Hello Ian (again)

'Tis the season to dig up my Walter White hat and shades and impersonate the only dead person within my budget. Breakfast at the orifice this morning. The guy with the pumpkin on his head is the boss.

Those who were working from home joined in on the big screen and this is Alicia's reaction when Tom loomed into view with a full-sized and very realistic cow's head on his shoulders. She actually has really, REALLY long gold-blonde hair which she'd somehow managed to cram into her swimming hat to don a Wednesday Addams wig. Everybody wanted to play with Phil's Hedwig hand-puppet (and Dan's blood-soaked chainsaw).

It takes seven years to train up an Architect … Who'd have guessed?

The Return of the Stone of Soane to the Office of Dive.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Old Dive sat happily on the top floor of our old office, gazing out across the river to the Cathedral. Then we got booted out and cast screaming into temporary accommodation while the profiteering powers-that-be converted the upper floors of our office into luxury apartments while the old ground floor was being re-purposed as our new office.

We’ve moved back in now and admittedly it is pretty spiffy and ultra-modern, with rise and fall workstations we can stand or sit at and all manner of whizzy virtual stuff that’s bound to go wrong.

I’ll post some piccies later but at the moment the builders are still in and it’s a fucking mess, soundtracked by power tools and the view over Pull’s Ferry to the Cathedral is obscured by site offices and lorries.

Yes, I know it's off-centre but it's not fixed yet.

This week, however, saw the welcome return of our capital capital. This used to stand in the rear courtyard but is now positioned at the office entrance and is currently being used as the workmen’s lunch table.

I am happy to report that Old Dive saved it from destruction due to some dogged detective work.
The Partners had always considered it a modern, reconstituted stone reproduction and it was due for demolition as part of the building works. Old Dive had his doubts and snuck out to examine it, only to discover that it was hand-carved Portland Stone and probably Eighteenth-Century, though the design was one I’d never seen.

The Partners postponed the demolition and tasked me with presenting a case for its preservation. I canvassed the old ex. members of staff, but nobody could recall where it came from except that it had moved with us from Sir Bernard’s old office in Cathedral Close when the new office was built in 1969.
Some suggested it might have been “looted” when we did work at St.Paul’s Cathedral in London; others that it had come from York Minster when Sir Bernard was restoring it. The style and the type of stone were wrong for York, however, and St.Paul’s had straight, Greek Corinthian capitals.

After much digging around in my old books, I found the weirdly erotic flower design was copied from an original in the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli (illustration from Antoine Desgodetz’ “Edifices Antiques de Rome” of 1682).

Alan (retired from the London office) told me he was sure there was a plaster cast of that in the Soane Museum, which then suggested it might have been from Soane’s remodelling of the 1730s Bank of England, started in 1788.

A delve in the archives found photographs of the column capitals in situ prior to the Twentieth Century virtual rebuild. A match! Turns out Sir Bernard had somehow snaffled a couple of these during the works and one ended up in his old garden at Stiffkey Hall (pronounced Stewkey – this is Norfolk) and the other in our old office.

At which, the Partners ponied up many groats to have it carefully removed, stored and plonked back at the entrance to our new office. Huzzah!

At Bloody Last …

Finally …

After weeks of faff and blather and daily commuting to bloody Cambridge, we've moved into our temporary orifice while the builders bugger up our old building.

I still have no interweb at home but at least I can post from the orifice now.

This is our little side office off the main room. That's Simon on the left, looking uncharacteristically stern, then Dan the mad Viking with his man-bun and David D with a head even shinier than mine. Emily and Erin couldn't be arsed to turn up and unpack their boxes.

I've got my mug of coffee and my little wooden cathedral so I'm settling in nicely. It's only a three minute walk to the castle from here so expect an update soon.

More Conservation Cuteness

 

Here's a little treat for you.

We're back at that Victorian model farm where the thousand-year-old oak lives.

Here, with roofing repairs almost complete, is a super-cute little building. The right hand side of it contained the milkmaid's lodging (the large building on the right is the dairy and milking parlour) and the left hand side contained the game hanging room.

