My first entry into the practice diaries is apt. Last week I launched a new architects practice LōF architects. I use the plural, but sat in my office — a small room at the bottom of my garden with just about enough room for either me or a swinging cat, but not both — I realise that the ’s’ is more a statement of future intent than a present reality. It’s really just me on my own. 

Well, me and a few students, unlucky enough to be out of work and willing to have a go at a few competitions. I also feel slightly odd about using the word ‘practice’, but I comfort myself by imagining Bjarke Ingels back in 2005 sat in a small cat-unswingable-room deciding on calling his practice BIG — neither the irony nor the prescience of this are lost on me. I stare out of the window into the garden imagining a similar rise to global fame and stardom, only to catch a glimpse of my balding, becoming-wrinkled, forty year old reflection staring back; which cuts a decidedly less handsome frame than Bjarke’s — I rethink my expectations. The children's rabbit runs across the garden having escaped again; I spend the next hour trying to catch it. I imagine Bjarke chasing rabbits. My phone rings, a number I don't recognise, it might be a potential client! It isn’t. It’s someone who found my number and wanted to know if I had the phone number for a structural engineer that someone had recommended to him. I suggest Google, which he says he doesn't know how to use, I ask where he got my number, he says “online”. I put the phone down.

My phone rings, a number I don't recognise, it might be a potential client! It isn’t.

After the vigorous exercise of rabbit chasing, an extended lunch break flicking though a glossy architectural magazine, and the disappointment of not having the rugged handsome good looks or talent of Bjarke Ingels, I am back at my desk registering for every free online business advertising available and in return get what seems like every online advertising business that isn't free calling me back. “ Is that Mr” — always a pause — “Kaaay-pen-eeeer” as they realise that my surname is about as easy to pronounce as the name I have given my practice — “from loooooof architects”. I let the surname go, but clarify that it is L- O - F architects. “oh what does that stand for” she asks. Only twenty-four hours have elapsed since choosing the name — after realising that one of the more famous architects in the world had started using the initials, my initials (well, and his), that I had wanted to use, and purchased the domain name for (let that be a lesson) — I am beginning to regret it. “It stands for ‘line of flight” I say. In my head I sound stupid, this is confirmed by her response — a pause; followed by “oh, right, I see, that’s, err, different”. Starting a practice is exciting. I’m excited. Excited; and, if I am to be honest, having hid for most of this diary entry behind deflective humour, am a little daunted at the task ahead.I figure that now is not the time to explain the reason for choosing that name, what it means, why it is important to me, and that it comes from the work of radical French post 1968 philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari, and anyway all of the other, much better names, that I thought of were already taken. A Swedish friend of mine also tells me that in old Norse — with the accent above the ‘o’  — that I added for nothing other than graphic effect, it means ‘leaf’; which I like, but realise that an already obscure name has, by graphic accident, become an even more obscure one by virtue of it having a ‘mysterious’ double meaning in a now obsolete language.

The credit card is on fire. Insurance; CAD subscription; memberships; magazines; books; computer equipment; a brief trip to Sweden (well why not!); a new scale ruler (son No.2 snapped the other one after hitting his sister around the head with it); stationary; etc …  — some more clients would be nice; the kind that pay and don't just want you to work for free. I decide to enter a few competitions and am caught sketching an entry at the kitchen table by my seven year old son. “What is it?” he says. “It’s a shelter with a small garden on the roof and a tree that goes through the middle”. He seems impressed, puts his hand on his chin — which is what I do when I am thinking; I know what is coming next — pauses for a moment and says that he has got an idea which would make the design much better; “an elevator” he says. The shelter is only two and a half meters tall. “yes an elevator in the middle of the tree that goes up to the launch pad”. Which to a seven year old is a totally rational suggestion — who wouldn't want to climb a tree and be launched into space! I suggest he calls Elon Musk. Thats a stupid name he says, and runs off laughing. Maybe we should just let kids design cities they’d be a hell of a lot more fun.

Starting a practice is exciting. I’m excited. Excited; and, if I am to be honest, having hid for most of this diary entry behind deflective humour, am a little daunted at the task ahead. I’ve done it before and it isn't easy — long hours, low pay, stacks of administration and the work that you have to take on because it pays the bills but will never go on your website. Maybe we should just let kids design cities they’d be a hell of a lot more fun. But here’s the thing, forgetting french philosophy and old Norse for a moment, starting a new practice is for me, a line of flight. Not flight as in ‘flying’, but ‘flight’ as in ‘escape’, not escaping from something but being on a trajectory towards something — towards new possibilities. I don't believe architecture can change the world, but I do believe that it can create the conditions for new possible worlds to emerge; for worlds of new possibilities; for events to come forth; for new lines of flight to find the space to meet and form new stories. I just fancy being part of that …