Acoustic panels with some artistic freedom

By Anne Kyyro Quinn LINK

Can store

Not related to the house but nice simple idea for storing beer in the fridge.

just £4 from mode studio

Standing Basil Spence figure

Interesting drawing

On the cover of Jan 08 RIBA Journal - various layouts of Acadmies by Fosters Architects.

Basil Spence

Screen at Coventry Cathedral source and more information available here

Polished concrete floor

Three images from a very good article on polishing your concrete floor.

And more on the before and after

Permitted Development PDG3 extract

PERMITTED DEVELOPMENT
Town and Country Planning (Permitted Development)
Order 2005
Erection of a greenhouse/garden shed/summer house within the curtilage of a dwelling.
Under the above Order, you may, without planning permission, erect a greenhouse, garden shed or summer house outside a Conservation Area or the curtilage of a Registered Building, provided that on completion of the operations;
for a GREENHOUSE;
(a) there would be no more than one greenhouse within the curtilage of the dwelling;
(b) the height of the greenhouse would not exceed 2.8m above ground level;
(c) the area of ground covered by the greenhouse would not exceed 15sq m;
(d) no part of the greenhouse would be between the dwelling and any highway which bounds the curtilage UNLESS you have sufficient garden or land that the structure could be erected at least 20m away from that highway bounding the curtilage;
(e) no part of the greenhouse would be nearer than 1m to any part of the dwelling;
(f) no part of the greenhouse would be over a public sewer; and
(g) no part of the greenhouse would be within 9m of the bank of any river designated as a Main River under the Land Drainage Acts.
The requirements are the same for a GARDEN SHED OR SUMMER HOUSE with the addition of a condition regarding the roof as follows;
(a) there would be no more than one garden shed or summer-house within the curtilage of the dwelling;
(b) the height of the garden shed or summer-house would not exceed 2.8m above ground level;
(c) the area of ground covered by the garden shed or summer-house would not exceed 15sq m;
(d) no part of the garden shed or summer house would be between the dwelling and any highway which bounds the curtilage UNLESS you have sufficient garden or land that the structure could be erected at least 20m away from that highway bounding the curtilage;
(e) no part of the garden shed or summer house would be nearer than 1m to any part of the dwelling;
(f) no part of the garden shed or summer-house would be over a public sewer;
(g) no part of the garden shed or summer-house would be within 9m of the bank of any river designated as a Main River under the Land Drainage Acts.
On condition that the roof shall be faced with wood or dark-coloured felt.
DEFINITION
“Highway” means “a highway maintainable at the public expense, which shall be construed in accordance with schedule 3 of the Highways Act 1986, and includes any part of a highway”, this includes a public footpath.

Extracted from The Town and Country Planning (Permitted Development) Order 2005 PDG3
Classes 14 and 16. Statutory Document No. 671/05
2nd May 2006

