Coffee in the Square

The Power of the Sun and the Pull of the Sea

I've recommended this ace caf' before. It is situated on the East Beach Seafront of Southsea. I've since discovered that it is not just a seasonal café but sits here distributing coffee and home made bread and butter pudding all year round.
Yesterday the whole of the British Isles was influenced by cold still arctic air that had sunk down to our latitudes, causing this cold bright weather.
Despite the air temperature being only 5 degrees C it felt much warmer in the sunshine. Warm enough, in fact, to sit quite happily beneath the umbrellas and sip your coffee.
We took a long walk along the beach and when we got back to the car, which had been parked due south, the interior temperature was 21 degrees C! How's that for passive solar gain. What better demonstration of the power of the sun than this.
Incidentially the waters around the Isle of Wight have some of the strongest tides in the country. But so far none of this power is being harnessed.
Last week the Crown Estates published the latest round of winners for contracts to build next generation windfarms. The winners for West of Isle of Wight, which would be the closest to Southsea are Eneco New Energy

www.corporateuk.eneco.nl

This company from Holland grew out of the municipal power generating companies of the Hague, Dordrecht and Rotterdam which were originally owned by the local authorities of those three cities.
Their website suggests that they are dedicated still to citizen participation.
Isn't it a shame that the wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight closed down. They would have been the perfect partners.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Catching the Last Routebus Home

Spent a pleasant evening with Dr. Compost the other night, AKA Craig Benton the recyling expert from Seattle who has now settled in Dublin and runs his business from there. (doctorcompost@earthlink.net)
We were showing him the delights of soho. (dinner at Polpo followed by coffee and cakes in the Bar Italia), when this little beut caught our eye. The Vegan bus has had mixed gastronomic reviews, but it looked busy and the diners looked happy on the night we were there.

The bus has a website


www.veganroutes.org

and while checking it out I also found


www.veganbus.com

which is an old school bus in Massachusetts that runs on waste vegetable oil. Check out the slide show. They clearly have fun.

Transport for London have now placed the order for new routemasters, from Wright Bus. The new generation will be hybrid technology with 40% less NOx emissions and 30% less particulate matter emissions than normal diesel.
For reasons I don't get it will have three doors and two staircases. So once you have all that kit it takes 87 passengers instead of the 149 or so that the bendy bus takes.
It remains to be seen how popular the new routemasters are. But somehow I can't see them becoming cafés when they wear out.
Perhaps the Vegan bus is real recycling.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

I'm a photographer not a terrorist!

London's photographic community came together rather shyly in Trafalgar Square today in order to protest about the law that allows people to be arrested just for taking photographs in public.
Whatever your fears of terrorism it does seem strange to me. My friend the architectural photographer Grant Smith who organised the demo is a quiet well mannered man, yet he was arrested photographing a Wren church in the City.
The privatisation of public space, found particularly in shopping malls, had always been a problem. But if these draconian rules are extended to the public arena what can we do?

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Moving the Boundary of Possibility

I was curious to know who were the originators of a cool little app. that I have discovered to monitor your carbon footprint. The app. Is called Zero Carbon and at first it seemed to exist only in Spanish. However once downloaded it seemed to sense that I was English and will only speak to me in my mother tongue. That's good.
The app. actually comes from a Chilean outfit called Fundacion Chile

Fundacionchile.cl

This is a somewhat strange collabortion between big business the Chilean government and a charitable foundation with the purpose of fostering innovation.

It's been going for over 20 years. Well I can't guage their success but if they make great little apps they can't be all bad.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Is Snow Chaos Worse These Days?

This was the scene in Winchester yesterday, where against all the odds I managed to attend a meeting! I drove back to Petersfield through thick snow, but on a perfectly clean road which had been kept clear by the snowploughs - well done HCC.
However there was traffic chaos on the M3 last night, 1000 cars trapped and we have opened two emergency centres in the town.
I'm sure that supplies may start to run out as everything and everybody has to come from such a distance. We are all now so imprisoned by our reliance on the car.
I shall walk to work today, but most of my colleagues will not be able to get to work because they live too far away.
Food comes not from the local farm but by lorry from miles away.
Schools are forced to close because the teachers and often the pupils live a long way away. They can only arrive by car.
And ironically the traffic chaos is caused more by traffic jams than actually by snow blocked roads. The A3 in Petersfield was blocked by pressure of traffic backing up behind a jacknifed lorry, not by the quantity of snow, which the snowploughs could quite easily have cleared! (If they could have got through the jams.)

