Nicholas Boys Smith
@boys_nicholas
Founder @createstreets Trustee @CommLandTrusts. Author #NoFreeParking #HeartInTheRightStreet etc. Faber est quisque fortunae suae. London
Coming to a bookshop near you soon! Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the book shops, here comes #NoFreeParking The paperback! Obviously please tell all your friends and family to buy 10 each😉 amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/178946…
Why shouldn't Bronx Community College have the very best? Part of the wave of new classical buildings sweeping America. North Hall & Library by RAMSA based on the St. Genevieve Library in Paris
Students at the @CreateStreetsFN Summer School get a side order in traditional bell ringing in beautiful Sherborne …
A huge joy to work with @RobertKwolek @ADAMarchitectur (who lead the architecture module) other @createstreets colleagues @RoseJericho @shepherdmg & James Armitage on the @CreateStreetsFN Summer School. And some of the feedback is humbling. Changing lives & improving places
It was an immensely rewarding week teaching on the @createstreets Summer School in Sherborne for the third year in a row, the architecture module masterfully led by @ADAMarchitectur. It's often been the highlight of my working year and this year is no exception.
Also a shame they stuck in in a service station for the A1
What price civic pride ? On the left: French town hall in a modest & not hugely prosperous town On the right: Cambridgeshire County Council’s recently opened new offices.
What a truly depressing pair of comparisons..
What price civic pride ? On the left: French town hall in a modest & not hugely prosperous town On the right: Cambridgeshire County Council’s recently opened new offices.
Empty homes are back in the news. The Prime Minister said we can use them to house immigrants. Is he right? Do we have an empty homes problem in the UK? If so, what should we do about it? Can we better use empty homes to house the waiting list or immigrants…🧵
Small town French car park. Note how the street trees and the stones entirely transform the mood, even under a slate sky.
English bond seen in France. Cultural appropriation. Outrageous.
French public realm quality is staggeringly better than in UK, even in quite modestly prosperous towns. Much more urban greenery & a higher proportion of good stones & less tarmac in town centres. Fewer Street Scars cars as well. Though I have found one on my drive south.
Many doors. Narrow fronts. A street which echoes itself & rhymes as you walk along it. The platonic ideal of Gentle Density
Lights are on
A quick blog & 🧵 on the relative unimportance but not total irrelevance of empty homes. I should have added that if we had sufficient homes, a higher proportion of them would be empty!
Empty homes are back in the news. The Prime Minister said we can use them to house immigrants. Is he right? Do we have an empty homes problem in the UK? If so, what should we do about it? Can we better use empty homes to house the waiting list or immigrants…🧵
Call me old fashioned (people do) but I would like my prime minister, or his press minions, to use grammar correctly! “Whom” Standards matter.
We're taking action to stop migrants working illegally as food delivery drivers.
The hectoring & naive tone, ahistorical hanging arrangements and sheer ugliness of some of the exhibits doesn’t help either.
one thing caused by social media/the internet/etc is that everyone now feels entitled to being A PERFORMER and this has massively changed how we consume art passive forms have all plunged: gallery visitors down ~50% since covid (an insane stat!!) cinemas not selling tix.....🧵
I spoke to Bruce Buckland about the @createstreets journey, about how to make better places and why it matters. What do @createstreets & @CreateStreetsFN do? How do we “solve” architectural education? How do we improve planning? youtube.com/watch?v=-dKDIL…
Love this new paper street. Thank you to Hugh and Andrew of @ADAMarchitectur & @RobertKwolek
… with a street on top ..
What was once good enough for agricultural labourers, is now beyond the aspirations of most of the middle classes. We need more homes and more attractive homes.
It's time to weave our towns back together, to restitch our streets and to undo the many crimes of traffic modernism
A lot of our problems in our cities can be traced back to this.
Dark days. Dark, dark days.
Don’t say we didn’t try to warn you.
I will be talking on @TimesRadio in a few minutes about empty homes. Are they the answer to our housing needs? Do we have too many of them? What can we do about them?
Paltry not poultry!! Sorry. Autocorrect 🐔
… still barren after ~20 years for much of the years and pretty poultry even in high summer. I guarantee the Wimbledon Stadium will never look as verdant as in CGI land. As for the public ? They would almost certainly MUCH prefer …