Now that the roof is almost watertight conservation can begin on the interior and on the lovely arcade that shades the game hanging room.

The Victorian "mock Tudor" chimney stack for the milkmaid's quarters was restored as part of the roofing works.

And finally a sneak peek inside the game hanging room prior to the next phase of the conservation work. Check out those gorgeous tiles and the stained glass.

Imagine the day after a shoot; all those racks festooned with dead game birds, rabbits, deer and the occasional peasant who got in the way.

Ah, the good old days when your meat was left hanging until it was just rotten enough for the pot.

It's still like that only they hide it away these days, stuff the baby animals full of antibiotics and growth hormones, slaughter them before they've had the chance to grow any decent meat on their frail bones, then slather what's left with chemicals, pump the carcasses full of water to add fake weight and encase the pitiful remains in phthalate-ridden plastic guaranteed to make your descendants infertile.

Ah, phthalates … To paraphrase the wonderful Dr. Shanna Swan in her recent study "Count Down", since the near universal introduction of phthalates (plasticiser - it makes your plastic packaging soft enough to mould) and other endocrine disrupting chemicals in the late fifties, average penis size and sperm viability has reduced at a constant rate of 1% per year and is still going.

Between 1960 and 2021 that's a 61% reduction.

It makes us old guys grin at young and fit millennials.

In addition the wonderfully named AGD (ano-genital distance) has been reducing at the same rate. The age of gender fluidity is not just a fashion, it's a scientific fact.

Women rejoice! Your grand-daughters will inherit a male-less planet. All thanks to the wonder of phthalates.

By the bye, the US is now constructing the world's largest phthalate producing factory complex.

Gosh, that skewed a bit off topic.

Architects' Coffee Morning

If you ever wondered what goes on inside a high-end Architectural practice …

This morning's coffee morning catch-up with the residential team consisted of Emily (chief resi partner) drawing a portrait of me at the beach.

I'm kinda relieved this lot aren't on my team for Norwich Castle.

What I Did On My Blog-Holiday

So what have I been up to during my extended sabbatical from dear old Blogville?

Well the fools let me loose on the Tudor panelled rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge and then plonked Norwich Castle in my lap.

The Castle project, called Royal Palace Reborn, intends to return the gutted Keep to how it was at Christmas, 1121, when Henry the First and his second wife, Adeliza of Louvain, moved in and threw a big old partay.

So I've been building this here model. It's a little unwieldy, being currently around three-quarters of a terabyte, but it's my baby. All the construction detailing and information is stored in the model so they can build from it. This view shows the new Great Hall with minstrel's gallery and the archæological exhibit below.

Here we see the King's Chamber (with the red curtains) and the Great Hall on the right. The tinkly light things above the archæology are "Ghost Arches"; the original arches having long disappeared, we're putting back ghosts of them with thousands of little LEDs.

We're putting a big viewing platform on the roof so you can see the whole city, and for the first time in 900 years, making the whole thing accessible to all, from dungeons to roof.

So anyhoo, as part of the project, Old Dive, as Architect and historic buildings expert, put together a side project: a series of lectures telling the history of the Castle. As these were for internal company use only, they tended to get a little Dive-ish and in places exceedingly silly and gross. 

In my next post I shall begin posting a potted version as I know Petrea especially loves old history.

Hope you enjoy it. In the meantime, the archæologists are digging furiously away in the basement and there's a massive tower crane looming over the Keep so that we can start work (Covid safely).

This is the view of it from my office, where I'm working on the Castle three days a week and hopefully posting some bloggery in between.

No Business Like Snowbusiness

We've had the overture; the Beast From The East is due to hit us hard tonight.

This was my commute this morning.
I had a choice: take water, food, blankets, shovel, etc.
or take my "Donner Party" kit:
Stihl chainsaw (sweet), boning knife, camping gas stove, butcher's apron.

No contest …

Winter Wonderland My Arse

The view of the Cathedral from my office window (see previous post) this lunchtime.

Apparently "The Beast From The East" is due to arrive tomorrow, bringing the gift of blizzards straight from Siberia via the Baltic and the North Sea.

