Patrick Zamarian

Not sure if Man United owner Jim Ratcliffe will see this being as he literally migrated to Monaco to avoid paying tax in the UK, but we wanted to put this up outside the stadium anyway….

📍 Old Trafford, Matt Busby Way

It's also our only defence against GenAI idiotification.

At last an AI tool I can get behind

“Upload an architectural render. Get back what it'll actually look like on a random Tuesday in November.”

antirender.com

Very excited to host the wonderful Tim Waterman tomorrow at the Liverpool School of Architecture! His talk, ‘Reworlding: Planetarity and Future Imaginaries’, is open for all and you can also look around our new home! @sotauol.bsky.social @livunihss.bsky.social www.liverpool.ac.uk/architecture...

It's so grim, isn't it.

Front cover of 'Bethlem Hospital: A History of Care and Control' by Evelyn Cross. The image shows a Victorian (?) institution viewed through open gates. Two statues stand on the gate posts

So, part of my job is to see what people are making of the history of our Hospital.

Bethlem partly exists in the gothic, horror-adjacent end of history, and so attracts a certain kind of presentation.

Restraints, gore, electrodes, I thought I'd seen it all. Until...

...I stumbled onto this book.

'The past is an underused tool': An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm In a deadly cold period known as the Little Ice Age, clever Elizabethan designs kept a magnificent stately home unusually warm – with lessons for how we can heat our own homes better.

Brilliant to see the BBC picking up Ranald Lawrence and Dean Hawkes' fabulously interesting and important #environmentalhumanities work on #HardwickHall. They measured solar gain to understand Elizabethan comfort tech.
The original articles are hugely worth reading too.
www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

Let me 'delve into' your list and get back to you.

It's been a long time in the making, so it's great to share a sneak peak of 'High-Tech Britain: Buildings of the Space Age', published by @batsfordbooks.bsky.social and @c20society.bsky.social on 5 March. Pre-order at www.batsfordbooks.com/book/high-te... 🤖

This looks excellent - well done, Geraint!

More updates to come up soon.

Zug ≠ Zurich

Did anyone snap the Foster/Holcim Essential Homes prototype at the Venice Biennale 2023? If so might I be able to use your photo for an article? I'm not getting replies to my request for permission.

Getting off US tech: a guide I’m in the process of dropping US tech services. Here’s how I did it, and options you should consider.

I have been working through @parismarx.com ’s guide to getting off US tech, slowly because I am so deep into the Apple world, but today’s events just gave me a big kick in the butt to get it done. disconnect.blog/getting-off-...

What the Stahl House says about L.A. For a cool $25m, the most famous of the Case Study designs can be yours

www.punchlistmag.com/p/what-the-s...

The algorithms are making it a lot harder to spread the word about these online talks. Although numbers are still reasonable, it would be a great help if folk were able to give the 30 December event a quick share 🙂

Booking available here:
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/buildings-...

3* is the new 4*.

4* is exclusively for 'earth-shattering'.

'New' would be useful, I guess.

Bronze plaque saying "A Letter to the Future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. August 2019. 415ppm CO2"

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque:
"This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

I don't understand why anyone who has that sort of money wouldn't buy it.

Flyer image for 'Down Under Webinar: Religion and Architecture in Australia', programme - 9.00 (CET) Welcome; 9.05 Practical and Active: Australian Religious Values from the Ground Up (Professor Katharine Massam - University of Divinity); 9.50 Building Faith in Australia's Capital: The Diplomatic Mosque and Other Architectural Narratives (Dr Md Mizanur Rashid - Deakin University); 10.35 Break; 10.45 Constructing Faith in the Antipodes - The Making of the Book (Dr Lisa Marie Daunt); 11.30 End. Free. KU Leuven / KADOC. Monday 8 December 2025 at 9.00 CET (8.00 GMT).

Free online seminar alert - 'Down Under Webinar: Religion and Architecture in Australia' (via KADOC/KU Leuven), 8 Dec, 8am UK time. Registration link - kadoc.kuleuven.be/english/3_re...

Nature not a blocker to housing growth, inquiry finds Commons committee report challenges ‘lazy narrative’ used by ministers that scapegoats wildlife and the environment

This is what many of us have been saying. Part 3 of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill is based on a myth: that we don't have enough homes because wildlife and green spaces are protected. It will solve nothing, and inflict terrible harm on our remaining ecosystems
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

@wildtwin.bsky.social Great chatting with you today Jeff. Thanks for attending and talking with the first year students it was lovely to hear you talk about your work and processes.
Thanks
Stephen

Auszeichnung für gute Bauten der Stadt Zürich 2021–2024 Gutes Bauen hat in Zürich Tradition. Die Stadt zeichnet seit rund 80 Jahren regelmässig die besten Bauwerke und Freiräume aus

Best buildings in Zurich, 2021-24 - sixteen projects, almost half of them retrofits. gutebauten.stadt-zuerich.ch

FastHistory — The Portico Library Listen to a series of quickfire talks with specially invited guests from across the history and heritage sector, then take to the stage yourself to share your own historical passions!

Manchester historians!

@historylabplus.bsky.social and @porticolibrary.bsky.social are uniting again for another History Open Mic Night! Come down on Dec 11th to hear brilliant speakers from the Manchester history scene on a range of topics - book below!

www.theportico.org.uk/event-calend...

Mirador del Rio - home of the utterly evil Baron in German cult TV show Timm Thaler.

Zürich hat jetzt seine eigene M-Wort-Debatte, allerdings natürlich unter klassisch Zürcher Bedingungen mit direkt persönlichen Attacken auf einen guten Kollegen, Bernhard Schär

In fairness, there were nicer bits in between.

One off the bucket list … I hiked from Manchester to Liverpool over the weekend. 71 kilometres. Won't be doing that again anytime soon.

A Reddit post with a wall with a black stain and the caption Down a grate, defenders at the top of this tower would toss scalding hot grease down at their enemies. The stain is still on the wall centuries later.

*sigh* No, that’s just the effect of several centuries of rain through an iron grate. Nobody was wasting precious oil during a siege. they were throwing piss