gablet & label

view from the office

Book Cover, Harvest House Constructiuon Guide by MAterial Cultures, shows persons assembling a timber structure

Here is your complete guide to build a "Harvest House".
By the fantastic Material Cultures.
No excuses. The future is biobased, you are as well. Get active.
materialcultures.org/2026-hh-cons...

Library date with Sir Bas!! 📖 Swung by Basil Spence’s Swiss Cottage Library (1964) on a sunny Saturday; pleased to be pondering buildings at home again. Light and airy, plus excellent stair game. I’d liked if we still had the pool:

previous photo mine; here's a pic of Jacobs carving, courtesy of Library and Archives Canada

detail of Creation, by Haudenosaunee sculptor Joseph Jacobs, 1986, entry to House of Commons

this panel depicts Sky Woman falling out of the old world into the new, caught by birds and carried down to rest on turtle's back

roofers graffiti

Callan's hand highlights a neat fold in layered rocks of unknown identity

A #FridayFold in Franciscan mélange on Perle's Beach, Angel Island, CA. ⚒️

Not sure I can make this in person but perhaps of interest to folk keen on the processes of construction.

csca.aha.cam.ac.uk/building-sit...

I like the use of tray here! The parapet hides the eaves of the roof like the lip of a tray or other vessel.

I’m familiar with corbel table, corbel tray I’d never heard!

corbel tray because it supports a parapet?

Thanks Marta!

Photo of the base of a window from the interior showing the wall reduced in depth. Sunlight on floor in the form of a pointed arch of two lights.

text from A French-English Dictionary, 1650, Randall Cotgrave, reading in part “Allege: An ease, lightning, disburdenment, easement, help towards the bearing of a burthen; a refreshment; asswagement; comfort, solace; any thing that lightens, or lessens a charge, care, grief, or mischief.”

‘allège’ as an architectural term refers to the local reduction in the masonry wall below a window

French, meaning a “disburdenment, easement, help towards the bearing of a burthen… any thing that lightens, or lessens a charge” (1650)

🧵

Sunlight grazing across the deeply rusticated stone facade of Palazzo Gondi, Florence, with arched and square windows.

A grilled window of the Palazzo Medici, Florence, surrounded by a rusticated arch and set in deeply rusticated stone wall, with a dark blue Fiat Cinquecento parked in front.

Looking up towards a corner of the Palazzo Rucellai, Florence, showing pilasters, arched windows and rustication, and a projecting cornice against the sky, the side facade just visible as a plain wall showing that the main facade is a thin veneer of stone.

Rusticated Renaissance palazzi, Florence.

A square-ish marble panel in two sections, once part of a pluteus - a solid partition eg between two sections of a church. Under a guilloche border at the top, two fantail doves face the higher section of a cross, also with guilloche decoration. At each side of the top arm of the cross are discs with a floral motif within, and at the ends of each arm of the cross are larger discs with concentric circles. Facing each other either side of the lower section of the cross, with tongues out licking it, are a unicorn with a horn on the left and a lion with a mane on the right. Under the unicorn's neck is a tree, representing the myth of such an animal getting its horn stuck in a tree when fighting a lion.

#ReliefWednesday
One of my all-time favourite reliefs from Tuscany.
Beneath pair of fantail doves, lion and unicorn w lovely feet are licking a cross.
C 8-9 pluteus (dividing structure made of large slabs).
Originally in church of San Concordio, Lucca, now in city's Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi.

Cheers Theo, we have

A window at the foundation of a Gothic-revival building is headed by a moulded pointed arch with carved tympanum, a gablet above. Below is a recessed moulded panel, a modern intervention expressing the allège, added when this opening was converted from a door.

But regardless of the particular expression, they all—face-bedded slab, chequers, polygonal work, basketweave—have one thing in common: all are carefully chosen rhetorical gestures communicating structural irrelevance.

central gable of an orange brick and brown sandstone Romanesque-revival building. Windows in second-storey are headed with lintels and relieving arches; below each is a panel, subtly distinguished from the surrounding running-bond by a basketweave pattern.

At Annapolis Royal a change of brick from running-bond to basketweave identified this thinner bit of wall.

upper part of a brown sandstone Romanesque-revival building with clocktower. Windows in second-storey and central gable are headed with segmental arches; below each is a panel of stone distinguished from the surrounding coursed rockface by exceptional height.

gable end of a pinkish-brown sandstone Romanesque-revival building. Windows in second-storey are headed with lintels and relieving arches; below each is a chequered panel, squares of stone in stack-bond.

Dominion Architect Thomas Fuller adopted the articulated allège as a motif in his post offices of the 1880s & 90s. At Smiths Falls he used tall, shallow panels of face-bedded stone; at Almonte it was chequer-work, perfectly square stones arranged in a stack-bond.

looking up at a buff sandstone Gothic-revival building. One pair of windows sit above another, separated by a panel of polygonal stonework. A single pointed surround with hood mould and irregular rybats contains the whole.

Chilion Jones and Augustus Laver, designers of East and West Blocks in Ottawa, made expression of the allège into a defining feature of these buildings: a recessed panel of polygonal-work is sheltered by the colossal order of a Berea sandstone arch rising through 2 stories.

Loads in masonry structure are diverted by arch or lintel around openings, into the solid piers on either side. Where openings are vertically aligned the wall can be thinned to a non-load-bearing screen. Structural rationalism, economy of means, and maybe a nice nook to sit in the sun.

Photo of the base of a window from the interior showing the wall reduced in depth. Sunlight on floor in the form of a pointed arch of two lights.

text from A French-English Dictionary, 1650, Randall Cotgrave, reading in part “Allege: An ease, lightning, disburdenment, easement, help towards the bearing of a burthen; a refreshment; asswagement; comfort, solace; any thing that lightens, or lessens a charge, care, grief, or mischief.”

‘allège’ as an architectural term refers to the local reduction in the masonry wall below a window

French, meaning a “disburdenment, easement, help towards the bearing of a burthen… any thing that lightens, or lessens a charge” (1650)

🧵

thats news to Kashechewan

In York for What’s the Point Two 2026 and have been to admire my friend, the late Rory Young’s work at the Minster. We worked together in Fife in the nineties and I’m struck by how much I miss him.

The extraordinary brickwork of Our Daughters of the Sacred Heart atop a green hill in Kensington.
Designed by architects #hennesseyhennessy as extensions (1920’s?) at each end of the pre-existing convent, the virtuoso arches & circles form beautiful open porches
#sydneyarchitecture

Bring back republican simplicity

The reason everyone's In boxes are unmanageable and we all have a bazillion unread messages is because email eliminated postage stamps. It turns out that postage was congestion pricing for communication.

For 40+ years, over many federal elections, closer economic integration with the US was debated. A perennial national issue, on which every leader is expected to opine. That integration is now being used as the stick to beat us. Nobody is saying that China is trustworthy, only that the US is not.