Conrad Shawcross - Timepiece

Some of us went to the Round House last night for the Conrad Shawcross 'Timepiece' exhibition. Very intelligent design, and a beautiful spacial experience.

The Unfinished Stairway to Heaven.

You may have noticed an odd slug shaped structure residing at the mouth of Bethnal Green offer the last couple of years. The structure, and it's surrounding landscaping, forms the first phase of the 'Stairway to Heaven' memorial by local architects,  Arboreal Architecture. The project is part of a new public space to commemorate the worst civilian disaster of World War II, when 173 people died on the staircase leading down to the tube station.

Unfortunately, the project ground to a halt when fundraising for the project did not meet the £500k required for completion.  The unfinished memorial still awaits it's final element : a hollowed out stair, evoking the volume of space in which people died. The ceiling of timber addition has 173 holes to represent each of the victims in light. The stair is constructed from a cargo of timber at the bottom of the Irish Sea, ironically from a ship sunk by a German U-boat in the First World War.

It's a lovely piece of civic architecture. Let's hope they meet they're target soon.

More.

IKEA's Augmented Reality 2014 Catalog

Ikea's kinda like the McDonald's of furniture design. We all know it's bad, but we all have a bit now and again. That said, this new AR feature of being able to show their furniture in your own home is interesting. Not for the fact it's IKEA furniture, but for the fact it's a way of illustrating a 3D model of a furniture piece in a designated space. Doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see this applied to the work we do. The point at which we can illustrate a proposal to a client virtually doesn't seem too far away. Gimmick or natural progression?

Pawson's St Moritz Church in Augsburg

Minimal transformation of St Moritz Church in Augsburg, Germany.

Sun shining on sunshine on our stairs.