Tag Archives: Olympics

May 18 2012

Life’s a game; squash is serious

Last week I got wet playing Golf in Scotland. It’s the only ‘other’ sport I play. My first choice is the game they regard as chess with a ball. Squash.

I have played for many years – and became an England Squash qualified Coach back in 2001. These days my knees are likely to shorten my career! It’s a hard game on the joints.

There was a travesty when Squash was not chosen as an Olympic sport either this year or for 2016. The problem is that it’s not a great spectator sport – although the introduction of glass walled courts have changed that. You really have to have played to appreciate good play.

The British Open is currently being hosted at the O2 in London. It’s the Wimbledon of Squash – and we currently have the world number one and two – James Willstrop and Nick Matthew. I have seen both of them play at Nottingham’s Squash Club. There aren’t many sports Where you get to see the World number one or two play? Sadly the sport has been declining in numbers for many years – which is a great pity.

We have to encourage kids to play.

And one such ‘kid’ was my youngest son Jak. He played from the age of six and then had a gap after picking up a number of injuries. But starting back a couple of years ago, his game has come on – to the extent that he won the Club Championships – Group C at the weekend. The final was hard fought, but he shone through. Apologies about the quality of the image! But you get the picture – Jak’s on the left.

I think his coach during the game is still awaiting the champagne…

Well done Jak!

Apr 16 2012

Ugly Buildings?

At the weekend the Telegraph were running a picture story – trying to get votes for the ugliest buildings in the world. It was a pretty woeful collection.It can be found here.

This one is my ‘favourite’ by a long way – it’s the Longaberger Basket Company building in Newark, Ohio. Unbelievably it is a real building and was opened in 1997. It has seven storeys and accommodates 180,000 sq ft of offices. It was inspired by what they make apparently?

It’s difficult to follow the thought process of the Architect here. Maybe he had a brush too far with his ‘literal’ class that day? It is certainly quite appalling. What were they thinking? The only thing that could have improved it would have been a gingham roof?

There are some others too – well worth scrolling through. I think the inclusion of ArcelorMittal Orbit tower is a bit harsh…

This got me thinking about Nottingham’s ugliest building. There are some contenders, but my favourite (least favourite I mean) is the Players Horizon factory. Built in 1972 when Architects had a concrete-fetish (some still do) it really is the ugliest building I know in Nottingham. It was built as Players moved out of the assortment of buildings they owned in Radford. It makes 120 million cigarettes a day. And that is the extent of the ‘wow’ factor. It is perhaps the most depressing of styles, the concrete is a sea of grey other ‘features’ are brown.

It was designed by Arup – who do some stunning buildings and structures now, but I don’t recall seeing this one on their brochures. Their web site makes the merest hint of their involvement!

Any takers on other ugly buildings? The Playhouse? The Evening Post Building? The Eastcroft Incinerator? Marco Island?

Jan 27 2012

2011 – a miserable year for property…

I guess we knew what the headlines were going to be – and they haven’t disappointed…even if they are disappointing!

One trillion pounds - piled up next to an arctic....

In the commercial market in 2011 the value of UK commercial property investment transactions in Q4 2011 was £8.69 billion, down 25% on the same period for 2010. We were hit hard by the lack of liquidity in the market and by the Euro-Crisis.

UK house sales fell last year to 869,000, one of the lowest totals on record, HM Revenue & Customs has said. House price growth was just 1% – which in the circumstances was probably fairly good!

This seems to have been a long depression – the back end of 2008 was when we saw the writing on the wall – that is nearly 3.5 years ago. I don’t think we ever anticipated the market to flat-line for so long.

This week the UK reached £1tn (£1,000,000,000,000) in debt. To understand what one trillion looks like – go and have a look at your doormat – 1 Trillion of them would cover the whole of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Alternatively if you had spent £1m every day since Jesus was born, you would still have some change!

The really worrying thing is that there is little sign of a change in the short term. However, in the medium term I am involved in a number of major projects which could come to fruition in 2013-15. They have a long lead in, but I take some comfort in the fact that people are considering them. Of course this Parliament must be dissolved by May 2015, it is unlikely that the current incumbents will want to go to the Country with the current state of play.

Further I suspect that there will be some monies available starting next year. We will have the Olympics out of the way – I doubt we will ever know how much that has cost us. The budget of £9.3bn is apparently robust, money we can ill afford in the current economic climate!

Perhaps it is better in the middle distance than we think? I hope so!

Jan 13 2012

The great place debate…

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had been invited to an event in London which was all about placemaking. My good friends at Thinking Place are the only people in the country who specialise in this area. They effectively help communities develop an identity.

