The Architectural Association Photo Library has a very long history and its earliest photographs date from the late 19th century. Just launched is its new website which provides a fantastic collection of pictures of buildings of all kinds as well as landscapes, cities and places. It also includes archives of numerous photographers whose work is in the collection, so these can be searched by name as well as by place. F R Yerbury's photographs of early modernism can be seen, as well as unique collections given to the Library with pictures by renowned architects and historians including Erno Goldfinger, Reyner Banham and Robin Evans. It's easy to browse, and the high standard of photography makes it rather different from Google image search.

What is totally unique, though, is its coverage of the AA itself. Often described as the most famous architectural school in the world, there is evidence here of the avant garde design work of its students, with thousands of images of student projects. And the life of the school is also abundantly present- pictures of lectures, workshops, exhibitions, crits, as well as the events and parties for which the AA is also renowned.

photolibrary.aaschool.ac.uk

A conversation in London a few days ago when Birmingham was referred to as a 'northern city', led me to pose and attempt to answer this question. It's as near to Bristol as it is to Manchester, and driving up from Oxford on the M40 takes an hour. Birmingham has six hourly trains to and from London on weekdays with three different train companies, while trains to those cities in the north are slower and far fewer. 

The bucolic Warwickshire countryside is on its southern edge, the delightful towns of Warwick and Stratford are very close- and the magical country houses at Baddesley Clinton and Packwood even have Birmingham postcodes. Not so grim (as) up north !

The Praca das Artes project in downtown Sao Paulo is now completely open, and the subject of a book just published by Azouge Editorial. The most ambitious intervention in the old centre for several decades, it is the work of Brasil Arquitetura Studio, led by Francisco Fanucci and Marcelo Ferraz, effectively the successor office of Lina Bo Bardi, along with Marcos Cartum of the Municipal Department of Culture.

A large urban block 'in poor health' according to Raul Juste Lores, its public open spaces are encompassed by a three dimensional composition incorporating schools of music and dance, rehearsal rooms, archives and concert auditoria. Most are housed in blocks of shuttered concrete, coloured by oxide pigments in shades of brown and red. Others are housed in revived buildings of the mid century, the project's narrative placed firmly in a reading of the historical significance of a location significant a hundred years ago, and intended as a gift to revive a needy part of the urban fabric with the pleasures of dance, music and art.

Bill Brandt, Edwin Smith and Eric de Mare were among the extensively published photographers in Britain in the 1940s and beyond. A name new to me is that of John Gay: an extensive archive of his work is held by English Heritage and published by them in the 2009 book England Observed. 

Born Hans Goehler in Germany, he adopted the name of the English playwright in 1939 and published several books, developing a career mainly with journal and advertising photography. Now there is an evident nostalgia of looking back at a lost Britain through his work, but the photographs that most appeal are imbued with a modernist sensibility- a concern with light conditions and a reflection of ideas of form. His German art education, shaped by the Bauhaus, shows through and maybe the photographs they most resemble are the commissioned work of the great Laszlo Moholy-Nagy during his brief sojourn in Britain in the 1930s.