Permitted Development Rights

VERY IMPORTANT
Permitted Development Rights only apply to houses (NOT flats) which are occupied by a
family, or up to six people living as a family.
The "original" size of the house from which base increases are calculated is the size of the
property as built, or as at 1948, if the house existed then.
Some houses may be subject to an Article 4 Direction which means that some or all of
their permitted development rights have been removed. The Local Search will reveal
whether this is the case.
Many newer properties may have had their "permitted develoment rights" taken away as
part of their original planning permission. The Local Search should reveal whether this is
the case.
If you live in a Listed Building you may require Listed Building consent to carry out works
that are permitted development.
Most structural works also require Building Regulations Approval. Planning Permission is
a separate matter.
THE RIGHTS - WHAT YOU CAN DO
1. Extensions. (not including roof extensions)
You may extend the original dwelling as follows:
(i) in a Conservation Area 50 cubic metres or 10%, whichever is the greater;
and,
(ii) outside a Conservation Area or non-terraced property 70 cubic metres or
15%, whichever is the greater or 50 cubic metres for a terraced home.
All of these are subject to the following provisos.
The extension must NOT:
(a) be more than a maximum of 115 cubic metres;
(b) be higher than the original building;
(c) project in front of any wall facing onto the highway where it is less
than 20 metres from the highway
(d) be more than 4 metres high if it is going to be less than 2 metres from
a boundary;
(e) result in more than half the garden area being covered by buildings
(f) not include any alterations to the roof of the dwelling.
2. A dormer roof extension can be constructed providing:
(i) the dwelling is not in a Conservation Area;
(ii) it is no higher than the highest part of the existing roof;
(iii) it does not face onto a highway
(iv) it will not be bigger than 40 cubic metres in the case of a terraced house, or
50 cubic metres in any other case
(v) and, taken together with any other extensions it does not expand the size of
the original dwelling by more than the limits mentioned under (1) above.
In other words, the right to build a dormer is part of the expansion allowed
under (1).
3. Porches
A porch may be constructed over any outside door of your property provided that:
(i) its floor area does not exceed 3 square metres measured externally
(ii) no part of it will be higher than 3 metres
(iii) no part will be less than 2 metres from any boundary with a highway.
4. Other buildings
Such as garages, garden sheds, greenhouses, swimming pools etc., which are to be used
together with the house, may be constructed within the grounds of the dwelling provided
that:
(i) they are not used as a dwellin(gie they are not intended to be lived in);
(ii) they do not project in front of any wall facing onto the highway where it is
less than 20 metres from the highwa; y
(iii) they are no larger than 10 cubic metres if within 5 metres of the existing
dwelling;
(iv) the height does not exceed 4 metres if it has a pitched roof, or 3 metres in all
other cases;
(v) they do not result in more than half the garden area being covered by
buildings;
(vi) in the case of a dwelling which is listed or within a Conservation Area, the
building does not exceed 10 cubic metres.
5. A satellite antennae and dishes
May be installed outside Conservation Areas provided:
(i) they are no larger than 90cm;
(ii) there are no other satellite antennae on the dwelling or within its curtilage;
(iii) and, they are no higher than the existing roof of the dwelling.
6. Gates, walls, fences
Can be erected provided:
(i) they are no higher than 1 metre where adjacent to a highway;
(ii) they are no higher 2 metres elsewhere;
(iii) they do not involve work to or within the curtilage of a listed building.
7. Other Permitted Development Rights
(i) New accesses to unclassified roads, provided they are required in
connection with other permitted development work (e.g. the installation of
a vehicle hardstanding).
(ii) The installation of oil storage tanks for domestic purposes subject to certain
provisos concerning height, capacity and location.
(iii) The painting of a dwelling.
POINTS TO NOTE
1. If you own a flat you have no Permitted Development rights and must apply for
consent for any external alterations.
2. Care should be taken to ensure that you have not "used up" your Permitted
Development allowance.
3. If you are in doubt about whether or not you have used up your allowance, you
can apply to the council for a "Certificate of Lawful Development" which if
granted will certify that your proposal is in fact permitted development and does
not require permission.
4. The fact that planning permission is required for something means that you should
have careful regard to your council's planning guidance. Most councils issue
guidance for domestic extensions which they will gladly send out, and it is sensible
to adhere to the principles laid down in this guidance. it will make it more likely
that your planning application will be granted.
IMPORTANT:
This is a brief guide for clients issued by A. L. Hughes & Co. It is not intended as a detailed
exposition of the law, and in all cases you are advised to take specific advice on any
particular proposal.

Windows Colour

The colour of Velux windows as standard is NCS S-7500-N which equates to RAL 7043

Demolitions day 5

Friday 11th January 2008 8:45am

Demolitions day 4

Thursday 10th January 2008 8:45am raining

Demolitions day 3

Wednesday 9th January 2008 8:40am

Trial Pits

Trial pits dug by Brian Sinclair the JCB driver/owner of Sinclair Plant Hire, with geotechnical advice by engineer David Mathews and Soil Contamination Analysis by Pat Kerr. Assitance by Neil Gaffney.

Demolitions day 2

08.01.2008

Katrina Stair

from here

Merry Christmas

Don't send a lame Holiday eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

Timber cladding decision

I got the go ahead today for timber cladding following a meeting with building control and discussions on the fire regs. Above are the calculatiosn based on "the enclosing rectangle method". The excel calculation is the interpolation of the size of the rectangle and published tables.

phew!

Brick dimensions

I always forget.

