Pudding Lane Building Surveyors

05/12/2023

Cracking day for an inspection on Bruny!

04/08/2023

40,000 decisions - yoiks!
Spot on article that should be required reading for all of us pondering the renos.

It's the running joke of home renovation shows — no-one delivers their project on time or on budget. Host of Restoration Australia, and professor of architecture, Anthony Burke warns it's not the only area where would-be renovators and home builders come unstuck.

07/10/2022

Fancy a dip anyone? The Sky Pool in London features in Part 16 in our Occasional Series on Engineering Marvels, and it is amazing.
It’s 35 m high, with a 360 mm base spanning 15 m between two residential buildings, 180 mm walls to accommodate hydrostatic and wind loads, and slides on bridge bearings at either end to accommodate differential movements in the buildings. It weighs 200 tonnes when full and it’s made of acrylic, which has a lower refractive index than glass so there’s less view distortion and means it’s well worth pulling out the quality goggles. The engineering ingenuity does our heads in.
The Sky Pool was designed and constructed by Eckersley O’Callaghan (read more here: https://www.eocengineers.com/en/projects/sky-pool-246) and has been shortlisted for the The Institution of Structural Engineers Structural Awards 2022, announced in November (see here: https://www.istructe.org/structural-awards/projects/2022/sky-pool/).
Photos by Simon Kennedy Architectural Photography, Polymer Technology, and Eckersley O'Callaghan.

29/07/2022

Finding it hard to recruit so thought we'd make one at our cloning facility on kunanyi.

08/07/2022

Best use of shipping containers we’ve seen yet!

calaak'oncept, a company specializing in cargotecture, designs and distributes swimming pools carved in shipping containers.

24/06/2022

We finished off a great little extension this month down on the Tasman Peninsula - a favourite part of Tas for a least 40% of us Pudds. Love the linkway to a brand new bedroom with a killer view and a deck for the dog, perfect for lazy Sunday mornings.
Elegant design by West Elevation Design and excellent construction by Eaves Building Contractors. Photos by Pudding Lane and the owners.

02/06/2022

Here in Australia, room height has to be 2.4 m in habitable rooms and is one of those apocryphal provisions in the National Construction Code that no-one really knows why it is, just that it is.
In the process of writing a performance solution on room height, we discovered that the earliest record of a specification for room heights appeared in the Act for Rebuilding the City of London (1667). This was enacted to guide the rebuilding effort after the Great Fire of London and effectively marking the emergence of modern building surveying as we know it today.
Room heights had to be 2 m in back street hovels and up to 3.2 m in front street manors. Given the lack of shower and washing facilities and the presence of candles and chamberpots in these rooms, it seems a driver of higher ceilings may have been to manage odours. Whether these room heights were selected because those in less salubrious dwellings were expected to grin and bear it or those in wealthier homes were smellier, we're not sure...

"Visit" by Maria Lvovna Tikhova-Finkelstein

20/05/2022

We came across this thoughtful piece by Anthony Clarke of BLOXAS on designing and modifying dwellings for the changing physical, cognitive and sensory abilities of people who call them home. With the release of the National Construction Code 2022 and its incorporation of accessible features for dwellings just around the corner, this is a timely article. It vividly demonstrates the surprise bonuses that can spring up when the design is considered, empathetic and enabling, both for those living with a disability as well as their families.

Anthony Clarke explores four house designs that have been guided by an empathic process – sometimes with unplanned but advantageous outcomes.

06/05/2022

Who'd have thought a boring old amenities building could be glammed up? Dock4 Architects and Fairbrother have extended and refurbished the Gunn Oval changerooms in Pontville and they look fantastic - bright yellow interiors and bright yellow concrete pads at the doors provide inspired luminance contrast. And best of all, bright yellow cladding that triples as a rooftop barrier, security mesh, and total blockwork bling!

17/04/2022

Risky time of year to be a lost chocolate bunny…
Have a great Easter!

08/04/2022

We welcomed Peony Pavilion, a new cocktail bar and restaurant, to North Hobart's restaurant strip over summer.
Of course cocktails pretty much demand fabulosity, and Oramatis Studio have well and truly delivered on the design, with Construction 3 providing an efficient and classy fitout. Looks rather perfect for a Friday evening drink!