Little City

With my final crit on Friday, I'm going to get model making this week. I like small scale models, perhaps working at 1:500, so these little cities are providing me inspiration as to how I'll make the houses themselves. I expect I'll end up chosing wood, with all the variety in grain and colour, but the clay is so versatile for adding detail. Let's see how it ends up!

Images: 1. maisons en cèdre by spielplatz 2. shelf city by the oak leaves

Beach Hut

I'd love a beach house like this by studiomama. Dreams of summer weather.
Images from studiomama

Funky Fez

For our studio study trip, last week we flew to Fez in Morocco. We've been studying the courtyard house typology and went to see it first hand. Fez has a dense urban fabric: it's like a labyrinth and many times we got lost, had no idea which direction we were going in and had to dive out of the way of the donkeys and carts flying down the narrow streets. Being in the medina is like stepping back in time - the historic architecture, being car free, the markets for shopping and the crafts people working on the street. It's the latter that intrigued me the most. There are silk weavers using the street as their workshop, men banging copper into shape in the square. 

Seeing Fez was an intriguing cultural experience, whether I could live there myself is doubtful - being back in the hustle and bustle of London was oddly calming!

Crafty Gentlemen

I read so many women craft blogs that I was happy to have stumbled across Grain & Gram - a gentleman's journal about making... furniture, prints, clothing, music. I especially love the images of the wood workers, it reminds me of when I was getting to grips with the workshop to make my chair last spring. Plus it get's me wanting to make something new...

Images from Grain&Gram

Twit Twoo

How incredibly cute are these?! Owls by Matt Pugh.

Urban Orchard

On Bankside in London there is the Union Street Urban Orchard, on now until 19th September. It was part of the London Festival of Architecture but is carrying on over the entire summer. It brings about plant adoption and exchange, workshops and urban food growing, things that I got really interested in during my modular housing project at uni (not to self: must post work!) Therefore I really want to go along and visit...

Images from Urban Street Urban Orchard

Deck Chair

Here is a snap of my prototype deckchair! It was a little study for me to get back into the work shop and see how the components fit together. The final chair will have a more rugged look using all the wood I have collected up and the seat will be a patchwork affair. I had a little accident and in the process of washing the fabric I acquired, I put a dark one in the machine, the brightly coloured material has come out a bit dull... lucky it wasn't any of my favourite clothes!

Woodland Oasis

Last night I watched Mastercrafts, a new series on BBC about traditional crafts - catch it on iplayer! This week was wood craft which I have always been fascinated with, probably since our trip to Canada and seeing the totem poles there. The apprentices on the programme were learning here, and at night the open air workshop under a canopy looked absolutely idilic. Wouldn't it be great for a summer party?!
image from the bbc