Hey ho …

Snowstorm Coming In

Office window.

Cathedral.

Rainbow.

Nuff said.

When 3D Printers Attack

So anyhoo … the orifice decided it was time to get a 3D printer … and this is how it made its first building.
A slightly more modern design than we had envisaged but hey … the client might like it like that.

Stop That Pigeon

Hokay … I defy you to get that theme tune out of your head.

My office - as has been noted before - is the local pigeon suicide spot. It's mostly glass and on a steep hill, so pigeons coming in over the river misjudge the climb and bang into my window.

On the side of the building, however, they fly straight out of the woods and slam into the windows at full tilt …

Er … POW!

Yup … that's how much dust a pigeon carries round with it; a walking squawking bag of psittacosis, stuffed to the gunwales with junk food and barreling out of the trees, straight into David D's window.

Pretty awesome, huh? You can make out the wing feathers and even the surprised look on its dumb little face.

Those of you of a more compassionate nature should know that it staggered around the balcony for a while and then flew off, presumably to gather some more dust.

This is what happens if the pigeon doesn't slam on the brakes …

Chris F's window at the rear of the building.

It must have hit beak-on with wings tucked in as it made a perfectly circular hole.

That one strutted around the office for a bit until we threw a tea towel over it and put it outside on the bridge, from whence if departed in high dudgeon.

So … with the peregrine falcons living on the Cathedral on one side of the river and our pigeon-eating building on the other, Norwich is doing its bit to eradicate the flying rats.

Tis the Season

Sunset from my orifice window just now. It almost makes working for a living worthwhile.

Four, Apparently …

That - it turns out - is the number of architects required to change a light bulb.

Not just any light bulb; one of those inset downlighter spotlight doohickeys in the shower room. Corrina went to change it as the caretaker is on leave and found there was no obvious way of getting the darned thing out of the ceiling.

So … four of us turned to the interweb and a six minute video of a large gentleman from the southern states of the Colonies whose painfully slow-drawled accent we adopted for the task ("un-cullee-up thuh spuh-ree-ung" etc.) .

Armed with a stepladder and a laptop showing the video, the gallant quartet donned hard hats and fluorescent tabards and managed to follow the precise instructions to … er … wriggle and wrench the thing out of the ceiling.

At which point the "spuh-ree-ung" unsprung itself at a rate of knots, spraying the room with small pieces of plastic and metal and eliciting a satisfying scream from Corrina.

Yet more "spuh-ree-ung cullee-ups" held the bulb into a plastic "ree-ung" which required the quartet to take turns at wrenching and swearing until eventually it all came apart.

The new bulb was a doddle to plug in. What was not a doddle was assembling the divers small plastic parts and "spuh-ree-ung cullee-ups" into something resembling a light fitting. The man in the video had failed to mention the inherent explosive qualities of the thing and its eagerness to violently disassemble itself. He offered no help in putting it all back together again. Humpty-Dumpty was nothing in comparison.

And so … several minutes later and after successive abortive design attempts we somehow managed to manufacture something that  (a) looked like a light fitting, and (b) contained all the parts collected from around the room.

Getting it back into the ceiling was entertaining in that the "spuh-ree-ung cullee-ups" acted much like mousetraps, snapping shut on any fingers attempting to manœuvre the thing into position.
Cue divers alarums and some imaginative profanity.

We now - at last - have a working light in the shower room - whoop-de-doo - but have decided that when the next one goes we shall wait for the caretaker to get back from his holiday rather than attempt such a monstrous task ourselves.

Downlighter spotlights? Fuck 'em!

Beware Saggy Old Men in Lycra

Hey, laydees … Saggy old men in lycra are waiting for YOU!

Please note, I'm the only one present with sufficient common decency to cover my lycra padded undercrackers with baggy shorts.

Meet the newly consecrated office road race team about to set off on our first practice run for next season's Tour de Broads. The gels are kitting themselves out with new bikes and Emily and Corrina should be joining us next time around.

Tragically, the boss has designed some company cycling clothes (bright orange!) which should arrive before our next ride.

