a cold start

An early start awaited me this morning for the 6am bus to Launceston. Fresh snow on the mountain and ice on the windshield.  All I was thinking about was the sun and the sand (i lie actually, i like the cold better than summer).

too long

It has been way too long since my last post, so I’m going to start posting more random things on a more regular basis.  This way the blog will be updated a little more often.  So here is the first of what i hope to be a lot more new posts.  This photo was taken a while back, and similar to the huge library of photos sitting on my hard drive, was dying to to be put online.

sydney last month

Last month I headed up to sydeny for the Biennale of Sydney.  Between bridgette and myself we had 4 cameras and a video camera – slight overkill.  In my defence it was really just my camera that i had use of, everything else was film.  Ayways took me a month to upload these images, but it was really great to be back in sydney.  A highlight was visiting the exhibition at cockatoo island, an amzing decommisioned naval base in the middle of Sydney harbour.

a little while between drinks

As you can imagine, now I’m back in Tasmania life has slowed down a little, meaning that I’m posting less often as the other ‘real’ thing in my world take priority. This is great as it means that I’m not spending 16 hours a day in front of the laptop, but also confirms that i should set some time aside for posting and thinking as well.

So to make up for it I decided to post a heap of photos of my two day stop over in london on the way home.  The images above are of the Architecture Associations DRL 10 c-space pavillion, which is a competition open to current and past DRL students (i think).  This year it was won by two guys who are architects with Future Systems (I also think).  More info on the official blog.

This one is also a pavillion by the AA, this time by second and thurd year students.  It make you see what can happen when you ahve alot of money for student projects (smell the jealously).  I was very luck as this opened the day i was there, so my daytime photos (not posted, only on flickr) still show the hoarding around the site.  There is heaps of great info available here.

Promenade by Anthony Caro, as a part of the Royal Academy of Art’s courtyard summer series.

Poly & Chai by Chinese architect Yung Ho Chang as a part of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s China Design Now exhibition.

And finally, two of the large graffiti pieces on the front wall of the TATE Modern.

So that was the end of Europe for me for a while, and now my life is back in Tasmania where I am teaching with the School of Architecture and working at jaws architects.  Hopefully they will bring as much enjoyment as my time in Barcelona – it’s a tough ask, but I’m sure they will be better.  After all, I’m now finally home.

gaudi_coloniaGuell

I finally got the chance to get out of the city with Ben and Casey to see a Gaudi building that we had wanted to visit for quite a while.  Colonia Guell is situated about 20 Kms out of Barcelona and is a quick trip via train.  The waether was fantastic, with the dryness of the hot air very different to that of the city.

As usual, it is another fine example of Gaudi’s unfinished architecture, this time the family ran out of money to complete the project.  There has been  some very fine refurbishment work completed on the building over the last few years as well.

madrid

During the easter break i headed to Madrid for four days with gogo, and we had a blast. A selection of the photos are below, but you can see the entire set here.