And Marmite was used as a metaphor last night to describe the latest Nottingham building to have hit the press. My good mate Sue Churchill at Church Lukas Architects bagged the front page of the Evening Post! The story is here – the latest £60m development at Nottingham Trent University’s city centre campus.

I love marmite and I love this building. I think it just adds to this area. We already have a rejuvenated NTU campus – which I have blogged about before. The new Newton / Arkwright extension is superb and this new building compliments and helps yell out “success”. I might be a bit biased being a former student! I have many happy (?) memories of the Byron building – which is to be replaced by this new building… Byron was constructed, I guess, in the late 1960′s when this was a Polytechnic. It has had its day. It’s tired and dated.

We do have to remember that we really do need out to Universities to push boundaries – and this is not just in research. The architecture can be cutting edge too.

Although I think this is great stuff for nottingham it seems that some of the comments posted at the foot of the on-line Evening Post article are less than complimentary. But then you might recall that I ventured into this arena before and quickly retreated. It’s the usual suspects making misguided and irrelevant (mostly) comments. Sue has a sense of humour and agreed that the “Stevie Wonder Architecture Studio” was worthy of a laugh!

I hope people, whether they love it or hate it, see the benefit for the City….

a little piece of the Charles Avery piece

We were given a special tour on Tuesday evening by Alex Farquharson – the Director. It was great to hear his enthusiasm for the place. He even likes the outside (I think it is a marmite building!)

The show is quite interesting for the The Contemporary as it is curated by The Hayward Gallery – not by the in house team. So they have nothing to do with the art displayed. The Curators are Lisa Le Feuvre and Tom Morton and they have chosen this year’s theme to be “In the Days of the Comet”, in emulation of H.G. Well’s 1906 novel. is held every five years and tours the UK. From Nottingham it goes to London, then Glasgow and finally, Plymouth. So we had the honour of the opening of the show. Another coup for Nottingham.

The Gallery was quite busy on Sunday morning which was reassuring – on Tuesday night it was packed with the Great and The Good from Nottingham.

But what of the art?

Well, I have to be honest and say that this is probably my least favourite exhibition to date. Some of the installations are quite challenging – which you need to see to judge for yourself.

But – I loved the Charles Avery pen and wash piece “Egg Eats Egret”. The detail is brilliant and you could look at it for hours – and see different things each time. I love the perfection of the building in the piece and the various characters.

I struggled with Karla Black’s ‘pile of soil’ – I just didn’t get it. Even after Alex had explained it to me…

We really are lucky to have The Contemporary – as I blogged last week it does give Nottingham profile. You don’t have to love the art all of the time. Nor, in my case, the building. But we should as a City support it – it does nothing but good…

Marmite XO - puts hairs on your chest

But there was news earlier this week that the proice or marmite has now reached the dizzy heights of a fiver. Five quid for a jar of the black stuff. I have to admit that I love it. This is despite spending a day with my late dad in about 1977 on what was then ‘work experience’. We went to the most boring meeting I could have ever imagined in Burton on Trent. It was at a foundry which was near to the marmite factory. I can still smell it now.

But this didn’t put me off Marmite. It put me off meetings!

It is made from spent brewers yeast – hence the connection with Burton on Trent home of a number of Breweries including Marstons.

And earlier this year I bought some XO Marmite in Selfridges in Birmingham. It is a bit potent…

But in reality it’s not so expensive compared to some of our other commodities:

Printer Ink – £1,700 per gallon
Chanel No.5 – £15,600 per gallon
Evian water – £4.00 per gallon
Scorpion Venom – £24.3m per gallon

And that essential of all commodities – a Starbucks Grande Cappucino weighs in at a mere £19.60 a gallon!

My only observation is that the Marmite goes quite a bit further than a gallon of petrol – especially in my car!

Healthy Chips, batter and a touch of Fish in the USA

It was always an interesting moment at the end of term when you finally worked out that the smell in the hall was the rotted apples from numerous packed lunches in the kids school bags. They had ‘forgotten’ them.

Times have changed (but not that much?) – from the days of Enid Blyton when the Famous Five ate themselves to sleep on sandwiches washed down with lashings of Ginger Beer!

The storyline on Five on a hike together went,

The children eat gargantuan amounts of food throughout this story, possibly even more than usual. When they first start on a hike the kind lady in the village store makes them sandwiches. Her son, she says, has six sandwiches, or “twelve rounds of bread.” When she asks how many the children can handle, Julian tells her eight sandwiches each! And as Dick confirms, that’s sixteen rounds of bread for four people, so sixty-four slices.

Kids don’t have time now for falling asleep in fields – besides it’s not safe. The comfort of the Plasma screen and X-Box require a more chocolaty snack! As the saying goes ‘chocolate is the answer – now what’s the question’…

Last night when the squash club was too busy for us to get a court we retired to the pub – and one of the boys had Dandelion & Burdock. We discussed this as it is a ‘Marmite‘ sort of drink. As it happens I love it – as much as I love Marmite! It was more expensive than beer though!

I like most food, but I hate mushrooms (with a passion). Fungus from fields.

Turkish Delight is also food of the Devil – witness the Witch in Narnia who captures Edmund with Magical Turkish Delight! If you have never read the book there is a synopsis here which will save you hours.

But, back to the thread – kids and packed lunches. I suggest we stop kidding ourselves that we can introduce some rules which will suddenly make kids eat healthily. They won’t. They will find away around the system – as generations have done before them. So stop being hypocrites – they will work it out for themselves in the end!

Postscript – how much, exactly, is a ‘lashing of ginger beer’? And is there really a Carrot museum? Must put on my list of world class attractions!

New bungalows at Abel Collins Nottingham November 2009

I took the photograph here yesterday morning and was quizzed by the son of one of our residents. He wanted to know what we were thinking – and what Prince Charles would have to say. Firstly, what we were thinking is that we had an opportunity to make a statement. Secondly, I personally dislike pastiche architecture and was keen to avoid replicating what went before. Thirdly, these are very sustainable – with green credentials – rainwater harvesting, a sedum roof, high levels of insulation, a low carbon footprint, solar shading and underfloor heating. The level of ‘green’ is somewhere between 25-44% better than the current Building Regulations require. What would Prince Charles say? He would think they were a Carbuncle no doubt. I respect his views, but don’t always agree with them. We have moved on and need to move on further if we are to hit our sustainability targets. Highgrove House won’t quite have the same levels of insulation! Nor is Poundbury, in my view, great architecture.

What really counts though is whether our residents will like living in them. In their current bare state they appear warm and light & airy. The rooms are well proportioned and the space will hopefully turn into a home for the new residents. Time will tell!

University of Nottingham Grace Building

Would either of these buildings worked in ‘brick and slate’…. I think not, but I am willing to be challenged. Architecture, like Art, is a matter of personal taste. A ‘marmite‘ moment! And it’s got people talking… which they tend not to do about our other houses and bungalows?

p.s. I love Marmite!