265cos_The architecture of the White Picket Fence.

The picket fence is a type of timber fence often used decoratively for domestic boundaries, distinguished by their evenly spaced vertical boards, the pickets, attached to horizontal rails. The white picket fence came to symbolise, particularly in the US, the ideal middle-class suburban life: the nuclear family with its 2.4 children, a dog, a station wagon, a large house and peaceful living. With his film Blue Velvet, David Lynch deployed the picket fence as a visual ploy to subvert suburban living as “stultifying at best, soul-poisoning at worst. The visual monotony of a given neighborhood’s cookie-cutter architecture becomes a predictable stand-in for the unthinking conformity of the community’s expectations, as well as the narrowness of the denizens’ dreams and desires.”

WHAT_architecture 08-Sep-2019
Category: 265cos_Game of Homes | WHAT_projects
No Comments » Comments (0)

265cos_Brick walls, slate roof

The materialisation of our Costa Street project in Peckham is merely a contemporary interpretation of the traditional two-storey semi-detached house. Formally this was a central entry, with framed windows and a pitched roof; materially, brick walls and a slate roof.

WHAT_architecture 04-Sep-2019
Category: 265cos_Game of Homes | WHAT_projects
No Comments » Comments (0)

Gossip as discourse.

Whilst studying under Peter Cook of #Archigram at @TheBartlett in the mid-nineties I was exposed to architectural discourse as tittle-tattle. Yet as this article in @TheObserver suggests, gossip unlocks the secrets of power: or rather what I experienced as an exposure to the back story of architectural politics.

WHAT_architecture 01-Sep-2019
Category: 000off_WHAT_admin | 000off_WHAT_process | 179prs_practice based research
No Comments » Comments (0)