Tipperary civic offices, Nenagh

1-Oct-2003
Sutherland Lyall talks to Robert Davys of ABK about a project that has shrunk since the original brief but is still both complex and innovative
It all stacks up

25-Sep-2003
Its version of the white box on stilts presented Springett Mackay with a number of challenging engineering problems
My name is Ozymandias

11-Sep-2003
Norman Foster: Works, Volume 1 Edited by David Jenkins. Prestel, 2003. 580pp. £60
Filigree writ large in the urban web

4-Sep-2003
BUILDING STUDY
Theme: bricks and blocks

1-Sep-2003
During the past century, the role of bricks has changed from structural to protecting the real supporting structure within - the blockwork. Consequently, the focus for brick manufacturers has switched to appearance, while innovation in blocks is geared to
All systems go

14-Aug-2003
architech
Theme: insulation and energy management

1-Aug-2003
Mandatory insulation standards are being made tougher with every revision of the Building Regulations. Yet there is still plenty of scope for improvement, with housebuilders reluctant to do more than the bare minimum and competing building systems and cost considerations further complicating the issue
Flaw show

31-Jul-2003
Modern Garden Design: Innovation since 1900 By Janet Waymark. Thames & Hudson, 2003. 256pp. £24.95
Pixels and palimpsests

17-Jul-2003
Mapping is the latest area to come under the curious and sometimes overly enthusiastic eye of architects
Master of all it surveys

15-May-2003
To improve the accuracy of the Ordnance Survey, the CODES scheme now pays architects for detailed information We think of the Ordnance Survey (OS) as the rock of British mapping.
Specifier's choice: Drongan centre, Ayrshire

1-May-2003
Sutherland Lyall looks at a project in Scotland that brings together an unusual mix of public services, and benefits from having a highly informed client With its design of a building for the Ayrshire village of Drongan, Wren Rutherford AustinSmith: Lord, the Scottish arm of AustinSmith: Lord, has experienced a new way of financing buildings for essential local facilities. The lead client was the Ayrshire and Arran NHS Trust, which put up the £1.2 million cost, courtesy of a successful ...
Twilight time

1-May-2003
aj review
Brave new world

17-Apr-2003
architech
Specifier's choice: Scottish Institute of Sport HQ, Stirling

1-Apr-2003
Sutherland Lyall talks to Oberlanders Architects' Robert Turner about a project where the specification was maintained almost 100 per cent The Scottish Institute of Sport is a division of SportsScotland that provides and administers sports training infrastructure for Scottish athletes. Originally based at its parent's headquarters in Edinburgh, the institute decided to look for a site with attached existing sporting facilities.
Theme: paints and finishes

1-Apr-2003
Fashion is always strong in the paint sector, with demand for an ever-changing choice of colours. But behind the scenes, the technicians grapple with the physics and chemisty of providing long-lasting protection against the elements Take a look at early 20th century architectural specifications. In the painting clauses will be complete instructions about how white lead has to be mixed with so much linseed oil and turpentine and so much pigment, and for how long the resulting paint has ...
Shrink to fit

13-Mar-2003
architech
Universal usability

23-Jan-2003
architech
Specifier's choice: Old Albanians sports pavilion

1-Jan-2003
Sutherland Lyall talks to Annette Fisher about a project in St Albans where the architect saved the day when the main contractor disappeared at the eleventh hour
Taking the high ground

10-Oct-2002
Entrance arrangements at Hounslow East station on the western reaches of London's Piccadilly line were once far from perfect, but architect Acanthus Lawrence & Wrightson has solved the problem with its redesign
A Blob on the literary landscape

15-Aug-2002
computing
people perfect vision

4-Jul-2002
Alan Davidson's fame grew with his evidence to the Heron Tower inquiry. There, his ground-breaking visualisation methods stood up to fierce scrutiny - now he'd like the profession to be more receptive to his innovations
Mouse matters

20-Jun-2002
Coming in all shapes, sizes and materials, the mouse has moved on significantly from its early wooden, rectangular days It is 32 years since Stanford Research Institute scientist Douglas Englebart invented the mouse. Englebart's 1968 prototype was rectangular and made of wood. Most current designs are like a flattened half egg.Apple recently came out with a smallish circular puck of a mouse that got rather mixed reviews: expensive style over function was the verdict. And size seems ...
50 / 50 EVA JIRICNA Architect