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Happy New Year from COFFEEINTHESQUARE

How nice to wake up on New Years Day to find a crystal blue sky and the Post Office Tower, which hovers over our flat, sporting a new years message.
This is perhaps just a little reminder about the importance of iconography to urban design. But mainly it's to wish all our readers good luck in the 'tens.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Soho Walking

Those observant among you will have noticed that I've started blogging from my iPhone. The iBlog programme, which is very good by the way, seems to want to boast this fact and also seems to put in ads. I'm sorry if this offends you all, but I don't know how to stop it. (Any advice welcome here)
But there is no getting away from it the Apps that can be downloaded are awesome and addictive.
The latest gismo I've downloaded is a little beaut called Cyclemeter by Abvio.
It uses the built in GPS to record your route by various means of transport.
Today, for example Astrid and I took a stroll to the Bar Italia in Frith St in Soho. Soho is always delightful and quiet on mornings like this. It took us 18.47mins to walk .87miles. Last night coming back from the theatre the same walk took over 20 mins.
It is said that we always over estimate how long it takes to walk and under estimate a drive time. Perhaps we should all be equipped with these little gismos?
Happy New Year by the way. This is my last blog of 2009.
PS if you look really closely at the image you can see Ronnie Scotts club opposite reflected in the window.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Happy London Christmas

12.45 on Christmas day in Portland Place, London. What more beautiful a city to spend Christmas in than this. The pale Portland stone of buildings which range from the 1890's to the 1960's looked beautiful in the low winter sun. Along this stretch there is quite a variety of styles, but a consistant facing material as well as the uniform height and set-back from the pavement edge is enough.
Design guides are ofter too prescriptive. The variety of design and detail is a joy here and not a hotch-potch. But of course Portland Place has always ensured the developer (of any era) a good return so they could afford to deliver quality. Perhaps that is the secret of it's success.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

How snow changes everything

This was Petersfield Market Square at dawn today. It always looks pretty, but in the middle of winter the extra light reflected off the snow is welcome.
Scandinavians know how important light surfaces are in gloomy climates. Think of the white and gold of Russian churches, the Winter Palace or the pale blue or yellow of so many 19th Century Swedish villas.

But in Britain we are so wedded to brickwork that we often forget other building materials. And architects are keen to draw the artists impression for a summers day but they forget to check how it will look in the gloom.

On the far left of this image you can see Petersfield's funky 70's Barclay's Bank with it's white rendered and concrete surfaces. It would probably never get planning these days. But I must say I think it's a fine bit of urban intervention. And it's wearing remarkably well.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Happy Christmas to all our readers

Dear Friends,

This is "raise a glass time" and I thought I'd give you the answer to the little quiz on our Christmas card by sharing a picture I took in a cafe there about this time last year. 

The city is Antwerp and being rather religious even the sugar cubes are shaped like a Madonna here.  However I could not bring myself to let her melt away so if you come to my cottage in Petersfield she is still very much whole and adorning the kitchen shelf.

Antwerp is one of the 21 cities that I studied in 2007/8 and the info can be found on the sister website www.thecitiesproject.com

I'm now working full time on the Whitehill Brodon Eco-town which I am proud to say has the first Eco-town masterplan in the country and is one of four  which will be government supported.  Go to www.whitehillbordon.com if you want to see what we've been up to.  

Though I am still a partner in Shillam and Smith it does mean that my consultancy work has reduced, but I still do the odd piece of work.  To reflect this Mike, who is still running the architecture side of the practice has set up a  special architecture website www.architecturesmith.co.uk Do get onto it and ask him a question.  Its the only place to find free architectural advice!

So Mike and I are in the happy position of having two homes, Great Titchfield Street in central London and I live during the week in a 17th Century cottage in the centre of Petersfield.  So if you are passing either of these locations please give us a buzz!

Good luck to everyone in the new year and we wish you all a very Merry Christmas.