Anne-apolis

  I spent the whole of last week in a workshop with the Maths in Industry Study Group, a wonderful initiative where people from outside the Maths field are invited to pose problems that are set in the "real world" that lend themselves to a mathematical solution. I was invited, along with my colleague Dr Ryan Bradley, to present a problem based on a low-cost housing prototype that Ryan built in 2017 and has been monitoring ever since. The house is built of cement stabilised blocks, made from crushed recycled bricks, not just the walls, but most innovatively for the curved vaulted roofs. These follow a catenary shape (the shape of a hanging chain, but inverted) and the double vault has earned the small house the nickname of Big Mac, with its similarity to the MacDonalds logo. It is a double-storey building with living rooms on the ground floor and bedrooms above.  The problem we posed to the mathematicians was to model the heat flow through the vaults, as these should perform m...

 Welcome back to my blog in 2025! To celebrate the new year, instead of looking at new things, I wanted to share with you a refurbishment project that I have just completed. Forty years ago, my sister gave me two classic wooden deckchairs, with striking canvas seats in red, blue and yellow. These lasted for many years, but eventually, when the canvas had become rather worn and faded, I replaced it with plain white seats. In  a second refurbishment, they were transformed into beige stripes, but recently it was time to give them a new lease on life for relocation to my daughter's house. Stacked on my balcony for several years has been another chair frame passed on by a friend that I have never had time to refurbish, and in discussing my plans, another friend donated his old chair that he has not used in years. So with four chairs to renew, the first step was to remove the old canvas. Two of the chairs have the canvas fixed to the frame with blue tacks, which have to be very care...

  As this is my last blog for 2024, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the various craft projects that I completed throughout the year. I have quite recently become a knitter - it all started in 2021 as a way of managing my anxiety. Before that, I had always hated knitting and dreaded every Easter when we had to knit squares and jerseys for charities supported by my school. My knitting this year started with a marathon - matching emerald green jerseys for my nephew and his family. The next was a real scale change - a pale grey jersey and beanie for a newborn baby of one of my daughter's best friends. Jersey and hat for a newborn baby The pattern for the jersey is a big favourite with all of the new mom friends, as it has buttons at the neck so that you don't have to pull a tight neck over the little face. Soon after, I used the same pattern, this time with variegated yarn, for a darling toddler who is a keen gardener, so the colours won't show the dirt. I like ...

Stone in its natural state has many imperfections, some of which we prize for aesthetic reasons, such as the veining in white marble which gives it a unique look. The problem with these characteristics is that it makes a stone element unpredictable when used in any construction application. For this reason, natural stone has been traditionally used with very thick components, such as the very deep beams in an Ancient Greek temple. When the stone bends under its self-weight or because of weight placed upon it, such as roof timbers, it develops stresses, which, if they follow the same line as the grain of the stone (the veins in the marble), the beam will crack and come crashing to the ground. The thicker the beam, the better it can withstand the forces acting on it. So what is engineered stone? Any material used in engineering needs to be predictable to be able to optimise the use of material and make each element as lightweight as possible. This is arguably even more important than the...

Whether you are designing a large building, or the interior of a single room, it is useful to have an overall guiding principle, the most basic of which would be mirror symmetry. This can be seen in the original wing of the building where I live. It follows a simple rhythm of 'abbabba', where 'a' is a two-bedroom apartment and 'b' is a one-bedroom unit. The entrance is in the centre, flanked by two studio flats, which fit neatly under the two-bedroom unit in the centre on the upper floors. Photo of the original wing in the early 1930s When the building was enlarged, just two years later, a different firm of architects was employed with more modernist ideas, so while the detailing borrowed from the original wing, the overall composition was asymmetrical, with a greater variety of apartment layouts.  The later wing with its syncopated rhythm In comparing the two photos, we have a good example of the differences of approach, with the symmetrical layout being more c...

  My daughter recently moved into a new home, so I will no longer have access to her old apartment where she introduced a number of great storage ideas.  I had a last opportunity to photograph these storage solutions, which included wardrobes in the bedroom, kitchen fittings and a bathroom refurbishment. These all followed a minimalist aesthetic, as she did not want the storage to be the focus in any of the rooms. The most minimal of all is in the bathroom - a floating shelf above the toilet with a plain white finish that blends in with all the other fittings in the room and indeed in the whole apartment. The shelf was used to display an air diffuser and some scented candles - essential for those long, relaxing baths at the end of a busy day.  A floating shelf in the bathroom As this bathroom is very narrow, all the fittings that she introduced are "floating" to enhance the sense of space and improve the functionality of the room. Parallel to the bath on the opposite wall...

  A couple of days ago I spotted an excellent example of Modernist architecture up for auction  in Houghton, Johannesburg. It must have been a jewel in its heyday, with striking three-dimensional treatment complemented by rolling lawns. It appears to be largely unaltered, offering plenty of scope for restoration. House on auction November 2024: all photos from auctioninc.co.za The entrance is very modest, emphasised by an overhanging rectangular volume on a slender steel column. The main feature of the house, the semi-circular bay windows, project to the right and the entrance door is tucked away to the left. The volumetric articulation has an affinity with the works of Erich Mendelsohn, the German-born architect who emigrated to the UK in the 1930s. This is interesting, as most of the modernist architecture in Gauteng is inspired by the French architect, le Corbusier.  The entrance Moving round the house, the bay-window motif is repeated, inviting the viewer to experien...