Ramblings on air

My article on Tadao Ando’s House in Sri Lanka is published on Dezeen. The text has been replenished with lots of unpublished anecdotes that you might enjoy reading about. I was fortunate enough to actually visit it. (BTW you have to scroll down quite a bit to get to the beginning of my text.)

My Article on Tadao Ando’s House in Sri Lanka for the Sunday Telegraph’s supplement magazine, Stella. I hardly recognized my own text, as it has been through the editorial mill. Still, I’m putting it up on my blog. (dezeen has published a version that is more faithful to my original text)

My article on The Cat House by Key Operation Inc. is published on Dezeen. Akira Koyama of Key Operation and I met working years ago at David Chipperfield Architects. Here our paths cross again, virtually.

I’m working backwards in time…here is the link to the talk / symposium I participated with the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto and others in 2010. It was organised by Architecture Foundation in relation to the Future Beauty exhibition at the Barbican. One of the most interesting comments made during the evening was by Fujimoto who said that Issey Miyake incorporated air into design, which possibly made his work very Japanese. I found a detailed review of the evening here.

Sophie Hicks (who is sitting next to me) and I actually made quite a contrast that evening because I was wearing a Mina Perhonen’s dress, which was black, thin & transparent, while Sophie’s Comme des Garçons gown from the 80s was white, very thick and well padded!

Here is my review of the talk Kazuyo Sejima, one half of SANAA, gave at the Royal Institution, which took place last year. I had never met her before this but having spotted her cuffing away her fag outside the building before the lecture, I went up to her and introduced myself. Sejima said she was nervous about giving a lecture in English. To me, part of the charm of that evening was her broken English!

My review of Tadao Ando’s lecture at the Royal Institution last week. After the lecture, I heard an elderly couple (I wonder who they were…) discussing how they were impressed with Ando’s sense of humour. I realised then that the general perception of Ando has been that he is a moody architect, with ferocious tantrums. I find him rather amusing, especially with his Osaka dialect. At 70, he appears incredibly youthful. Perhaps you lot (by that, I mean, ‘young’ architects) should take up some boxing to keep up with him?