I really enjoyed Kevin McLeod’s conversation with Margaret Throsby earlier this week.
In addition to admiring his style in Grand Designs, I have been fascinated by his Grand Tour and his visit to Dharavi. (The Dharavi program led me to explore edgeless spaces.)
I was particularly interested to hear Kevin explore ideas about social spaces and listened carefully to his brief mention of Hab Oakus. I liked Hab Oakus’s manifesto which includes …
We will:
- draw on landscape and history to create an architecture which is strongly rooted in context, both physical and cultural
- create communities which will appeal to young and old alike; where people grow up, have a family and grow old
- conceive our projects within the context of community-wide initiatives from sourcing local food to sustainable means of transport
- make places which are a pleasure to live in and a joy to behold.
HAB is short for Happiness, Architecture, Beauty. This approach is another discovery for me on my interest in personal learning environments.
It has prompted me to think about how educational and sport contexts can embody the possibilities that:
We build houses that make people happy; that keep people warm in winter and cool in summer and generally comfortable and cheerful all year round. We work with brilliant architects and landscape architects to make places that look great and work well, and have lots of outdoor space for people to play, chat, lie in the sun, throw a good party, grow their own food.
Photo Credits
The Triangle, Swindon
Northway, Oxford
