(I am still catching up with posts.) Here we are completing the record installation at The Old Vinyl Factory. Very satisfying!

‘The King’ has turned out to be the theme of this week. Yesterday at Typolondon, Julian Zimmermann and King Bansah did a great presentation and all for a very good cause.
(Eric Spiekermann and King Bansah).

Obviously we have to use Lemmy’s ‘Ace of Spades’ lyrics to celebrate our first birthday.

I bought a new stylus for my old deck this week – first time in 10 years.  So, inspired by a visit Morag and I paid to the British Music Experience at the O2 yesterday,  I spent all this morning rifling through my singles enjoying them as much for the covers as the songs. It’s just not the same listening on iTunes or Spotify.  I just love that crackle as the needle hits the plastic…

In New York recently I finally got to see the Highline Park.  it’s the most perfect example of how an old, rotting piece of city infrastructure can be turned, by good designers, and committed people into one of the most beautiful parts of the city.  It runs from The Meatpacking District to 34th Street – a good chunk of downtown Manhattan – zig-zagging it’s way up above 10th Avenue under, over and through buildings.  It’s planted brilliantly, there are cafes along the way and great places to just sit and hang out. (more…)

On my Sunday walk down Columbia Road I came across these guys and bought my remembrance poppy from them.

All the seating and the screen for the outdoor Silent Cinema at The Deptford Project are made by the designers and artists working in the arches on the site.  Here is Zoe from Crafty Bitches making the cushions for the seats. Tickets are on sale now from The Deptford Project’s website here.

In September we’re doing our own version of London outdoor cinema at The Deptford Project.  Carlos and Joe have designed the seating from old palettes.  This is them trying out ideas.  The textile designers in one of the arches are making cushions from vintage fabrics.  We’re doing Silent Cinema – where you sit like on a plane, watching the film through headphones, soaking up the atmosphere of being in a crowd outside on a warm evening without any of the unwanted noise.  We’re having an 80’s weekend (Breakfast Club), Horror (American Werewolf) and Cult (Clockwork Orange).

It’s 2 years since we installed the train carriage cafe in Deptford that Morag designed.  Now that the recession is easing the project is up and running again and I’ve been working with a local team to populate the site – the old railway yard to Deptford High Street Station.  The arches have been cleaned up and let to local creative types – this is Insa’s Custom Paint Shop, a gallery where the artist will be custom painting cars (more pics to come).  There are furniture makers, textile designers, artists and a cycle workshop that trains homeless people to start bicycle repair businesses.

Off to NLA tomorrow (Tuesday) to speak at a Design for London event as part of the London Festival of Architecture.  Going to talk about a project I’ve been working on in The Royal Docks.  This is Millennium Mills, the old Spillers factory.  It’s HUGE, empty and a tiny part of the enormous space just East of Canary Wharf which is London’s next big development zone.  One of the biggest enclosed, man-made stretches of water in the world. An amazing place.

Just found this picture on my phone of a beautiful neon that I saw in the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.  It’s the sign from a cinema called Skarpa. In the 60s and 70s, Warsaw was awash with neon, at the urging of the government – they saw it as a way of making the city seem modern and forward thinking. Unfortunately, many of the signs were torn down after the end of Communist rule in a similar attempt to make the city seem modern.  Now, some are being restored and put back.  This one is in the museum’s temporary home – and old department store – until their new building opens in 2015.