Image credits: Fernando Guerra.

I had no intention of celebrating 5 years of blogging with such a strange and unannounced departure. As someone said, blog birthdays are soooo 2004 anyway. But a series of circumstances kept me away from writing and it wasn’t just the flu. Most of all, I needed some breathing space to put certain things into perspective.
2008 was an unusual year for my blog. For several months I’ve had the highest number of visitors ever registered in my blogging history. Some posts were quite successful and repeatedly referenced out on the web. And still, looking back, I can’t help feeling that it has lost some of its tone. Browsing back I often miss my own voice, and although I don’t want to do a blog about “me” I think that a personal blog is all about sustaining a particular voice in the global arena. About expressing your own take on life. Those are the blogs I like to read and most definitely the kind I want to write as well. So I think I need to refresh things a little bit. My agenda for 2009 is plain and simple: to blog with more personality and, if possible, with a bit more style.
I’m also starting to feel that the Blogger platform is becoming too narrow for what I’d like to do. So I will possibly be moving to a different domain in the near future. I know I’ve talked about it before and didn’t deliver, but this time I’m strongly considering a change and have both the tools and the know how to do it the way I want to. Don’t worry, I’ll be keeping you all posted on every step of the way.
A new year is upon us and it’s time to put things into motion with new ideas and some old ones as well. Things that have been stacking up in the drafts section and will now be brought to life.
A few months ago I’ve presented a series of generic posts about school architecture – in Portuguese only, sorry about that. Now I intend to publish a series of projects of new and renovated schools, recently built here in Portugal as part of a wide public plan to improve the built environment of our teaching institutions. There are some interesting lessons to be learned from these contemporary interventions. School design is being impacted by new ideas towards flexibility and a more communitarian appropriation of space. These experiences are important not only for their individual value but as part a wider process for the advancement of patterns and typologies and the establishment of better architectural practices in such an important area.
I hope you all enjoy this new year of blogging activity and would like to thank you for your continued interest and support. Enjoy!