One of the best-smelling craft activities I've ever done @museumoflondon Docklands
Awesome, exhausting day with 15 animators transforming the built environment with water features at @riba
Design with accessibility in mind - treehouses for birds that don't nest in trees designed by children at @riba
Bees, trees and veg. A great day at Westminster Abbey.
Spent the day at the National Maritime Museum with these handling objects, some curious families and an awesome volunteer
A delightful day of buboes at @charterhouseec1 with a y5 class learning about the Black Death. We made "cures."
Lovey day to talk about plague @charterhouseec1
Lovely day to talk about the Black Death
BRICK DAY for young architects club at @soanemuseum. Everyone loves bricks! (Mass produced ones and small batch, hand made ones).
Everything I wish I knew before I went for a swim at Azkuna Zentroa
Nothing to do with work, but hopefully useful to one of my favourite cat sitters, and any other swimmers who will soon be visiting Bilbao.
The pool closes at 10:30pm (half an hour before the centre closes).
The entrance to the building closest to pool reception desk is on the Iparraguirre Kalea side of the building. Go in though this entrance, up the steps and turn right. You pay for admission to the pool on the ground floor, the changing rooms are in the third floor, and the pool is on the fourth floor. It gets more confusing.
One-off pool admission is €7.10. You can pay by card. They’ll give you two receipts, one has a barcode on it. DON’T LOSE THIS ONE. You’ll need to scan it at the turnstile on the way in and out. (I found the scanning almost impossible, but on the last day had some success with the end turnstile on the right. Otherwise I resorted to giving the nice ladies on the reception desk a I’m-sorry-I’m-English face. They were very patient).
You’ll need a €1 coin for the locker. It gets returned.
The website says you must wear a swimming cap, but I saw a few people without them. Maybe they had a note from their Mum. Towels aren’t provided as far as I could tell.
There are separate female and male changing rooms. They are beautiful and spotless and cavernous. You don’t have to take your shoes off before going in (and if you do and the cleaner catches you at it, she will laugh at you and then be very kind to you when she realises you are an English idiot.) The lockers have enough space to hang up your ballgown and your suit of armour on the hangers provided -proper hangers! - and park your car.
There are ample hairdryers, they are much better than the ones at the Ibis.
The pool is a very long way away from the changing rooms via quite a convoluted route and some stairs. The signage is tastefully discreet and very easy to miss. If like me you find wandering about almost nude in an unfamiliar building and in a foreign language a bit daunting, i recommend doing a recce with your clothes on first. The door you need to go through is marked “larrialdi irteera” (emergency exit) in large, alarming letters, but be brave. Alternatively, follow a dry person in a swimming costume if you’re confident you can do it unseedily.
There are showers on the poolside for a pre-swim hose down. They’re easy to miss because they’re embedded in discreet, slim stelae of brushed steel, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the slate grey decor.
There are three pools laid out end to end; two small, warm ones which are shallow but swimmable though, eurgh, warm. And a cooler one (still a touch on the warm side) for lane swimming. It’s about 25m long. When I went, most lanes had red, yellow and green signs, and I never got to the bottom of what they meant, as everyone seemed to be swimming at whatever speed they liked. I pottered up and down and no one ticked me off or blew their whistle at me. The lanes are on the narrow side, and I did get kicked, moderately thwacked and once, as I tried to cross a lane, head butted.
The exhibitionist pool, with glass panels in the floor that make your form visible to anyone stood directly beneath them on the ground floor, is the middle pool - one of the warm ones. It’s worth a go if you can bear to be stewed while you do it. You can’t see anything of course but it’s a singular thrill nonetheless.
The whole of one long side of the pool is stepped. I repeat. All steps.
You’re allowed to leave your towel/swim bag poolside.
There is a clock, but it displays grey digits on a grey background.
The pool’s architecture is magnificent. It is worth visiting both at night and in the day to see how strikingly different it is in daylight (unlike much of the rest of the building, where it is always midnight but never Hogmanay). It is understandably popular though, and I found it was quietest between 9:30pm and kicking out time at 10:30pm.
Made a Scythian swan for work. The cat has befriended it. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/scythians.aspx https://rosiefuller.wordpress.com/category/under-fives-2/
Architects club at @soanemuseum looked at Soane's use of coloured glass, and coloured their own. https://rosiefuller.wordpress.com/category/clubs-and-projects/
Nice day for a consultation session at Kew
Families have been hard at work all weekend animating foreshore finds from the Thames at Museum of London Docklands. https://rosiefuller.wordpress.com/category/e-learning/
Today I have been working with trees and bees at @kewgardens
Shadow puppets inspired by Greek myths made by families at @soanemuseum. Endymion and Selene, Perseus and Andromeda, and a sea monster with enormous teeth! https://rosiefuller.wordpress.com/category/families-2/