entschwindet und vergeht

2012-01-27T09:54:00.000Z

A partial reading list from 2011

2011-12-31T13:54:00.002Z

I use Google reader, which means that I have a big long list of posts that I was too busy at the time to read, but which I went back to later. The following list is of some of the most interesting things I read in the last year, by no means exhaustive or even remotely comprehensive, but hopefully of interest nonetheless. In a year in which some of the best voices online stopped writing at all, for whichever and whatever reasons, then it's nice to know that some people were still working, discussing and working out ideas in that now-decrepit medium.

Between Channels
This unnamed blogger has been sharing with us their collections of vernacular architectural photography from the post-war period. Dusty & lugubrious, their hoards of images are glimpses of the frequent surreal drabness of Britain's social democracy experiment, of frequently beautiful marketplaces and new town shopping centres.

Stevenage and Wembley 68
Concrete
Covered Markets of Olde England
Friars Square Shopping Precinct (part 2)

The Medium and the Message
Technically this isn't really a blog, in that it is the online page where BBC employee Adam Curtis posts up notes from his researches, but that's not such a problem when it is so relentlessly interesting. In 2011 Curtis became pretty controversial amongst the left for his sprawling, ludicrously ambitious, but frequently tenuous 'All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace', but he also regularly posted up fascinating archive videos dredged up from the BBC archive, reflecting upon the various unfolding shocks of the year.

Sadat's Dat
The Curse of Tina (I)
The Curse of Tina (II)
Dream On
The Ghost of the Colonels

Fantastic Journal
It wasn't really a good year for architecture writing online, as output slowed to pretty much nothing more than a dribble. One bucker of that trend was Charles Holland's 'Fantastic Journal'. Charles managed to keep the 'mordant photo essay' flame alive, as well as various posts which were great reading, including a really great piece on the palm house at Kew Gardens.

This is a Gateway
Guide to the Not So Modern Buildings of London
Pre and Post Modernism
Around the World

Bauzeitgeist
Another trend-bucker, Bauzeitgeist was both reasonably new and reasonably prolific, with some excellent analyses of American architecture, and also, perhaps more useful for ignorants like myself, of African architecture and urbanism. Strong, systematic and frequently excoriating.

Container Stores
Guardian of Guangzhou
The Corporate Parks of Kevin Roche

Charnel House
Speaking of systematic; nobody has has been providing more in-depth architecture writing than Ross Wolfe. A brilliantly generous scholar of early Soviet architecture, he has been posting up all manner of essay, research, analysis and image scans, which if you can give it time is unsurpassed. However, if ultra-left purism is not your thing then you might find his frequent arguments and intellectual hatchet jobs a little hard to digest, but it's more than offset by the density of the academic work.

At the Intersection of Nature and Architecture -Modernism’s Response to the Alienation of Man

Bat Beam Bean

Once a week, Giovanni Tiso publishes an essay on all manner of topics, although with a particular focus on technology and memory. I simply cannot recommend his writing enough.

The Decades

A consensus amongst those I know seems to be that one of the only positive developments in blog-writing this year was the institution of the decade blogs:

and what will be left of them? (1970s)

Faces on Posters / Too Many Choices (1980s)

Up Close and Personal (1990s)

With a rotating cast of writers and an open editorial policy, if you want to find idiosyncratic and intellectually exciting historical and cultural analysis I don't know of anything better right now. Sometimes it can be utterly off the wall in ways only blog writing could ever be (the Heideggerian implications of Level 42, anyone?), but that is said as an entirely positive thing.

The Unlikely Lads

Last Words

If you can remember the 1990s you weren't there

As a Good Socialist I'm Going Where the Money is

The Punctuation, was Weird

The Dining Room in the Oil Rig

And last but not least...

The Future (according to Google)
XKCD's utterly terrifying graphical representation of the googlemind's vision of what is to come.

Collected Icon Articles : 2011

2011-12-30T15:17:00.001Z

In the interests of neatness, here are links to all of my Icon stories that have been posted up online in 2011. There are more not shown here that are buried in back-copies of the magazine (and a few more recent issues), and furthermore there are longer, more involved articles which are unlikely to be published online any time soon. But if you like reserved, bite size reviews of buildings and architectural ideas, then here you go:

Iwan Baan

Jewish Community Centre - Mainz, Germany
architect : Manuel Herz

Fernando Guerra / FG+SG

Amore Pacific - Seoul, South Korea

architect : Álvaro Siza & Carlos Castanheira

Studiogreenblue

Konusho T-House - Tokyo, Japan

architect : Studiogreenblue

Felix Krumbholz

Fraunhofer Institute - Darmstadt, Germany

architect : JSWD

Information Based Architecture

Canton Tower - Guangzhou, China

architect : Information Based Architecture

Zaha Hadid Architects

Review - The Autopoiesis of Architecture
Author : Patrik Schumacher

Sergio Pirrone

Giant Group Campus - Shanghai, China

architect : Morphosis

Nigel Young, Foster + Partners

Masdar Institute - Abu Dhabi, UAE

architect : Foster + Partners

Fernando Guerra / FG+SG

Old People's Home - Alcácer do Sal, Portugal

architect : Aires Mateus

Joe McGorty

Profile - Ma Yansong

Roland Halbe

MACRO - Rome, Italy

architect : Odile Decq

Bruce Damonte

Institute for Regeneration Medicine - San Francisco, USA

architect : Rafael Viñoly Architects

Miran Kambič

Sports Hall - Podčetrtek, Slovenia

architect : Enota

Inego Bujedo Aguirre

City of Culture - Galicia, Spain

architect : Eisenman Architects

Kim Yong-Kwan

Galleria Centercity - Cheonan, South Korea

architect : UN Studio

Wojtek Gurak

Congress Centre - Stockholm, Sweden

architect : White Arkitekter

Inego Bujedo Aguirre

Centro Niemeyer - Avilés, Spain

architect : Oscar Niemeyer

Pedro Pegenaute Esparza

Primary School - Baix Llobregat, Spain

architect : Mestura Arquitectes

Cristobal Palma

Horticultural Expo - Xi'an, China

architect : Plasma Studio

Olivier Nicollas

Josephine Baker School - La Courneuve, France

architect : Dominique Coulon & Associates

Fernando Guerra / FG+SG

Olive Oil Factory - Alentejo, Portugal

architect : Ricardo Bak Gordon

Christian Gahl

Universiade Sports Centre - Shenzhen, China

architect : GMP Architekten

Iwan Baan

Museum - Ordos, China

architect : MAD

Duccio Malagamba

Martin Luther Church - Hainburg, Austria

architect : Coop Himmelb(l)au

Iwan Baan

Actelion Business Centre - Basel, Switzerland

architect : Herzog & de Meuron

And there you have it.

A Song for Europe

2011-12-03T14:16:00.001Z

Off to Bracknell

2011-11-28T14:18:00.000Z

I was recently in Bracknell. I'm not entirely sure why. It's a town which lies about an hour on the train from central London, although it's not really that far outside. For some reason or other the day carried with it a faintly sad air, the sun weak and low in the sky, few people around and with crisis in the air.

At first I went through Reading. A few months ago (issue 097) I wrote a feature for ICON on the space frame and its cultural significance, and how its popularity at a certain time in the economic cycle of building has meant that those that are left in our cities are frequently sad and neglected looking buildings, covered in dust, with various bits of servicing detritus stuffed into their voids, spindly and unattractive. At the time I had never seen the train station at Reading, but there you go - it fits perfectly into my theory.

I'm a big fan of the lurid cock'n'balls drawing, as something which unites human culture across all our conceivable moments of history. This was a particularly good one, the method of whose creation I couldn't work out - there was no apparent material that had been put down, merely a dried-out patch of tarmac. The timelessness evoked by the priapic doodle would reappear later in my wander.

Someone must have thought that nobody was looking, so they could design something like this monster. It's not quite sure if it wants to be mega kitsch, or slick Miesian, and the confusion doesn't help it one iota.

Bracknell felt very much like a place straight out of the ghost box mythos. This shouldn't be at all surprising, it being a post-war new town built around the remains of a small village. This image says an awful lot about the place - see the Victorian church, whose churchyard is practically throttled by the oversized ring-road. But see also the humdrum modernist building in the foreground, a quotidian lump, brick and painted timber, of a style that you can still find up and down the UK. I spent my first three years at school in a building just like that.

What the Ghost Box world actively excludes is the built world of Blairism; and here we have a ridiculously representative example of 21st century pseudomodernism. Bracknell & Wokingham College is no 'Belbury Poly', although at times they may have been similar. I'm not convinced about this, but I'm willing to suggest that this college is one of many across this island who amalgamated and consolidated themselves over the last fifteen years. During the property boom it was the strategy of many colleges to sell off all but one of their campuses to property developers and then build a new, single building with the courses combined. It made perfect sense at the time of course, and in an earlier incarnation I actually worked on a few projects like that, but of course the highlight was always visiting the doomed buildings, engineering workshops, art studios, cookery classrooms, with their unassuming modernism, their dusty windows, their dowdy detailing, but also the sense of life, of a different, lost culture wafting through them.

Apparently, after a cursory glance at old wikipedia, this is one of the oldest buildings in all of Bracknell, a 17th century coach house.

And just coming around the corner, in the shadow of the college's somewhat needless cantilever (thanks to Ellis Williams Architects...), you come across this kind of thing. Shite, just shite. Where does this language come from? How do people design buildings with such a lack of flair? Why do developers build buildings with balconies looking out over a busy ring road? This kind of thing is so utterly lacking in charm or finesse, or even effort that it's just a shame that people actually have to live in them at all, let along be forced to aspire towards living in one!

