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A cold snap

When one lives in a warm-temperate climate, one is often caught napping when there is a sudden spell of cold and rainy weather, as we have experienced in Johannesburg this week. Our  houses are simply not equipped for the cold and damp, and are often very difficult to heat effectively and affordably. This is often exacerbated in older houses, when many generations of repainting the steel window frames prevents them from shutting completely. I have installed wall-mounted panel heaters in three of my rooms, but I find that they do not really make much difference on their own - one needs a more developed strategy to be really cozy when the temperature drops below zero. One of my panel heaters One of the biggest problems we face when heating our houses is that any warm air very quickly leaks out, under the doors, through the large panes of glass, through the ceiling and roof if the roof-space is not insulated, and even through the walls and floors. I am lucky in many ways, in that I li...
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Imitation

Yesterday evening I was watching a video on the work of the "replicator" at the British Museum, who has a fascinating job of creating legitimate forgeries. These have many uses: for display when the original is being restored or shown elsewhere; for teaching purposes (he said he has made 33 replicas of the Rosetta Stone); or, using the identical materials, so that visitors to the museum can pick up the object and get a feel for the weight and tactile qualities. The museum is always careful to indicate a replica on display, thus preserving the authenticity of the original and of the museum as a whole. Replica of the Rosetta Stone Creative commons licensed:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Replica_of_the_Rosetta_Stone_-_52052670338.jpg I had just been thinking about replicas and fakes in everyday things - much more mundane, but everywhere we look.  One of my history of architecture lecturers called this "tectomorphic" - representing the function of something i...
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Favourite spaces

  I have recently been house-sitting in a home that is very different from my own in many ways, yet being there is a real delight. This leads me to ponder what it is that makes for the atmosphere that is deeply satisfying, yet is completely different from my own home. The first thing I notice on arrival, is the multiplicity of pot plants at the entrance - rich and varied in scale and texture, from cacti and succulents to frangipani and hibiscus. Beside the door are some wind chimes, made of thin slices of decorative stone that give a very subtle background of sound, less obtrusive than the more common metal ones. The entrance hall is huge - setting the scale for the interconnected spaces of dining, living room and music room, all just visible from the entrance door giving a sense of the flow of space. Light floods into this entrance space from a skylight above the wooden staircase - natural wood is the predominant material here, for all of the furniture as well as the balustrade an...
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The invisible hand

  Since I was an undergrad architectural student, I have always been fascinated by the concept of invisible design - where the result fits so perfectly in its setting that it looks invisible or timeless. This was almost certainly inspired by a house that my dad designed, that I have always regarded as his masterpiece. His client was a botanical artist and the site was very heavily vegetated. The plan tried to minimise the loss of any trees and large shrubs, and Anita Fabian spent many hours on site in the initial weeks, carefully transplanting the smaller flowers away from the house footprint. The finally completed house, with its low lines and natural materials, was completely invisible from all viewpoints, concealed by the dense vegetation, and meeting the clients' brief exactly.  I have used this philosophy in my heritage work, in particular at the village of Rhodes in the Eastern Cape, aiming for a very modest interpretation of the Victorian architecture for the new house...
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Upcycling baby clothes

  I have always been a fan of recycling - giving new life to old things and finding new uses for what would otherwise end up in landfill. This goes back to childhood. I remember very vividly my dad bringing home old Bills of Quantities - lengthy documents printed single-sided with the blank reverse side perfect for all of my sketching practice and other drawing projects. In the 1960s and 70s, repairing things was very much part of life, whether mending clothing or other items. At my (very upmarket) high school, we had a toy workshop, where we collected and mended broken toys which were then given to the charities we supported. In my teenage years, my brother and his friends would buy up old sports cars and spend every spare hour coaxing them back to life, including some quite sophisticated repainting. This attitude seems to have very deep roots going back to probably prehistoric times, and not just bred from scarcity or poverty. I remember reading in a Jane Austen novel, how the ...
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A small restoration project

 I have recently come back from a holiday in the UK, staying with my sister and brother-in-law in Buckinghamshire. They live in a 1930s house that has had several alterations and additions over its lifespan, one of which was the removal of the fireplace in the front bedroom. One of their neighbours, in an identical house, is in the process of a major renovation, which included the removal of the upstairs cast-iron fireplace, which my sister rescued from their skip waste. The rescued fireplace in its original condition Although there was a legacy of many layers of paint, now in a sorry state, the only serious damage was to the left lower corner, and the cast-iron mantlepiece was beyond salvage. The first task was to clean off many generations of soot and spiderwebs, before starting the major work of removing all the old paint. In any restoration project, the preparation is the most important stage of the work, however tedious and unrewarding it may seem when doing it. Here, I had th...
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Everyday things

  As a child, I had firmly ingrained into my head that "special things" were only for use when guests came, and the status of the guest would influence the degree to which this was applied. This thinking has lived with me all my life, despite innate resistance. Why should one's most valued things live at the back of a cupboard and only emerge a couple of times a year, or even less often - surely we should be celebrating these as a way of elevating every day? I can understand the logic - the more often something is used, the more likely it will get damaged or broken - but the converse is what I am pondering today. If something can give you joy each and every day, surely this is worth the investment of having something a bit more valuable? This mug is a case in point: it was a gift, and the image is taken from one of my favourite buildings, the Art Museum in Milwaukee, designed by Santiago Calatrava. As an example of graphic design, it is a masterpiece, but it scores well o...
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