Its not often that a preposterously silly and totally impractical idea become anything beyond a preposterously silly and totally impractical reality, particularly when applied to architecture, but the ‘Seed Cathedral’ (the UK pavilion) at the 2010 Shanghai expo is one that truly does.


Created by UK designer Thomas Heatherwick it is constructed with 60,000 varieties of plant seeds selected from the Kew Gardens’ Millenium Seed Bank collection, encased at the end of 60,000 individual fibre-optic acrylic rods which illuminate the interior by piercing the buildings shell via geometrically cut holes.


The six storey high cube-like structure has a look somewhere between a dandelion (its chinese nickname) and a sea urchin... and its jaw-droppingly beautiful.


You can find more about Heatherwick Studio HERE


and more about the 2010 Shanghai Expo HERE

Tags: Architecture

A few years ago I went to meet a musician at a house overlooking Highgate Private cemetery. It was designed in the 1970s by John Winter and it looked like it came straight from an episode of Thunderbirds. I saw it and I loved it, for all of its avatar blue, corrugated modernist ridiculousness.

I almost wanted to own it one day, but it wasn’t quite ‘me’.

By pure coincidence, I passed the house again the other day... well not quite the same house, they knocked it down... and look what they built in its place!



The new Eldridge Smerin designed house is a triumph (if you like that sort of thing)... and this time it is totally ‘me’.
If I was a house, this is the house I would be.

It was built in 2004, so when I got home, I rushed to see which house was on Google maps, and the answer, neither, just a big hole and a crane.
Anyway, back to work... I’ve got £4m to earn

CLICK FOR MORE INFO ON THE ELDRIGE SMERIN: HOUSE IN HIGATE CEMETERY

Tags: Architecture, London