Winter jumpers

Liv's present, a mug inscribed with "Giddy Aunt", was apt.
(Dad and Theo)

Brixton

For those who spent the last days of 2009 trawling through lists of the decade’s top tens and defining the year that was, we could well hail 2009 as the year of the ‘pop-up’. Yes, we were popping up in galleries, etsy-esque handmade stalls and found ourselves nabbing an afternoon garibaldi in empty shop units across London last year.

No initiative was as curated as Space Makers Agency and London & Associated Properties’ (LAP) venture in Brixton Village indoor market. With 30 vacant shops, in a quest to unlock local talent, market owners LAP and Space Makers asked Brixton-based first time shop-keepers to submit their vision for the units, with a tantalizing offer of three months rent free space. Nearly 100 proposals flooded in and after a close evaluation, the chosen ones opened their doors last week. The result is a substantial wave of new shops housing vintage clothes, design studios, and locally produced food to community focused outlets including local climate change campaigners, Transition Town Brixton. It’s a performance space too - theatre company Space Station Festival are keeping their doors wide open during preparations so their rehearsals themselves transform into theatre.

With some projects open for 1-3 months and other initiatives set to become permanent businesses, I suggest a trip down to the market to experience South London’s answer to the recession.

Having first envisaged the scheme, Nicola Blake of LAP was particularly keen on the tree and plant sanctuary. Christmas trees aren’t just for Christmas. See you at the sanctuary the day after Epiphany.

Brixton Village Market (also known as Granville Arcade) off Atlantic Road and Coldharbour Lane.

Wary Meyers' 2006 Marshmallow window display at Anthropologie, New York. Meyers used 15,000 marshmallows in the installation.
"Now they just need hot chocolate" - Sara Borchard

Scandinavian Kitchen on Great Titchfield Street puts everything in perspective.

Places of the mind. You might never have stepped there before but lightly close your eyes for a moment. My 'place that I have never visited but feel at home at' happens to be in Maine. By a lighthouse. It's a light breezy day and I've just been asked if I would like a lobster sandwich.
Visit Brian Ferry's collection of very beautiful photographs and The Blue Hour blog.

London snowflakes

Is it possible to be (ever) so slightly bah humbug and still have 'let it snow, let it snow, let it snow' playing on a loop?
(wooden present tags via)

In Toronto, at the beginning of the decade (I am starting to acknowledge that we are heading into a new one!), one of my 9 flatmates wrote 'mantras' and bluetacked them to his wall. These prints might help you leap out of bed on winter mornings.
As mentioned

The School of Life's Daily Aphorisms

A little light on life

An invitation to read Freya's enlightened new blog about health, healing and magical things. Your Oslo based health guru and advisor on raw chocolate cake.

Hoping for northern line tube delays

For reading hour.

Tom Dixon & RIBA London

Festive season party at Tom Dixon's studio on Portobello Dock. Wine tasting and mont d'or cheese (Dad would approve!)
Visit the studio and cafe (with ex-chef from River Cafe).

Make Lounge

Make Lounge: evening craft workshops and sewing classes with titles like 'Crochet Camp,' and 'Zippers Clinic' in Islington.

Exploring the A Roads

Mike Althorpe, RIBA London's Policy Manager occasionally walks London main roads. For fun. Recent walks include:

Clerkenwell to Brent Cross
Marble Arch to Edgware
Bank to Ealing
Monument to Kingston
Bishopsgate to Seven Sisters.

Arterial roads . London's entry points to the city with lines of commerce.
(A Tuesday morning coffee conversation)

Dieter Rams's Ten Commandments

Functionalist Braun and Vitsoe designer, Dieter Rams. A streamlined design ethos. Less, but better. Dieter's 10 design principles.
*Exhibition at Design Museum until 7 March 2010.

Intricate gold leaf

Richard Wright, Turner prize winner.
Temporarily ornate. Wright paints over his works. But this is not destruction: “I’m interested in the fragility of the moment”.
Go see at Tate Britain before 3rd January before it becomes a magnolia wall.

An Aside no.3

Who invites friends over for lunch and hands over ingredients of avocados and couscous at the door?
Thank you all. (2010 is my Cordon Bleu year).
Enjoy the Floridian key lime pie T + D.

Event: Words on Monday at Kings Place

Kings Place hosts Monday evening talks on 'all of the above': arts, culture, politics, science. Andrew Marr is speaking to a sold out audience on Monday. Next year's line up includes Seamus Heaney..
n.b talks take place in a beautiful concert hall with Arup tested accoustics.

An aside no. 2: Undecided

on the Eames Rocker, originally designed in 1948. Currently none of the chairs in Flat 14 lull you into a daydream on stormy weather wintry evenings.

Your thoughts? Perhaps an investment too far..
*(feedback: 'curl up','armchair','plastic'. Search continues)

An aside

My mum always travels with a copy of Vanity Fair on planes. Without fail. It's on the list and under the big banner heading of things that just have to happen. In celebration (and preparation) for her trip to New York, Carly Simon's Proust Questionnaire answers. What would Proust have thought about her classic answer involving a whale and a credit card?

Happy nearly weekend.
(my absence has been a blogging blip..Many things to tell you including Nicola's inspired concept, the Brixton Arcade project and London through the lens of Mr Ferry)

The Olympic Park

A tour of the Olympic Park. Construction on an epic scale. The velodrome currently resembles a scalextric set and Zaha's Aquatic Centre is all but a steel frame without its creamy white curves.
(Many)statistics of sustainability from the Olympic Delivery guide.
One for a Friday afternoon. Over 50% of all construction materials are being brought to the site via the canal or by train.

(image 3: Zaha Hadid's Aquatic Centre's proposal)