Apparently it rained a bit whilst I was having a sunny time in the French Alps. But don’t panic because the architecture students god Mr Hertzberger (and others) have come up with a plan.
Sourced from the Guardian Unlimited 21st January 2008
The UK’s first Internet “fibre town” could go online in the autumn, delivering Internet speeds of about 100Mbps (megabits per second) to consumers’ homes via new fibre optic networks.
Fibre firm ‘H2O’ provides super-fast broadband via the sewers; saving costly and disruptive road digging, and either Bournemouth, Northampton or Dundee will be offered the service first. These three have been selected because ‘H20′ has already installed its fibre service to local council buildings.
Last month BT announced that its own ‘fibre-to-the-home’ trial at Ebbsfleet in Kent would see the first homes connected by August of this year but this will initially be limited to around 600 new houses. The development will eventually have some 10,000 homes connected via fibre with speeds of up to 100Mbps but the project will take until 2020 to complete.
The current telecommunications system was never designed to carry large amounts of data and many have called for an urgent fibre upgrade. The mega-fast service will have instant appeal for consumers, and local businesses (i.e. for regular server updates between offices, etc).
Competition time: if anyone’s interested, there’s a competition to submit a (speculative) design for none other than the White House, Washington DC. Whilst the topic may be slightly imaginary, there’s a very real $5000 first prize. Registrations and submissions by 20th April.
See the competition website here
English Partnerships’ standards were revised in November, reintroducing minimum space standards for new homes on their sites. These standards go beyond the old Parker Morris standards of the 1960’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Morris_Committee). New housing projects for English Partnerships’ sites will require dwellings to be a minimum of 51m2 for a 1 bed, rising to a minimum of 106m2 for a 4 bed (6 person) home.
England and Wales are the only countries in Europe with no minimum space standards for new housing.
The vast majority of private and public sector schemes we undertake will not require these standards but there is some useful design guidance on layout, storage etc on this imaginatively-titled website: www.swingacat.info
Architects: KSP Engel & Zimmermann
Source : Architecture Today Jan 2008
The basic rule and challenge of architectural photography is keeping the vertical lines vertical, just flick through the pages of architectural books or magazines. Vertical lines are kept vertical.
This principal should be followed through with all Visual Imagery.
As the saying goes, rules are meant to broken. But to break a rule, first, you have to learn it so that you may have a good reason for breaking it. For example, if you are taking the shot right from the base of the building and shooting straight up . . .