This AVIS building has shades of John Outram's pumping station on the Isle of Dogs.

And back to the horror of the 'dromes, deafened by the traffic, fenced off behind the road. There are ways you can deal with these kind of situations - a number of buildings which shield themselves from motorways or busy railways would give you an idea, but it seems that these have just been parachuted straight in from sketchup hell, a non place of non places.

Thankfully this gave way to something slightly more interesting. Look at the building on the left, designed in the eighties but perhaps only completed by the early 90s, still flogging the pomo donkey, then in the middle, a bit of earnest, self-deceptive office architecture of the 21st century, acting as modern as possible, and then to the right, the penny-pinching, mean, but utterly efficient modular architecture of the traveller's hotel. The level of standardisation that these people can achieve is ridiculous - if you want to see the utter refinement of generic plan-based architecture, you only have to look at buildings churned out by the hotel industry.

Oh! Public art! What happened? Our recent history is littered with small-ish bronze sculptures, quasi-abstract, sometimes almost figurative, with titles such as 'FULCRUM IX' or what have you, earnest and damned, swept away by colour, neo-classicism, brute corporate power and juvenile symbolism. There is heart in this naive modernist sculpture that we seem to have forgotten, where every estate, polytechnic, small office building, shopping arcade, etc would have some second rate Moore or Calder or Hepworth approximation stationed outside, sentinels of abstraction.

The offices along this road did not seem to be doing too well. Near empty parking lots, curtains drawn, lights off in the receptions.

By this point it was very much reaching 'The Office' levels of abjection. A building on its last legs is a sorry sight, far more so than a ruin, with its sublime pleasures. A building due for demolition is perhaps the worst, with the thought of all the life that might have gone on under its wan lights, its cheap ceilings. What resentments, what ambitions, what nervous breakdowns and demeaning love affairs have taken place while this was the headquarters of a, say, electric shower manufacturer?

No, there's nothing quite like the pathos of a small office block lying empty.

More ongoing collapse.

Yet more.

One of the things that is notable about Bracknell's built environment is the effort that the council have put into decorating the underpasses, of which there a legion. This one is hardly much of an effort, but there are more intriguing ones to be seen.

There is something about the simplicity of form that one gets from modernist architecture and infrastructure that is constantly creating 'compositions'; dynamic fields of line and shape, complex and compelling. Underpasses, cantilevers, all inject even the simplest of views with the drama of a supremacist painting. If you are in the right mood to see, then merely walking under a main road becomes an adventure in poised and tense formal relationships.

Another last quivering sneeze from the pomo virus.

All of a sudden, and you might find yourself inside a George Shaw painting, all drooping telephone cables, half-hearted housing, bleached fences, that British sense of choking banality.

Composition with Stairs and Railings XII (2011)

Composition with Stairs and Railings XXIV (2011)

I mean, honestly, the number of plunges down and rises above the street level that it took to navigate around Bracknell was intense. I have no problem with this of course, fearing no droogs, but it could have down with some overpasses as well, to be honest.

This underpass was a riot of seasonal landscape paintings, bleeding deep reds and greens into the gloom. Strangely it's a very dark set of colours to have in an underground space, but then it seems to work with the warmth of them all.

And what warmth! Yes, it's picturesque isn't it. In the centre of the huge roundabout, a park, with the fiery trees and the yellowing, setting sun. You'd have to be cold of heart not to melt at the sight. I moved on.

This is what I was referring to when I saw the cock'n'balls earlier on. In one of the tunnels under the streets has been painted a history of communications media (a reference to the predominance of IT and high-tech firms based in the town). Now, as someone with a strong leaning towards theories of culture that focus upon the archive, this is amazing. It begins with the cave painters, the very beginnings of the archive, the first marks made for memorialising or commemorating, and proceeds across many stages, through Gutenberg, to the phonograph and then of course to the computer. The 35,000 year journey from earliest marks to the near-absolute archive of today. Can we even imagine a further stage beyond this? If every mark we now make is recorded, stored, then the issue is one of sifting, of finding within the now-near infinitely piled up fragments of culture the objects, moments, facts that will allow us to narrate a history through this cacophony of memories. But even if we are at the end of the archive, we will never be able to retrieve that which was never marked down.

But rather than musing further on matters of archives, of ghosts, of information and forgetting, I trudged on, into further new-town aesthetics.

Of pale grey office blocks for the council, hints of Robin Hood Gardens, of flags and administration.

The Library. Perhaps being transformed into a skeletal fun-palace of indeterminacy, but probably not.

The centre of Bracknell was both a pleasure to wander around but it was also very sad. A pleasure because of its townscape planning and 'festival style' architecture, but sad due to the lack of people, the empty shops, the sense of there being, you know, a massive recession ongoing, and a catastrophic collapse somewhat imminent.

But the architecture was very charming, all scandinavian influenced diet modernism; quietly hopeful...

And the mosaic on concrete is such a quintessentially 'festival style' detail. Up and down the UK, the little ceramic mosaic adorns all manner of buildings in their early old-age.

More people were around this street, but it was clear that commerce was not moving swiftly. If the shops were not selling generic discount wares they were empty, or given over to artists to at least keep them busy looking.

KEEP

CALM

AND

I GIVE

Ah, murals. If it's not 'FULCRUM XI' in bronze as described before, then it's a mural of good working people. Not quite an Eric Gill, but there's something about it nonetheless.

This unwieldy brute loomed up above the main square. Although dramatic, I'm pretty worried that nobody in there is getting much light in there, what with the depth of the plan. But still, it's an interesting example of something that would look much more at home in East London than out here.

Could this image be any more evocative of post-war Britain? 'Festival Style' building, with a pedestrian rout underneath, a sad looking bandstand (with those lozenge shapes that were popular in the 1950s - where did they come from?), two strolling boys, as well as signs to the post office and the college. The CCTV and mobile phone shop seem like such an anachronism in this scene.

A real mural. Royalty, animals, industry, lives, fighting, objects, stories, memories, narratives.

The square in full. The bland office block in the corner, the parapet details on the raised building to the right, the raised walkways, the fountain (in shadow), the low rise shopping, this was almost an uncanny vision of the post-war British town, almost too perfect an example to be real.

I mean, it even has a expressionist modernist catholic church, for god's sake! It couldn't be more new town if it tried.

This was horrible though. Such a grim canopy, dirty, cheap, over-engineered, pigeon netted. What's more, hanging out of shot is a banner saying "LOVE SHOPPING SEE YOU AGAIN SOON", as if it wasn't depressing enough. It's difficult, because as you might have noticed I'm a bit of fan of sad looking canopies and other such structures, but there was just something ignorant and heavy about this one that oppressed so.

I'm a huge fan of the escape staircase, as the virtuosic modernist counterpoint to the straight-laced gridded orthographic building. Le Corbusier was a real master at making his escape staircases work for the building, in his Indian projects especially, they are eccentric, angled structures putting the whole building into a sort of compositional tension. And here, I spotted one upon which an effort had been made.

Oh, and it was a beauty! Old, withering, absolutely covered in moss and mould, yet expressive and flamboyant, it was almost as if it had been uncovered from the jungle, a lost monument to getting out of a building in case of fire.

As I was gazing up at the entrance here, with its hardwood banisters (another architectural detail loaded with social democratic memory and weight), an older lady walked past me and said "Why are you taking pictures of that horrible building?"

Leaving for the train station, I came upon this - it's the entrance and exit to the car park of the shopping centre whose canopy I was so disparaging of. But here, gosh! The multiple levels, the bold structure, the overlapping and twisting spaces! I went underneath to see where those steps led but they went only to some dirty old locked doors. Still, they gave an impressive vantage point from which to survey the convolutions of the twirling ramps.

Home. The trip out was along a route I have oft travelled, for various different reasons, and with various different people. For some reason this time it was a source of much bitterness, as the innocuous sight of the horrible blue roofs on the top of a particular housing estate just outside of Reading brought flooding back soft memories of travel that scoured and retched against the present and its current arrangement. In all it was strange, the mood of Bracknell was very much one that befitted the state of mind of the traveller at that time, autumnal, deserted, in decline, perhaps doomed - at certain points the poverty of some of the inhabitants was very much made clear, and the imminent decline of the high street was tangible. This is what being in London hides: for all its poverty, London -due to its immense attractive force- is still able to fill its spaces, for however long. But London is not the truth of the UK, rather its anomaly, its sickness.

Anyway, the route I took back to London was not along the oft-travelled main line but across the various dormitory towns that cover the area, giving a chance to examine landscapes unseen, before drifting into Waterloo as the sun disappeared, dense, crepuscular, choked.

And I thought I'd share this view of Lloyd's. It won't be there for long because they've started building the Leadenhall Building again.

A friend of mine used to live in the Petticoat Square Estate, and I swear it's a real undiscovered gem. We'd often call it the 'Baby Barbican' due to it being actually within the city of london, bounded on three sides by office buildings and on the other side the textile trade.

And it's a lovely place. The flats are nice if a little small, often in the form of densely packed maisonettes. The massing is dramatic and fun, with escape staircases and walkways all over the place, the buildings reacting to their odd-shaped site not by bending but by staggering across the facade, giving it a strange lego-ish look. If you've never seen it you should have a look, as I've no idea how it will survive over the next years of city encroachment and economic collapse.

What have I done?

2011-11-23T22:02:00.001Z

What have I done recently then?

