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Notes from a recent trip to the Ecobuild conference:

It goes like this: DETR figures state that for a neighbourhood to be served by a viable transport network you need 5000 dwellings. To design a ‘walkable’ neighbourhood we should provide all key facilities within a 10 minute walk. This defines an area contained within a circle of 600m radius. Take away the space recognised as necessary for communal facilities and roads and you’re left with a dwelling density of 50 per hectare.

Cue a series of images showing potential layouts at 50 per hectare, which MacCormac admitted himself was barely the beginning of any qualitative judgement of the resulting spaces. His key point, touched on throughout the presentation, was how this qualitative judgement is dependent on an improved understanding of the net vs. gross density – or, crudely put, the houses vs. the spaces.

He’s absolutely right and there’s a thread across this entry that moves from the CABE audit I mentioned earlier (which has much to say about better highways integration), to the car free environment of Trystan Edward’s terraces (whose high density probably land back at about 50 when you introduced parking), through the Span story of quality landscape better mediating the Radburn car/pedestrian divorce, to the shifting tessellations of MacCormac’s houses and gardens.

Full notes on all the speakers can be found on Rob’s weblog: no2self.net

The partners here at Axis Design have a long history of teaching (working here is always an education!) and at the office we have copies of lecture notes and books that are all worthy of re-publishing via the web.

Under a new category simply entitled ‘notes’ we will be posting urban design lecture notes to share with visitors. These are made available under a Creative Commons license.

For the first installment there are three PDF files on offer: 1, 2 and 3.

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Part of the goal of Open Practice day this Friday is to talk about how architects work. One of the projects available for viewing on Friday will be some recent design work for a single domestic residence on a challenging suburban site.

The challenges of difficult access, overlooking from nearby houses and substantial level changes were developed into opportunities through a series of sketches and diagrams. The diagram is an important device in architecture and the hand drawn sketch continues (in an industry ruled mostly by computer aided design) to be the best way to explore them.

Come and visit on Friday and we can talk about the way the design developed…

Architecture Week podcast episode 1:

To celebrate Architecture Week we’re publishing a two part audio presentation in mp3 format that will lead us up to Open Practice Day next Friday. The proposal is that you listen to them on the way to the office when you come and visit.

Charles Jencks and Ralph Erskine – Participatory Politics and Organic Design (mp3 file – 17Mb).

Episode 1 is for those of you who visit the city in the car, Episode 2 will be more sustainable – we’ll go for a walk!

Architecture Week 2006 events

It’s Architecture Week here in the UK.

Here are a few choice picks from the itinerary in my area, the West Midlands. There are plenty more to choose from on the official web site: www.architectureweek.org.uk.

I’ve saved the best one till last…

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Axis Design will be taking part in the Open Practice event during this year’s Architecture Week. Along with 9 other architects in Birmingham, we’ll be opening our office to the public from 10am till 4pm for the public to come along and take a look at our work and ask questions about any of our projects.

Come and visit us and other Birmingham architects on June 23rd. More details can be found on the official website: Open Practice.

Recent updates on the web site posted specially for this event are collated in the Architecture Week category.

How we work as community architects

We are a Midlands based practice with over 20 years experience in public consultation work at a variety of project scales. We enjoy the work and are committed to finding win/win solutions to often conflicting demands.

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