Home Rule

"While reducing under-occupancy can’t solve the crisis of provision by itself, and there will still be a need for new construction, a better distribution of the housing we’ve built already would help to relieve the pressure on both people and places. First we need to see the problem. I suggest a new concept: housing footprints. Your housing footprint is the number of bedrooms divided by the number of people in the household. Like ecological footprints, it reminds us that the resource is finite, and that if some people take more than they need, others are left with less than they need."


http://www.monbiot.com/2011/01/03/home-rule/

New Endings offers fresh start for Cardiff's dead ends

[A]rchitects and Grangetown residents Kevin Hong and Mhairi McVicar of the Collaborative Design Studio realised these dead ends can also offer new beginnings, that they are opportunities for creating meeting places, talking places, growing places, swapping places and places for play. They set up New Endings as a project to identify these dead ends and engage the community in creating and possibly implementing new uses and interesting designs for these sites. In the middle of last year I joined them in the project and together with other colleagues and Grangetown residents we secured some funding from towards the initial stages of the project the Arts Council of Wales and the RSA Catalyst Fund.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cardiff/2011/mar/23/new-endings-grangetown-project-cardiff-dead-ends

http://newendingsgrangetown.wordpress.com/

Debate re-ignites about where to build in Cardiff

Cardiff Local Development Plan History on Dipity.

"Candidate sites, showing where new housing estates totalling up to 4,500 homes in some cases, put the city’s greenfields under-threat once again."

http://yourcardiff.walesonline.co.uk/2011/01/17/debate-reignites-about-where-to-build-in-cardiff/

Wix - Free flash website

"At the heart of Wix is our intuitive drag &drop editor where all the creating happens."

http://www.wix.com/

Admiral HQ Cardiff council arrogance

"Loss of Public amenity space The report admits (8.6) that the site is a “popular piece of informal open space with amenity value” and that (8.5) Policy 7 of the Local Plan applies. This states thatdevelopment proposals involving the loss of open space will only be permitted where: i) They would not cause or exacerbate a local or city-wide deficiency of recreational open space and the open space has no amenity"

http://cardiffgreengranny.blogspot.com/2011/06/admiral-hq-cardiff-council-arrogance.html

Turning Estates into Villages

"We are, to a surprising extent, what the built environment makes us. Academic papers show that many of the problems we blame on individual behaviour are caused in part by the places in which we live. People are more likely to help their neighbours in quiet areas, for example, than in noisy ones. A long series of studies across several countries, beginning in San Francisco in 1969, shows unequivocally that communities become weaker as the volume of traffic on their streets increases."


http://www.monbiot.com/2010/08/09/turning-estates-into-villages/

"Build loose suburbs carved up by busy roads and without green spaces and you help to create a population of fat, lonely people plagued by criminals. Build dense, leafy settlements with mixed uses, protected from traffic, and you help to create safe, fit and friendly communities."

Gigantic Coal Gasometers Transformed into Thriving Communities

"In 1896 the Viennese authorities decided to invest in large-scale gas and electric utilities, so they constructed what became Europe’s largest gas plant. After nearly a century long run the plant was decommissioned, and left behind were four massive gasometers. These incredible structures were cast off, but a recent revitalization project led by Jean Nouvel, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Manfred Wehdorn, and Wilhelm Holzbauer have transformed these four tanks into spectacular and thriving communities."

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/10/14/gigantic-coal-gasometers-transformed-into-thriving-communities/

Ancient Lights

"Ancient lights" is a colloquialism for the "right to light," guaranteed under English law, whereby windows that have seen twenty years' worth of "uninterrupted" daylight cannot be blocked by the construction of new buildings.

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/ancient-lights.html

Abilmo Pop-up Hotel Rooms: Instant Accommodation

"Abilmo squeezes a lot of stuff into 12 Sqm, (130 SF) including a bathroom with toilet and shower, thermal and acoustic insulation, individual heating and air conditioning. It is an interesting idea- why build an entire hotel for a big event when you can just move it around?"



http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/albimo-popup-hotel.php

Pub shed is Britain's Shed of the Year

"An octagonal garden building complete with bar was yesterday named Britain’s Shed of the Year.



The annual competition is run by www.readersheds.co.uk  a website devoted to sheds and run by Andrew Wilcox (aka Uncle Wilco), from Cardiff."



http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/07/09/pub-shed-is-britain-s-shed-of-the-year-91466-21309932/

Building Demolition Videos: From Amazing Explosions to Botched Implosions

"Nothing last forever and that includes the most grandiose skyscrapers, luxurious hotels and beloved sports stadiums. It seems amazing at times that so much money, energy and material is invested in structures that ultimately get torn down so quickly. Some of these demolitions are simply damned impressive while other implosions are downright frightening."

http://weburbanist.com/2008/03/05/16-sweet-and-scary-building-demolitions-in-action/

LiTraCon - Light transmitting concrete

Litracon™ is a combination of optical fibres and fine concrete. It can be produced as prefabricated building blocks and panels. Due to the small size of the fibres, they blend into concrete becoming a component of the material like small pieces of aggregate. In this manner, the result is not only two materials - glass in concrete - mixed, but a third, new material, which is homogeneous in its inner structure and on its main surfaces as well.

http://www.litracon.hu/

Helix — a 1D skyscraper with a single corridor

"The principle is a cylindrical building with a helical shape for the floor. The slope of the floor is 1.5% (it rises by 1.5 cm every meter), thus hardly noticeable. The height of each ’storey’ is 3 meters, so that when you walk 200 meters along the corridor, you have walked a full circle, but you end up one ’storey’ above or below your starting point. This results in a diameter of approximately 60 meters, therefore quite common for large skyscrapers. The corridor is on the outside, so that everybody has access to the fabulous views over the city. Offices are all on the inside. As the tower is hollow in the middle, and the inner diameter of the patio is still approximately 40 meters, this makes for a very nice light shaft with peaceful lighting conditions."

http://absidea.free.fr/wordpress/index.php/helix-a-1d-skyscraper-with-a-single-corridor/