Oh me, oh my! My raptures over Kathryn Tyler’s Corkellis House have only increased since I found out that a) it’s her own house, b) she designed and built it herself, and c) you can watch the whole process from start to finish on Grand Designs.

I knew none of this when I saw the photos the other day, but now I am triply impressed and even more mightily jealous. Kathryn has just essentially fulfilled my own dream in front of my very eyes.

And you really don’t get to say that very often.

Many congratulations to Kathryn on her fantastic work.

Linea Studio

This incredible LED chandelier was my favourite work from the Art + Design London show that’s on in Berkeley Square this week, running alongside Frieze.

This year there was a dearth of interesting contemporary work in the Art + Design Pavilion, it’s mostly filled with beautiful 20th Century art works. But there’s always a real gem or two to be found in there.

The Fragile Future dandelion head lights by Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn were the stand out works of the show and were quite rightly awarded the Moet Hennessy Prize 2010.

I first saw the Nauta + Lonneke’s LED Fragile Future lights at the wonderful In Praise of Shadows exhibition at the V+A last year, curated by Jane Withers. It’s brilliant to see them developing this idea into new forms.

The LED lights placed at the centre of the dandelion heads seem quite magical. At first it seems to be a sort of visual trick, but then you realise they are really real. The mind boggles imagining the intricacies involved in pulling these structures off.

The conjunction of the heavy concrete block in amongst the incredibly fragile dandelion heads creates a particularly powerful image of the imminent damage and destruction of these incredibly delicate forms, as well as a rather beautiful visual analogy of environmental destruction.

Good ol’ Charles Eames - would so dearly have loved the chance of hanging out with him and Ray for a day. They were such brilliant designers, with a beautifully direct creative ethos:

“Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.”

On an evening when I am frustratedly ‘picking away’ at my corner, I’m bolstered by Charles’ words that my careful, intense picking might make a difference.

My current design storytelling task is to try and find an engaging way to illustrate interconnectivity. It’s all about the connections…

As Charles said: “The details are details. They make the product. The connections, the connections, the connections. It will in the end be these details that give the product its life.”

Oh for some Eames-like divine inspiration… I’m trying to channel their playful, joyful and yet functional energy. I might have to sleep on it…

Fantastic pallet stage being built at #WOMAD by Norwegian studio Tyin with the Fourth Door Review Roots Architecture project.

Possibly the most entertaining and stylish project on show at the Goldsmith’s Design Degree show last night was Talkin’ Proper by @chuckharrison. Charlotte Harrison’s work involves creating beautiful type fonts, or Accent Navigation Tools, from the audio quality of different people’s accents. In fact each person can have their very own bespoke font of their unique voice, which seems pretty damn ace!

The really smart part of Charlotte’s project was her design performance piece, the Accent Plotter, which attracted lots of attention through out the evening. No mean feat with all the schmoozing and boozing going on at the degree show opening parties.

Experience the excitement of your voice being carried to a visible pen movement on a piece of paper. Tracking your voice’s rhythms, peaks and troughs as you mimic some of the most famous and strongest British accents. Each sheet displays a ready-made blueprint for your imitation to plot over. The graphic output allows you to directly compare your imitation with that of the blueprint.

The elegance of Harrison’s vocal type fonts, the graphic satisfaction of the accent plotter outputs, together with the witty social observation, were all rather joyful!

Very interesting article by Alice Rawsthorn on the toxicity of the colour green. As someone who is increasingly allergic to the banality of enviro buzz words such ‘green’ and ‘eco-friendly’ I’m delighted by Ms Rawthorn’s little design chemistry insight.

Keeping my eye on the prize…

Having been blogging in a professional capacity for over five years now - TreeHugger + Cool Hunting - I reckon it’s about time to get personal. Yep, I’m gonna start freestylin’ and telling you what I really think…

Twitter has been treating me kind, Facebook (no I’m not even gonna link to it) is an abusive ex, I couldn’t give a crap about Foursquare, and I’m more than a little bemused by Formspring.me. So, as if I haven’t got better things to do, like running my business, let’s see what this tumblr malarkey has got to offer.

What am I going to use it for? Hmmm… good question. Letting my hair down? Having a boogie? Applauding creativity? I think I’ll make it up as I go along. But it sure does make a pretty good looking scrap book.

Oh, by the way, if we haven’t met yet, you might l like to know that I’m a design storyteller. Sounds interesting? It is… take a looky here.