Stuff

While I wrestle with a lengthy post about Berlin and a short one about the worst new building in London, here are a few reviews and bits and bobs that I should link to. 

Firstly, a few reviews of FAT's issue of AD, Radical Post Modernism. Steve Parnell has a somewhat terse review in AJ (£) but a longer and more expansive piece about the talk at the RA in which we took part in Architecture Review. David Rosenberg has written a not wholly complimentary but pretty perceptive review in BD (more £, unfortunately).  Neither picks up exactly on our reason for writing about (and doing, I suppose) post modernism in the first place but both are surprisingly sympathetic to a revisiting of this still much-reviled architectural movement. 

Interestingly, both writers attempt - for obvious reasons - to distinguish between post modernism as a critical approach and post modernism as a historical style, which is something we also do if not exactly all the time - the 'toxicity' of Po Mo being simultaneously its most useful and annoying quality. This was a point that come up at our official launch of the edition at a reassuringly packed Architectural Association last week. Having said all that, this subject, together with the seemingly endless panel discussions connected to the V+A's Style and Substance exhibition, is starting to feel like a rather well trampled path.....

Finally, a note about a personal contribution to architecture practice We Made That's newspaper The Unlimited Edition. I've taken part in their High Street Pick'n'Mix, an Exquisite Corpse style exercise pasting together a number of individual shop fronts by different designers into a fantasy high street. Mine is a kind of lopsided tribute to Sheffield's Castle Market and makes use of my latest discovery in the field of architectural representation; the hand drawing. David Knight's missing slice of Wickham's Department Store on the Mile End Road realised as a monument to the empty shop unit is particularly nice....

Copies of The Unlimited Edition are available at the Whitechapel Ideas Store and Holly Lewis of We Made That will be talking about it here.