really nice sunset the other night.

the first warm day of the year was here today, it reached almost +20c! so we got my bike fixed and went into town to get the finished bits and pieces for the trip home in a weeks time.

at one point we went into sanomatalo to look at some stuff and we took a quick break in the coffee shop there. there was about 40 or 50 customers in there, of which there was 15 babies! plus another five or so pregnant women. like teenage skaters who have their own hangout nearby and the goths who hang out around the corner, it seems that the mothers with newborns and expectant mothers also have their own place. there was at least 1 baby at every table, in fact one table had five! (all sitting on the laps of their mothers). it was like a scene from the twilight zone or something.

homesick

as a follow up of sorts to the fabulous “content” (see here and here), ideabooks in holland are distributing the new archis/amo/clab book called “volume”

volume no.1 incl amo - history of europe archis has reinvented itself with the help of oma and c-lab, together founding a new manifesto to explore the exciting possibilities of architecture beyond architecture. cleverly packaged in a transparent multipurpose casing designed by 2×4, the first issue features a host of contributors including visions from: ole bouman, rem koolhaas and mark wigley and comes with an extra magazine, amo’s history of europe and the european union.

more info here at archis.org.

on thursday we went back to fiskars village and had a look around. it being ascension thursday some of the shops were closed and the main exhibitions were not yet open (they open tomorrow), but we still had a good look around.

fiskars is a small artisan village about 90minutes drive west of helsinki, its got several galleries and restraunts and exhibition spaces. the main exhibitions open tomorrow and go until october i think. i saw a table there last time we visited that i want to buy, it was still there but no price on it this time. for some reason i have the impossible price of 100€ in my head for it. one day it shall be mine (picture below).

here is the flickr photo set: [2005.05.05 fiskars]

(related links: last years trip to fiskars. also, here is a bit of the road to fiskars from last week, here is the same bit of road in the full splendour of last summer)