Margate Football Club

Further to an earlier post regarding our work at Margate Football Club, the planning application to Thanet Council for a medical centre was refused which has put the development on hold. In the meantime I am continuing to work with the club to seek other opportunities.

Football clubs cannot survive on football alone in this day and age and, with the support of the fans, the community, the developer and the local authority the club can hopefully have a modest sized stadium they can be proud of with some long term sustainability to allow the team to develop without the background financial pressures that plague most clubs in this day and age. Everyone involved in the redevelopment has done so with the best intentions and at huge risk. I wish the club and everyone involved every success for the future and I am sure that the current setback will be overcome.

February

Having dropped 2 staff in February I have found myself twice as busy. There is work ot there but there are more companes fighting harder for it. Our project to refurbish and extend a church to create a community based business centre will hit site soon and the demolition contract has already started.

Internal Works Commence at Wellwynd

In between real work I produced a poster for a display of uniforms of The Royal Scottish Regiment to be held in Edinburgh. The exhibition is being organised by Miliary Heritage Scotland, an organisation established to promote the creation of a Military Heritage Museum somewhere in Scotland.

poster

Caught the Watchmen, which i thought was really good and true to the graphic novel. Saw Educating Rita at the Citizens which was a lot better than I expected. Not done much more culturally over February and the poor weather is curbing much photography outdoors. plan to get much more done in March with the lighter nights and get fit!

January

January has been a difficult month for the majority of the construction industry. The government has promised a lot but I have me reservations on how increasing spending on NHS, schools and capital programmes will anyone who is not already established in these areas. I have filled in many tenders over the years but never get past the pre-qualification when it comes to certain types of building. Housing Association tenders always ask for experiance of social housing carried out over the past 3 years. The answer-none, immediately knocking us out of contention. The problem is always ‘how do you get experiance when no one will give you a project to start with?’. In my now 20years working in architecture I can hardly think of a building type I haven’t worked on and really would wish architects abilities were judged more on the quality of the buildings they produce and not the size of the practice, the number of or type of jobs they have done and their ability to tick boxes on how many meaningless policy documents their office holds.

No matter what the building type is, architects should (and most do) have the ability to tackle any brief presented to them.

Glenbank Road and Meadowside House submited for Scottish Design Awards this week, so fingers crossed.

Managed a trip to Culloden. Unfortunately the visitors centre (designed by Gareth Hoskins)was shut for the winter, however, the great weather conditions and the lack of tourists made it perfect to take some pics. Well worth a visit.

Cullden Visitors Centre

Trying to get a decent holiday this year has become a priority for sorting out in February!

Motherwell Children’s House

Progress meeting at motherwell project today, completion estimated in May

interior

view from garden

2009

The first weeks of 2009 have been taken up finishing off Meadowside House and planning workload for 2009. Although the economy is in a bad state, my workload seems to be ok and it should be a good year for actually completing some projects.

Meadowside House’s new residents have moved in and are delighted with their new home. I will be posting a feature on it soon on my work blog, www.gcaarchitects.wordpress.com, . It is great to see it finished and although I could pick up on lots of things I would do different now, I am proud of the building we have created. The next houses in Cumbernauld and Motherwell will be finished in the next few months also and are shaping up well also.

The extension in Strathaven is now out the ground and the frame is up. The finishing detail in this project will be very important to the end product. It is the first time we have used zinc cladding although we have it specified for a larger project for a community business centre in Airdrie due to start this March.

Garden View

View from House

Our largest project this year will be Wellwynd Community Centre in Airdrie which involves the refurbishment and extension of the oldest church in the town. It will be a challenge and is a very high profile project for a town which holds a carbuncle award for the worst town in Scotland. The council’s support and asprations for the project have been tremendous along with their partner Clyde Valley Housing Association who are now driving the project forward.

I am hopeful that a few housing development projects will be progressed, however, I feel they may drag on a while due to the current climate.

I plan to enter more architectural or othe design competitions this year and have targetted a couple already. I will also develop proposals for an area of land I have to the rear of my house, possibly for a home office and gym.

Meadowside House 1

Meadowside House 1

Originally uploaded by scarpadog

Completed handover today, marks 3 years of hard work, I hope they like it!