Here's where we went. A lovely sunny evening with much banter and some wicked hill climbs and sprints en route.

 We managed to get back in time for beer …

… and sunset.

Boffo!

Amazingly, no aches and pains today and having done the long distance meant I knocked five minutes off my time cycling home this evening.

Dammit … I'm becoming a cycling bore.

You Might Want To Rewrite That A Little More Carefully

Email from the boss this morning:

"The plumber has been in to investigate our toilet problem.

New parts are required, so he will be back with them next week to resolve.

The toilet therefore remains out of use.

It is however ok to continue to use the shower."

I told him "But I don't WANT to pee in the shower."

Was it You?

Larks this morning. Somebody bum-dialed the office last night and Corrina played their message on the big bluetooth speaker in the middle of the room.
Some grunting and a toilet flush, NO washing of hands, some walking and some crappy tinny radio, lots of rustling and then a massive fart.
"Press five if you want to hear the message again."
"Again! Again!" we chorused.

Such is the world of Architecture.

"You May Like …"

The interweb is a truly wonderful thing.
Earlier today I decided to consult the Magic 8 Ball for some advice on sizing and designs of sub-stations as I have a tight site where I need to squeeze one in.

Under "Substation Design Guide" this page came up.
You're going to have to click on it to enlarge it if you want to see why the interweb somehow knows what folk really want.

Meanwhile, On Planet Dive …

In their infinite wisdom, the government's BIM Task Group has informed us that we will be required to change our BIM classification system to Uniclass 2.

So far, so whoop-di-do.

Did I say "infinite wisdom"? What I meant to say was infinite incompetence.

BIM - as any fule kno - stands for Building Information Management and is a subject somewhat duller than watching cardboard biodegrade.

Uniclass 2 is a system of classification that governs the legislation, restraints, etc. regarding any and all activities that can affect a building's design, f'rinstance: the distance you need to leave at the top of a stair before you allow a door to open onto the landing and knock someone down the steps in an amusing fashion.

It replaces an almost identical classification system for no sane reason, but the changeover to Uniclass 2 will be a monumental, tedious and expensive business. We know this because the previous classification system recently replaced another almost identical system causing several people to chew off their own legs in frustration.

The classification system governs the kind of things you need to know to design a room for a specific use.

There are, however, hidden gems within the classification lists and I only wish my own architectural projects involved more of these.

I include a selection below, together with their new classification references. Mayhap you would like to write a short story or poem incorporating them all.

Maybe not …

Ac 20 20 96 War Room Activities

Ac 20 87 63 Frisking

Ac 20 87 86 Strip Searching

Ac 20 95 96 Waiting

Ac 25 35 03 Animal Holding

Ac 25 50 90 Touching Living Creatures

Ac 25 90 59 Orienting to Mecca

Ac 25 95 10 Burial Under A Church

Ac 25 95 13 Circumcising

Ac 25 95 14 Walking Under Cover

Ac 25 95 15 Confessing

Ac 25 95 90 Treasure Storing

Ac 30 20 24 Dungsteading

Ac 30 40 18 Cheese Maturing

Ac 30 40 80 Slaughtering

Ac 35 50 38 Homeless Eating

Ac 35 50 85 Suicide Watching

Ac 35 70 17 Corpse Observing

Ac 35 70 72 Remembering

Ac 35 80 95 Urinating

Ac 35 90 37 Hippotherapy

Ac 40 05 17 Contemplative Strolling

Ac 40 05 23 Dodgem Car Driving

Ac 40 85 82 Splashing

Ac 45 10 49 Living

Ac 65 10 31 Formal Pausing (Indoor)

Ac 84 80 05 Arriving

Ac 84 90 80 Spacecraft Maintaining

Pr 20 29 57 12 Captive Nuts

If you ever wondered why I am like I am perhaps this will help clear things up.

Sheesh!

