Filofax 2002
<< Filofax 2001 / February 2003 >>
31.12.02 / 01 / blog
My actual blog began in February 2003. It picked up most things of interest, but the Filofaxes continue to be useful for precise dates.
14.10.02 / 01 / pringle brandon
Started work at Pringle Brandon, or rather 'for' not 'at' since my office was in a large stack of Portakabins at Canary Wharf, working on the new Barclays HQ which was rising opposite. I was based here until July 2004. I would be involved in almost every part of the fitout, except Level 2, but my primary work was the director and C-suite levels at the top of the tower.
I also became responsible for the five atria after a piece of creative problem-solving. The atrium designs by another consultant were approved, but then it was realised that there was seemingly no way to suspend the wonderfully elaborate hanging elements. Amazingly, the basebuild architects had provided five atria without any provision for fixings. I noticed that there were cleaning cradle tracks across the atrium ceilings. The next day there was a client meeting to explain the debacle, everyone was despondent. I burst in with a pile of overnight felt-tip sketches, and said - I know how to make it work. And it did.
Everything was hung from lightweight gantries which were themselves hung at four points from the cleaning cradle tracks. There were motors on each line to raise and lower the assembly. The challenge was, the tracks were only designed to carry a cradle with two men in - there was a strict weight limit. So the hanging elements had to be extremely light. There were even giant cheeseplant leaves made of carbon fibre.
It was designed for ten years at most, we wondered if it would last five before they were tired of it. Remarkably, some of it lasted twenty years and some of the floorstanding elements are still there.
16.07.02 / 01 / renunciation
In 2001-02 I was trying to put together a freelancing career based around web design and content editing. I needed to have three or four clients that paid sufficiently and regularly, but I couldn't find the last one that would make it work. I had a couple of frustrating near-misses. By the middle of 2002 my finances were in a bad way. I was faced with getting a full-time job in architecture again, which I really did not want as I knew how it would consume my life and leave little time or energy for the church-based projects I had set up.
In mid-July I resigned from my work for Ship of Fools - the monthly column, and hosting the discussion board. My last column was August 2002. Ironically it talks about 'portfolio careers' at the moment when mine had collapsed. I stayed with Greenbelt Insight until October when I got an architecture job. The CPU idea was stillborn, although it was and maybe is what I had always wanted to do. I knew that it would now take much longer to achieve anything.
26.06.02 / 01 / glastonbury
My only visit to Glastonbury Festival (so far), to help run the St Pauls Cathedral labyrinth. It wasn't successful - I wrote about it for Ship of Fools.
Apart from the labyrinth, Glastonbury was wonderful. I particularly liked the spiritually-oriented Green Fields. Especially the evening at the Stone Circle when everyone brought flaming torches. It was magical.
29.04.02 / 01 / alternativeworship.org goes live
The site went live, to general approval, and then the ongoing work of expanding and updating it began.
The site was no longer updated after 2010, except for some graphic changes. The movement had become too diffuse and widespread for me to keep track, although people thought that I had a full overview of it for years afterwards.
16.01.02 / 01 / greenbelt insight live
Greenbelt Insight finally went live after six months of planning. I would call in for an hour or two a week at Greenbelt's office, sitting on the sofa working on my laptop in a way that wouldn't be standard practice for another 15 years or so. The experience was useful later when I was designing corporate workplaces and was already familiar with the seemingly new ways of working.
03.01.02 / 01 / dawn ministries
From this point Dawn Ministries in the USA were paying me monthly to create alternativeworship.org. This was brokered by Andrew Jones. By being paid to do a number of hours a month, the time was safeguarded and the site was much better as a result. In a decade of existence it never needed major changes to style or structure, though the html behind did get updated.
In November I asked Dawn Ministries not to fund me any more, because I had a full-time job in architecture by then, reducing the amount of time I could spend on alternativeworship.org. In any case, the intensive work was done, it would now be about updating it.