Buildstore 2

 
 
 

More images from Buildstore

Buildstore 1

 
 
 
 

Images from display at Build Store in Livingston 01/12/2007.

Textures / Materials for Sketchup

http://www.cgtextures.com/

House design - update

It may change as the timber cladding is currently in doubt...

Fire and stove

The lovely Hwam elements stove

The Carola Chair by spanish furniture company

nice chair by Adreu world

Stair with concrete plinth

stair with concrete plinth...

Stair design

This is the first stab at a stair layout with open treads.

Maekawa House

House in Tokyo, 1945 designed by Kunio Maekawa
photo by a Columbian Architect in Tokyo

Rafael Moneo:

Reduction is always risky, but [Alvaro] Siza's observations [on his working process] could be simplified in this manner:

"place: origin of all architecture."

"distance: provided by the fact that it's others who build."

"discussion: pay attention to those who will be using the building."

"contingency: the solutions to the specific problems of each job are to be found in the conflicts that accompany the reality of the context of the work."

"uncertainty: thanks to the vagueness of the goal being pursued at the start of the job. The reaction is not resignation. On the contrary, that all well-done jobs end in surprise is a source of satisfaction."

"mediation: architecture as something that calls for group work, accepting one's limitations (constructive, functional, legal, etc.), sacrificing direct personal expression."

"nonsatisfaction: every architectural work is, in the eyes of its architect, unfinished; the architect necessarily feels that his solution failed to resolve all the conflicts inherent in the surrounding reality."

"evidence: architecture as the opportunity to test the uniqueness of things, the uniqueness that in their evidence allows us to discern their very essence."


from daily dose of arcitecture from in turn Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects (2004)

Minimum space standards

Minimum space standards made an unscheduled return to the housing sector last week when regeneration agency English Partnerships unveiled a set of minimum requirements that go beyond the old Parker Morris standards abandoned 40 years ago. The new standards apply to all EP schemes from 1 November 2007, the agency confirmed this week.

The agency’s requirement for minimum internal floor areas (MIFA), calculated in line with the RICS Gross Internal Floor Area, are:

• 1 Bed / 2 person dwellings – 51 m2
• 2 Bed / 3 person dwellings – 66 m2
• 2 Bed / 4 person dwellings – 77 m2
• 3 Bed / 5 person dwellings – 93 m2
• 4 Bed / 6 person dwellings – 106 m2

RAL colours

RAL 7024


RAL 7021


RAL 7015


RAL 5011


RAL 5004

SOURCES ONE AND TWO

Window colour spec - darker colour

new colour - darker than previous
ref R38 G38 B43

Colour: the spec

The specification:
#353C42
or
R53 G60 B66

Colour and what not to do

I found the colour that I was thinking of (charcoal blue) for my house windows on an old church and also an example fo what not to do - white windows eek!

Poor detailing but interesting

closed cavity shows timber decay from H E R E

"bold simplicity threaded by an odd streak of vanity"

Quote about Scottish Architecture:



source
Ranald McInnes
Rubblemania: Ethic and Aesthetic in Scottish Architecture

ARCHITECTURE BRIEF

The man who fell to earth
A month after he died, police have finally managed to piece together the skeletal details of Mohammed Ayaz's long journey from a remote village in north west Pakistan to his final, sorry end in the car park of a DIY superstore in Richmond, west London.

Special report: refugees in Britain

* Esther Addley and Rory McCarthy
* The Guardian,
* Wednesday July 18 2001
* Article history

The police didn't know how long the body had been there, but it was clear the man was dead. Tucked under a tree, just inside the railings of Homebase carpark, the prone figure was spotted by one of the store's staff as she arrived just before 7am. She assumed he was a drunk who had tumbled over the railings and fallen asleep while staggering home along Manor Road. It was only as she edged over for a closer look that she noticed that his limbs were grotesquely misshapen, and the pool of lumpy liquid in which he was lying was not vomit, but the man's spilt brains.

The area was hastily screened off and police launched an immediate murder investigation. But it soon emerged that a witness had seen the dead man a few minutes before his body was found. A workman at nearby Heathrow airport had glanced upwards to see him plummeting from the sky like a stone, his black jeans and T-shirt picked out against the washed blue early morning sky.

