The construction world isn’t exactly full of bloggers, but if even Sir Terry Farrell is chatting away online these days, it might be time to start taking it all a bit more seriously

Our industry has yet to fully embrace the world of blogging. Apparently there are nigh on 100 million bloggers in the world, but from my experience there are probably no more than 100 bloggers writing about UK construction and architecture. The prospect of Ray O’Rourke chatting about the latest developments at Heathrow Terminal 5 or Norman Foster filing a missive from the launch of his latest global project are some way off.

Why so? Well, there’s probably still a perception that blogs are rather trivial and silly, full of teenage angst and gossip. And most of you have day jobs to do so the idea of adding to that burden by expressing your opinions on partnering, modernist design or the latest version of the Construction Act at the end of a working day probably isn’t that tempting. And I can imagine that most practitioners would be slightly wary of mouthing off about their job/boss/client in a public sphere.

In spite of this, some industry bloggers are beginning to emerge. These range from the irreverent, such as the anonymous architect’s b2architecture (Bollocks to Architecture, to the news-led, such as a site on design and architecture called Dezeen. Judith Armitt , the chief executive of the Thames Gateway, has started one and there’s a response to her last post about the future of development east of London by none other than Sir Terry Farrell.

Some sites are springing up on sustainability, too. Mel Starrs is a consultant who has been running her own Elemental site for some years and has well and truly grasped the blogging habit – she’s travelling the world for a year but still posts regularly on environmental matters. Mark Brinkley writes very perceptively on sustainable housing on markbrinkley.blogspot.com. While on Brinkley’s site earlier this week I even got into a discussion on the relative merits of Zaha Hadid and Radiohead. And I’m expecting Terry Farrell to post a reply any moment …