Recently I moved office for the fourth time in the same building, this time to the top floor with all the other retired emeritus and honorary staff into the area we fondly call the retirement village! With each move, I have taken the opportunity to cull all the old exam scripts for shredding and any other accumulated stuff that no longer has a use - a great exercise in editing out the clutter. With a team of enthusiastic lab staff, the move took about an hour, but it was only this week that I felt that I had truly moved in. The significant activity was the hanging of pictures and a map, which made the room look complete. This set me thinking of the role of the vertical surfaces in the design process - often designers spend many hours working on the horizontal dimension, the planning and furniture layouts, as this influences the main building activities and constitutes the bulk of the expenditure of a project. So what is the part played by the walls? As an experiment, I turned the ...
Reflections on architecture, design, interiors and inspiring creativity