Always visit your grandmother.

On the 26th I was in London and swung by the Architecture Foundation for a little talk by none other than the self-professed grandmother of architecture Denise Scott-Brown. Short of feeling very aware that I knew no one at this very small event and making a not so subtle early exit (damn infrequent trains home) this was a really enjoyable a very insightful talk. The main topic was architecture and planning and the benefit of uniting these disparate spheres. I think the thing I found most interesting was Denise's use of social sciences and planning to inform the architecture across several scales. For example for the design for a university campus the location of the buildings was based on various densities of students and cultural spaces and the desire lines through the city and the form of the building accomodated these and it's design was based on internal desire lines creating social spaces that were based on where people would be rather than being forced.

The video of this talk is going to be uploaded by the Architecture Foundation so keep your eyes peeled round here

Whilst in London I also went to a little exhibition of Jean-Claude and Christo at the Annely Juda gallery. This was of their drawings and models, which I have to say are pretty stunning in themselves sometimes. There were just really successful drawings for in a single piece displaying everything you needed to know about the project. Like this drawing, perspective, plan, details and a sample of the material, very nice.