I wrote a review of François Dallegret's exhibition at the Architectural Association for BD. It's here, although paywalled. Dallegret is perhaps the lost member of the late 60s / early 70s utopian bunch of architects, too idiosyncratic to pin down and probably not ambitious enough to end up as powerful as the rest of them.

I also wrote a review for the Architect's Journal of the book 'RUINS' from the series 'documents of contemporary art', which is here. It's funny, the book that I have coming out soon deals with three of the themes of these books quite heavily - first they did ARCHIVES, then FAILURE and now RUINS. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that really, perhaps the book is coming out too late for the wave of interest but then it was written what feels like a ridiculously long time ago, so who knows. One mustn't expect too much anyway... Still, read the book - it's ace, well worth it.

More of my short journalistic work is in this month's ICON, where I write various pieces about Herzog & de Meuron, Ma Yansong, and Coop Himmelb(l)au.

I went to Zagreb, which was great. I gave a talk about the ArcelorMittalOrbit sculpture, which I've written about on here quite a few times before. I was speaking as part of this event, along with Mark and Owen, who both gave very interesting talks, despite me still not being able to muster a toss about Pulp... Zagreb was a fascinating place, where I met some very lovely people, and it is also blessed with some incredible architecture. I also saw the funniest thing that I've seen in a long long time, which I hope I can share with you sometime soon.

On matters music/hobby related, two more Chopin preludes:

Chopin - Prelude No.7 in A - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht
Chopin - Prelude No.20 in C minor - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht

Oh well...

Strauss, R - Morgen!

2011-11-14T21:05:00.001Z

Und morgen wird die Sonne wieder scheinen, und auf dem Wege, den ich gehen werde, wird uns, die Glücklichen sie wieder einen inmitten dieser sonnenatmenden Erde… und zu dem Strand, dem weiten, wogenblauen, werden wir still und langsam niedersteigen, stumm werden wir uns in die Augen schauen, und auf uns sinkt des Glückes stummes Schweigen... Strauss, R. - Morgen! op.27 - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht

Und morgen wird die Sonne wieder scheinen

und auf dem Wege, den ich gehen werde,

wird uns, die Glücklichen sie wieder einen

inmitten dieser sonnenatmenden Erde…

und zu dem Strand, dem weiten, wogenblauen,

werden wir still und langsam niedersteigen,

stumm werden wir uns in die Augen schauen,

und auf uns sinkt des Glückes stummes Schweigen...

And tomorrow the sun will shine again

and on the way that I will go,

will she us, the happy ones, again unite

amidst this sun-breathing earth,

and to the beach, wide, wave-blue

will we still and slowly descend

silently we will look in each other's eyes

and upon us sinks the mute silence of happiness

(between you and me, it's been quite a tricky month...)

London Bridge, 1st November

2011-11-03T00:08:00.000Z

For various reasons, the 1st of November 2011 was not the sort of day one wishes to go through. As part of this horrid spin I had occasion to walk across London Bridge along with the lord knows how many other thousands pass across as it as well, perhaps a six figure number. Before reaching the bridge however, I had to walk through the bus station, which as I have mentioned before, is in the process of a slow demolition and replacement, its roof being torn apart in one place, propped up in another, almost intact in small sections. And as I walked under it it on this damp November morning it was hard not to see it as some kind of allegory.

Along with the space frame, those pointed and strange lanterns over the rooflights are other details that we're unlikely to see again once the current generation of 40-odd year old buildings are demolished and forgotten. One has to admit that they do not make for a pleasant sight, ungainly, savage almost, like awkward teeth. But they have a purpose and they also strangely work as well, with a rhythm that compliments the spindles of the frames below. Indeed, at this late stage in their life they create a strange mimetic effect with the additional grey steel support truss on the underside of the roof.

The roof is truncated & incomplete, but in a strange reversal it begins to give the impression that it is poised in the process of expansion, just waiting to be extended out to accommodate some kind of growth. It seems both to be on its way up, but also on its way down, and we know what that means: the ruin.

Ruin. You might say: who built that? You might alsosay: who destroyed that?

-Victor Hugo, on the barricades of 1848

And then not only the secondary structure of the trusses that hold the roof up for now, but also an extra structure of scaffolding. This leads to a frankly ridiculous profusion of vector-like members, spiderish and confusing, fragile in appearance. There's nothing pretty about it, yet seeing it like this allows us to appreciate the effect that engineering architecture first had upon people - its very lack of weight and expressive detail made it troubling and ugly to nearly all who saw it. It wasn't long of course that we learned the engineering aesthetic of rationality and became masters of it, somewhat numbing it, but when we see a scruffy mess like this we can catch a glimpse in ourselves of that original reaction.

A couple of days ago I recorded a brief clip of Beethoven, a piece which has been on my mind a lot recently. You might remember that the 'Heiliger Dankgesang' features prominently in Patrick Keiller's film 'London', and indeed there are a number of shots from the film that focus on the commuters in and around London Bridge and the station. There is of course a melancholy eye that you can place onto a scene like this, whereby the thousands of nameless people streaming out of the door make it seem as if the city itself were taking a deep sighing breath. Caught in this stream one gets a sense of the countless bodies who have wafted across the Thames for work over the last millenia, and London becomes some kind of sad entity in itself. The fragile yearning in the Beethovian counterpoint is a perfect match for the sense of disappearance inherent to the wash of commuters, endlessly repeated with slowly changing actors. But here, under the drab sky we are reminded that nothing repeats without change, and we see a building belonging to one era being crushed beneath the brute weight of its replacement, the Shard.

Beethoven - Heiliger Dankgesang

2011-10-29T19:23:00.002+01:00

Beethoven - Heiliger Dankgesang, op.132 (fragment) - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht
Here is another fragment of music for you. This is a portion of Beethoven's 'Heiliger Dankgesang', or song of holy thanks. It's a magnificent example of modal writing, with barely any accidentals in the long exalted passages from which my little transcription comes, and an all-over mood of almost unbearably serene melancholy.

If you're not already familiar with it you might actually recognise the piece from its use in Keiller's 'London', where it bestows the drabness of quotidian London with an exquisite shimmer of yearning.

A wee update.

2011-10-26T00:24:00.001+01:00

Here are a few things that I've done / been up to recently:

If you've ever come round this way at all in the last two years (TWO YEARS! I know...) you might be aware that I'm 'architecture correspondent' for ICON magazine. Well; issue 101 is out now and in there you'll find the usual roundup of what's new in architecture, in this case a crystalline sports complex in China and a strange japanese bridge structure that pretends to be a massive version of a traditional east-asian timber joint detail. Further in however, and there's a full-length interview with Shiguru Ban, discussing the varying strands to his career and his attitude to architecture in general. It's worth reading just to get a sense of the way that Ban manages to conceptually spin the plates of structural experimenter, fashionable designer, recycling advocate, disaster relief specialist and so on...

I've got a few articles, reviews, lectures in the pipeline. I'll try to remember to let you know about them when they turn up, try to get the muddy, near-ossified juices of self-promotion flowing.

In quieter moments I've been engaging in musical activities, when time allows. In the last week or two this has thrown up the following little ditties:

A Cat's Skeleton by entschwindet und vergeht
This is a little sketch I made, featuring a little clip from the cheery kitchen sink/apocalypse TV drama 'Threads' from 1984. I guess the fact that the clip shows a crackly vhs recording of a BBC children's educational programme being played to post-nuclear holocaust weans puts this very much into the venerable tradition of hauntoyadayada.

Schubert - 'Wehmut' D.772 by entschwindet und vergeht
Slightly more serious here, I've transcribed and recorded a guitar version of Schubert's lied 'Wehmut' (melancholy), which is a typically 'Sturm und Drang' kind of a piece, although significant here because the poem, by Matthaus von Collin, goes a little something like this:

Wenn ich durch Wald und Fluren geh',
Es wird mir dann so wohl und weh
In unruhvoller Brust.
So wohl, so weh, wenn ich die Au
In ihrer Schönheit Fülle schau',
Und all die Frühlingslust.

Denn was im Winde tönend weht,
Was aufgetürmt gen Himmel steht,
Und auch der Mensch, so hold vertraut
Mit all der Schönheit, die er schaut,
Entschwindet, und vergeht.

Summerland

2011-10-13T09:50:00.000+01:00

Everybody knows when the dream of modern architecture died, don't they? Depending on which side of the Atlantic you are from, there are two events that supposedly mark this particular failure out. Americans generally point to the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in 1972, most famously highlighted by Charles Jencks., while in the UK we have the May 1968 partial collapse of Ronan Point tower in east London (a quick aside - on the old black and white 'Eastenders' title sequence you can see the shadows of the Freemason's Estate just to the north of the western end of the Albert Docks). But there is another symbolic event at which modern architecture supposedly became suspect and untrustworthy, when the concrete veil was lifted and we saw modernism for the mistake that it had always been, yet it's an event that seems to have been dropped from the narrative. In many ways it is a more damning and terrifying indictment of architectural practice and negligence in the post-war period, and yet it no longer has quite the same symbolic cache as the previously mentioned events. In this post I'll describe the building, and try to explain why it's actually a more complex and in some ways more appropriate symbol for the failure of the modernist project.

'Summerland' was an indoor entertainment complex in Douglas, the Isle of Man, which on the evening of the 28^th June 1973 suffered a massive fire which killed 50 people. The fire was started accidentally by a group of children who were hiding outside smoking, with a discarded cigarette causing a small fire that made its way into the exterior walls of the building. This fire grew, out of sight, before breaking out into the main hall, and within minutes the entire building was ablaze, with 3,000 people hysterically clambering over each other to escape.