This has the potential to be a great place....

Last night the event was at the amazing new St Martins College building near Kings Cross (I think it’s where Jarvis Cocker ‘caught her eye’?). It was an impressive backdrop – and a building that itself is trying to define an area – find a sense of place.

I am no expert on what Thinking Place do – so I hope they don’t mind me trying to distill some of the messages. The evening was prefaced by a statement that in our austere times we have little resources, but that we are going to have to be more resourceful. We should see the lack of piles of cash as a challenge to our ingenuity.

Places are where people want to be or want to go. But in order to create a sense of place we have to have some ideas about what the place means. We have to have a purpose. Those driving the agenda should have a passion about a place. This is perhaps easier said than done?

There were two things that ‘caught my eye’. firstly, the word that has become conjoined to the Olympics – ‘legacy’. It’s over-used and I’m not sure what it means really. I’m not sure that the Olympics will leave a legacy – but that is perhaps another blog! A point was made about the dysfunction of the development process. The developers are in it for a short term gain – legacy over 20 years is not really that important to the rate of return!

But the second was that it is actually property development that is the catalyst for place. Especially if we want to change a place. Development is the thing that can make the change. Which does put property back at the forefront of the debate…

A fascinating evening and food for thought!

May 15 2011

A short film with a difference

Writing a blog is relatively easy, but I wonder if writing a film script is the same? It can’t be that much harder, surely?

There is a fantastic opportunity if you are so minded to write a script for a 10 minute short film and then (if selected) have it shown to millions of people.

BA are running a competition with Richard E Grant in the run up to the Olympics. Essentially all you have to do is write a script, send it to BA, win and get famous. It then gets shown on all BA flights in the run up to the games and on various screens around the event. Millions are expected to see the film. And it will surely springboard the winner into the Spielberg enclosure?

The only clue is that it needs to be innovative and original. Simple.

The details are here.

It’s a great idea. Now all I need is one… What about a bloke running around a quadrangle trying to get round really quickly? I think it may have legs? Genius!

May 7 2011

London Olympics – the best bit?

We haven’t entered the bidding war for Olympic tickets. I’m not sure why – I do know lots of people who, if they get all of their allocation, will be broke. I won’t…

But there is going to be a stunning piece of ‘architecture’ at the event. It really moves beyond architecture – into our digital world. It has been designed by those very clever chaps at MIT – and is called the Digital Cloud. You have to watch the embedded Youtube clip below to grasp what they have designed. It looks fantastic – and may be a reason for us to head to the Capital after all during the Olympics!

It is also going to be very green with solar panels providing much of the power needed. The other running costs would be covered by its visitors – each is being invited to ‘sponsor’ an LED for £1.

Oct 21 2010

Aircraft carriers – the future

I was speaking to my great friend (and former client) Nick Hammond this week about the stunning news about Britain’s fleet of aircraft carriers.

It seems that it is too expensive to stop building them. But also too expensive to run them.

So we were brainstorming ideas. It’s relatively easy for me as I am constantly trying to find ‘alternative uses’ for buildings – in an effort to squeeze best value out of them…

I was reminded about a joke image sent to me announcing Tiger Woods had bought a new yacht…

My second idea was for a portable football stadium. They are big enough. And they are capable of being moved, so they could host matches on The Thames, The Mersey, The Tyne and perhaps even my native River Trent? They could even host ‘Internationals’ off Cannes or other coastal resorts? And if there is trouble we could simply cut them loose and leave them drift for a few days. Footballers and troublemakers alike. We might need a system for getting the ball back?

On a similar theme we could host the Olympics aboard? It would save all that vote rigging – as we could just simply shift the venue to another Country. The only downside would be that it would be difficult for Andorra to host the next Games?

Nick suggested that the carrier could be a great concert venue. This could work well – little complaints from the neighbours about noise. Also the group could simply stay aboard and move to the next place for the next set of fans. Similarly any problems – there could be a chute deployed off the back of the boat to rid the venue of drunken yobs. They’ll soon sober up when they hit the water?

I was then thinking about the sheer volume of space. Ignoring a semi-serious suggestion about letting the space for shops, offices and factories – moving around to meet local demand and supply – what about housing? We wouldn’t need to build new towns? We could house the homeless. The only caveat if Nick was involved would be that he would insist on a Rose arch around the front door…

I am happy to receive other ideas – which I will try to pass on to the Department of Defence… in my ever helpful way!

UPDATE

Or…maybe we should just put all of the muppets who signed the unbreakable contact with BAe on board and send them on a Global fact finding mission for the next 10 years?