London 2011 - look forward to..

Art + design
+Will Alsop- Proper behaviour in the Park at the RA
+Gordon Matta-Clark, Laurie Anderson and Trisha Brown show at the Barbican Art gallery
+ Miró at Tate Modern(and if you happen to be lucky enough for a Cornwall Tate St Ives visit see Simon Starling: Recent History: Design Research Unit 1942 – 1972)
+Projects by Olivia and Alison
+Pick me Up graphic art fair at Somerset House
+Southbank Centre's 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain (wallpaper a wall in celebration?!)

Books
+Purchasing Natasha Solomons' The Novel in the Viola in hardback (signed copy please Tash)
+Nicole Krauss' Great House
+Craig Raine's How Snow Falls (already in print but let's include it in this listing!)

Theatre
+Richard III at the Old Vic directed by Sam Mendes
+The Children's Hour at the Comedy Theatre with Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men's Peggy Olson)
+ Almeida's Spring season: Penelope Wilton in A delicate balance and David Eldridge's first play since his Festen adaptation, The Knot of the Heart
+ Peter Hall's Twelfth Night at the National
+Toneelgroep Amsterdam Antonioni Project at Barbican

Gigs
+Deerhoof electro-pop at Alexandra Palace
+Remembering how good The Decemberists are
+Rufus Wainwright at the Royal Opera House
+Beach House supporting Portishead at the Palace

Comedy
+Jerry Seinfeld's first UK gig in over a decade (why the O2? Could we not have had a 40 night run at Soho Theatre?!)

Film
+Architecture on Film: Dark Days
+Black Swan (Charlie Rose interviews)
+The King's Speech
+Miranda July's The Future
+Wim Wenders Pina Bausch documentary (release date tbc)

Food
+Breakfast at Bill's in Covent Garden (the Brighton branch made me happy)
+Tom Dixon's recently expanded Dock Kitchen

(image by Mama Borchard who always reminds me how lucky we are to live in London!)

The Royal Tenenbaums

More pencils. Note the hand-typeset in Futura Medium in keeping with Wes' film font.

Margot: You probably don't even know my middle name. Royal: That's a trick question. You don't have one. Margot: Helen. Royal: That was my mother's name. Margot: I know it was.

(via The Scout)

RUSHMORE

Rushmore's pencils! I want to join the beekeepers.
(via the pitch perfect A Cup of Jo)

ECC

ECC = Experimental Cocktail Club = after hour drinks during this lush time of year.
Rose martini
(via NY Times)

Signage

(Barbara Hill designs via SeeSaw designs)

Skyroom

David Kohn Architects built on a Tooley Street roof to create Architecture Foundation's event space. Open for after work cocktails this week and next. See for opening times.
*Possible venue for next year's 30th birthday celebrations? Includes star gazing.

Signage

A new shop opens in Paris in March 2011.

Same time, same place, same table

A year on, my favourite conversationalist lunches again with his Grandada.

AA School of Architecture

3 exhibitions at the AA school. Annoyingly, I missed Alex Laing's The Americas but still time for Linda Brownless and Serie Architects.
(images by 1) Linda Brownlee, 2) Serie Architects, 3) Alex Laing)

Phaidon announcement

In 2011, I will be part of a collective that writes for Phaidon's online architecture pages. Agenda has a gorgeous style and I'm so excited.

Do judge a magazine by..

Boneshaker + Anthology. Two new magazines have launched with playful front cover illustrations.

Ticket to Ride

Oh yes. A railway themed board game that's better than Monopoly with David and Katy. Winning tastes sweet. Particularly if you have an older brother and never won at Monopoly.

Happy Golden Hanukah

A few ideas to go with the gelt.

Midas Collection

A wishbone via SeeSaw Designs

A recipe for golden (apple)latkes via Smitten Kitchen

Boxed Water is Better!

Let's make the transition from plastic bottles to cartons: recycled packaging + 10% of profits donated to water conservation foundations and 10% to forestry foundations.
Approved.

A prolonged cold moment

Let's all hibernate in the Tate. While we are there we can see Rosa Barba's exhibition.

Missing London

(image via {Wit + Delight} )

Nordic

Nordic Bakery have just opened a second home in Marylebone.
Sara and I had a scandi lunch of gravlax on rye bread but denied ourselves a cinnamon bun. Fools.