A month after he died, police have finally managed to piece together the skeletal details of Mohammed Ayaz's long journey from a remote village in north west Pakistan to his final, sorry end in the car park of a DIY superstore in Richmond, west London. It is a story of breathtaking courage fired by a fierce hope that a decent life might lie in a distant country where he knew no one. It seems all the more tragic that this heroic odyssey should have ended in desperate bathos on a sunny Thursday morning, in the sort of quiet, affluent suburb in which the young man probably hoped he would one day raise a family.

At Bahrain airport the night before, at about 1am local time, the 21-year-old Ayaz somehow broke through a security cordon and sprinted through the dark towards a British Airways Boeing 777 that was preparing for takeoff. As the ground crew backed away and the enormous aircraft dragged itself round in an arc towards the runway, he ran under the wings and hauled himself into the cavernous opening above the wheels.

At takeoff, a number of passengers noticed that the man in black had not emerged from under the plane. Local Bahrain news reports claimed that by the time it was lumbering into the air, the captain had been told there might be a stowaway. But for some reason, perhaps because the sighting was unconfirmed, or because schedules were tight, or because runway security was not his responsibility, he did not turn back. This was put to BA and its response was that a captain would never take off if he believed security had been breached. Tim Goodyear, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association in Geneva, describes the apparent decision to proceed with the flight as "somewhat unusual". "On the other hand, one cannot say that any captain should have behaved in a certain way." Hindsight, he says, is a terrible thing.

Ayaz's family have had little time to grieve. They have spent the past week in the fields harvesting this year's onion crop. The harvest is good; mountains of red onions are piled by the roadside, but market prices are bad again. They make barely one pence a kilo. Since Ayaz's death the family of five brothers and four sisters face a mountain of debt.

The small village of Dadahara sits in the broad, green valley of the Swat river in northern Pakistan, close to the Afghan border. The Queen visited in the 60s to see the beautiful, once-forested mountains. But there is little work now, little opportunity for education and only one telephone between 3,000 villagers.

Ayaz, a keen cricketer and footballer, left school at 16 and went to work in the family's fields, farming wheat, barley, corn and onions. "He always spoke about going to work in America or England. But they don't give visas to poor people like us," says his brother, Gul Bihar, 26.

Seven months ago, Ayaz finally decided to join the thousands of young Pakistanis who travel to the Gulf states every year to work in construction, hoping to save enough money to send home to their families. He found an agent who promised him work as a labourer in Dubai. It would cost 120,000 rupees (£1,300) to arrange the flight, the visa and, the heaviest cost, to meet the agent's exorbitant fees. The family borrowed heavily from their relatives and Ayaz, who spoke little Arabic, flew out to Dubai with a promise of a salary of 400 dirhams (£77) a month. It was more than many earn in Pakistan but even if he saved most of his salary it would still take at least two years just to pay back his relatives.

It soon became clear it would take Ayaz a lot longer to earn back his money. His employer in Dubai kept his passport and paid him just 100 dirhams (£19) a month, barely enough to buy food. "He was a very strong man, very brave and very good at working. He just wanted to earn money for the family so his brothers and sisters could be educated and have a better life," says Gul Bihar. "He phoned us a few weeks before he died. He was very upset. He said: 'I've been here for six months but I haven't been able to send you any money because I haven't been paid. What should I do?'"

Days later, without telling his family, he crossed to Bahrain and climbed on board the flight to London. Getting into the wheelbay of a Boeing 777 is not easy. It involves climbing 14ft up one of the aircraft's 12 enormous wheels, then finding somewhere to crouch or cling as the plane makes its way to the end of the runway and starts its deafening engines. Ayaz had to contort himself around the huge pieces of articulated steel while the Tarmac slipped by only feet beneath, the engine accelerating to 180mph. But it was probably only when the wheels left the ground and began to retract into the bay that he realised how much trouble he was in. "There certainly used to be a belief that there was a secret hatch from the wheelbay into the cargo bay, and then into the passenger cabin, as if it were a castle with a dungeon and a series of secret passageways," says Goodyear.

