Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Interbuild Exhibition




The UK’s excellent building show will be staged from Sunday 28 October to Thursday 1 November 2007 at the NEC's three largest exhibition halls 3 / 3a, 4 and 5 in order to allow a better groupage of products together and to provide visitors with an even easier way to navigate around the show. Usually this show is held earlier in the year around April time but a consensus of opinion has seen it put back to the autumn to better suit their clients and the public alike. Visit http://www.interbuild.com

Grand Designs Magazine Awards


The Grand Designs Magazine Awards chaired by Kevin McCloud are here again. Here is word for word in italics an email I received from them this evening. Any takers?

The Grand Designs Magazine Awards are back for 2007 and we are beginning our search for the best products and domestic architecture from the last two years.

Kevin McCloud is once again chairing our influential panel of judges and is keen to see more of the quality demonstrated by the 2006 entries.

In conjunction with our sponsors and our esteemed media partner, The Independent, we want to see projects and products that raise the bar. So if you are a reader who has sweated blood to create your own grand design, an architect who has worked on a great project, a fledgling product designer or a grand master whose name we already know, these awards are for you.

Entry forms are available now to download or you can enter online from the 15 January 2007 at http://www.granddesignsmagazine.com/awards

We are keen that you enter the awards, and would like to send you email updates. If you do not wish to receive email literature relating to the Grand Designs Magazine Awards, please use the link at the bottom of this email to unsubscribe .

The excitement is mounting and we want to ensure that you have the opportunity to shine.

Regards

Claire Barrett
Editor, Grand Designs Magazine

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Your comments on new builds wanted!

Kevin's Grand Design

Seems Kevin McCloud, the presenter of Channel 4's Grand Designs is angry at the state of housing in Britain today so much so he plans to build his own suburban housing estate to show it can be done properly. However what Kevin wants is your opinions and advice from the people who live in, rent or own modern homes. He wants to know of their experiences be they good or bad. For the opportunity to voice your opinions, whether to slate modern housing, or to stick up for it, please call 01494 733528 or e-mail siobhan.canning at talkbackthames.tv (Replace 'at' with @ and leave no gaps. This is to prevent spambots hounding this email address).

This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
Please remember to leave your phone number when you contact Channel 4. Siobhan Canning, Assistant Producer - Kevin's Grand DesignTalkback Thames01494 733528.

Story comes from http://www.snagging.org

Snagging

If you have recently bought a new home, moved in and found a number of faults that really ought not be there then the Snagging website may be just what you need. Snagging.org brings pressure to bear on developers who haven't perhaps ensured the expected quality of finish one would hope for in a new home. You can buy off their website a checklist of areas to search in a new home which is both methological and easy to understand for the lay-person making an inspection. They even state that if you do not find any snags with this document you can have your money back!

Visit Snagging at http://www.snagging.org

Saturday, January 06, 2007

What goes up must come down.

Congratulations to Cllr. George Fairhurst of Standish, near Wigan for spotting a new block of flats that was too high, by 5 foot. Now the only way this could have been spotted was surely not with the naked eye? Mr. Fairhurst must have been checking this out with some surveying equipment or some such apparatus? In which case, did he have some kind of gripe with this development? Okay so the developers are in the wrong, they claim a 'Genuine' technical error. Afterall they built the building 5' too high. A Government Inspector had a look and has now made it quite clear the whole lot will have to come down and the foundations lowered. So, the loss of 14 flats at around £170,000 each is doubtless going to hurt the developer, Wainhomes North West. No one was complaining other than a jobs-worth councillor who thought he'd score some brownie points down at the Tory Party office in Wigan. Now an awful lot of energy has to go into pulling down these flats, lowering the foundations and rebuilding the structure. This really shows the planning system for what it is, an inflexible, out of date monument to red tapped jobs-worths. The structure one presumes wasn't going to fall down, no one had it seems noticed anything wrong with it apart from some councillor who probably went out with a load of survey gear to make sure the building was the right (wrong) height. Why couldn't the developer merely be fined for messing up? We often see reported in the newspapers stories about someone who built their house 2 foot too tall, out of line with what was agreed on plans, whatever, and yes whilst these people have plainly been served rather badly by their surveyors, planners or architects why can't some hard hitting fine be imposed instead of the very wasteful demolition and rebuilding of a structure? Rebuilding will just produce more pollution at a time that we are supposed to be cutting down on it, especially within the building industry.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

SOLTAG

Another interesting website we found recently by Soltag who are a Danish company involved in turnkey penthouse additions. Visit their website and their vision states (extract only) 'In the densely built-up urban environment, there is a call for vertical orientation while offering socially responsible, economically attainable and yet still attractive features such as rich daylight and ventilation options, while also enjoying minimal energy consumption.'
Soltag target donor building of the metropolitan flat-roof housing variety circa 1960-1990 for upward development. Their website goes on to state that any European capital may have in the region of 100,000 sqm of such available roof-space. They also state Soltag was founded as a consortium of building industry enterprises, one of which seems to be Velux. Follow the links below for press releases from these companies.


http://www.soltag.net

Download a brochure here: http://www.soltag.net/pdf/STfolder.pdf

http://www.velux.com/About_Velux/News/News2.htm

MODULO

Happy New Year for 2007! Over the holiday period I found this website for MODULO prefab. The company was founded in 2005 and operates out of Vilnius, Lithuania. Amongst otherthings MODULO produce prefabricated modular penthouses and currently have a project on the go in London, though it's location is not specific, merely the name of the donor building is mentioned, i.e. New Inn. I wonder whether that is New Inn, Shoreditch? Shoreditch is one of them areas where penthouses are becoming increasingly fashionable and sits on the easterns fringes of the financial city and the east-end of London. (I know the name New Inn existed in Shoreditch as it was an address my great grandparents lived at in the 1880s so I would be interested to know!) Anyway, I digress. The architects and engineer are Ocean Studios and Artelier One, respectively. I am unable to find a web presence for Ocean Studios so hope someone will be able to enlighten us and I will add a link.

http://www.atelierone.com

http://www.moduloprefab.com/buildings.html