Models!

Did a bit of roaming around London on Saturday--from the AA to the Building Centre to the V&A, and spotted these nice models.

Forgive the not so great photos, from top:
-sketch by Richard Rodgers and Norman Foster for a tiny room for Rodgers' wife's parents, in the woods, by the sea. The section is perhaps more lovely at explaining it than the model (following pic)
-little Toyo Ito building(s)
-can't remember about the bridge!
-Peter Eisenman. Of course made of white acrylic.
-models justifying and explaining how to build the Sydney Opera House arcs (Jorn Utzon). Gorgeous, simple and complex at the same time, and cleverly, beautifully presented
-tensegrity model (Bucky Fuller, I think)
-Corbusier, can't remember the name of the building, but reminded me of the Mill Workers House
-Alvaro Siza, this model is gorgeous, and make me desperately want to visit the building--a set of pools and poolside facilities on the coast of Portugal. The model was nearly all sea (or steel standing in for sea) and really showed how the concrete retaining walls and structures became part of the land/sea line.
-the display that the Siza was part of at the AA

Most of these are models of architects first projects, shown at the AA. A few are at the V&A (Corbusier, Utzon, tensegrity),

Snow on Diablo

Main building, front- RCA communications, Inc (what Marconi wireless became after WWI)

Gallery space- very echo-y. You can see the cable insulator bubbles above the left window (details of same below).

Antenna field. Tall wood poles with guy wires.

Radio equipment room. It has a really big clerestory vent which isn't visible here, presumably for cooling all the electrical equipment.

Radio equipment.

Glass bubbles again.

The "chapel" from the outside.

The abandoned warehouse...maybe we can go in next time.

Holidazzle

Pieces of beautiful holiday decorations: our gorgeous, fat tree at the KCAT flat where we spent Christmas with Patrick, Gladys, Ruth, Colum, Valti, Fionn, and others. The photo is lackluster, but it was a most beautiful, tree! Decorated with red apples, Steiner ornaments, crepe paper flowers, and incredibly, REAL candles that we lit every night. The candles gripped the branches with beautiful counterweighted brass holders. Simple decorations are the best, aren't they? Paper snowflakes one one tree, and straw ones on another. Merci in Paris had a Mini (and a courtyard) full of just-cut trees. Loved the trees just above storefront level all over Ireland (here, at Callan's pharmacy). And red berry branches bought on a Clerkenwell lane.

A pre-holiday walkabout

A walk around London towards Shoreditch...where we happened across two David Adjaye buildings (just as dark and minimal from the exterior as lectures and books promise) and an amazing store, Unto This Last, that cleverly crafts furniture and housewares out of birch ply using CAD/CAM equipment. The designs push beyond flat-pak and into using ribs, more laminating, and bending. They call it 'local craftsmanship at mass-production prices.' We saw nicely thought-out joints and beautiful ideas.

The Callan Abbey

Hard to believe this was all in the span of a few days. Though the days are of course short this time of year, what beautiful light! And lucky for us, we were greeted by the beautiful frost-trimmed view Christmas morning!

More photos from Ireland to come...

Seen round London: fun

Hard to admit that these were all taken at the Regent Street Anthropologie--but what amazing displays and imaginative staging! A gorgeous plant wall (see photo of how its all done, looks like laser-cut acrylic), as well as good ideas for old drawers (add to the Droog example, etc....and inspires me to go to Urban Ore soon...) and new ways to think of chandeliers: as pottery investigations into form rather than light-refracting, or as entirely made of wax!