In fact, the undercarriage compartment has no oxygen, no heating and no pressure, and there is certainly no way out. By about 10 minutes into the ascent, the temperature in the wheelbay would have been freezing. At 18,000ft, minutes later, while passengers only a few feet away were being served gin and tonic and settling down to watch in-flight movies, Ayaz would have begun to hallucinate from lack of oxygen. At 30,000ft the temperature is minus 56 degrees. Even if the young man managed to escape being crushed by the retracting wheel mechanism, he was as good as dead from the moment his feet left the runway.

"He didn't have a chance," says Paul Jackson, editor of the specialist magazine Jane's All the World's Aircraft. "At that temperature you're a block of ice - there's no way you're going to get away with it, unless the plane is forced for some reason to fly at an unusually low altitude."

By the time the plane reached British airspace, he was almost certainly long dead. Shortly after 6am, somewhere between 12 and 20 miles from Heathrow, the plane locked on to its approach path and began to descend over Barnes in south west London. Between 2,000 and 3,000ft, the captain opened the undercarriage and lowered the wheels; the young man was tipped out into the early morning sky.

The moment Ayaz's body struck the Tarmac in the car park at the Richmond branch of Homebase, he became the problem of Detective Chief Inspector Sue Hill. She had a distressed supermarket worker and the badly disfigured body of a "suntanned man, of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern appearance", but not much else to go on. The man was carrying a book with a few phone numbers in it, which suggested he was Pakistani, but no identification. "It was harrowing," says Hill. "I sat in the Homebase car park and thought, this is someone's son. What a bloody awful way to go."

What struck Hill and her team immediately was how lucky they had been. It is difficult, in fact, to imagine how a body slamming into the ground could have contrived to avoid the B353 only feet away, the railway line at the end of the car park beside which is a primary school, or the tightly packed red-brick houses of Manor Grove just across the road. The police have cause to worry. Across the road from Homebase, a few yards to the left, is an enormous Sainsbury's supermarket, completed a year ago on the site of a derelict gasworks. It was here, in October 1996, that 19-year-old Vijay Saini's own journey ended. He had stowed away in a jet from Delhi in the same way as Ayaz did, and fell out at almost exactly the same spot. His body lay undiscovered for three days. In August 1998 a couple drinking in the nearby Marlborough pub saw another body tumble from a plane, and land on what they thought was the building site of the new Sainsbury's. Despite a widespread police search, that body was never found, and police think it may have landed in a reservoir. There were reports of a fourth body being discovered while the Sainsbury's complex was being built.

"The undercarriage is always lowered at the same point, that is why they are falling at the same place," says John Stewart, of the airport noise pollution lobby group Hacan Clear Skies. "But it's an almost uncanny coincidence - these people fly right across the world in this way from different places, and they all end up in a car park in Richmond. If there are any more bodies to fall, that's where they will fall."

Only one man is known to have survived such a journey. Vijay Saini's brother, Pardeep, was found at Heathrow in a disorientated state shortly after a flight from Delhi landed - he was thought to have entered a state of suspended animation in the freezing temperatures.

It took Interpol, Pakistani community workers in the UK and a number of fortuitous coincidences to track down Ayaz's parents. A committee member from the Pakistan Centre, a community organisation in Newcastle, happened to be holidaying in the Swat area, and came across a small village, the talk of which was the young man's death; he went to Dadahara. "All the conversations that I had with his father, he was trying to plead for the body to be sent back," says Shabbir Ahmed Kataria, who works at the centre. Kataria organised a collection to send the body home, with anything left over to go to the family.

On July 5, three weeks after Ayaz died, his body began the final leg of his journey. The coffin was taken to Heathrow, and loaded into the hold of another British Airways plane, this time bound for Islamabad. Ayaz's father, Gul Diar, is a deeply religious man who has struggled to rationalise the death of his son. His wife suffered a minor heart attack after hearing the news and is in hospital recovering.

"Allah gives and Allah takes away. He was meant to die at this time," said the old man, wearing a cotton prayer cap and stroking his long white beard. He greets guests and then walks out to the graveyard at the edge of his land. His son was buried here two weeks ago under a large mound of brown earth ringed by stones and covered in a dirty plastic sheet. Two large, plain slabs of slate stand up out of the top of the unmarked grave. "My son was as strong as four men but he died in search of bread," his father says.

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offers over 475

a mews house not a million miles disimilar to ours in Portobello...

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