God and Gaudi

Q. What's the difference between God and an architect?
A. God doesn't think he's an architect.....

It's a first for Architecture and merits a little 'hors sujet' of its own:
Up until now the only patron saint remotely useful to architects was Saint Jude. Now it seems we're going to have our very own saint in the form of Antonio Gaudi, or God's architect as he is sometimes referred to in Spain. Apparently he's being canonised at this very moment. According to the Vatican it's not so much for his miracles but for his willingness to answer prayers. This is surprising as most of what your every day run of the mill architect does for his/her client is very much on a par with miracles. I'm damn sure Gaudi wasn't an exception. Despite not being of that persuasion I'm all in favour of this patron saint business. In fact I think the church should take it all the way. What about a few relics?

The Holy Rotring of Barcelona
The Holy Tryptich
(you know how it goes - three A0 drawings on featherlight board with plans elevations and full colour perspectives for monday morning)

Any other ideas will be welcome. Leave a comment

By the way, if the The Client reads this, she shouldn't worry, her house will not take anywhere near as long to build as the Sagradia Familia, but then again if she wants to light a candle.......?

We have blocks.....therefore we are not blocked

The blocks have arrived. Which means we are back on the road again with a vengeance. More on the subject soon.

'Y compris les retards'

We are officially 3 and a half weeks late. The Client wonders why I haven't announced this before, 'The last time I asked, you said we were on time. What's happened since?' Carefully stepping back in anticipation of a possible blow to the head I reply 'Three and a half weeks have happened'.


The Builder is quick. He has the reputation of having built a three storey house in 3 months. In the absence of the right building materials however, his lightening speed and efficiency are useless. The blocks that caused so much existential angst to The Engineer in an earlier phase of the project are now the source of client angst.
They weren't ordered on time. The delivery period was 8 days. That soon stretched into two then three weeks. They were supposed to have arrived this morning. Now apparently they're coming on Thursday. As they are manufactured in the east maybe the delivery is by camel?


In the mean time a garden wall has been built once, demolished once and been built again. We've had a spring clean and most of the 'dark matter' has been removed from the back garden. So all is not lost.

Next time I see The Client I'll casually mention the merits of life in a camper van.

Trailing edge of technology

Apparently building a Lamborghini involves craftsmen repeatedly hitting sheet metal with large wooden mallets.
This is a comforting thought and helps lighten my recurring sentiment of being, despite my desires, at the trailing edge of technology.
My 'Lamborghini' was, a staircase in steel with an elaborate structural concept involving cantilevered treads, reconstituted steel profiles, triangular frames and sophisticated calculations. Due to budgetary considerations the Italian custom job now resembles a reasonably priced pacific rim family runabout.

Howard Roarke was here!
(with his purpose made rubber stamp 'NOT BUILT').

The Client will now descend elegantly (in evening gown) a stair consisting of two stringers and flat metal welded treads. We are talking the simple and plain here, an archetypal stair. Maybe I should forget technology and start talking about minimalism.

Whatever. The steel stair should be arriving in the Spring (the big unit of temporal precision on a small job in France is a Saison or Trimestre - smaller increments are measured in Ponts*).
In the meantime the ground floor stair is being built. Now here, we are definitely not on the leading edge of technology, we're attached by baler twine being dragged a good distance behind.
The physical realities of the average construction site don't seem to have changed in hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Mixing stuff in buckets hitting things with hammers.......minimalism?

*The 'Pont' will be explained to the non French reader next month, when it will inevitably become a major theme.

Easter Vandals

Vandals have been on the site. They took down the formwork from the textured wall and decided to take out the timber inserts that formed the openings. They must have attacked the first one from behind and forced it out through the front of the wall - it blew a big chunk of the textured concrete off. Seeing the damage caused obviously incited them to have a go at the second opening in the same way. Likewise the front face of the textured concrete was damaged.

According to the English Neighbour the vandals bore a remarkably uncanny likeness to the builders.

The Skater accused The Architect of not doing his job properly. He reckons that The Architect should be on site more often to stop this sort of thing happening. He's not happy. He thinks The Architect is loosing his grip of the situation.


The site is now empty. Maybe the vandals are too shameful to come back. Maybe they are off for an Easter break. They certainly aren't answering their phones. The Architect only manages to reach overloaded answering machines with multi track pre-recorded messages subtly mixing grunts and noises of small children doing unimaginable things. The Architect is considering spending all his waking hours on site. A live blog. A blow by blow account.

Full moon rising

The Architect doesn’t sleep well when the moon is full. Agitated and restless he turns and turns. Despite an early night, the full oblivion of sleep never really comes. At 5.30 am, lying awake in bed, he makes a virtual tour of the site. After having made the rounds at least 36 times the roaming somnolent self seems to be homing in on one particular spot. Why?

The unconscious has obviously spotted something and is tapping annoyingly on the thin dividing partition between dream and reality.

At last with an awakening ‘lightbulb hovering above head’ style flash – a picture of the open formwork on the first floor comes into focus – no horizontal slot opening between kitchen and living room.

On site at 8. Not too late. Caught in time. Sigh of relief.

He gives a big thank you to the full moon and absent mindedly wonders why there’s one less workman on site and how the hot shower still hasn’t managed to shift the dried blood and earth from under his finger nails.