The disaster was in many ways similar to other tragedies of its type - visitors were unaware of escape routes, while some of the doors had been locked shut by the management as a way to prevent people from sneaking in without paying. There was also a delay in the evacuation of the building, which didn't begin until the fire had already engulfed the interior - in addition to this, the fire brigade were not called for almost half an hour after the fire started due to poor safety training of the staff. In a subsequent enquiry these were the most significant factors in determining why there had been such loss of life.

But there were other significant failings - ones which inevitably damaged the reputation of architects and engineers. One of these was genuine, and serious; the internal layout and the means of escape in the building were wholly inadequate for a building of its type, with a single large open staircase the only obvious route down; this staircase was overwhelmed during the escape, and half of the bodies of victims that were later found were on this staircase.

Furthermore, and in a development that brings to mind John Poulson and the image of the brown envelope-handling poltician and architect, there was a blatant flouting of the normal building regulations. The external wall that the fire started below was built from 'galbestos', an un-fire rated panelling material, chosen to save money - it was suggested that if it had been concrete then the fire would not have spread. The 'oroglas' transparent acrylic that was used for the façade and roof was known to be flammable, but somehow during the design process the architects managed to get a waiver for the material, relying on manufacturer's claims that when heated the material would soften and simply pop out of its frame, an untested supposition. During the disaster, the oroglas ignited rapidly, greatly increasing the ferocity of the fire, and causing molten plastic to drip down onto those desperately trying to escape. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster the press developed a narrative whereby this untested and dangerous material was a major contributing factor to the disaster, and although this was later shown to be mostly untrue (the oroglas ignited late in the conflagration, and it was later realised that most if not all of the casualties had already occurred by then), the narrative of the modernist architect foisting a dangerous and untested material onto an unsuspecting and vulnerable public was a dramatic one, and one that seeded itself in the distrust of modern architecture that would fully develop in the following decade.

But beyond the horrible events of that day, the Summerland building is a remarkable building as well, both in terms of its functions but also its position within a historical context. It deserves to be studied, certainly not as a work of architecture of any note, but as an early attempt at actually building a radically new idea of the time. Outside of the tragedy itself and the historical effect it would have, the Summerland building was unique.

The decision to build Summerland was born out of demographic trends in the 1960s - the generally increasing standard of living meant that more people were taking foreign holidays, and often for the first time this included the working classes. Douglas on the Isle of Man was a traditional summer holiday destination, but it was moving into decline as the 60s wore on - it had pretty average weather and a lack of facilities or entertainment venues. The solution that was put forward by the government of the island was for a modern leisure complex to be created that would encourage tourists back to the island again. An architectural competition was held with a very vague brief (basically; "a swimming pool and whatever else you think might be useful"), which was won by a local architect, James Phillips Lomas, who presented a remarkably avant-garde design.

The proposal for Summerland basically consisted of two main phases; one was an Olympic-size swimming pool complex entitled the 'Aquadrome' and the other, 'Summerland' proper, was a massive single enclosed space into which all manner of entertainment programme was to be inserted. With a footprint of about the size of a football field, and a single 30m high roof, it was a huge, singular air-conditioned environment, designed to create a pleasant microclimate throughout the year no matter what the weather, its vastness giving the impression that it the visitor was actually outside on a wonderful summer day. The space was supported on a large truss of steel columns, with a space frame roof spanning across the top, and into this structure were inserted the oroglas panels, chosen over glass for their strength, their lightness and their ability to control solar gain.

Summerland was designed to offer the visitor absolutely everything that they could get from, for example, a Spanish holiday resort. Into the cavernous greenhouse were built a number of terraces, with programme including an amusement arcade, a restaurant, a number of bars and a futuristic tanning room called the 'sundome'. Underneath the solarium were children's entertainment and amusements, and a basement disco. In total the building was capable of holding 10,000 visitors at any one time, a rather huge amount of people to be freely moving around in just the one complex. The interior was kitted out with a very strange array of styles, from the deck chairs and stripy canopies associated with the Great British Seaside, to the 'timber Helvetica moderne' interior style that was common at the time, to the total kitsch of the interior waterfall and 'rustic walkway' made of logs, to the crazy high-tech communications tower, and the plastic tat of the bingo hall.

At the architectural scale the building represented a strange hybrid, a transitional architecture stretching forward but unable to escape its own time. The majority of the building was constructed in a rather unsophisticated brutalist manner - the swimming pool and the lower storeys of the solarium were almost entirely windowless concrete lumps, with none of the flair of a Rodney Gordon, another architect operating at the same time at the similar end of the commercial scale, and yet capable of magnificently bold and clever designs. The solarium, however, is an embryonic example of the architecture that hadn’t yet managed to make itself felt as 'high-tech', the steel and glass mode that has now taken over the world; the solarium was spare, structural, it receded in a way that concrete doesn't. It was an example of architecture as attempted dematerialisation.

After the fire, it is really rather astonishing that Summerland was not immediately demolished, considering the horrors that had occurred there, but it was decided to rebuild the complex in a less risky and ambitious fashion. The swimming pool had suffered comparatively little damage from the fire, as did the concrete floors underneath the solarium. Instead of the massive airy enclosure however, the replacement was a single storey box with barely any windows to the side, supported under a gloomy space-frame roof. The pedestrian bridge across the road was sliced off, and the concrete facing the sea rotted away to the reinforcements, leaving the building looking about as sorry as it was possible for a building of that period to really appear. Although apparently still valued by locals, the new, diminished Summerland never managed to maintain profitability, and it was eventually demolished in 2005.

There are a number of resemblances that I'd like to point out here. The first is a rather uncanny one; the USA pavilion at the Montreal Expo, 1967. On a superficial level, Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome has two major resonances with Summerland - the dome of the expo building was not only entirely clad in oroglas, but it too was consumed by fire, although without any loss of life. But furthermore, both of these structures were attempts to create massive interior, climate controlled and hospitable spaces for activities within. This was very much part of the utopian culture at the time, with the prospect of moon bases and the rise of the consideration of architecture in terms of serviced space rather than form and void - Banham's 'Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment' was published in 1969, for example. Indeed, it was said that the original concept for Summerland was actually a dome but was lost to cost and construction difficulties - this would seem to be borne out by Lomas' other design for a leisure complex in Hunstanton which looks rather like an early sketch for the Eden Project.

But Buckminster Fuller's Biodome was a pavilion of science and lofty thinking, whereas Summerland was entirely an entertainment complex. With this in mind, then perhaps the greatest resonance is with Archigram. The gee-whizz consumerism of Archigram's Zoom ethos was remarkably congruent with the high-tech British seaside resort that was Summerland (even if Warren Chalk gave a patronising review of Summerland in the AJ, calling it a 'rather timid collage'); both had the same emphasis on colour, fun and consumption and the apparent freedoms that they entail. But whereas Archigram's dreams were conjured up by a group of professional men, at least some of whom were of the 'upper orders', and were populated by models and starlets, Summerland was pitched directly at the ordinary worker and their idea of a fun holiday. Furthermore - the great project of Archigram, the one that got away, was indeed a single-purpose entertainment venue, by the sea, contained in a large, continuous single serviced space, although this time it was to be built in Monaco (of course!). In this case what Summerland represents is a genuine, actually existing example of what an 'applied Archigram' would turn out to be; a concrete test of the flash-whizzy dreams of architects applied to genuine working class lives, which in this case was a fully-sealed space for children's talent shows (although it should be noted that until the disaster, Summerland was making a tidy profit). The point here is that Summerland as an idea was no less ambitious than an Archigram event-space, inasmuch as Summerland was genuinely built, genuinely used and genuinely enjoyed, rather than merely pamphleted into academia.

Finally, we can go yet further back, and here it becomes rather clear quite why I have become so interested Summerland: there is another historical building, one which synthesises the two oroglas vitrines, Fuller's and Lomas'. I am referring of course to the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. Here, a single seemingly immaterial interior space of a genuinely unprecedented scale was erected in 1854, with lofty ideals of education and optimism. Again, inside this envelope (or sphere, if you fancy a spot of Sloterdijk) were strewn a varied and shifting set of architectural spaces, styles and programmes. Again, the building was an attempt to create a moderated interior environment that would be akin to a constantly pleasant outdoors. However despite the ideals of its founders that it would be a place where the classes would mix, by the turn of the 20^th century it was looked down upon as a place only frequented by the aspirational petit-bourgeoisie, with entertainments and exhibits of a rather kitsch variety. And of course eventually it too would burn down.

So beyond merely representing yet another end-point of modernism in architecture, when the negligence and incompetence of its practitioners were laid bare in the most appalling fashion, Summerland actually has a deeper resonance with the architecture of modernity; it is part of the modernism of disappearance, of traceless architecture that recedes behind pure activity and space, of environments defined by freedom. Despite its brashness, and despite the fact that even without the fire and tragedy it would probably still eventually have been a failure, Summerland was fascinating for being a genuine attempt to realise some of the dreams of its time.

Level 4 plan of Summerland (note - numbers in bold symbols represent where bodies were recovered)

Level 5 plan

Level 6 plan

Level 7 plan

Note:- This post was greatly helped by a study of the disaster written by Ian Phillips.