Shh

RCA Secret postcard sale. You won't know who the artist is until after you have made your postcard purchase. Over 1,000 artists have donated work from the acclaimed(Grayson Perry, Sir Peter Blake, Sir Paul Smith, photographer David Bailey, film maker Mike Leigh and designers Ron Arad and James Dyson) to the emerging (RCA students).

Vic

I love the idea of bespoke. Just something for you. Vic's personalised photo shop (open until tomorrow at midday) is so charming: she is inspired by your name and the feeling it creates before popping a photograph in the post.

Happy weekend all.
(Photos via Vic)

Continuing Concrete

How can concrete become cozy? A Norwegian Mountain cabin's answer.
(via Emmas Designblog)

AOC (Agents of Change)

AOC's renovation of a Golder's Green family home. Concrete hearth with a parquet pattern. Spot the rabbit!

The Grand Stack of Notebooks

Archie Grand Notebooks with specfied content.

Architects I met and liked.
Writers I met and liked
Doctors I met and liked
Communists I met and liked (!)

I Am Love

Me to Jing: You HAVE (with caps lock) to see I Am Love. It's an Italian melodrama with Tilda Swinton.
Jing to me: An Italian melodrama with Tilda Swinton? Wow. Um. Ok. Sold.

Another Country

My first stop at the London Design Festival's Tramshed event was to Another Country. Since then I've noticed considerable design press coverage for the Dorset based craft furniture designer. A day bed that the Shakers would have approved of.

Likely to inspire a post countryside walk and apple cake snooze.

Face to Face

Such a strange feeling to read about my late grandmother Ruth Borchard and the Face to Face self portrait collection in this week's Time Out!

A (mixed) review of the exhibition at Kings Place

Self-portraits can be morbidly fascinating. It was the introspective nature of the endeavour that prompted the late Ruth Borchard to build a collection of 100 self-portrait paintings and prints by mainly British artists, each bought/commissioned for a maximum of 21 guineas. This selection, spanning 50 years (1921-71) offers welcome glimpses of several key developments in British painting, not least the kitchen sink school. The specificity of Borchard's interest, however, and this lacklustre, frieze-like display make one all too aware of the gaps: those who are not and should be represented here.

Borchard, who fled Hamburg during WWII, was clearly a woman of influence and a hard bargainer. Many decades on, it seems preposterous that artists of Euan Uglow and Roger Hilton's ilk would agree to part with such personal works for so little.The majority were made and bought during the 1950s and '60s, when post-war austerity and social realism ruled. The sobre palettes and serious poses generally reflect this, as opposed to more abstract concerns from across the pond.

Among the many art-school educators (William Coldstream, John Minton), David Bomberg looms large: from certain perspectives around the odd balcony space, there appears enough muddy slap to drown a field of festival revellers and overwhelm the more subtle but significant pieces of this art-historical puzzle. While one might argue that the holes in any collection are as pertinent to the backstory as the works included (the fact that only five women artists made the pack speaks volumes), one tends to rely on Borchard's accounts of her dealings with the artists as tonal chart to match these p‚té-hued views on the past.

Weekend

On the cusp of November and I am on the cusp of a cold. I know, I know. Chicken soup followed by fresh ginger with honey and lemon. Need a quick remedy as going to see my friend Lucy. We lost touch - I was one of her bridesmaids - and we both have no idea how we lost touch. We do know exactly how long it's been as she had a baby boy called William in the meantime! Looking forward to long and overdue catch up.

Have a fun weekend all.
(image via White Trash Beautiful- an excellent title!)

Ready...set...

A running track through the building. Zaha Hadid's fantastic design for a Brixton school makes me want to go back to school and start running. I never thought I would ever write that as both are decidedly unappealing options!
(via Guardian)

Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth have just opened a sleek gallery on Saville Row. The gallery's inaugural exhibition showcases the late Louise Bourgeois's web of textiles.

"Noah"

A Loire estuary look out point and retreat.
(via Handmade Charlotte)

Paris vs NYC

A tally of two cities.
Please Mister Muratyan, tally London and Paris.

Desert Glamour

Tash is back after Joshua Tree/ Big Sur adventures. She has completed her next book, The Novel in the Viola. My friend is formidably prolific!
Catch up with a Postcard .

Skyplanter

An average day in the kitchen. Grow plants or herbs upside down. And then chop some green peppers.
(Design Museum shop of whimsy)