Douglas Carson

Should designers specify quartz countertops when workers who cut them are dying from silicosis? Whatever happened to the professional obligation to practice with "due regard to public health and safety?”

78% of interior designers say quartz (engineered stone) counters are hot this year. Meanwhile, they are banned in Australia because workers are dying of silicosis, and in the US, republicans are passing laws to protect the manufacturers from lawsuits. So why do IDs even think of specifying it?

European Citizens' Initiative Give your support !

eci.ec.europa.eu/055/public/#...

This European citizen's initiative demands the full suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

1 million signatures will require the Commission to put a proposal forward. Please sign and share widely.

European Citizens' Initiative Give your support !

eci.ec.europa.eu/055/public/#...

This European citizen's initiative demands the full suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

1 million signatures will require the Commission to put a proposal forward. Please sign and share widely.

Kitchen countertop workers are dying. Some lawmakers want to ban their lawsuits Some safety experts want California to stop the cutting of quartz countertops saying it can't be done safely. Lawmakers, meanwhile, contemplate a ban on workers' lawsuits against quartz manufacturers.

Some safety experts want California to stop the cutting of quartz countertops saying it can't be done safely. Lawmakers, meanwhile, contemplate a ban on workers' lawsuits against quartz manufacturers.

Purely decorative? Like an external egg-and-dart molding?

Leading medical publication the British Medical Journal recognises SUVs as a danger to public health in a new editorial co-authored by T&E’s James Nix: bit.ly/4hVDlBC

Large SUVs are a danger to pedestrians, cyclists & other drivers.

It's time to take action to reduce their presence in urban areas.

Crisis Mode | Irish Cities in Crisis

At 13:40, Phili Halton, like some brilliantly articulate & correct historian/architect/campaigner, speaks to @mattcooperlastword.bsky.social about efforts to create spaces for Dublin's youth, often against council ideology. Well done RIAI for inviting this young voice
shows.acast.com/68e546af744f...

Photograph of colourful walls

Photograph of colourful walls and staircase

Nearing completion, at a Dublin domestic re-use. Previously the home had multiple ground floor levels, all-magnolia walls. and chronic energy loss issues. The newly accessible GF is now all one level, with polychromatic walls and low energy use.

Would you sign up for my seminars if this was week one? (These are not all obligatory ..)

I laughed my hunksband pants off

As some vast Tropic tree, itself a wood, That crests its Head with clouds, beneath the flood Feeds its deep roots, and with the bulging flank Of its wide base controls the fronting bank, (By the slant current's pressure scoop'd away The fronting bank becomes a foam-piled bay) High in the Fork the uncouth Idol knits His channel'd Brows; low murmurs stir by fits And dark below the horrid Faquir sits; An Horror from its broad Head's branchy wreath Broods o'er the rude Idolatry beneath—

Fragment 4: As some vast Tropic tree, itself a wood
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43978/...

A (teaching!) colleague recently promoted a fee-paying school to me. I told him I'd rather my kids had the best education, which for me meant them being alongside a diversity of peers, not just the rich kids of parents who don't want their kids hanging out with the poor. Cue awkward silence!

A nearby secondary fee-paying school boasts of high academic achievements. Students are segregated into a 'higher' or 'lower' stream from Day1. Expulsions are common. Parents can all afford grinds. I hear of miserable parents/students. My dad went there. I won't be sending my kids there.

Irish Times excerpt with paragraphs that are only 1 or 2 sentences long

Help me writing experts! Setting aside the article's content, this phenomenon of writing as bullet-points, with 1/2 sentence sections is strong here from Min. Donohue. Precise writing? Or a sign of over-confidence? Any writing recs for why this is problematic?
www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Collison owns a 2,500m2 home within 4,000,000m2.

Average Irish home <200m2.

I admit this is an ad hominen agrument as to why he should not have so much space. But sometimes in life, ad hominen arguments are entirely appropriate!

Newspaper Headline: Catherine Connolly is going to win

A fine tagline on the @irishtimesnews on the Irish Presidential race, which Catherine Connolly will indeed win, with the Irish Government's candidate, Heather Humphreys, coming second.

Manifest the change! 🥰

Our next Government Cabinet there! 🥰

In Ireland, more than half of all female architecture graduates have left the profession.

The gender pay gap in architecture in Ireland is 10%.
It's 18% in one Dublin architecture office.

(Ireland's median gender pay gap is less than 8%.)

Credit to UCD colleague Dr Dearbhla Murphy

Iconic moment at the Downton Abbey premiere

Ah yes! That makes much more sense. Kevin Lynch seemed like a decent egg, while Colin Rowe.....less so!

Any truth to the story that Kevin 'Image of the City' Lynch poured a drink down her back at a party?

Any truth to the story that Kevin Lynch poured a drink down her back at a party out of professional jealously?

Is there any truth to the story that Kevin Lynch poured a drink down her back at a party?

Text from Philip Hoare, "William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love" (2025): "John O'Neil..married an Ellen Blake who kept a shebeen in Rathmines, she then lent her name to O'Neil's son by another mistress. It was this son, James Blake who became the father of William (Blake)."

2. Late 18th C Rathmines Map

Photo of Slattery's Pub

Is William Blake's granny's sheebeen under Slattery's? Only a handful of Rathmines buildings there at the time...

1. Hoare, P. (2025) "William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love". 2. Ó Maitiú, S. (2021) Irish Historic Towns Atlas.
@blakesociety.bsky.social ‪@philiphoare.bsky.social‬

At the Israeli embassy, Dublin.

"Ban all trade, travel, and financial transactions with Israel, freeze all assets, expel diplomats, and suspend Israel from the UN General Assembly as was done with apartheid South Africa."
via Artists for Palestinians

#SocialistSunday

A fellow tutor once tried, and failed, to get Gove's Schools for the Future policy on the precedent list for our (Dublin based) architecture students. Not excellent, but worth of analysis?.

...aside from that, Frank Barnes' Swiss Cottage School for the Deaf is a fav UK 20th school of mine.

I support Palestine Action

YouTube video by Hermit the Frog The Singing Detective - When I Grow Up

youtube.com/watch?v=hos1...

YouTube video by NPR ‘What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?’: Descendants Read Frederick Douglass' Speech | NPR

Well, I guess it’s never too early to post this again —