You wouldn’t necessarily want to live next door to Dubai. Not if you were concerned about neighbourly one-upmanship.
Call that a garden shed? Look, my friend, our new garden shed is an 800 metre spinning tower built in the shape of a palm tree with an Alpine ski slope in the basement…
The latest in Dubai’s quest [...]

Okay, I absolutely promise that this is my last blog on Kevin McCloud for the rest of the year month week.
But as reported here, Kev’s company Hab (Happiness architecture beauty – and yes the lowercase acronym is intentional) got a bit of bad press over their decision to part ways with architects Wright and Wright.
In [...]

What the … eh? … awww ain’t it cute!
The latest offering from achingly trendy design mavericks SuckUK has sparked a bit of a heated debate here in the FAP Editorial Suite.
Well, it did once we’d all stopped laughing like loons at the sight of this slightly indignant looking cat ‘flying’ a WWII plane.
Look, he seems [...]

One I made earlier? Not quite … still
Lily Allen, the prolific blogger and occasional popstar who always sometimes gives the impression she simply must tell the world about every thought as it enters her head, has created a small yet important ripple in the world of architecture.
Why? She simply let slip, in typical brazen-as-you-like style, [...]

This blogging malarkey appears to have triggered an unexpected impulse within my synaptic gap, namely the constant need to reference the deity of property putdowns that is Kevin McCloud.
“I’m not obsessed!” I wailed at my boss on presentation of this latest subject.
“You have a picture of him on your computer,” he replied, in an annoyingly [...]

“Rudimentary illimitable sewerage? malformation, backstop carolyn.
Clog document millionaire? last, last lucy”
No I haven’t been channelling TS Eliot again. (Last time I tried that, I kept seeing women coming and going, talking about Michaelangelo – all rather weird.)
Instead, this deathless verse is but a fragment from one of the occasional spam emails we get here at [...]

Someone tell the three little piggies to forget their straw, wood and brick houses because I’ve seen the future – and it’s all made of foam.
Already mushrooming up in Japan (where else?) these styrofoam houses are being touted as the solution to the world’s housing crisis. You know those polystyrene cups of tea you get [...]

Shoreham Harbour
Last year (October 2007), I heard a rumour that a super-size me development could be sprouting forth from Shoreham Harbour.
This was hardly news to me, a coastal dweller whose daily commute requires travelling past the Harbour along the narrow and congested strip (the A259) between Shoreham and Brighton.
Back in 2003 the kibosh was put [...]

Acoustic cloaking? Sonic crystals? Have I unwittingly staggered across some new age musical therapy? The kind that involves mantras and chakras, auras and a heavy dose of unreserved middle class self-indulgence?
Actually no, these techie terms bear no reference to spiritually inspired incantations per se, but they could one day protect your home – and your [...]

“If we find out that our neighbours, or households similar to ours, are using half as much energy as we are, then we’re much more likely to bring our own consumption down in line.
“So I can announce today that a Conservative Government will make sure every gas and electricity bill contains information that allows each [...]