I whizzed down the hill from Newtown towards the Summer Hill – where my mentor for this project works

This suburb with the anodyne name is indeed very pleasant- it is that horrid cliché the urban village- made real

It sits to the south of Summer Hill station and its shops are located on four streets in a grid

In the centre there is a square. Well it’s a car park. But with a little work- a beautiful piazza!

There are some good cafes and delis, and an excellently smelling well named “summer hill wine shop”. The strangling creeper of home wares shops are gathering however. Nothing is perfect.

MZ, and his peers work in a tall skillion roofed space above a charity shop. The stair meanders up, heading south, then north, east and finally west. It charms you into taking the stairs two at a time – so much so that I carried my bike all the way up.

I explained the new name of the project and Michael repeated it quietly to himself, layers of living, living layers…

He began to edit my thoughts aloud

the shared pleasures I speak of could be classified into two;  efficiency/time and collective /sharing

That what I am looking at is collective spaces

The journey from public spaces to your front door and back again – collective spaces constructed by the route from street to court

Have I read “the intermediate scale”? – He asked

I should do hand sketches / diagrams of lobbies

Forget apartment plans; most architects can do a unit plan, but struggle to string them together- he declaimed

 

Its going to be good – I think – he murmured.