Durban, South Africa

Just a few Images of Durban, South Africa.

The LEGO Beijing Olympic Arena

LEGO minifigure turns 30

It's not every day that a children's toy becomes a design icon but in the case of LEGO's minifigure, those tiny plastic male and female figurines that animate (in an inanimate sort of way) children's building block creations the world over, icon status seems oddly fitting.

2008 marks the minifigure's thirtieth year in production - an impressive milestone in design as much as business, considering that the basic look of the figurine has remained virtually unchanged since its inception - a body, three LEGO bricks long, beneath a head, one brick high, with that mini plastic toupee clipped on top.

When you consider that an astonishing seven LEGO sets are sold around the world every second, it's no surprise that the miniature builders, firemen, cops, and nurses (as well as 'celebrity' guest figures including Darth Vader and Indiana Jones) have become so ubiquitous - over four billion are scattered around the globe. If they ever decided to form their own autonomous state it'd be more populous than India and China combined. Now there's a scary thought.

Phew. . .

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Couture, la joie de vivre!

Travel should be about freedom, experimentation and the wind in your hair. Time to unearth your four-wheeled friend, the mighty skateboard. You may not have clapped eyes upon this little chap since tootling round your primary school playground but fashion demands otherwise. Skater chic is upon us.

Think America in the '70s. The Cadillac - a new and vastly improved model of skateboard - has just been released. Geeks and jocks forget their differences and come together to share their love of skating. There’s a drought in California. Dried up swimming pools become dude paradise. The Goonies is soon to be released and The Ramones are the band du jour. Life is sweet.

Mix checked shirts with retro t-shirts, don baggy jeans to house necessary knee pads, adopt beanies and gilets. Channel American vintage with a twist of Canadian workwear. Hair should be tousled and unkempt – you’ve been kickflipping off a stairset, not standing infront of a mirror. Decorate your board or rucksack with some dark comic art, and voila - you’re the hottest young thing since Rodney Mullen created the ollie impossible. Watch out South Bank.

Sunset behind the City

This is a picture of Durban with the sunset behind the City. I was out towards the oceans side when I took the picture as the City faces Eastwards.

London Festival of Architecture

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Shibuya Station, Tokyo

Architect Tadao Ando’s new Shibuya Station extension is all about making travel fun again. 'A station should be a place where visitors think "I was glad to come to this station’ or ‘that station was fascinating",' Ando says, as he examines the three-story atrium of the nearly completed building.

Ando’s design is based on what he calls a 'chichusen,' or underground spaceship. Commuters board the buried flying saucer near the top of the atrium and are carried down to the tracks at its base. 'Because this station has an atrium from top to bottom, you can easily see where you are... it gives you a sense of security,' Ando says.

An environmentalist, Ando is a strong advocate of public transport. 'Japan has the most substantial transport network in the world, even without a car you can still get around, and I repeatedly point that out, but the motor industry says: "He’s making trouble for us! He shouldn’t be talking this way." That’s the problem,' the 67-year-old says.

The environmental benefits of Ando’s new building don’t stop at getting people to leave their Toyotas at home. The design allows fresh air and light to circulate via the atrium and a ventilation shaft, and the glass-fibre reinforced concrete skin of the 'spaceship' incorporates a water-cooling system.

The combined result is a station that cuts power use and takes us back to the days when train stations were equivalent to cathedrals in the public-space pecking order.

International Poster Competition

Things look bright in Chaumont. The 19th annual International Poster and Graphic Design Festival is currently underway in the small French municipality which, over the years, has become one of the premier graphic design destinations in the world.

The event brings together professionals and student designers for interactive workshops, vibrant exhibitions, and the much anticipated International Poster Competition, which this year received 2,194 entries from graphic artists across 46 countries.

The submissions were culled down to the 127 best, as determined by an international jury of industry pros, and after a period of public display, the judges awarded prizes to the top three – no small honour considering the breadth of competing talent.

Laurent Pariente

For Laurent Pariente, empty space can be as much a building material as the painted walls and floors of the room segments he creates – able to be coloured by filtered light and moulded by structural demarcation. The manipulation of spatial perspectives by physical environments is at the heart of the artist’s latest project, Sans Titre, currently occupying the Grand Hall of the Mudam modern art museum in Luxembourg.

144 translucent coloured PVC panels, each four metres high and spread over 233 sq m, create a labyrinthine walkway, transforming the museum’s hollow central atrium into an intimate series of whimsical nooks.

The translucency lends an oddly voyeuristic element to the ordinarily open space; the movement of other visitors behind distant screens attracts special attention and adds to the rhythm of the installation.

The effect recalls in part the giant metal sculptures of Richard Serra, and like Serra’s richly textured sloping walls, Pariente’s shiny facades fascinate both as visual tricks and as ornaments in themselves – not to mention as smart mini-feats of constructive engineering.