A (belated) guide to the Autopoiesis of Architecture

2011-10-05T00:23:00.001+01:00

About a year ago Patrik Schumacher's 'Autopoiesis of Architecture' was released. I read it and reviewed it for Icon here. What I also started doing was writing a detailed review, with the rationale that a work so ambitious needed at least to be given a proper look. The problem is, however, that I never managed to finish the bloody thing, being a) just a mere mortal, not a Herculean near-god like Patrik, and b) really bloody busy. That said, I've been getting a bit cagey about the general criticism that Schumacher gets from people who haven't read the book - I mean, they may well be right about it, but at the same time it's not a firm foundation for criticism. With this in mind, I went and had a look at the thing I had started writing, and realised that I had basically stopped after the exposition, which was more or less complete.

So I've decided to post up what I had completed by the 9th February 2011. It should hopefully function as a fairly neutral guide to what is contained in Schumacher's book, so may be of some help to someone who just has not the time to go through the bloody thing. Hope you find it useful.

Patrik Schumacher has written abook. Or two books. Well, sort of. He has written one book, which is so longthat it has needed to be split into two volumes. Thus everything that I willwrite here is based upon the first half of the project. Whether or not thisinvalidates what I am writing is I suppose up to you to decide. I will refer tohis book as if it were a complete work - I have no idea when the second volumewill be released, so perhaps there will be occasion to read and write aboutthat one when the time comes.

The book is titled 'TheAutopoiesis of Architecture'. Autopoiesis is a neologism from the Greek, whichmeans 'self-making' (it can also mean something else too, which I'll get toeventually). Schumacher has gotten the term from Germansociologist/philosopher/theorist Niklas Luhmann, who in turn got it frombiology. It's worth noting here that Schumacher reckons his work (henceforthAoA) is an application of the work of Luhmann to Architecture. If, like me,you've not had occasion to read Luhmann's work, then this puts you at animmediate disadvantage. I would go further and suggest that if somebody like mehasn't read Luhmann then very few architects at all will have done so. As a bitof background research I did ask about Luhmann in the company of amathematician/theorist/political activist/nocturnal flying mammal, and theresponse was something like "OH! He's that crazy right-wing German systemstheorist!" And sure enough, a cursory glance at the wikipedia page forLuhmann and it would seem that he was a social-ontologist, with a theory ofemergent complexity, and was what you might call a 'relationist', in that hisontology seems to be structured more around the connections and less about theobjects that make them up (OOO fans take note). In fact, his theoriesapparently have no room for subjects at all, and if wikipedia is to bebelieved, they have been criticised for being rather right-wing. The otherthing that's worth noting is the gargantuan size of his theoretical edifice,which apparently is of a scale and scope that rivals Marx.

But, to go back for a second, whois Patrik Schumacher? He is partner at Zaha Hadid Architects, and is commonlythought of as Zaha's right hand man, and less charitably as the brains ofZaha's operation. Many of their designs of the last decade or more have beencredited as 'Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher', so you get the idea of hisstature in the firm. He is also credited with being the main driving force behindthe digitizing of Zaha's design process, which progressed from paintings tofloppy shapes rather quickly from the late 90s onward, leading to much talkabout pre-computer and post-computer Zaha buildings (Maxxi and the Evelyn GraceAcademy are pre-computer, Guangzhou Opera House and the Aquatics Centre arepost-computer, for example). As well as being at the top of the pile of the topof the league of 'starchitects', he has also been running the Design ResearchLab at the Architects Association, which is, depending on your viewpoint,either one of the top post-grad programmes in all of architecture, or afee-paying internship for those who want to work at ZHA. Schumacher seems toget a lot of flak from a number of directions, from old-school modernists, toenvironmentalists, to anti-theorists, to those who simply find hismegalomaniacal pronouncements in public forums a little too much to take. I toohave heavily criticised ZHA in my time, sometimes with more spite and venomthan at others. I do not intend to be mean here - I will endeavour to be asreasonable as I can. I am approaching this as someone who has trained as anarchitect, has plenty of experience of digital architecture and itstechnologies, and some knowledge of the workings of parametric software. I amalso reasonably well versed in continental philosophy and the history of moderntheoretically influenced architecture. I am (overall) positive about theprospects of digital design in architecture, and also take theory to be morethan fashionable nonsense. I would like to think that I am an ideal reader ofthis book.

So what the hell is AoA all aboutthen? It is an attempt to provide a 'Grand Theory' of Architecture, andSchumacher's strategy is to utilise Luhmann's theory of society to explainarchitecture. Before we've even really started, Schumacher introduces us toLuhmann's theory of society as a series of autonomous networks ofcommunications, for example economics, politics, law, the mass media, scienceand art. According to Luhmann, these networks function 'autopoietically', inthat they emerge spontaneously as society becomes more complex, and thenmaintain themselves through internal communication networks, thus perpetuatingthe very complexity that gave rise to them. Schumacher has decidedaxiomatically that architecture, which in Luhmann is subsumed within the artsystem, deserves to be considered an autopoietic network by itself:

The comparisons and parallels that could be drawn between architecture andthe various functional systems analyzed within Luhmann's oeuvre accumulated tothe point where the possibility of a theoretical reconstruction of thediscipline of architecture, set within this new encompassing theoreticalsystem, seemed viable. This reconstruction is the core ambition of the theoryof architectural autopoiesis. To orient the discipline's forward thrust is itspurpose. [19]

We can see that there are alreadysome grand claims being made about what is going on in the text - the notion ofit being a guide to action rather than just an analysis is there from thebeginning. But the fact that Schumacher is deviating from Luhmann is not loston him, and the text is peppered with occasions where Schumacher is happy totell us that he reckons that Luhmann was wrong, leading to the final admissionthat "Faithfulness with respect to Luhmann's work can thus no longer beclaimed." [435] What is worth noting here is that for Schumacher,buildings themselves are only one kind of communication within the autopoiesisof architecture, indeed, buildings themselves are considered to be a'negligible' [4] part of the theory. Instead, architecture is the discussion ofarchitecture, the hypothesising of architecture, the speculation ofarchitecture. An abstract render or essay can be as important as any building,if it connects up properly in the network, and makes allies which lead tofurther communications (we're very much in Latour territory here). WhatSchumacher is trying to do here is create a concept of architecture that wouldinclude all of the peripheral work that has been going on in academia over thelast few generations to be uncontroversially counted as 'inside' the field.

Schumacher's first task in thisvein is to stress the importance of theory in architecture. Rather than being abunch of pretentious shits waffling at each other, as is sometimes claimed,Schumacher insists that theory is a vital aspect of the autopoiesis ofarchitecture, giving the following trajectory of luminaries:

Virtually every architect who counts within architecture was both aninnovator and a theorist or writer. Themost striking examples are Alberti, Le Corbusier, Rem Koolhaas and Greg Lynn.[35]

Schumacher will insist that onlyself-reflexive architecture is worthy of the title:

Only theoretically informed building design constitutes architecture. [36]

Schumacherwill go on to discuss the difference between problematising (critical) andgenerative theory (inspirational), with Hannes Meyer an example of the former,and Eisenman the latter. Problematising theories are required when contemporaryarchitecture is no longer adequate to the building tasks at hand, and once theyhave put standard practise into question, generative theories come along whichbegin to form methods in which these new problems can be solved. [41]

Aswell as these distinctions, Schumacher insists that architectural theory mustbe

'autological' i.e self-reflexive, and senses that thisoccurred when architecture began to import ideas from 'post-structuralism'. Inthis sense it was important for architects to read Derrida at one point inorder to increase the complexity of architecture theory - Schumacher feels thatthe increased complexity of an 'autological' theoretical system makes it moreeffective and able to contribute to its field. Schumacher feels thatdeconstruction becomes more of a hindrance to architecture at this point,because it "refuses this extensive system-building endeavour and thereforecan never break the cycle of Deconstruction and counter-Deconstruction."[60] Schumacher states that the failure of deconstructive theory is in itsinability to provide 'a coherent account of philosophy', and that this can onlybe achieved with a 'comprehensive theory of society' i.e. Luhmann's/his.[62] Heseems a little disgusted with 'deconstructive' theorists, because he feels thatthey overstep the boundaries of architecture, and thus become if notirrelevant, then at least useless to the architecture's forward march.Basically, theory for Schumacher is utterly vital, but it is not worth a damnif it doesn't help architecture to 'innovate'.

Thenext main section of AoA is historical. As you might have noticed, Schumacheris reframing the word 'architecture' slightly. Although he has set up the'autopoiesis of architecture' as the emergent network within society, healready has a tendency to refer to it as simply 'architecture'. This is worthbearing in mind. Schumacher wishes to explain the 'historical emergence ofarchitecture', ie the point when his 'autopoiesis of architecture' emerged fromundifferentiated social complexity.

