Monday, 13 October Design · Cities · Materials Subscribe

Fieldnote

Writing about the things people build and the places they build them

Commuters crossing the concourse of a large city railway station

Cities

Why every new station looks the same

Three architects, one procurement rulebook, and a decade of identical concourses. What the standardisation of rail architecture costs the towns that get a new station and the ones that never will.

Rowan Ellis 14 min read

Four stories are written in full. The remaining five are sample headlines showing the card layout, and they are deliberately not links.

A designer drawing by hand on tracing paper

Design

Drawing by hand in an office that runs on CAD

Three studios explain why the first sketch still happens on paper.

Priya Raman · Sample

A minimal interior wall with a round clock and a small sideboard

Interviews

“We spent two years on the door handle”

A conversation with the team behind a library that took a decade.

Rowan Ellis · Sample

A glazed office interior with pendant lighting

Design

Open-plan offices are back, and they are quieter this time

Acoustic design has finally caught up with the floor plan.

Jonas Weber · Sample

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