A Sign for Our Times

This is a novel idea for the regeneration of a deprived area. In Chattanooga , Tennessee some inspirational creative types have persuaded the city authorities that the lift the city needs can be captured in a clever re-branding of their signage.

http://www.good.is/post/can-a-font-help-a-city-make-a-comeback?utm_campaign=daily_good2&utm_medium=email_daily_good2&utm_source=popular_post_link&utm_content=3D%20Solar%20Structures%20Create%20More%20Power%20in%20Small%20Spaces

This only applies to public sector signage (road markings, city hall letterheads etc) but the designers are also hoping to encourage local businesses to adopt it. Whilst it’s great that the cohesive effect of regeneration can be implemented and measured by such simple ideas, there’s the potential for it to lose track of its very purpose.

Regeneration has many influencing factors (jobs, security, education, diversity, health & wellbeing etc) but one major aspect is often entrepreneurial, artist-led communities following cheap rents. What creative industry wants their brand dictated to them? Imagine the creatives in Dalston and Hackney being told they should adhere to a brand to further promote the regeneration of their area. They’d tell you to shove your wingdings somewhere very uncomfortable!

MB

Developing City Exhibition

We are currently working with Pipers and Wordsearch on the Developing City exhibition due to open in June at the Walbrook Building. It will form part of the London Festival of Architecture and run alongside the Olympics.

The exhibition will look at how the architecture has influenced the commerce of the City and will focus on the enduring resourcefulness that the City of London has relied upon as it developed from Roman times to now, and hopefully far into the future. The City has survived many challenges including the Great Fire and the Blitz and part of the exhibition will be about speculating how the City of the future will replenish and reinvent itself as a result of the current financial crisis.

It is not just the office blocks that have defined the City but also the spaces between them and the socializing that they support, where cafes and restaurants have often driven the deals within the City.

http://www.lfa2012.org/events/view/the-developing-city-52

Conquest House wins BCO Award

We are delighted that Emrys Architects won the London and South East region BCO Award yesterday in the best Refurbished/Recycled Workplace category for Conquest House. We celebrated at the awards ceremony with our client GMS Estates and Hult Business School who now occupy the building.

Thoughts on an afternoon wandering around Ecobuild…

The programme looked interesting on paper, lots of seminars that would have been worth checking out if one was spending the whole day there. If you are just there to browse the stalls for an afternoon, it’s probably not worth the trip. Once you’ve walked past the 99^th Solar Panel company, fatigue starts to really kick in!

The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t really exclusively Eco. It seemed more of a general trade show for the building industry. Given that sustainability is compulsory nowadays, it seems slightly misleading for many of these building products to represent themselves as ‘Eco’. CJ

Emrys at Olympic Park

No, sadly we haven’t had a chance to design any buildings at the Olympic Park but some of us did get to visit last week. We went to watch the Fina Visa Diving World Cup, part of the London Prepares series at the Aquatic Centre.

And, no, that’s not Nuno on the 3m platform.