London Open House 2: The Bridge Academy

Schools are interesting as a building type for a variety of reasons: they have a clear function, i.e. accommodating children and organising teaching and learning; there are clear temporal patterns in usage and stark differences between classroom activities and the times before, after and in between; and the interface of schools is complex, too, in…

The Secret Life of Buildings

Or: The Good, The Bad and The Shiny. Channel 4’s series on ‘The Secret Life of Buildings‘, broadcast in August 2011 is a fascinating inquiry into the way buildings affect people. Three episodes on our homes, our workplaces and places of leisure looked at examples of good design and bad design. I can whole-heartedly approve…

Palace of Justice Brussels

VISITING THE PALACE OF JUSTICE, BRUSSELS Ever since reading about the fact that defendants keep escaping justice by being able to flee from the Palace of Justice in Brussels (for example in a NY Times article in 2009), I was curious to visit the building. Being in Brussels for a conference in April 2010 meant I could…