Default Street

When walking down ‘Default Street’ with its countless often irrelevant signs, the ad hoc appendages to lampposts, the mismatched and usually ugly street lighting, you do wonder what’s actually gone wrong here. It’s often a question I ponder about and usually provokes me to imagine what it could be like. But really why are our streets so damned incoherent, almost devoid of beauty at street level?

Since the explosion in personal transport modes i.e. the car, our streets have become more traffic gyratory systems than places we actually like to walk along and inturn the pavements have been reduced in width, lighting degraded to a utilitarian motorway standard and the road signage increased to confusing proportions.

Sometimes you do see pockets of sense where the power’s that be have seen the light and understood the importance of visually clean coherent street. Unfortunately this usually is more than often a token effort targeted at tourism infused areas rather than a wider ranging all encompassing urban design approach.

What is distinctly lacking are robust higher quality and better designed systems. This applies not only to its street furniture but the quality of the materials and execution of the design intent. Landscaping issues are often overlooked too or seen as an unnecessary ‘ luxury’ expense , instead we just get a few random tree’s and hope for the best. It is this lack of conviction that find most frustrating yet other European countries have a much better understanding of urbanity yet we still carry on churning out ugly lampposts, horrible railings and terrible footpaths blanketed without care or attention to our poor streetscape.

To be fair though things are improving 'a little' and I do believe or have faith that our rather ad hoc off the peg approach is becoming less prevalent but still walking down ‘Default Street’ you can see what I mean when it comes to bringing things together, the lack of finesse and clumsiness of it all and distinct lack of pride.

Some would argue that this ‘urban grit’ is our culture, that in some way’s its ugliness breeds beauty but then you could say that where has the beauty been personified? The real reason the stagnation in design of our streets is lack of investment and lack of drive or desire to design decent spaces and objects that enlighten our senses. We are given an economical answer to a lamppost for example but is it a thing of beauty? No. We need to work harder to build an environment that approaches design again as a saviour of our streetscape and our architecture and we need to invest in proper master plans that understand locality and to find the best solution , banishing the term ‘acceptable’. It’s very simple really.

Where is the love?

I'll keep this short but my concern is that architect's should perhaps think about the architecture before the science experiment.

Space Sky/Architecture/Christian Harrup Design

Spacesky is a novel approach to public space that envisages a public amenity in the sky that inturn will give back to the local community a new park containing various functions for local use.More to come..

spacesky by christian harrup design

SL01 stack link chair by Christian Harrup Design

SL01 chair by christian harrup design

This is the sneak preview of the SL 01 chair stack link chair which is  based on an old concept of mine but has been reworked. The aim of the project is to have a chair that is ultra minimal in appearance yet designed to be functional and elegant institutional stack/ link chair in it's  form and construction.

It features a unique feature in the armed version inspired by holding hands. This application allows for the seating to be arranged and rotated in a multitude of variations and arrangements not possible with fixed solutions while still adding an element of control to the user.

The polyamide fibreglass seat features a flat steel frame in chrome or lacquered epoxy.

Roller Deck Design

Meaning ;


1.The way that designers pick and choose from the vast array of information and imagery to come up with an ‘idea’ but try to change it slightly to fool themselves into thinking it’s original.
2.Lack of imagination
3.Very Common.
4. I hasten to add we all do it but we are all in denial.

The Emerald City?

This is my first Blog about issues that interest me in design and architecture. With architecture being one of my primary interests in life, I am passionate about its ongoing evolution and the impact it has so many aspects of our everyday lives. My first foray ( or rant ) will be on some issues that perhaps people have overlooked or not noticed in our towns and cities and something to possibly think about the next time you walk around where you live.


The built environment is at the moment going through a change.
The architectural professions tirelessly working towards a more sustainable future are trying to make our buildings more intelligent, in a sense worthy of this planet if you like. Of course sustainability is definitely a worthwhile cause and I will not deny that, but are we neglecting or even defacing our cites inadvertently in the process while searching for this unknown nirvana.
What I am writing  about is the rather worrying trend and over use of green, blue and minty coloured glass that our architects are for some reason specifying in abundance in virtually every sector, every use you can think of. I have noticed over the years that this is becoming the norm yet really, is it necessary and why are we doing this?
Call me old fashioned if you will but when I think of glass in buildings I think transparency, clarity. I think of great glasshouses, crystalline clear glass office and public buildings. I really don’t think of Green minty profusions used in a blanket, almost all encompassing manner across our cities.
So disturbing is this trend that even on structures where I see no need for green glass ie a lightbox for example we get it again! it's almost as if colourless glass suddenly doesn't exist any more.
Glass is naturally green through impurities in the form of iron oxide that is used in modern day glass to reduce glare and heat absorption. But these 'impurities' should be seen as just that, an impurity.
In the planning process elevations and renderings usually depict glass to be a transparent almost colourless shiny material, ideal images usually with a rather large dusting of artistic licence.
But then something goes wrong. What we were tricked into believing was a rather lovely glass building has now transformed into something else. This amnesia among architects and planners shows that they have fundamentally missed the point that the glass we thought we were getting is infact green Shock/Horror!! Surely this isn’t right?
 Would we accept it if a white wall was a lurid colour? I doubt it, so why is it acceptable when glass changes colour from originally perceived. It’s a sort of denial that I suppose is something most people choose not to think about or notice, well not yet anyway until perhaps it is too late.
My fear is we are so in love with the fully glazed office building that we are forgetting the big picture in that what it actually looks like in our cities as a whole. Their composition within the rest of the urban fabric and perhaps the damage it is causing especially when it's not quite what we were expecting. Would it not be sensible to set guidelines and rules that control the colour pigmentation in glass or or at least keep it to the bare minimum to reduce this unnecessary visual jarring. I do believe that this has to be addressed not only to save historic views and buildings but because I do believe that it will deface many of our cities and towns for generations to come. Glass technology already has glass that performs in the same manner as its greenish counterparts so an argument otherwise is fairly weak yet we still keep getting it again and again and again...it's becoming a broken record.
Are we turning into an emerald city, perhaps we are but is that really what we want?