30-May-2002
These interviews by Sutherland Lyall will form the basis of the 50/50 exhibition at Interbuild 2002.
Cyberspace culture

30-May-2002
computing Neil Spiller's Cyber Reader offers an overview of cyberspace theories with key extracts from books and essays on the subject
50 50 CHRIS WILKINSON Architect

23-May-2002
These interviews by Sutherland Lyall will form the basis of the 50/50 exhibition at Interbuild 2002.
50 50

16-May-2002
MAX FORDHAM Services engineer
Sustainable credentials

16-May-2002
Architect Stride Treglown's use of timber in two buildings in Bristol - part of a new office complex in the old Temple Meads railway yard - has highlighted the green nature of this under-utilised building material Glass, steel, concrete yes. But you do not necessarily associate atria with the other mainstream building material, timber. It may be something to do with the perception of fire ratings. Yet concrete has to be fireproof, steel has to be fireproofed - and it is not exactly ...
the big issue

18-Apr-2002
people: Despite his success in winning this year's AJ/Robin Ellis Design Build Small Projects competition, Simon Conder is determined to move away from smallscale domestic schemes and is committed to working in the public sector
50 50

11-Apr-2002
LOUIS HELLMAN Cartoonist and architect
50 50 IAN LIDDLE Engineer, Buro Happold

4-Apr-2002
What is the best building of the past 50 years?
An image problem

7-Mar-2002
With the report due soon on the Heron Tower planning inquiry, we examine a landmark in digital presentation
Down sizing

7-Mar-2002
Despite the paperless office, desktops can still suffer from clutter - often large PCs. Perhaps it is time to think small
Archigram: necessary irritants

14-Feb-2002
NEWS
Lost in space

7-Feb-2002
Review
Clean up your act and sort out your history

17-Jan-2002
AJ+. column
Making progress by design

6-Dec-2001
architech EDITED BY RUTH SLAVID
Space odysssey

29-Nov-2001
PUBLIC BUILDING: Sutherland Lyall explores reverse classicism in the heart of England
Boxing clever in Islington

11-Oct-2001
Simon Conder Associates' imaginative solution to an awkward warehouse site was to enclose all the wet services in a softwood box which 'floats' along one wall, creating a calm and uncluttered interior The most basic softwood has been used to create a beautiful but inexpensive interior, thanks to scrupulous attention to detailing by the architect, Simon Conder Associates Fitting out warehouse subdivisions can be an exciting opportunity for playing around with space, form, colour and light.
Reacquainted with one's old school memories

26-Jul-2001
aj+. column
Challenging convention

28-Jun-2001
A steel frame is one crucial ingredient of a prefabricated home that questions Belgium's outdated ideas of the form that a family house should take A glass jewel sitting in an orchard in Verviers, Belgium, is a house for the Denis-Otmans family, designed by architect Daniel Dethier.
Community choice

28-Jun-2001
Brian Avery's visionary ATH modular housing system uses stackable, expandable prefabricated room units Architect Brian Avery has been talking with Corus about constructing the modular elements of his visionary ATH modular housing system. Architect for both the Museum of the Moving Image and the new Imax cinema at Waterloo as well as the new RADA theatre in Bloomsbury, he has designed a number of projects around the lift-access stackable prefabricated room units, the most recent of which ...
Into the shadows

21-Jun-2001
REVIEW: Gaudi: The Biography By Gijs van Hensbergen. HarperCollins, 2001. 322pp. £24.99
Simply edible

21-Jun-2001
VIEWPOINT
Saying bye-bye to beige

14-Jun-2001
New technology is poised to kick under-desk spaghetti, bulky boxes and insipid colours into the office dustbin
Saving your legal bacon

1-Mar-2001
Archiving data is essential for all practices, but it storage must be safe and accessible. Arup offers one solution
Tomato catchup time

1-Mar-2001
The architectural profession is still a long way behind other creative professions in the use of computer technology
Lapping up the key changes

7-Dec-2000
Osteopaths will not be pleased, but the days of carrying heavy laptops around may be numbered
Tate meets Lyall

