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We’ve been working on our latest newspaper, and it is now available to view online:

Axis Design News – issue 2 – 2012

Liz Clayton, Architectural Assistant here at Axis, shares what she’s been up to in the final year of her Part 2:

I’m due to finish Part 2 of my architectural education within the next few weeks. It’s been a long haul but freedom is just around the corner! The final year (for us part timers at least) focuses solely upon an Integrated Design Project. I chose Birmingham as my city of interest with particular focus on Birmingham’s historic metalworking quarters, where my project site is located.

My project is called ‘The Music Forge’ it contains a hot-metal-works for converting scrap metal into sheets, workshops for instrument making and performance, and practice spaces for use by the local music academies. The concept was conceived off the back of the dwindling number of metal manufactories in this once prosperous metalworking centre and the need for the repopulation of creative metalworking business in the area.

The project quickly became about two things; the process of making instruments and sound – from both the performance and the fashioning of these beautiful objects. The dichotomy of sounds that would emanate from the two building programmes drove the project to become about two interrelating but contrasting halves.

Music and Architecture have fascinating experiential comparisons. They are both constructed of moments, relationships, collision, contrast, structure and patterns. Harnessing and communicating these comparisons has been controversial as there is no universal synesthetic reaction that translates music into a visual form and vice versa. Art can provide the integral link between understanding music as architecture or similarly time as space. Famously, Kandinsky provided visual expressions of the relationships of musical tones and patterns. His work, interestingly, is easy to relate to the work of Steve Holl and his ‘Stretto House’ in Texas. At first glance the Stretto House is cumbersome, not what you associate with music, but it is in the details that the delicacy of music is materialised. The building holds two contrasting rhythms which touch, just as a flute would interject upon an oboe.

I’m not sure if I have managed to achieve this level of delicacy but this project has been about contrasting sounds imagined together as a cacophony, which I feel the building I have drawn and developed over the year has at least managed to express.

A few weeks back, we recorded Severn Partnership carrying out a 3D laser scan of one of our projects. Take a look:

This week (which is week 16 for those of you who’ve been paying attention), Rob was invited to talk about housing design excellence at the Midlands Regional office for the Homes & Communities Agency (HCA).

Organised and run by the HCA in central Birmingham, the main aim of the event was to share ideas and results about Housing Design Quality. The HCA organised the event for their delivery partners to share key findings from their recent QAIV Quality Counts report (Quality Assurance and Impact Visits).

Over the last 4 years, the HCA has been visiting tenants to get an idea of what they think of their homes. The information gathered about what could be improved and what lessons can be learned will inform the affordable homes programme over the next 4 years.

Alongside the other keynote speakers (Richard Baines from Black Country Homes and Architect Glenn Howells), Rob gave a presentation that expanded on a previous piece written for Building Design Magazine’s Housing Blog examining the impact of technology and services on the history of housing. Entitled ‘Scullery Made: Servicing the housing industry’, it proposed a return to a better appreciation of the need for greater storage and its integration with mechanical services.

The remainder of the event was made up of workshop-style discussion sessions. Workshop topics included tenant engagement, sustainability & technology, internal layout quality and external design. We were able to share our experience of sustainable design such as our Passivhaus research, along with the web-based consultation we have carried out on projects such as Hill Top in Warwickshire and the Eco Terrace project in Newcastle under Lyme.

Care of Podnosh, have a listen to Brandwood End Resident’s Group Chairman, Steve Walters, and other residents talk about the history of the Brandwood End housing project in Kings Heath, Birmingham:

…our latest recruit: Lorna Parsons.

Lorna joined us in December 2011 and will be helping us to improve our business development and marketing as well as supporting our ongoing commitment to progressive use of digital tools and the web. We’ve asked her to introduce herself:

My career in architecture began in 1999 but over the last few years I’ve been pursuing an interest in how web-based tools and technology can help to improve communication within the industry. I may have been with Axis Design for just a couple of months but I’ve been working alongside Rob for the last 3 years having organised two Be2Camp ‘unconferences’ together in Birmingham in 2009 and 2010.

My interest in using the web for improved communication within architecture is key. It overlaps two specific areas: internal communications within the office, but also helping the practice communicate the design process externally with clients and citizens. The latter forms an important part of Axis’ working ethos, particularly as they work predominantly in social housing and community-based projects.

My skills lie in making stuff happen. So far, working with Axis has resulted in changes to their website, improved marketing techniques and the delivery of an event aimed specifically at Housing Associations. On an ongoing basis, I’ll be working in a business development capacity alongside the directors, as well as ensuring outward facing communications are kept up-to-date, helping to improve web-based organisational systems internally and finally being an extra pair of hands to assist in day-to-day running of the practice alongside office manager Debbie.

Out of hours (when I’m not at work nagging architects to write blog posts) I play the ukulele. Yes, really.

We believe our clients will benefit from Lorna’s support and input. If you’d like to get in touch with her to discuss any business to business collaborations, events or networking feel free to e-mail her at lp@axisdesignarchitects.com

In week #5 of 2012 we’ve been talking about drawing in 2012 and how it should speak of the poetry and the data in our architecture…

Last week we took part in the WMCCE seminar on Building Information Modelling and presented a talk on how our decision to adopt BIM across the office has improved our work. We’re interested in how better use of our computer processors can help us raise our game and provide a better service, as well as helping us consider the quality of the way we draw.

