ABC RN Blueprint for Living
A chat about design destinations (1st August 2015)
Palais Ideal by Facteur Cheval
Palace of the Parliament, Bucharest
Joseph Hudson, whistle designer
Talking about bricks (The Last Half Hour)
Talking about vintage (The Last Half Hour)
Finnish design (3 designs within a feature on Helsinki)
Bauhaus segment (with pieces on Marianne Brandt, Josef Albers and Josef Hartwig)
Chicago (with 3 buildings – Monadnock, Pleasant Home, Tribune Tower)
Fez (with 3 buildings – Bou Inania, the Ville Nouvelle, Sidi Hazarem baths)
Liberty of London and Liberty style
Budapest (with the Fisherman’s Bastion and Parisiana nightclub)
Heidi Weber and Le Corbusier in Zurich
Breeze blocks
I greatly enjoy Colin Bisset’s erudite talk,but I think his talk on breeze blocks leaves something out.
He is an Englishman in Australia and I am an Australian who spent a little while in the UK. I think the terms have different meanings in the two countries. In Australia it is indeed a block with a hole for the breeze to blow through.
In the UK it appears to be a concrete block with a high amount of cinders or “breeze’. Other than meaning ‘a light wind’ the word ‘breeze’ appears to mean ‘cinders’ or ‘fly-ash’ waste products of furnaces which are sometimes mixed in with cement.
I need to add that I know very little about this, but think you should check
Jeff Thompson
‘
Thank you, Jeffrey. You are perfectly correct. While I mentioned the cinder concrete, I didn’t mention the etymology of the word, which somehow got lost in my final edit. I grew up with breeze blocks being those solid grey blocks so I was somewhat mystified when I arrived in Australia to find a breeze block meant something else entirely. Architect Sam Marshall has written a lovely book called, simply enough, The Breeze Block Book, which I recommend.