Week 32 - 22 September 2021

  • I went down to the farm for the last time this summer, with my friend Alice-Mae. Seeing the purple sprouting broccoli I'd planted earlier in the summer pressing up against the net was nice - and getting to free them and weed them gave me a little paternal buzz.

Brocolli pressed up against the netting

Brocolli that I'd planted earlier in the summer, released from net

  • Later that week I was sent to represent the farm at the opening of the new Koya in Broadway Market, where we had a salad named after the farm. Felt like a satisfying closing of the loop.

Nama Yasai Salad

Nama Yasai Pickles

  • The thing I was working on for London Design Festival has appeared. It's a film called Supernature TV, which collects stories about circularity, reuse and sustainable systems. It's nestled in a garden made of these Space Frames by Studio Mieke Meijer. Originally commissioned in 2018, they've been reassembled in different configurations each year.

Supernature TV at LDF Kings Cross

  • London Design Festival seems more digestible this year than most. Perhaps cut down to size by the pandemic. In recent years it's been a big stodgy dumpling, bloated by endless trade shows and product launches. In my mind LDF is synonymous with BIG installations - I still remember being awed by Textile Field at the V&A when I was at school. It definitely feels like something conceived in a different time - now it's something from a previous era trying on new clothes.
  • I wonder what it'd look like if we started from scratch. I always liked the Ready Made Go exhibitions that happened at Ace Hotel - where designers were commissioned to make objects for the hotel, like door handles or stools. The festival just celebrated the installation of new permanent editions. I wonder what that'd look like blown up to city scale.
  • Something that feels like it's got a bit more vitality is Open House London. Poking around usually closed buildings feels weirdly sneaky and spicy. On the way back from Koya I stumbled across Antepavilion, where a beautiful tensegrity structure - made famous by Extinction Rebellion - has been installed for the summer.

One of this year's antepavilion - a tensegrity structure

  • Along architectural lines of travel - I had a look around Matera, the third oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. It's people sized, made of locally sourced material, charming, with buildings that are naturally cooled in the summer. Lots we could learn from for building cities today.

Matera skyline

  • Aaaaaand lastly. I finally visited my old colleague, Tom in York, with Tam. We walked the famous (not really) York Solar System, a scale model stretched out along 6.4 miles of old railway. Well - we made it from Jupiter (where there's a free car park) to Saturn. Before stopping for hot chocolate and wandering back.
  • I got my first university assignment this week. The outcome is taking the form of a Pecha Kucha about garden hedges. Here's a pic from it (taken by my lovely housemate Louis) of the BLM hedge in Herne Hill. I'd like to transform these notes into being a bit more objectively about the course I'm doing...I'll have a think about how to do that.

BLM Hedge

  • I thought the previous set of notes were my last hurrah for the summer - but skimming back over these it feels like this was the true sloppy delicious gubbins of the meal.

Last update: 2021-09-22 12:00:00 -0600