A consequence of moving to Australia from Britain over twenty years ago has been that I’ve passed through a lot […]
Building bricks of life
Recently I was asked to contribute some thoughts about bricks for ABC RN’s ‘Blueprint for Living’. My chat with Jonathan […]
Starstruck in the past
There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’ when the 1920s flapper played by Marion Cotillard wishes she lived […]
Building character
Character in a building makes us smile. Character implies something time-worn and wise, like laughter lines around the eyes. We […]
The sunshine and shadow of a Swedish icon
Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943 and died recently at the age of 91. Last week I was invited to […]
Never mind the quality
I had a meeting recently in a particularly lovely space. The office was in one of Sydney’s old warehouses and […]
The road well travelled…
People used to joke that when your plane landed at Auckland airport, they announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to New […]
What’s in a name?
Do you reckon you’d feel different if you’d been called something else? I mean, if you’d been called Benedict instead […]
Turning a deaf ear
I was at a talk recently where an architect took us through the idea of baugruppen*. This is the German […]
Coming home
The house next door has been demolished, leaving a rectangle of bare earth. In feng shui, that side of my […]
