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If you look below you'll see the Cans Festival post, at this festival the public were allowed to bring along their own work and apply to selected areas. This is what we advertised!

The Cans Festival

These 2 pictures below are in a separate area where anyone is allowed to paint and put their own art work up.

The Cans Festival

The Cans Festival is worth having a look, its just around the corner from Waterloo Station. The Art works are being taken down at the end of the festival, but the graffitti will remain!! As it was a bank holiday it was very busy as you can see from the pictures and videos!

Mile End Park

Mile End Park was designed by Tibbalds TM2. The Green Bridge was designed by Piers Gough of CZWG Architects. This park is an ideal example of demonstrating the importance of maintenance. The design of this park is great and has tons of potential but due to poor maintenance by the council the park looks dissapointing. The description of the park sounds really nice

"Mile End Park was gorgeously landscaped during the millennium year by Tibbalds TM2, and now incorporates a go-kart track, a children's centre for under-10s, areas for public art and an ecology area."

Text from here.

The reality of the park is far from attractive and welcoming for anyone let alone under 10s and families. Its hard to judge whether the public art includes the graffitti and un-kept look the park has. I tried to open minded about the park but that was hard after having read and heard negatives reviews about the park, and then being there every word that i'd heard or read was accurate.

Below shows some photos to give an insight to the park.

Mudchute Farm

This was a bit of fun in the day!! There's something about seeing a pig just makes you laugh. The llama's were amusing as well, they didn't look very happy and when I was told they spit quite far I stepped back!
This is a nice example of a community run project, it would be interesting to find out more about the farm. Where they get their funds from? Do the chicken eggs get sold or are they given to the community? Who pays for the food and upkeep of the fences/gates etc?
Ignoring all these questions this is a great opportunity for inner-city children to get an insight to farm animals and what they need to survive.

Jubilee Gardens, Canary Wharf

Jubliee Gardens, i'm not to sure about these gardens, they have the potential to be nice but just aren't. The detailing isn't very nice but the knowing that there's a shopping centre underneath gives you a little more appreciation for it. The fountains work well at drowning out the nearby traffic, other then that I wasn't a big fan of these gardens.

Greenwich Peninsula

Having never visited the dome or the surrounding area, it was decided that was something to do! Below is a public open space near a school, the paving was really nice but the layout was a bit strange. The paving didn't cover the whole area. The games here entertained us for about five minutes and then it was decided that they were too difficult so we moved on. This is a short video of the turning disks, you might have to tilt your head a bit i can't rotate it, sorry!

Design Museum

Jean Prouve this is an exhibtion about all the work that Jean Prouve has done. Like most of the exhbitions about people are all a bit samey and not massively inspiring, but worth a look while your there.

The Design Museum are working alongside the Tate Modern to show Maison Tropicale. This is a prototype house designed by Jean Prouve for the 1950s colonial West Africa.

Design Museum

Brit Insurance Designs of the Year This is definately worth a look in! The range of designs goes from a car (the new Fiat 500) to different graphic styles, to a set of 6 foot solid aluminum speakers to different fashion styles, furniture, architecture and many more. Some of the more interesting exhibits were the interactive ones. Some of these include Volume at the V&A click here or here. Below shows some pictures of the mentioned items above. This video shows one of the better interactive exhibits. Designed by Ross Phillips The Replenshing Body Kiosk is a 25 section touch screen video grid and visitors are encouraged to make 1 second recordings of themselves, and makes up a big picture of 25 different moving images. Its quite fun to play with as you can see by the video, some school girls were having a great laugh with it!

Open City @ Somerset House

Below is one of three videos which is related to some very nicely bound documents explaining the development of certain areas in and around London.

Open City @ Somerset House

This exhibition is well worth a look in. Public spaces seems to have been done over and over, but this exhibition presents the space in a different and interactive way.


The exhibition is made up of the little house's each with a different theme inside. In the next room there are a lot of videos related to some documents nearby.



The map above is part of the re-link to the river in one of the small houses. The map shows a the river as it flows through london and the key points nearest to the river.

Open City @ Somerset House

To compliment the exhibition at Somerset House, there are a series of talks set alongside. For more information about these click here. For more information about the exhibition click here.

More Windy Weather

To help save money and be more environmentally friendly I choose to ride into central london for the breakfast talks at the NLA. This was made more difficult this morning due to the strong winds howling through the country.
However I made it to the Building Centre in one piece, but a couple of plant pots didn't survive the strong winds as you can see below.



For more about the beating England has had from the weather click here.

Underground London @ The NLA Building Centre

Underground London is an exhibition looking at the changes the climate is bringing and prompting a vision of a complete underground infrastructure for the city. This will include upgrading the existing facilities and installing new technologies. This exhibition looks at planned changes for London and the steps the city is going to take to make it a more sustainable city.

To compliment the exhibition there are a series of breakfast talks. The first of these was David Anderson, the Engineering Director from Crossrail. This talk was looking at the new line that Crossrail have planned to put in across London. The main focus was on the stations and how they are going to be efficient and better then the existing underground stations. This talk was interesting but the delivery of the presentation was hard to keep up with. This wasn't helped during the question time from an annoying audience member insisting on making herself heard!

The second breakfast was given by Alex Michaelis, from Michaelis Boyd Architects. This talk was very interesting focusing more on the new technologies that could be harnessed to make the city a more sustainable place.

The first of these was a private house that was built with height restrictions, so the design focused on the idea of having half the house underground. This has lead to a lot more people looking into extending their homes down instead of up. The main reason for this is getting the planning permission for the height extension on the existing building. To see more about this private house, check the website here and search for the Oxford Gardens house. Note the built in slide on the stairs down to the swimming pool!

Some of the sustainable ideas that Alex Michaelis and Arup were working on were very interesting. They were working towards making London a sustainable city;

1. Eco-sewer. This works on the basis that everyday between 6-9 in the morning and evening, hot water passes through the sewers of London. This energy could be harnessed and used to power turbines to create energy.

2. Eco-travelator. This is much more conceptual then the eco-sewer. The idea works towards the removal of cars and buses. The travelator would connect key points around London with each other, by travelators. They would be powered via solar power to reduce the energy consumption.

Energy Island, this works with the Ocean Thermal Energy Conservation (OTEC). This works on the knowledge of temperature changes between deep and shallow waters in the sea, can create electricity. The energy island would also be a docking port for large tankers to help protect the docks built around the country. The tankers are getting bigger and the docks are suffering, with the use of the energy island the tankers would be able to dock comfortably.

Anthony McCall @ The Serpentine

For picture source click here.

This is a must see!! From the first point of walking into the dark room the light looks quite fun, but when you stand in the beam of light it gives the illusion of being in a tunnel. You almost can't see outside the beam of light, which gives an odd experience because people seem to float in and out of the "tunnel".
The first room shows some of the concept ideas behind the lighting effects which gives a good insight about what is trying to be achieved.

For more about Anthony McCall click here, for info about The Serpentine exhibit click here.

For picture source click here.