Matthew Cook

Just last week, in Milan...

the phrase the Boris Wave has been going around a bit but I only just realised what it meant. I had thought it was boriswave and I was imagining clips of a mop haired Johnson overlaid with a VHS filter and dreamy music, nostalgic for 2019

Brits got a pretty easy ride in NL to get permanent residency post brexit, and it was still proper hard work to get it. The idea that ILR could be taken away from people who have made such a huge commitment to the UK is simply insulting.

The RAC regional control centre, a high tech tower of steel and glass, in the dusk light. Image by Steve Franklin: https://www.flickr.com/photos/steve_franklin_images/22963146541

My first memory of capital A Architecture is Grimshaw's RAC tower at the M5/M4 junction near Bristol. Seen from the back seat of a car it felt like the future. My appreciation for that building and all of Grimshaw's work has only grown over the years. Truly he was one of Britain's best architects.

Not sure if you heard his interview with Emily Maitlis, he refused to answer questions on Careless People since he claims not to have read it and he didn't work for meta at the time. He then got shirty at any suggestion that maybe he should read it. It was all wholly unconvincing

Foto van de winkel raam van Blokker

Handig dat de oude Blokker waterkoker kapot gaat net nadat Blokker terug is

new business idea, dick and dom in da bungalow escape room

I think the horse chestnuts near me were starting to go brown and crispy when it was still June. They are usually depressingly early but this seemed a bit much

Exactly 10 years ago I moved to the Netherlands, I was not expecting to be here a whole decade later with a partner, a dog, and a whole life. It is freaking my nut!

Nailsea and Blackwell station is less than 5km away, but it is over 150m lower. Maybe a cable car connection could do the trick?

Apparently the rest of the London based media didn't notice that either so I don't think the embarrassment rests solely on you! If only someone would start a proper London focused investigative local news site to report things like this

The really bizarre thing about the delay was that apparently nobody was keeping track of progress until your extended Elledge/Foreman/Hazzard/Marshall-verse started tweeting about it looking half finished shortly before the planned opening

A view of the Rotterdam City centre skyline from the 12th storey of a building. There are skyscrapers and tower cranes busy building more. The book City of Quartz by Mike Davis sits in the foreground

I'm (finally) reading City of Quartz, and I'm not sure I could find a more suitable spot in the Netherlands to read it if I tried

Genoeg = genoeg.

This great FT piece correctly identifies the lack of stewardship in designing new settlements. We probably do need development corporations for new towns, but a more active planning later would already help a lot. I made this thread about it a couple of months back

www.ft.com/content/e5d0...

I have wondered what industrial uses might exist that could deal with the irregularities. It's not my field so I'm just guessing but I wonder about energy storage such as hydrogen electrolysis? Maybe production of heat or cold to be stored underground till later?

The consequence of temporarily super abundant energy is really interesting. As the share of renewable electricity increases, finding a use for huge excesses of electricity at irregular times will likely become very important

'Luxury homes' never fails to make my eye twitch with irritation.

Also considering that most homeowners will ultimately have their last home go through probate, only 1% vacancy is very low, given how long that process can go on for

A photo of the outside of a 5 storey building with a gym on the ground floor. It has the sign TRAINMORE Ladies

Amsterdam has decided to take a much more industrial approach when it comes to My Fair Lady

My metro station in Rotterdam has a large mural along the platforms explaining how James Watt and his steam pump were responsible for draining the surrounding land

Not only is it a UK requirement, I believe if anyone says anything, even as a joke, legally the ceremony is stopped and the objection must be checked. Registrars often do multiple weddings a day so if they don't have time you aren't getting married that day. A very quick way to destroy a friendship!

UK political parties are missing out on abbreviated phrases for names, I mean come on, who doesn't want to be called PvdA/GL?

I do wonder if being demographically dominant and getting your way electorally for years, to then start losing this to your kids generation as they start voting dependably and your cohort starts to die, has contributed somewhat

Willemstraat 28 - Mitchell van Eijk Wonen in een spacebox van 18m². Met alles erin wat je nodig hebt. Mitchell van Eijk laat zien hoe bewoners aan de Willemstraat hun krappe ruimte indelen. Mitchell heeft 10 spaceboxen gefotografeerd. V...

18m² is the legal minimum size of a dwelling in NL, it's hard to visualise. Mitchell van Eijk photographed a series of 18m² units in Eindhoven. I can say from experience it works, but only just, you need to have your life out of the home
mitchellvaneijk.nl/Portfolio/Willemstraat28

Bizarre reading this from a euro house building perspective. Here the maximum developable house size is about 200m² (≈2k sq ft), above that they become unsaleable. Even 1.5k sq feet is considered a large family home

An urban arrow tender cargo bike with a large refrigerated box (about 2m³) on the front

You see a lot of interesting bikes here in NL, this is my first refrigerated cargo bike though!

People walk, cycle, sit, and dine along a temporarily car-free stretch of Meent in Rotterdam, which is lined with retail shopfronts, planter boxes filled with trees and flowers, terraces, bike parking, and benches.

People walk, cycle, sit, and dine along a temporarily car-free stretch of Meent in Rotterdam, which is lined with retail shopfronts, planter boxes filled with trees and flowers, terraces, bike parking, and benches.

People walk, cycle, sit, and dine along a temporarily car-free stretch of Meent in Rotterdam, which is lined with retail shopfronts, planter boxes filled with trees and flowers, terraces, bike parking, and benches.

People walk, cycle, sit, and dine along a temporarily car-free stretch of Meent in Rotterdam, which is lined with retail shopfronts, planter boxes filled with trees and flowers, terraces, bike parking, and benches.

This week, the City of Rotterdam began a car-free pilot along a section of Meent—the busy shopping and nightlife street—which will be closed to all motorised traffic for the rest of the summer. Only emergency services, cyclists, mopeds, delivery vehicles before 10:30, and pedestrians can access it.🧵

While a nice street I've generally avoided the Meent for exactly this reason. I haven't seen the changes yet but I'm looking forward to spending more time there now!

A minor annoyance I am noticing more and more is architecture firms' websites displaying each project either as a black and white picture or even worse just a monochrome icon. It's almost impossible to get an idea of an office's body of work like this.

One rural Dutch municipality I know of will only provide care if you live in specific settlements. You want care, you move to where it's efficiently provided. Not sure if it's a model to copy but at least it gets beyond even more expensive care vs. more migrants to do shit jobs