Had a very successful interview earlier today at Allies and Morrison Architects at Southwark, London (the glass building in the above snap is their main studios).

The office is just across the road from the 'Blue Fin Building' (which is just behind the Tate Modern). In fact the 'Blue Fin' happens to be one of their latest projects to be opened.

Here's a few more snaps of it

Though a bit too massive I have to admit that I quiet like the way the building is grounded and reacts to the different street conditions/edges around it. Check out their website to see more of their work- http://www.alliesandmorrison.co.uk/

Went to see the Laban Dance Centre near Greenwich with Juan earlier today. This has be the best project by starchitects - Herzog & de Meuron that I have seen soo far {ofcourse as you might have guessed I have seen many : ) }. Though the Tate Modern is great to, it's not really a new building.
I loved the external skin of the building, it's colours, it's lightness.
The first building that I saw by them was the Forum in Barcelona and till date remains one of my biggest disappointments. I felt that they got too many things wrong in that building, the worst of which was the external texture of the building, which seemed almost like a rendering error in 3d max.
The Laban Dance Centre on the other hand is a much better design and the materials and finishes are well executed. Even a similar rough texture (as in the Forum) used in the Entrance Foyer is of a much better scale and provides a good contrast with the sleek outer skin.
And the finishing touch to the building is its detail of the building lands - almost hovering over the landscape.
Like at the Tate the landscape is done by Vogt Landscape designers, also from Switzerland. Check out their website - http://www.vogt-la.ch/en/
(I have to say their new book is a great way to understand their work, the website doesn't do them justice)

Cheddar Gorge and Caves

While I wait to hear from the offices I have applied to I'm spending most of my time at my brother's place, here in Weston Super Mare some 3 hours from London. Since I'm not particularly up to anything here he felt bad and decided to take his family and me to see the Cheddar Gorge just around 15 minutes from here. I was happy to get out and didn't quiet bother to check about the place online as he had asked me to do. Anyways, in my head I had almost dismissed it as probably nothing that great.

As we were getting there he told me that the world famous Cheddar Cheese is from here, the Gorge near the town is the largest in UK, that its very popular tourist spot and also has some nice nature walks around. He got my attention. But I still had no idea what to expect.I was quiet excited as we passed through the gorge - it had lots of people climbing the cliffs, others walking along its ridges - cos it just appeared out of no where in an otherwise soft and hilly English country-side. Yet I would appreciate its true beauty only when we entered one of its caves.
Since we were close to closing time and we were with his kids we could go into only one cave. So we decided to pick the bigger one - Gough's cave.
What amazed me was the scale of the cave, it was huge with large spaces inside and it just went on and on.
Apparently what we see is only a small part of what has been discovered so far and to see more you have to sign up for an adventure caving trip where they give you all the equipment and stuff.

The cave also has early stage Stalagmite and Stalactite formations. I would have never imagined seeing these here. This was a great surprise!!

Have to come back for Adventure Caving - but probably I'll wait till Summer (it was really freezing in there!!)

Bye bye Rotterdam!!!

Took this photo of the square behind my school - Blaak square - from the bus as it looped around Rotterdam on its way to London.
The grief of leaving what was home for the last two years made the hardships of this horrible bus journey - random census interview, many immigration checks, countless baggage checks and an uncomfortable bus - negligible.

Anyhow I am now in UK. Waiting to give some interviews and see what the future holds for me here.