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 […]
A proper hello
I’m a fool for a doorway. Thankfully, there are several Instagram sites that feed my addiction so I can peruse […]
Café culture
I don’t always ‘get’ cafés. They used to say in London that you were never more than six feet away […]