Christmas 2008

Thanks to Santa, I am now the owner of a limited edition print of the Guy Denning painting, “F**ked up Celebrity no.1′. I can’t help seeing Victoria Beckham as the female although I would associate others with the sentiments more, Jade, Jordan maybe even Kate Moss. I don’t like disecting paintings too much in the same way I would a piece of architecture as I think it is all a matter of personal taste if you want to hang something in your home. Check out Guy Denning and others at http://www.redpropeller.co.uk/gallery_132652.html

F**ked Up Celebrity no.1

Margate

I have been working on a project for Margate Football Club for around 5 years now and I have lost count of the number of schemes or designs produced. Tomorrow will be an important day as there is a planning commitee meeting where our proposals for a medical centre on he site will be put forward. Unfortunately, the planning report is recommending refusal, not on design issues, but other issues to do with the need for a centre on this site.

Hartsdown Medical Centre

The contractor on our Children’s House at Meadowside is pulling out the stops to have a handover by the end of the week, a few issues to deal with on Building Control and it may be ready. It is looking good and the initial comments from the client have been great, I won’t be happy until it is finished and the kids have moved in.

Strathaven extension is coming out the ground, first progress photo below:

Foundations in at Strathaven

Progress is going well and I reckon it will be finished around March although the contractor thinks he will be out of there in February.

Planning

This week has been predominately taken up with trying to complete Meadowside Children’s house and dealing with planners on 2 fairly large projects. Without going into specifics, one project has been deferred for a site visit, wasting even more time. On a project which was submitted in March and only being presented to committee in December is farcical. The development potential has probably lost £0.5m in the meantime and may actually be unfeasible now. On another project, the inability of the planning department to actually enter into a dialogue with us on the submission is disgraceful. Hiding behind legislation has beome part of the problem of the current crisis being faced in this country. Public bodies do not, no matter what they think,  work under the same financial constraints of private businesses. I am constantly under pressure to ensure that projects are delivered on time and to budget, otherwise its quite simple, I don’t get paid. The inability of some organisations to respond to letters, phone-calls, faxes or e-mails would be inexcusable in private enterprise and would probably constitute disciplinary procedures. Blaming pressures and procedures has become s standard answer, however, some authorities and departments seem to deal with the same problems quickly, efficiently and most importantly with some degree of co-operation and professionalism.

I have great admiration of anyone that manages to build anything of real quality in this country knowing the journey they will have to have gone through to actually get there.

I will cheer up for christmas hopefully!

Nick Cave

Checked out Portobello Road Market on Sunday Morning. Bit dreich so didn’t hang around long. Got a cool Hendrix T for nephew and a decent breakfast.

Headed to Tate to see the Rothko exhibition. I have been interested in Rothko for a while after hearing the story of the Seagram paintings while studying at Art School. I recommend Simon Schama’s ‘Power of Art’ episode on Rothko if you don’t know about the story behind these paintings, worthwhile if you do too. The exhibition is expensive at £12 but it is seldom you will get the chance to see as many Rothko’s together in a show like this and so well set out. The problem for me is that his paintings are atmospheric  and contemplative and the crowds distract from this immensely and it is not a condusive atmosphere to really appreciate the power of these peices. I could also hear the murmers and tuts as I got up close to study the paintings as I got in the way of those viewing fom the seated areas.

Nick Cave

Headed to catch somethin to eat before the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds gig at the Troxy. Had seen him earlier this year at Connect as Grinderman which is where I took this pic. He is amazing live and has a real presence on stage.  After being tortured by the support band Tenebrous Liar(and I have a reputation for liking really miserable music!), anyone would have sounded good!

Cave did not dissapoint, my only mistake was going for a pee just as mercy seat started, one of my all time favorites (just realised 2 of my all time favorites are called mercy seat!).

Troxy was a decent venue but carpeting a venue holding gigs like this in Glasgow would be a BIG mistake and also, as is found in most of the recent conversion type venues, toilets are severely undercatered for, especially the girls i am reliably informed.

Sneeked a pic of VV from the Kills havin a fag after the gig

Stella and John outside the Troxy

Visited the V&A and Westminster Abbey before Driving home on Monday, back to work Tuesday…………………………