Anne-apolis

On 24 September every year, South Africa celebrates Heritage Day as a public holiday; an opportunity to reflect on our richly diverse origins and cultures and to engage in tours and other events that allow us to explore the many historical threads and their associated artefacts.  Fortuitously, I was in a postgraduate symposium just last week in which one of my former students, now a member of staff in the Wits School of Architecture and Planning, was presenting his work on the Johannesburg Art Gallery, where he has been serving as heritage consultant for the past couple of years. Johannesburg Art Gallery entrance Creative commons licensed:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:9_2_228_0069-Art_Gallery-Johannesburg-s.jpg The Gallery (or JAG, as it is often called), was designed in 1910 by one of the most prominent architects in the English-speaking world at the time, Edwin Lutyens. He was also the designer of the War Memorial in the Johannesburg Zoo, a striking landmark when...

  If you live in an apartment and are thinking of getting a cat (or two), the answer is a resounding "yes": the advantages of cat ownership are many, including a number of claims about the benefits to your mental and physical health. They are quite independent, so if you need to go away on business or for a holiday, a neighbour popping in once a day to check on the food and water supply is usually sufficient. I have only had the briefest spells of no cats in my life, but always the "cat redistribution system" has come through for me as soon as I moved out of each of the apartments I lived in where cats were not allowed. I recently had to put down my older cat, of the quintessential "rescue" breed, and decided to wait a couple of months to see whether my younger cat enjoyed being an only child. As at least one day per week I am out for the whole day, I was concerned that he was becoming lonely, so enter Willow, a Friday cat made from all the leftover scraps...

  A couple of weeks ago, I reflected on the sense of smell in a domestic setting, where I touched on the idea of a more conscious "curating" of the smell of your home by introducing some of the vast range of aroma enhancers. As I am such a novice in this arena, I was given a guided "scent tour" of one of my daughters' homes. It is interesting that both of my children are very much more aware of their "smell environment" than I am - one can speculate whether this is innate, inherited from their father's gene pool, or whether this has emerged through its high profile on social media. We started at the front door, to simulate the experience of a guest visiting for the first time. The entrance area is dominated by wooden floors, fittings and furniture. She has enhanced the natural timber smells with a subtle scent of bergamot and lavender, from a reed diffuser in the guest loo that opens into the entrance. A reed diffuser for a subtle background effec...

  Last week I had an online meeting with one of my students who, after a couple of minutes, asked: "Are you in your office today?" An odd question, but one that set me thinking -  I usually hold our online meetings from home, where the WiFi is more reliable, so what was it about the background sounds that prompted his question? He was quite sure about its being the echo - my office has entirely hard surfaces, giving a quite different background acoustic environment. My living room, where I have my normal online meetings, is probably less sound absorbing than most people's, as I have no carpet (due to allergies) and my furniture is not particularly sound absorbing, but clearly the presence of curtains and upholstered seating is enough to make a noticeable difference. My living room with limited soft furnishing, but wooden floor and high ceiling In spaces that are very reverberant and echoing, we tend to be more alert and energetic, while in more sound-absorbing spaces, we ...