Schumacherreckons that architecture didn't exist between antiquity and the renaissance.Gothic architecture isn't actually worthy of the name because it wasn'ttheorised, and so it is only with Alberti that architecture restarts, if youwill. Renaissance architects allow architecture to emerge as an autonomousdiscipline, a status that has not regressed since. We are treated to a briefhistorical sweep through self-reflexive architecture, progressivelydifferentiating itself from other function systems, right up until the differentiationfrom both engineering and art gives us modernism and figures such as LeCorbusier. [88]

Itis at this point that Schumacher brings in his notion of the avant-garde, whichis to be differentiated from 'mainstream' practice. It is utterly vital forSchumacher that there is a separate subsection of architecture that is engagedin experimental research, and it is even more vital that they are protectedfrom the constraints (economic etc…) of practice in order to better performthis role. The best place for this to occur, of course, is in academia.Schumacher's notion of the avant-garde is actually likened to scientificresearch, in the sense that creating a social vacuum around the avant-gardeallows for a freedom to experiment that benefits society at large through theinnovations it makes possible. [100]

Ofcourse, Schumacher must deal with the meanings that are already attached to thename 'avant-garde'. To do this, he divides the avant-garde into 'revolutionary'and 'cumulative' periods. Revolutionary periods are where many innovations aremade very quickly, without necessarily working them out, whereas cumulativeperiods are when these innovations are systematically worked out. Theproliferation of radical philosophy in architecture over the last 20 years wasa symptom of a revolutionary period, which has receded now that avant-gardearchitecture is more interested in how to fit windows into curved walls. [122]

Nodiscussion of the avant-garde is complete without dealing with questions ofutopia, and Schumacher doesn't disappoint. While stating the commonplace thatutopian thinking about the future is out of the question, he goes on to suggestthat what architecture can offer is the notion of 'latent utopia':

The radical architectural projects proliferating on today's computerscreens do not offer themselves as utopian proposals in the sense of elaboratedproposals for a better life. […] They are open-ended mutations that at bestmight become catalysts in the coevolution of new life processes. […] Who is tojudge and deny a priori that a strange building will not attract and engender astrangely productive occupation. […] A decoded architecture - made strange -offers itself to inhabitation as an aleatoric field, anticipating and activelyprefacing its own 'détournement'.[127]

Didyou get that? What is being asserted here is that the radical formal researchconducted by the 'avant-gardes', by creating spatial configurations that areout of the ordinary, provide a necessary supplement to quotidian space thatmight possibly be taken up by an unforeseen new social arrangement.

Byfar the longest section of AoA is the third, which goes into depth aboutarchitecture as an autopoietic system, and it is here where most of the'theoretical heavy lifting' of the whole book resides. In this third sectionSchumacher first outlines exactly what it is that he thinks makes architecturearchitecture, and then proceeds into the elucidation of his own vision forarchitecture and its future. The former section contains an argument forarchitecture's autonomy, followed by an analysis of the process of architectureand the form/function distinction. The latter introduces the extra layer ofthe beauty/utility distinction, beforemaking an attempt to rehabilitate the notion of 'style'.

Itis worth quoting Schumacher's thesis about the autonomy of architecture infull:

"There can be no external determination imposed uponarchitecture - neither by political bodies, nor by paying clients - except inthe negative / trivial sense of disruption."[188]

Now before you spit out your tea, there is actually atechnical point being made here; 'Architecture', as the shorthand term for 'theautopoiesis of architecture', has to be autonomous as it is already defined asthe emergent network of architectural communication. So technically (if alittle tautologically) this is correct; for example, the cost of the buildingis an economic aspect of a building object, and by definition is not a part ofthe 'autopoiesis of architecture'. The budgetary constraint placed upon abuilding is not an architectural constraint, it is an external 'irritant' whichcan only be approached 'architecturally'.

Accordingto Schumacher, the 'elemental' architectural communication in architecture isthe design decision, which is embodied in the elemental vector of architecturalcommunication, which is the drawing. All of the external constraints that anarchitectural project must pass through are translated into design decisions,which are then communicated as drawings. The client of a building is not'inside' architecture, but the pressures they exert must be translated intoissues 'within' architecture.

Howare external irritants changed into internal architectural issues? Schumacherstates that this is down to the 'lead distinction' of form/function. Anypressure that imposes upon the autopoiesis of architecture is transformed byforcing it through certain questions: "The total domain of architecture -the totality of its issues - is dissected by the distinction of form andfunction"[208]. Now, this might at first sound rather obvious, but thereare interesting aspects to Schumacher's way of seeing form & function.First of all, this distinction understood this way doesn't have to befoundational - it can be seen as an emergent property, thus it is protectedfrom idealism. It gives us a very simple way of mapping architecturalcommunications, for example, the process of designing modernist buildings wasobviously more strongly concerned with function, while postmodernism was farmore concerned with formal questions. As the process of design proceeds, at anypoint one of the two terms can be used as a guide to move further on in theprocess; they help keep the complex activity of design moving forwards.Finally, if anything crops up that cannot be placed into this framework, thenit is of no consequence to architecture. Form/function allows architecture tomaintain its differentiation from other social systems.

Ontop of this, Schumacher brings in a further binary here, that of the beauty andutility. This is the introduction of value into form/function. Beauty is goodform, and utility is good function. Beauty & utility can be seen as twoterms that all possible communications within architecture can be analysed with.As a metaphor we might think about how any point in two-dimensional space canbe explained as the conjunction of an x and a y value. In the same way, aformal and functional analysis will place any design communication at a pointin the autopoiesis of architecture. It's worth noting here that this is arather significant deviation from Luhmann, who describes binary codes such aslegal/illegal (legal system), or true/false (science). Architecture has whatSchumacher calls a 'double code', ie, an architectural communication has to befitted into 'beautiful/ugly' AND 'functional/dysfunctional'. This isSchumacher's own system, which he justifies by pointing out various failedattempts to eradicate one of the axes (for example, Hannes Meyer's functionalismor Peter Eisenman's formalism).

But this is still not enough;Schumacher introduces a third code into architecture, or at least theavant-garde section of architecture that he identified earlier. This is thecode of novelty [228]. Schumacher's point is that although in the mainstream ofarchitecture there are only two questions that can be asked (is it beautiful,is it elegant?), within the avant-garde there is a third question that putsitself forward: is it new? The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, accordingto his Luhmannian framework (which he is increasingly deviating from by thispoint), autopoietic functions inherently become more complex; it is in theirvery nature to do so (Schumacher explicitly claims that a society becoming lesscomplex is commensurate with totalitarianism, a rather Hayekian idea if you askme). Thus an extra code of novelty is seen to allow for greater accommodationof this very complexity. Secondly, Schumacher is drawing from his ownexperience of being an avant-garde practitioner; in his milieu, newness hasbeen enthusiastically taken up for the last fifteen years or so, after therelatively atemporal period of 'pomo'.

There is also a third aspect toSchumacher's obsession with novelty, which is perhaps the most interestingaspect of the book as a whole: Schumacher's analysis of the drawing. If you'vebothered to read this far then you probably already know that Schumacher is oneof the more prominent exponents of scripted/parametric architecture, and hisexpertise in the subject becomes highly apparent in this analysis. In keepingwith the axiomatic character of AoA, Schumacher posits 'the drawing' as asingular yet typical medium for all of architecture, which provides a vitalfunction within the autopoietic system of architecture:

Drawing has been developed asa medium of speculation that is able to depict an uncertain future state with avery convincing degree of internal consistency and detail. A drawing can coherea large number of people around a new complex endeavour requiring long chainsof coordinated activity, the results of which lie in the relatively distantfuture.[329]

Schumacher puts forward a veryconvincing argument about how the drawing simultaneously makes possible thecreation of architecture as well as limits what is possible within it. Heprovides a brief history of the drawing that discusses what was geometrically& cumulatively possible as a result of the drawing techniques available. Sothe invention of the corner perspective greatly increased the ways in which abuilding could be composed, and the development of tracing paper allowed for agreater level of recursiveness in the development of a design. Now, with therapid advances in digital modelling technologies, the possibilities torecursively edit a design are increasing almost exponentially, and the level ofcomplexity that can be stored in a digital model that need not be fully workedout constantly is also vastly greater than it was, even one generation ago. Thelevel of modulations that are made possible using parametric modelling softwaredo indeed make possible a hitherto unseen level of flexibility in the designprocess in architecture. So the fact that brand new tools are consistentlybeing made available to the practitioner means that if the avant-garde are tobe worthy of the definition that Schumacher has given them, novelty must betheir priority - it is their job to test out new and under-developedpotentials.

All this novelty and exponentialincrease in potential options poses a problem of what the hell an architect issupposed to do with all this freedom. Schumacher's solution, and what willprobably be the most controversial aspect of AoA is his rehabilitation of'Style'. Schumacher wants to provide a functional analysis of 'style' inarchitecture as a guiding principle for formal decisions that allow thearchitect to resolve the massive complexity of the information that they haveto process as they work through a design. It should be noted that he isprimarily interested in large, overarching styles, rather than the individualstyles of particular architects:

An epochal style is the dominant style of a particularcivilisation within a particular historical era. It is primarily in this lastsense that the theory of architectural autopoiesis uses the concept ofstyle.[242]

As you've probably worked out by now, Schumacher's entiretheory is not revolutionary. This is not such a problem, as no doubt he wouldprefer to think of his theory as evolutionary. His aim is not to rejectprevious theories but to include them in a more complex and more effectivesystem. Thus, instead of reacting against stylistic concerns, he wishes toadmit both previous stylistic theories as well as theories that have rebelledagainst style. He is attempting a reconciliation of ideas about architecture asdivergent as eclecticism and functionalism, and the upshot of this is thefamiliar notion that a style is tied to the epoch that produces it, which isexemplified by this approving quote from Otto Wagner:

'Each new style gradually emerged from the earlier onewhen new methods of construction, new materials, new human tasks and viewpointsdemanded a change or reconstituting of existing forms.' This lucid statement ofthe fundamental conditions and motive forces behind the development ofarchitectural styles is as valid today as it was then. (With respect to ourcontemporary condition we only have to apply the now crucial factor of theevolving design media).[251]

At this point you might recognise what's coming along here.It's the old 'zeitgeist' argument:

Ephocal styles are those […] styles that demonstratelong-term viability because they offer a systematic solution to the essentialproblems and challenges of the respective epoch.[253]

Schumacher is convinced that there has recently been anepochal shift in the complexity of society, which is challenging architecturewith new tasks and problems which the ordinary paradigm of architecture isill-equipped to cope with. At the same time, new design technologies have sprungup which have made possible a new kind of formal expression in architecture.These two parallel processes make it possible for Schumacher to proclaim thefollowing historical progression:

GOTHIC

RENAISSANCE

BAROQUE

NEO-CLASSICISM

HISTORICISM

MODERNISM

PARAMETRICISM [254]

So - what is parametricism? Parametricism is what Schumacherbelieves has finally come along to rescue us from the half-century crisis thatmodernism has been struggling through. Postmodernism and Deconstructivism quastyles of architecture were bothtransitional rather than epochal styles, too attached to the critique of theoverarching narrative of modernism to truly surpass it. But Parametricism, bornout of the research that avant-garde architects have been conducting into newdigital design technologies, has finally coalesced into the style that is readyto take architecture into the new generation. Thankfully for us, Schumacher haslucidly and simply expressed what constitutes the style of Parametricism [286]:formally it is that everything must be 'parametrically malleable' andcorrelated, while rigid forms and simple repetition of elements must not beallowed. Schumacher is saying that the new possibilities to construct complexshapes mean that older formal strategies in architecture must be avoided. Thisis in keeping with his quest for novelty.

