PAIMIO LIGHT - ALVAR AALTO - AUTHOR'S IMAGE In this context I use the word ‘Praxis’ to mean, thoughtful, intelligent Practice.   If a Client demands we design a bridge and we react accordingly by designing a bridge that for me is Practice: simply responding to circumstances as presented. However, were we to respond to such a demand through a more expansive frame of thought, we might ask: Do we need to cross the river? If we do: where? If here: how? Of course the solution might in the end of this process be a bridge, but using the frame of Praxis, we have explored the a-priori potentials of the original challenge.   ‘When you are up to your arse in alligators, it is hard to remember that you are here to drain the swamp.’ (Anon) All too often (judging by much of the ‘Architecture’ that surrounds us), the everyday demands of contemporary architectural Practice are overwhelming. Given the exponential growth in the ...

Thursday evening was a delightful experience. I was invited to the opening of Pentagon Tiles London Showroom (http://www.pentagontiles.com/), designed by my erstwhile student and now close friend Simon Astridge of the Simon Astridge Architecture Workshop (SAAW). Such projects are evidence of the potential of architecture to make poetic space when design talent and enlightened Clients coalesce. On a tiny derelict urban site in Leather Lane, in the Hatton Garden area of London, the project defies binary description. As Pentagon Creative Director Sam Frith articulated:   “We are questioning preconceptions of what a showroom is, and the relationship between the products we display and the space itself." (Pentagon Website) Of course this is a showroom of ceramics but it is also, a library, a depository of the materials of earth: a retreat - a place of meditation and choice, a place of gathering, a place of learning, a place of exchange and a place of repose. But most of all it...

And what of the fortunate ones: those able to access Higher Education and study architecture? My own every-day experience as an academic suggests that the 'fortunate ones' are under incredible pressure.  The commodification of Higher Education has had a devastating impact upon the millennial generation. Tuition Fees of £9,000 p/a will ensure an ongoing indebtedness of at least £45,000, and if we add living costs (even at a meager £10,000 p/a) I anticipate a total level of debt and / or expenditure in the order of £100,000 at the completion of full-time study in architecture. This situation of course may be mitigated by earning: however the need to earn money to support academic study, provides yet another pressure in balancing income against academic demands.  A significant number of my students are suffering financial hardship and are having to access financial support from the University and/or are consistently raiding the bank of Mum and Dad.  My sense is such ...

Architecture and its kindergarten, Architectural Education, cannot continue in stasis: systematically ignoring the tectonic shifts in culture, the nature of economy, contemporary politics, or indeed existing and projected counter-cultures. Architectural Education in the UK today is, in essence, predicated upon a model that emerged from the 1958 Oxford Conference. 1958!!! That's two years after my birth and I am now sixty. Trust me - much has changed. If we take just one example: the exponential growth and spread of technology that facilitates communication, we might reflect that in 1958 we had the telegram, the telephone (for the privileged few) and the letter. Television had only two channels and went dead at 11.00pm. Today we have, e-mail, social media, mobile phones, satellite communication all of which, allow us pretty much to 'to be' nowhere in particular. Similarly, we can travel to the other side of the world by air in 24 hours. Mogens Prip-Bus, Utzon's Da...