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Day 2. We Start the day with a breakfast at the Davis Langdon offices, with an introduction to the management and technical backup they offer. Aside from being a nice bunch of chaps, it was interesting to have insight into a clever business model which is being used by most of the big names in London. It makes you wonder whether or not this is a model that the architectural profession could adopt itself.

Sufficiently caffeinated, we headed to the site of the Rothschild bank building under construction for a site tour with OMA,s site architect, Carol. What a fantastic building and supportive client! But we left with no illusions as to how challenging the project must have been for the team. Design and build is out, construction management is in.

Rogers Stirk harbor and partners provided our first insight into the workings of a

large practice before ARUP provided a broad yet comprehensive survey of their work with the worlds best architects and the business models they use to support this. A special thanks to Simon Anson , an expat Aussie, for setting this up via the blog! Lets hope next years group will have the same opportunity.

The DST crew found that both of these experiences provoked discussion as to the changing face of the way we practice.

Now for drinks with our peers at RIBA.

Day One: Today we were led on an expedition by Architect Ken Allison through the urban playground for the prolific and adventurous architect; London. The city is a built form of complexity, of Contextualism, futurism, pre-classicism, modernism, brutalism,and deconstructionism. Ken talks about the city as if it were his best friend, and explains its history through chalk diagrams on the sidewalk. The tour gave us insight in the formation of today’s London, our next visit would show us the future direction of London…

The site of the 2012 Olympics is surreal. Enormous man made structures surrounded by piles of decontaminated soil. The current

debate in the media is Olympic form vs. Legacy form. The Olympic form is massive and awkward, Zaha Hadid’s legacy form of a curavature aquatic centre is unrecognizable in between the additional 25,000 box seats plugged onto its ends. The main stadium by Populous once designed to legacy mode by having detachable top tier seating has now been bought by a football team and these seats will remain changing the whole intent of the design. Tensile fabric designed to wrap the circumference of the stadium to project media was value managed out by the new government, but whom have now decided to reiinstate the fabric. They are currently test fitting design options. The endless residential towers of the Atheletes village is a scene directly from a Shanghai. 2800 apartments need to accomodate 17,000 atheletes. Kitchens are currently rooms, and will be retrofitted with fixtures after the games, and sold onto the public and some used for social housing.  The importance of integrated design becomes evident through this process. Jetlag begins to hit in the afternoon, and we retire to a warm pub meal and some rest, ready for the next 9 days…

And we

are off…..nice day to leave Melbourne. Next stop Singapore.

It’s a nice day

to be leaving this Melbourne weather behind.

I can’t believe the time has come around so quickly…..personally I am

glad to be leaving Melbourne.  The weather has been hideous; I swear I saw snow falling in Swanston Street !

This time in less that 17 days we will be on route to London….sheish!

The itinerary for the ten

days is now confirmed, so what are we seeing you might ask?

Over the nest two weeks, I will blog our proposed itinerary day by day…..stay tuned.