As far as function is concernedit becomes a little bit stranger. Here, what is demanded is that the functionof the building must be understood in terms of smooth 'fields' rather than fixed'spaces' of function. This notion of field is explicitly drawn from Deleuze& Guattari's notion of 'smooth space' [424]. The 'field', to Schumacher, isa gradiated, almost liquid transition of forms and functions that underminesimple binary distinctions like figure/ground, and allow architecture tosupercede the modernist fixation with space which can only lead to falsesimplicity and a denial of autopoietic complexity.

But after all this, WHYparametricism?

Schumacher states that:

In an evolving, increasingly complex and demanding societal environmenteach of the coevolving function systems is burdened with the requirement ofcontinuous adaptive upgrading. This also includes the continuous adaptiveupgrading of the respective specialised media: new forms of money and financialinstruments, new mechanisms for social control and the administration of power,and new design tools and techniques within the medium of architecture. All ofthem are upgrading their capacity on the basis of the advancing technologies ofcomputational information processing. [347]

What he means is that worldsociety is so complex now that only buildings of the complexity made possibleby parametric software are capable of accommodating it effectively. Modernism(a term which for Schumacher includes corporate architect of choice NormanFoster [297]) is not capable of properly articulating the complexity of aglobalised, decentred, diversified world and its spatial requirements.

Parametricism is the great, new, viable style after Modernism[…] Parametricism provides a pertinent spatio-morphological repertoire forarchitecture and urban design that is able to organise and articulate thecomplexities of contemporary (post-fordist) society. [129]

Ihave now given you a (rather extended) ride through AoA. You might considereverything up to this point to be a disinterested guide to the book, one thattakes the book at more-or-less face value, that has avoided making stridentcritiques. Hopefully this in itself will be useful for those who may not havetime to read 400 pages but might just have the time to read 4000 words or so.But in reading the book I have also collected a number of criticisms which Ithink are significant, which I will now outline below:

And that's where I gave up.

Totenfragment

2011-10-01T12:03:00.000+01:00

Strauss, R - Im Abendrot (fragment) by entschwindet und vergeht

Here's the introduction to Richard Strauss' "Im Abendrot" (At Sunset), one of the Vier Letzte Lieder.

Tell It Like It Is

2011-09-28T22:06:00.000+01:00

"At the time, I suggested that their purpose hadbeen overlooked: psychogeography and the dérive wereconceived, in a more politically ambitious period, as preliminaries to theproduction of new, revolutionary spaces; in the 1990s they seemed more likelyto be preliminary to the production of literature and other works, and togentrification, the discovery of previously overlooked value in dilapidatedspaces and neighbourhoods."

- Patrick Keiller, Imaging

Chopin - Prelude No.22 in G minor

2011-09-08T23:17:00.001+01:00

Chopin - Prelude No.22 in G minor by entschwindet und vergeht

Another of Chopin's Preludes given the once over by my clumsy fingers. This one is nasty, brutish and short, with a usually thundering bass melody (in octaves on the piano) being played stacatto entirely by the thumb, with the other fingers left to render the syncopated, angular chords draped over the top. I must say it's quite fun to bash the guitar around a bit in a way that isn't normally done, but I suppose that to play this piece properly requires a bit more precision than I've got, what with my miniscule practise regime these days.

A Trip to N19

2011-09-07T22:53:00.002+01:00

So, I'd like to write about a short jaunt I took the other day, with some pictures attached. This time I went off up to see some Camden 'council brutalism', and take in some of the sights around there. The object of my adventure this time was Stoneleigh Terrace, designed by Peter Tabori in 1972 onwards. It was utterly pissing it down, I might add.

First thing, after leaving Gospel Oak tube is that you are confronted by a long terrace in a very Corbusian manner, almost 'Pessac-ian'. It's also reminiscent of a smaller version of the 'Maiden Lane' estate, and sure enough, a little research shows that it was also the work of Benson & Forsyth, everyone's favourite Corb-worshipping Scottish intellectual architects.

Fairly rudimentary round the front, the rear facade showed more interest, and overall despite a certain weathering to the concrete, the black frames remained to offset the white, with a pleasant covering of plants and ivy.

Setting off under the railway bridge over which I had arrived, this metal lady looked rather threatened by my presence.

And underneath the bridge someone had stuck a landscape onto the brick pier. A fine likeness it is too.

That kissing couple look uncannily like the sort of thing one finds in the work of the Savage Messiah. Perhaps crossed with the sort of thing Thom Yorke draws on his Radiohead album sleeves.

And lo! A premonition of what was to come. I'm a big fan of the stepped-section building, of which this is a very tame example. There are some undoubtedly wonderful buildings in London that utilise the method - the Brunswick Centre for example. Allowing agreeable daylight into the front of the building, and accommodating all sorts of gymnastics and drama in the overhangs behind, the stepped section is a wonderful method of laying out flats. This is by Robert Bailie, 1963, and betrays a certain Scandinavian influence.

It's cliched but nevertheless true about London that one usually begins to experience it primarily through the tube, in which case it is perceived as a series of very small areas perambulated around, and only ever visited atomistically. After a while and you start to take the bus or cycle more, and it begins to link up with itself, becoming more of a territory that is understandable. But after a number of years, and if you are fond of wandering, it starts to become harder and harder to find a territory that is genuinely alien, surprising. So as I walked up the road and passed round the front of this block, I suddenly realised that I was crossing a street I had walked up a number of times. The joy I had been taking in being an 'explorer' was suddenly shattered as I recalled walks in sunshine towards Hampstead Heath with friends years before, or bus trips to picnics on Parliament Hill, or...

I must have been disheartened, as there are no photographs from the next few kilometers I walked, which thankfully took me back into uncharted territory. Living in the flatlands in the area surrounding the river, it is always a joy to find somewhere in London that has TERRAIN of any sort, and I took a certain pleasure in passing up and down the undulating streets that led east around the base of Highgate.

And at the very top of a hill, some humdrum modernism, I would say 1960 or thereabouts. The views from this one must have been tremendous.

How very very British this lot are. deferential, grim, and yet familiar, safe even. The lack of ambition is palpable.

I knew it wouldn't be a wander without encountering some Festival Style. This block, o'er-leapingly entitled 'The Tower' has it all: rounded, gentlemanly columns, tasteful brickwork, including some clever coursing, a cantilevered canopy, a gently pitched roof and a vaguely corbusian treatment of the ground floor. There's really nothing to complain about...

Unlike with this horror. Despite all the years that have passed, despite all the retro-mania in nearly all forms of culture, despite the rehabilitation attempts, I still find myself utterly dismayed by the tastelessness and tack of the 1980s.

I mean, these are nice, if deeply unremarkable examples of turn-of-the-century housing, but they're a million miles more appealing than that bastard to the rear of the photo, even if it does pretend to defer and to mimic.

A pillbox in Highgate. One for Paul Virilio.

Oh Hello! Hiding down a short stump of a street was this little cheeky terrace of five units, executed in a strange grey brick. Similar to the buildings seen at Gospel Oak, it turns out that these are by Neave Brown of Alexandra Road fame.

To be honest these are fairly non-descript. The windows are poky, the bricks are not exactly attractive. They are obviously desirable if the plush car is anything to go by, and they set quite the surreal juxtaposition with their terraced and church neighbours, but I could probably leave these ones.

Oh, and what a shame. It's time for dilapidation worship. These terraces are on their way out, currently undergoing an ignominious strip-out and apparently to be demolished properly soon enough.

An ex-picture framer framed.

For various reasons I was reminded of St Peter's seminary at Cardross. Partly this was due to the empty cells, with their views through the building interrupted only by rubble.

And so here I was. Highgate Newtown. The Whittington Estate, Stoneleigh Terrace. N19

But one last look back at the building to go. The other reason I'm seeing Gillespie Kidd & Coia in this building is the way the revelation of the timber infill panels reminds me of the way that GKC used to articulate theirs, with the ribs and studs clearly articulated on the outside. I must say that the escape staircase canted out to meet the road angle has created some brilliant little complexities, in a scheme which seems to emanate from that strange period when brutalism, hi-tech and kitch were all operative at the same time (exemplified by Stirling's Runcorn housing), which I have previously nicknamed 'Brutalomo'. Alas, these are to be wiped away by an (admittedly high performance) scheme by arch-bore Rick Mather.

