Remember that this advice comes from people just as flawed as you. We do our best to practice what we preach. We don’t always succeed. But we’re better for trying, and knowing how good the benefits feel inspires us to keep going.
Read MoreReflecting on Man Up
When I told my brother I'd started rehearsals for the performance, he said, "It's not something I'd have expected you to do." He wasn't the only one. But I'd been with Man Up the whole way and, if I'd departed from it at the last, there was no excuse I could have given that I'd ever have been happy or comfortable with.
Read MoreBuilding Homes of the Future Today
People are fallible. Daily life and unexpected changes in routine get in the way. We put things off for a minute, and a minute turns into an hour or two or more. We forget to open windows, or we open them and we forget to close them again. We can learn to use an overly-complicated letterbox, but we struggle to operate our buildings properly.
Read MoreHow are you today?
Appearing vulnerable, especially in certain social circles or in the workplace, is something that many of us feel we can’t do. We may not recognise the feelings to give proper voice to them, but that only makes it more important to be honest with the people around us.
Read MoreHealth warnings for buildings?
It's perfectly possible to construct buildings resilient enough to face this oncoming challenge, but the sad truth is that few are. There shouldn't be an excuse, but that's a post for another time. The even greater challenge is retrofitting existing buildings in a sensitive and holistic way to provide them with that resiliency.
Read MoreRaw Craft and Raw Emotion
Usually, my reaction to celebrity deaths reported in the news is one of detachment. It says a lot, then, that I was genuinely moved and taken aback by Bourdain's death last week. The world felt a poorer place; I felt upset and vulnerable. This didn't seem like something that should have happened to the person I saw in that video.
Read MoreMaking Yourself 'At Home'
The development of homes from single-roomed halls in which every household activity took place to multi-roomed houses is particularly fascinating. In the larger houses of the very wealthy, kitchens and dining rooms would be so far apart that one stately home owner resorted to installing a railway in his property in an effort to deliver food to the table while it was still warm.
Read MoreInsulate Magazine, Issue 18
After reviewing ecobuild in issue 17 - and noting a lot of school groups in attendance, as well as several stands with confusing technical detail - this month I decided to look at whether building physics and performance would be a useful addition to the school curriculum.
Read MoreBrewing Up a Side Project
The front page of this website says I subscribe to the idea of side projects, yet since embracing self-employment I’ve provided little evidence of anything remotely approaching a ‘side hustle’. Today that changes. Today I’m proud to introduce you to a little-known thing I like to call ‘beer’.
Read MoreMan Alive!
Our social groups should have a positive effect, not hold us back. We need to share our stories because we are individual. One of the big messages of Man Up is that we share experiences, not opinions. Bottling things up and being someone we’re not is unhealthy. We need to laugh and cry and feel things because we are human beings.
Read MoreInsulate Magazine, Issue 17
Also in issue 17, I take a look at the language of insulation, and ask whether the traditional model of manufacturers delivering CPD presentations really works. These topics never go out of fashion, and are ones I'd particularly like to encourage feedback on, from all readers.
Read MoreMaking Space(s) for Creativity
Sky-high land prices and poor quality existing building stock make it difficult for anybody to find healthy, comfortable and affordable places to live. For people in the creative industries, finding both places to live and studios or performance spaces that are fit for purpose is particularly difficult.
Read MoreBalancing Design and Specification
It should be second nature to check the age of 'news' these days, but I was too interested in the subject matter to immediately pay attention to the date of publication. As a piece on how buildings fail their users, it felt every bit a story made in 2018. To discover that it was actually written four and half years ago only served to show that performance gaps have been a problem for a long time, and lessons are slow in being learned.
Read MoreLight in the Middle of the Tunnel
In the peaks of its different phases, Array represented a battle of wills and philosophies: order vs chaos; geometric vs fluid; bleak colourscapes vs rainbows. At one point, a dazzling light display was instantaneously supplanted by a static, imposing red and black colour scheme. The sense of oppression, of an unseen authority reasserting its dominance, was palpable.
Read MoreInsulate Magazine, Issue 16
Readers of the magazine will likely be familiar with conventional uses of insulation in construction, so this month I drew on experience of questions about more unusual applications for thermal insulation products. I also look at the new external wall insulation (EWI) system from Mauer UK, which uses offsite manufacturing techniques to make EWI installation a year-round possibility.
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