A new game spontaneously erupted at the office this afternoon.
We are well used to playing jumper or tie bingo:
(if two people come in wearing the same coloured sweater or tie they have to make the first round of teas and coffees; if three are wearing the same colour they have to buy a round of cakes and if four: a round of drinkies at lunchtime. We've never had five but the forfeit will probably be something obscenely biological) …
… earworm tennis:
(playing excruciatingly catchy and ghastly songs across the office using iTunes)…
… and not forgetting the classics: the Game of Scunthorpe and Rembrandt's Underpants.

Now we have added the game of Antonio Banderas.
It all started with Cassie (currently trudging through an industrial estate design), calling out, " I refuse to call the first phase 'Units A and B'; it's too bloody boring. What's sexier than units A and B but starts with the same initials?"
"Antonio Banderas" yelled Dale.

And so the first phase of the development is now officially named Antonio Banderas.

"What about Blocks C and D?"
"Cameron Diaz!"
"Errol Flynn!"
and so it went on around and around the office. Some are trickier than others and in the end we had to give up on celebs (much like real life) …

Our first attempt continued: "George Harrison, Indiana Jones, Kelly Lynch, Mike Nesmith, Oscar Peterson, Queen Rania (of Jordan ; yup, we were digging deep), Steve Tyler (Corrina is to blame for that one), Upper Volta (yes, we know it's a country but we voted it a sexy country), big it up for author Wendy Xu (Matt's first suggestion of "Whistler's Xylophone" could not be verified so was rejected), and a final flourish from Stalin's granddaughter, Yekaterina Zhdanov.
Tomorrow we might play it backwards …
or we might just go bowling.

Go on … Play it yourselves … You know you want to.

An HIstorical Figure Writes …

Sheesh …
Suddenly I feel very old.
This lunchtime we had a semen hour presented by one of our young London office staff who is doing her Masters degree on Erno Goldfinger's London tower blocks.
The last of these went up in the seventies and my own training was tangled up in such socio-political concepts that arose from the later phases of postwar slum clearance and the rebuilding of entire areas of bombed out housing.

While it was clear (or at least partially intelligible through the fog of "y'know"s and "er"s and "like"s and nervous giggling) that the poor girl had no concept whatsoever about postwar social housing needs and the events and politics of the time that led to the building of Goldfinger's blocks - or even of the social and architectural theories of Goldfinger himself (though she had found a photo of him on a website), I managed to keep from rolling my eyes until she started answering our questions by saying that she obviously had a lot more research to do but that most of her ideas had come from "reading a book about the history of the nineteen-sixties and seventies" …

And so the fun began:
An artillery barrage of shock and awe proportions from myself and those crusties even older, some of whom had helped design and even lived in the buildings she was researching left her floundering, before she was comprehensively sunk by one of the senior partners who took her conclusions to pieces with admirable artistry, asked how she hoped to achieve a Masters degree in a subject she was clearly unfamiliar with, and finally wondered why she never asked any of us who were there and were a part of it what actually happened during this "historical period".

So at last I have officially become an historical figure, as I always suspected I might. Not that I mind that so much as the fact that the children in our offices would rather read a book on historical figures than ask us questions directly. At least they are still ABLE to read a book and not get their entire theses from wankipædia, though on today's evidence they are seemingly unable to absorb learning from that book and are completely at a loss when it comes to attempting to articulate their conclusions.
I weep for the reeking and rotten corpse of our educational system.

Anyhoo, before she burst into tears we offered our help …

Our suitably chastened student has now decided to hurriedly rewrite her entire thesis based on the actual events and the experience of people who were there and asks us for our assistance in letting her know what happened and why in that remote dark age.
Interviews have been scheduled and I have already given her a two page outline of the socio-political and architectural situation pertaining at the time together with a long list of criteria to consider and an essential reading list of genuinely relevant books that will take her a decade to complete. Another crusty has informed her that he worked for years in Goldfinger's office and has offered his own first hand observations on the man and his methods.
At least she will now stand a chance of obtaining her degree.

Why she never thought to ask in the first place leaves me in some considerable doubt as to the survival of our species beyond the next generation and actually rather glad if it crashes and burns.
The Eloi and Morlocks spring to mind.

(Exits - rolling eyes and waving arms in despair) …