Here’s a novel response to the ongoing MPs expenses fiasco: An architectural design competition to find a housing solution for MPs in Westminster and in their constituencies.

Download the brief here: http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/J…ion%20Pack.pdf

Additional information here: http://commonofhouses.blogspot.com/

On a recent visit to Sheffield I thought it worth a detour to visit one of the 2007 Design for Homes - Housing design awards winners. A shame that the weather wasn’t up to scratch but that’s South Yorkshire.

http://www.designforhomes.org/hda/2007/complete/sinclair.html

Due to the office in Leeds having a rather dull grey appearance, it has been on the cards for a while to throw a few splashes of colour onto some canvasses to brighten the place up.

Friday night was the chosen night to roll on the shocking Pink and the Banana yellow, I’m sure you’ll agree that they are both rather lively colours!

Thanks to Sonia, Caroline, James P and Patrick H for their efforts.

Hello all,

I have produced a short interactive presentation/tutorial for those wishing to learn how to produce accurate, presentable building forms using Sketchup. This will focus mainly on the transformation of existing 2D AutoCAD drawings to 3D Sketchup models and hopefully highlight how easy it is!

I’ll be giving the presentation at both Leeds and Stokesley in the near future (date TBC) The Leeds staff may even have the pleasure of a glamourous special guest…

In the meantime if you’ve never had a go at Sketchup, I would advise those interested to download the trial version of Sketchup (available on the X: Drive in the “Sketchup Demo” folder), install it and try out the 15 minute official Sketchup tutorial which should get you familiarised with the way it works.

Please e-mail me if you are interested in taking part.

Here is some of the work Ryan has produced here at Leeds from 2D autocad Drawings.