Round-up

1. 26 recommendations for August are here.

2. Open House weekend is rapidly approaching. For those who don't know, the eponymous charity every year manage to persuade over 600 buildings in London to throw open their doors for eager architectural busybodies to have a snoop round places normally inaccessible. This year's event is over the weekend of 15-16 September.

Such building voyeurism is only possible thanks to volunteers to act as stewards and guides, and as ever, there's a need for more people. Bonus is that, once you've done a shift volunteering, you can jump the queue at other buildings. So it's well worth doing. You can sign up here.

This year, should you wish, you'll be able to come and find me at 120 Fleet Street, the old Daily Express building, now one of the homes of Goldman Sachs.

3. The Corley Conspiracy is also rapidly approaching. A new opera by Tim Benjamin of Radius, and directed by Sean Starke, it has been comissioned by the London Design Festival (itself also rapidly approaching...), and is on at the Purcell Room between 19-21 September.

26 (OK, me) are helping out by looking after the programme, which will feature discussions on the themes of privacy and surveillance that the piece touches on. You can get tickets from the Southbank centre now.

4. Adam Murphy, talented animator and much more besides, has a show of his portraits, sketches and street scenes opening in Oxford from this Sunday. It's called 'Character' and is at the Jam Factory. In an added bonus, Adam will be around for a lot of the show to capture visitors' likenesses. Go see.