16-Nov-2000
Sutherland Lyall reviews the brickwork at Tate Modern
Train spotting

16-Nov-2000
Sutherland Lyall makes tracks to West Ham Underground Station
Everyone's on speaking terms

14-Sep-2000
Construction e-management systems mean better communication - and nowhere to hide if things go wrong
Keep taking the tablets

14-Sep-2000
It is finally becoming possible to use a drawing tablet as you would a pen - if you ignore a tiny gap at the end of your pencil
Ah, the relief of a little lucidity on the web

7-Sep-2000
aj+.column
Net speed restrictions - take care

31-Aug-2000
In the wild and wacky world of architectural websites you are soon aware of a great truth: architects aren't trained as graphic designers. It is odd that, because, although architects would immediately shop any graphic designer who styled themselves as an architect, a surprising number of architects do not see it the other way round. And when that attitude gets translated into website design 'Aaaargh' is the nicest thing I can say.
The games architects play

6-Jul-2000
Computer gaming has come a long way since the early arcade shoot 'em ups, but who influences who?
Stage presence

1-Jul-2000
A bemused Sutherland Lyall reports on a new theatre where brick is centre stage
Dry dissertation

29-Jun-2000
The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960By Eric Mumford, MIT Press, 2000, 375pp. £27.95
Scanning new horizons

25-May-2000
The architectural practices where scanners are forgotten may be missing out. Here are tips on getting back in focus BY SUTHERLAND LYALL
You spin me right round

25-May-2000
Panoramic images of 180degrees and 360degrees are migrating from CAD to the Web. For architecture, it's a real . . . revolution BY SUTHERLAND LYALL
Browser

24-Feb-2000
Archinet Archinet is the pioneer site in the UK with a newbuilding commentary page, details of competitions, features and practice profiles - effectively electronic brochures. However, it hasn't quite managed to sign up enough members to achieve the critical mass a site needs.
Paper shuffling for professionals

24-Feb-2000
Weaning designers off paper is obviously going to take a while. In the meantime, how do you choose a new printer?
Profile: Fletcher Priest

24-Feb-2000
Fletcher Priest is pioneering a sophisticated web-based management system, but considers it self conservative
Cambridge geometry

4-Nov-1999
PROJECT PROFILE; STUDENT HOUSING Sutherland Lyall reports on the Brian Pippard Building at Clare Hall
Riverside surprise

4-Nov-1999
PROJECT PROFILE: COMMERCIAL OFFICES Sutherland Lyall's account of Weir House, new offices for Octagon
Something in the air

15-Jul-1999
Review: The Inflatable Moment: Pneumatics & Protest in 1968 At the riba, 66 Portland Place, London W1 until 7 August
Rethinking construction inspires missionary zeal

17-Jun-1999
It was a bit like the last night in the chapter house before this sturdy band of Anglo Saxon monks set off to convert the pagans in the dark forests beyond the Rhine: murmured accounts of encouraging preliminary forays among the Hunnish tribes, muttered recitations of the credo, emotional professions of faith, quite a lot of practice preaching.
Review: Urban ambiguities

25-Mar-1999
Andrew Holmes: Asphalt Paradise At the Laurent Delaye Gallery, 22 Barrett St, St Christopher's Place, London W1 until 17 April
people in the news

14-May-1998
The riba bookshop hadn't heard of it last week, but that hasn't stopped John Harris's new book, No Voice From the Hall, from making the Sunday Times bestseller list. It was at number 10 the week after it came out, and climbing. Harris is philosophical. Although as curator he turned the riba drawings collection into the wonderful and astronomically valuable thing it is today, his relationship with the riba has always been an uncertain one.
A passion for history and architecture

7-May-1998
review
Building favourites

26-Feb-1998
Jonathan Ellis-Miller of Jonathan Ellis-Miller Architects talks to Sutherland Lyall about SOM's United Airlines wash hangar, San Francisco, 1958
Solution to a burning issue

18-Dec-1997
Foster Associates' vast new Hong Kong airport is set to be a national monument but still has to meet fire regulations. Sutherland Lyall reports on Arup Fire's innovative fire-engineering solution to the problem posed by a 200 metre-long canopy and notes t

Architects JournalSutherland Lyall

Architects Journal
Sutherland Lyall