Here’s a copy of the slides:

Week notes #3 & #4…

Lately it’s been all about http://affordablepassivhaus.info:

Over the last few months we have been carrying out a detailed R&D project into making Passivhaus design principles a financially viable option for social housing. Working alongside environmental designers, and certified European Passivhaus consultants Brooks Devlin, our proposals for an affordable Passivhaus were created initially in response to a call for solutions by the BRE Passivhaus competition in 2011.

We took up the challenge to develop our proposals further because we think that construction standards in the UK will require a significant move towards Passivhaus principles. We are launching the project at an event in February aimed at local authorities and housing associations in order to disprove the myths surrounding Passivhaus build costs and share our research.

If you’re involved in delivering new build affordable housing and would like to come along to our event on 21st February in Birmingham, please register your interest via the Affordable Passivhaus website, get updates from the twitter account or drop us a line on email.

Week 2 of 2012 has brought with it a reminder that this is in fact week number 1500 and something. An early spring clean is unearthing drawings and files of past projects, including some promotional material that reminded us all that 2012 is our 30th anniversary. Plans are afoot for a celebration later in the year…

We’ve finally taken the decision to clear some space in the office of old magazines and rather than dispose of them we’d really like them to go to a good home. Birmingham School of Architecture may be taking some, but if you’d like to have some copies of the Architect’s Journal from the last couple of decades, drop us a line.

So, this week we have been mostly…

If you’re a resident of Sutton Coldfield then you’ll have perhaps seen the progress of our work at Chase Farm Shop. As the extension to create a cafe nears completion Mike has been visiting site to help the client and contractor with some of the final design decisions.

In the drawing department there’s been more detailing – early work to help guide an as yet undecided upon contractor. Finding the right level of detail in the early stages isn’t easy, with all lines and junctions being interconnected, all product and material choices being interdependent, it’s not simply a matter of general arrangement. As an ex-partner at Axis once told me, the problem with starting a shadow gap on a buildings surface is knowing how to find the other end of it.

We’ve got some new SAP calculation software in the office, so the learning curve for that has begun with testing on a domestic extension project to compare the before and after results of our intervention. We still like to collaborate with specialists in this field, such as our fellow Passivhaus team members Brooks Devlin, but it’s important to have the basic skills in-house too.

The joys of public sector procurement are upon us, as we wrestle with another web site for tender submissions. To keep our spirits up we’ve been pushing forward with our Passivhaus seminar plans – confirming the team, agreeing the venue and even (dare I say it) starting a web site, because clearly there aren’t enough of them in the world.

The most important news of the week however, for all of us in this business, was the sad loss of both John Madin and Isi Metzstein. With our office and lives based in Birmingham and the founder member of the practice learning his craft in Scotland, the work of both architects had an important place in our history.

A review of Madin’s local housing work is long overdue for us and Mike is promising to dig out his slides of St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross. We’ll share them in a future week note.

Here’s the first of a new series of posts called ‘week notes’ – an idea created by Matt Webb and Jack Schulze at BERG to see what happens when you take the time to reflect on what you’re doing and what you’ve achieved every seven days.

We’re not sure how well this will translate in the slightly slower moving world of architecture and construction, but it’s got to be worth a try…

Week note #1

We’ve kicked off 2012 with technical challenges and event planning, with some of the office working on construction details and some of us plotting ways to develop the work ideas we’re interested in pursuing this year.

Our latest BMHT sites achieved planning approval at the end of last year, so now we’re turning our hand to a few details to help guide the construction costing as it goes out to tender this month. Katie has been getting to grips with the product that I covered in my review for BD’s Envelope magazine last year – Ibstock’s Tilebrick.

Lorna has started her second month with us after spending December getting our web site back in to shape and wrestling Highrise – our CRM system – into submission. This month will be about crafting things to share with clients such as newspapers, iPad apps, bookleteers and planning seminars on Passivhaus and Retrofit. Elsewhere in the office admin department there’s a New Year tidy underway, bringing with it a decision to finally throw out many of the old magazines we’ve hoarded for years. Thanks to a twitter conversation I’m hoping they’ll be heading to Birmingham School of Architecture rather than lost forever.

Mike is busy drawing, and site layouts for more BMHT projects are filling up pieces of tracing paper. Next week we’ll need to start working them up in BIM. The challenges of creating new streets and communities in some of the city’s infill sites means once again we have to return to first principles in places and question the house type and tenure possibilities for the neighbourhood. Liz is pulling together the final pieces of the puzzles that were presented to us in BMHT’s Phase 3, coordinating levels, manipulating landscape and arranging surfaces of buildings and gardens.

Meanwhile, I’m working on our live retrofit projects, talking to builders about costs and load-bearing structures at one end; working up our first estimate with a QS at the other and trying to make sure that the more innovative products like Porotherm and Homatherm are well understood. ‘R&D’ into the new map making tool by CASA and attempting to install a time management tool on our web server is ensuring the usual levels of geek research are maintained. Oh, and the file server is misbehaving. It’s a good job I like I.T.

This week we have been mostly listening to Radio 6, although I’m hatching a plan to introduce more dubstep and see what the results on productivity are.

Happy New Year!