The Midnight Lunch: My favourite (mostly) design blogs and websites

Who Needs Books? by boltron-, on Flickr

This week I’ve been pretty busy preparing presentations for the Revit Technology Conference which is being held in Auckland 16-18 May (you can still register here). I’m giving 3 presentations – topics are using information as part of the design process, revit and room data sheets and the economics of BIM from a design practice perspective.  Anyway as a result of all this conference prep I’ve been pretty busy and thought this week I would share with you my favourite blogs and websites related to interior design, workplaces, BIM, innovation and collaboration. Some I subscribe to via email and check out every post, others I have in google reader and I view on the flipboard app (I still don’t know what I’m going to do when google kills the google reader – any suggestions? I love the flipboard interface for the aggregated feeds).

Happy reading!

Yellowtrace
http://www.yellowtrace.com.au/
This is one I have subscribed to for ages. One of the only Australian interior design blogs with any commerical project/product content, but also just so beautiful to look at. A little interior design eye candy in your mail box every day, its writer Dana also has a very personal and witty style. I also love design free Thursday which often focuses on art – frequently of the very kitsch and very funny variety, I often share Thursday posts with many non design friends. If you subscribe to one interiors blog, I say make it this one (as well as The Midnight Lunch of course!)

Office Insight
http://officeinsight.org/
Heaps of articles from a variety of contributers on workplace design, real estate and culture. UK based. I can always find something to read on here.

Workplace Unlimited
http://workplaceunlimited.blogspot.com.au/
I was just recommended this one recently, it is written by Nigel Oseland an Environmental Psychologist and Workplace Strategy Consultant. One post in particular was suggested to me where Oseland blogs about the comparison between workplace design and zoo design. I need to find time to sit down and read more.

Workplace Design Magazine
http://workspacedesignmagazine.com/
An interior design magazine, but focussed on the workplace. Ideas, projects, products. You get the idea.

Double Helix
http://doublehelix.me/
This is a relatively new blog, some great posts on workplace consulting – check out Crunchy Creative Clusters. But some of the other posts do seem a bit random.

New Ways of Working
http://www.newwow.net/
One I have only recently found described as combining real estate, HR and IT. A lot of posts on teleworking and sustainable workplace design. Best of all is the infographic of the week.

Office Snapshots
http://officesnapshots.com
Want a peek inside Google, Facebook or Microsoft offices – here is your website. Photos and some commentary on great office fitouts from around the world. Odd thing is, its not curated by someone with a background in design or workplaces but a teacher!

Life of an Architect
http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/
An American architect named Bob, blogs on all sorts of aspects of practicing as and just being an architect. Great writing and great sense of humour. One of my favourite posts was one for Valentines Day Architect+Architect=??

Green Futures
http://digbyhall120.wordpress.com/
Another quite new blog, this one a local Sydney blog on architecture and sustainability. I like the idea of daylighting the Tank Stream.

Dezeen
http://www.dezeen.com/
Is this the webzine for architecture and design? Does anyone who is an architect or designer not already subscribe?

Australian Design Review
http://www.australiandesignreview.com/
Get the local architecture and design news.

ThinkBIM
http://revitall.wordpress.com/
News of all things BIM with a focus on interoperability.

Practical BIM
http://practicalbim.blogspot.com.au/
This blog is all that its title promises – a practical view of BIM. Posts are well written article on many aspects of BIM project delivery, very much focussed on working with BIM in a real project environment and not just doing crazy techy things because we can.

BIMFix
http://bimfix.blogspot.com.au/
Another very practical BIM site, which aims to discuss things BIM which “need fixing”.

Seth’s Blog
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
If you have read Seth Goodwins books, you should read his blog. Or if you haven’t read the blog anyway. Just a couple of paragraphs of wisdom on all sorts of stuff every day. I would describe the common thread of the stuff as being about communication and dealing with other people – something we all need to do all the time.

Innovation Excellence Weekly
http://www.innovationexcellence.com/
A good place for articles on collaboration and also often technology. It is where I came up with the name for this blog.

The other sites I frequently seem to find myself on are the business sites, Inc and Forbes.

What are your favorites? Perhaps you can put me onto some great new blogs – there seem to be more and more starting up all the time.

PS On Saturday I’m going to be in the audience at TEDx Sydney, so next weeks post will feature my thoughts on something great from the day – there are so many interesting presentations I think it will be hard to choose! They are simulcasting live to satellite events at heaps of places so if you have nothing to do on Saturday think about heading to one of the satellite events.

Image credits:

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic License  by  boltron- 

8 thoughts on “The Midnight Lunch: My favourite (mostly) design blogs and websites

    • Hi Adrian
      I’ve really enjoyed some of your posts on workplace issues (I shared Creative Crunchy Clusters on Linkedin – it was very popular), but I guess I found some posts such as the recent hospital complaint one, a bit off topic and not necessarily of interest to me. Perhaps though some people would say the same about my blog depending upon their interests.

      • Oh you saw that Post it was actually only a temporary thing to get the attention of a hospital here in London regarding their poor service. It got there attention alright. So I then removed that post. Normal service resumed so not so Random. 😉 best & Thanks!

    • Yeah…I did check out feedly but I like the flipboard interface better. For me it is not so much google reader itself as the way I can interact with it through flipboard. There have been a lot of requests on the flipboard forum for them to incorporate an aggregate reader/magazine option so fingers crossed!

  1. Ceilidh, many thanks for the mention and I hope you get time to read my blog on “The Workplace Zoo” and others like “It’s a Jungle in There”. Afterall we are but social animals.

    • Thanks Nigel. Those are actually the 2 posts I have read, I thought they were great. I need to find some time to read so many others you have written, just browsing through looked like some interesting articles.

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