KSIA (Cooling Tower)

My sister flew in from Port Elizabeth yesterday, so I took the opportunity to wonder around the new King Shaka International airport while I was there to pick her up.

I was pretty impressed for the most part. The terminal's pretty ordinary, but to be fair there aren't a whole lot of exciting terminals out their, since the scale doesn't really lend itself to very creative architecture. There are a couple of really interesting little features around it though, and I got quite carried away taking photos (It was really overcast though, so sorry about the picture quality).

To the far left of the main terminal is a small oval plan structure that I really liked. Its almost impossible to find any information about the airport, but from what I could work out its some sort of A.C. plant/cooling tower arrangement with security offices and an airport shuttle stop. The paving and street furniture also looks really great!

Pretty sexy. Drop me a comment if you know any details.

Then I'm Radio, then I'm Television

Wow. Its been a long time since last I wrote, and I seem to be saying that at the beginning of every second post lately. Life's been pretty busy for the past month of two. Third year is proving to be a whole lot more intense than first or second, but I'm on holiday for about five weeks over the world cup so its time for some much needed rest! (If the vuvuzela blowing ever stops that is.)

I had a bit of a motorbike accident about a month ago. When I say a bit, I mean I drove into the back of a car, stuck my head through the back window and had to have 14 stitches. No broken bones or anything major though, so I'm happy to be alive. It feels good to be this blessed!

I did a poster for a gig I went to last night, an EP launch for a local band. It was a pretty fun show, and I'm pretty proud of the poster. I've been playing around with graphics quite a bit lately.


Applying design techniques to a new medium's always really exciting. I've been doing some furniture designs and taking lots of photos, and who knows, maybe I'll be doing some fashion design one day!

I should be back for a while, I've got a lot of free time, and a lot to share, so we'll chat soon. I've given up on the splashy fen reviews though. That was just too long ago now. Sorry. Maybe next year.

Lastly, if you haven't heard the new The National yet, get it. Now. Its fantastic. Very similar to Boxer, but a little more experimental I'd say. Really great rainy afternoon music.

Splashy Fen (part 2)

Varsity started again on Tuesday for me, which explains my apparent lack of interest in continuing my little series on Splashy Fen, but I've got a minute to spare so here comes part two of Bands-I-Thought-Were-Awesome.

The Death Valley Blues Band

Yes, they are as incredible as their name and that photo suggests.

I'd never seen these guys before since they're from Jo'burg, but a friend of mine had been raving about them all day, so I went to see them on Sunday night. They played a kind of fast, dirty, blues and punk influenced rock 'n roll, finishing with a fantastic cover of King of the Swingers from the Jungle book!

The huge, eight piece band barely fit on the small stage, but they had some serious vibe and had the whole tent dancing and tapping their feet!

Go check these guys out! Now!

Splashy Fen (part 1)

Hi Internet.

I just got home from Splashy. It's really good to be home, I'm pretty tired, but feeling totally refreshed and amazing, and now that I've had a shower I'm even better.

This was the festival's 21st year and, despite some pretty disastrous cost-cutting (You thought we wouldn't notice the toilets didn't you?) it was a really great long weekend!

I thought I'd do a short series on some of the bands I watched that really blew me away. There was a huge variety of acts, and I won't mention ALL of them, but in no particular order, these were some of my favourites:

Thomas Krane

That guy in the photo isn't Thomas Krane. Thomas Krane is his band's name. Not sure how important that distinction is, but I thought I should make it anyway.

These guys are really great. I've seen them play a couple of times and was super excited to see them again. If you like your arty hipster double-barrel genres I suppose you could call them anti-folk; they're what happens when you hand a guy with some really outstanding taste in music a guitar a tell him to write you a bunch of songs. Their sound's not easy to pin down, but they play mostly down tempo folk flavoured indie rock with beautifully crafted melodies and intricate atmospheric guitar work.

Looking fittingly detached they delivered a short set that was unfortunately disrupted by power failures. Never the less, they were probably the best part of Sunday afternoon.

They're such nice guys in fact, that you can go along and download there WHOLE first album for free at ReverbNation. Enjoy!

Some more Beautiful Conrete

In my last post, I wrote about my little class trip to Pietermaritzburg, and althought the Law building was by far my favourite, there are a few other buildings on that campus that are pretty rad too. Check it out:

On a related note, I've heard an as yet unconfirmed rumor that Zaha Hadid will be speaking at congress in Jo'burg this year. I may not her biggest fan, but I'm sure she has an insane wealth of knowledge to impart.

So here's holding thumbs!

PMB Campus Law Building

On Thursday I went with my class to Pietermaritzburg for the day and, believe it or not, there is actually a fair amount of interesting things to see in Maritzburg.

The reason we were there was to check out the site for our new design project, a fine arts school on the PMB, UKZN campus. Its a really interesting project and I'm pretty excited despite the daunting task of designing an entire faculty building.

I took a whole lot of photos while I was there, so I have a few things to share, but today's post is dedicated to the Campus's Law faculty building.

Wow.

The campus is basically split down the centre by Golf Road, dividing it into the more traditional, main campus of mostly brick constructed buildings and the Golf Road campus comprising an assortment of incredibly sexy, brutalist concrete buildings of which the law building stuck out as my favourite.


I love the streaky old concrete and huge windows of the South-facing library and the brick infill panels and the planting around it and the stairwells and the symmetry and... Sho. Great stuff.

Hope you're having a great long weekend!

On a side note, I'm absolutely loving David Crowder at the moment. Certainly not your average worship band. So kiff.

Earth Hour

This is pure gold. The hypocrisy of it all literally blows my mind.

I stumbled across this article on IOL today that starts off:

Durban's Moses Mabhida Stadium will join other landmarks around the world in supporting Earth Hour 2010 when it is plunged into darkness for an hour on Saturday March 27.

The stadium will switch off its lights from 8.30pm to 9.30pm.

Yup. A whole hour. How generous of them to turn our glorious landmark's lights off when its not in use.

This is an issue very close to the heart of our esteemed mayor Obed Mlaba, he is quoted in the article as having said:

"Climate change will affect all of us and it is the poor who will suffer the most. We have a responsibility to our people to take action that reduces climate change and to call on others to do the same.

"It is in this spirit that the eThekwini municipality will be participating in WWF's Earth Hour 2010. If we are united in our call for action and we respond collectively, we can prevent dangerous climate change."

So thank you Durban. You're doing so much for the poor and for the earth by celebrating this wonderful hour of compassion. We get a whole hour.

But after that its back to having all the lights on for absolutely no reason but to draw attention to the giant piece of concrete that I suppose some people must have missed..

Sure its a very pretty piece of concrete, and I've enjoyed the wonderful atmosphere at the games played on its perfectly manicured pitch, but anyone who has driven past it at night will know that any day of the week, the constantly illuminated white basket of Moses Mabhida Studium declares her magnificent preeminence like some post modern sculpture on its massive pedestal.

So to me, in general Earth Hour seems to be a bit of farce. Like driving your Prius to the airport or using a photo voltaic solar panel to power the air conditioner. But, as a friend of mine said to me earlier, at least James Cameron will be happy.

But on that note, I really think James Cameron needs stick to ice bergs killing ships and stop focusing on people killing ice bergs..