We can get an idea here of how the new estate is supposed to work. Matching the scale of a traditional terrace, as well as more or less matching the width of a typical traditional flat, yet with full windows and generous balconies, this building is not Corbusian, is not CIAM in its approach to the urban. This is perfect Team X brutalism; an interpretation and elaboration upon a pre-existing typological arrangement.

But of course there is always architecture - note here the joyous method of terminating the block. It could have stopped at a full wall, it could have stepped down, but no, it appears to step up and out like some weightless honeycomb. This building was designed by Peter Tabori, about whom I knew nothing until recently, but the following is remarkable:

Peter Tábori was born in Hungary in 1942 and studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic. When he was a student, he asked the local authority for a diploma project and was given the brief for Highgate New Town. After working for Ernö Goldfinger and Denys Lasdun, Tábori joined Camden Architects Department - Sydney Cook had been so impressed by Tábori's student work that he was employed to develop it into the final scheme.

My goodness. I can't really imagine the following happening now, for a million different reasons.

One of which is shown here. Apparently the timid blocks on the left are part of the same scheme, albeit a later stage. How pathetic! A thoroughly turned-tide, pointless humility.

Of course, one project that this should remind you of is the Brunswick Centre in Holborn, and how fortuitous!

You are forbidden from climbing onto a flat fish.

And as we approach, the absolute treat of the varying levels of access, the walkways, the stairs, the three dimensional movement.

Which, as we get into the estate proper, is shown in the entry sequence. What we have here are three routes into a flat. A double staircase up, a single staircase up, or a staircase down. There is free movement at the bottom level.

The estate is arranged across six rows of flats, which are connected by four streets in parallel. Due to the car parking being arranged underneath the estate, all of the paths are pedestrian only, which along with their patio paving gives them a quality somewhere between that of a street and a garden path.

Examplified here by the way that the path meanders around the side of the blocks.

The estate is very leafy at times, a park-like condition that compliments the fact that the estate backs onto Highgate Cemetery.

Walkways! Symbols of hope!

Some of the flats are entered from the side. These stairs lead up an open 'close', giving every single flat on the estate their own 'front door'. They are protected from the elements by transparent canopies, a condition that cannot help but remind me of some of the more exquisite flats in Glasgow, with rooflights casting soft glow down into their twirling stairwells.

And so an end to the estate. What I haven't pictured here are the children that were present while I visited. There were two boys who were playing with those metal scooters, rolling up and down the top street before coasting down the hill towards the bottom. There was a group of about four or five boys around 12 or so, who were running around the entire estate and crossed my path a number of times. Then, as I walked along one of the streets I saw two girls at the door of a flat, the mother inside talking to them, their conversation apparently about whether this lady's son/daughter would be able to come out to hang around. It was this that struck me the most - here was precisely the interaction that the Smithsons spent so much energy trying to study and maintain in their work, this was the 'life of the street' that they eulogised so, basically meaning a comfortable and safe-feeling space where there are plenty of people who know you, or at least know who you are. It's not that difficult to achieve.

The Girdlestone Estate next door is not of such high architectural merit, indeed, it resembles far more the sort of non-descript brick design one finds in the East End, but it seemed to be functioning in a similar fashion to its neighbour...

...and was, in places, equally lush.

And, gosh!

If ever there was a typology for garish pomo, it was a leisure centre. What is the correct classical order for a flume ride? I'm sure they asked themselves. I'd like to know who the architect was, as this is the obviously endearing, sub-Jim Stirling end of pomo, as opposed to the wanton kind shown before.

Can you say CORBU?

It seems that everytime I go on a wander it has to be finished off with some garish nonsense in the Blairite style. Take a bow, Kay Hartmann Architects! Now take them away, guards! What a bloody shocking building - thank god it's for children otherwise it might have made me cry it was so grimly jolly. Oh well.

Note - I wrote this up on the day that the UK government passed their vote on the NHS reform bill, which will effectively pave the way for the continuing destruction of the welfare state. In times as gloomy as these, we ought never to forget the wonderful things that a little bit of social spending can achieve. It's really not that hard.

Rain Song

2011-09-04T12:31:00.002+01:00

Rain Song by entschwindet und vergeht
Digging around on my clogged hard drive I found this recording that I once made. A few years back I experimented for a while with a technique whereby through a process of filtering, certain specific frequencies could be extracted from a source recording, without affecting their timbre. Sounds that had a wide range of frequencies and yet some rhythm and texture were best for this, and the rain was especially useful. This was all pre-hauntology, but the idea was quite similar - melodies could be found that were like ghosts within an existing sound, and the pieces sometimes automatically sounded like faint human voices. Unfortunately this was a very time consuming technique, involving the filtering of individual harmonic frequencies for each note, and overall I had better things to be doing. But here's one for you, created from the sound of the rain during a thunderstorm, I think sometime in 2009.

Forthcoming!

2011-08-31T20:10:00.003+01:00

Well, some of you might know about this, some of you might not, but I've written a book.

Against those who consider architecture to be a wholly optimistic activity, this book shows how the history of modern architecture is inextricably tied to ideas of failure and ruin.By means of an original reading of the earliest origins of modernism, the Architecture of Failure exposes the ways in which failure has been suppressed, ignored and denied in the way we design our cities. It examines the 19th century fantasy architecture of the iron and glass exhibition palaces, strange, unprecedented, dream-like structures, almost all now lost, existing only as melancholy archive fragments; it traces the cultural legacy of these buildings through the heroics of the early 20th century, post-war radicals and recent developments, discussing related themes in art, literature, politics and philosophy.Critiquing the capitalist symbolism of the self-styled contemporary avant-garde, the book outlines a new history of contemporary architecture, and attempts to recover a radical approach to understanding what we build.

It's due to be published on the 24th of February 2012, and in the time left before that I'm going to have to a) remember what it's about, and b) transform myself from a shameful self-deprecator into a shameless self-promoter. Wish me luck!

Romanticising the Riots

2011-08-28T18:23:00.006+01:00

Romanticising the Riots by entschwindet und vergeht
You might have noticed that there were some riots recently. I don't really have much to add to the hundreds if not thousands of analyses that have already been contributed, apart from the observation that they all have some element of truth to them.

One of the riots took place right outside my house in "London's Fashionable East End", and as well as going outside to have a look at what was burning (along with a sizable cross-section of the local population), I also, as you'd expect from a pretentious hipster, made an audio recording of the helicopters that were thundering around outside, of which I counted at least four.

Now, it's not as if I couldn't have just left it at that, and had myself an interesting little Chris Watson style audio recording, but I felt it necessary to somehow transfigure it slightly, and the result is the audio that you can listen to here. The helicopters have been combined with a recording of Strauss' 'Im Abendrot' ('At Sunset'), one of his Four Last Songs.

Why? Well, there could be a number of reasons. On the one hand it's a sly gesture towards Stockhausen's 'Helicopter Quartet', but that's by the by. It's also a kind of aleatoric duet - listen to how the doppler effect of one of the helicopters perfectly accompanies the slide from the major to the relative minor! But then it's perhaps about the artistic gesture as such, the impotence, or failure, of any artwork to genuinely transfigure the structure of the world into which it's inserted. The high-romanticism here functions as a phantasmagoric fragment of a world that is not always in the process of collapsing, a fiction that is always drowned out by the harsh sounds of the world in which it is heard. Or, to put it another way, high-camp futility is the mood I'm going for.

Soon to be gone

2011-08-26T00:05:00.003+01:00

There's always this strange thing that occurs when you live in a city, and it's that amnesiac feeling when new buildings are being completed around you, and it becomes almost impossible to remember the building that stood on the site previously, even if you passed it almost every single day. We could probably draw lessons about 'homeliness' perhaps, about how the immediate environment is always present to hand and thus taken as permanent, even if the building before us is only a year or two old. There are innumerable buildings that have gone up in the time I've lived in London, where upon encountering them for the first time, amid the revulsion of yet another rubbish new building being inflicted on us one suddenly senses a loss, not of the object itself, but more of the ability to consider or remember it.

With that in mind, here are a few buildings that I have begun to notice are about to be lost.

London Bridge Station

This deliriously dreary space frame roof is set to be removed as part of the Shard redevelopment. This was very much one of the first buildings that really put me on to how sad and disheveled a space frame could look, on the various occasions I sat gloomily under its pale light, waiting to be taken away somewhere.

Milestone House

This rather unremarkable bit of Mini-Mies is rendered fascinating by the fact that it holds the 'London Stone', a rock of great historical and mythical status, although for people like me it's most interesting because it features in Keiller's London, when it inspires Robinson to declare the No.15 a sacred bus and bus route. This is especially poignant for me as I lived for a number of years on the route of the 15, so I saw the stone frequently as I made my slow way back home. The fictional sacred-ness of the 15 is understandable, as my experiences of the bus were almost the perfect example of the idea of London as a world city of hard workers from everywhere and anywhere - I've never heard as many different languages being spoken in one enclosed space as I did on the No15 heading back out east on wet and cold december evenings. What's going to happen to this building is that (apparently) Fosters are going to knock the building down, and relocate the stone into their unfathomably ugly Walbrooke building next door, at which point all sacred-ness will be lost forever.

4&6 Broadgate

And of course, planning permission has been granted for MAKE's terrifying bulky block building for UBS, with sardine-stacked traders piled into massive floor plates well over 100m long. In drawings the new building begins to resemble an old 19th century mill factory, with innumerable posh yobs getting through those harsh early years on the vast trading floors before they can jack it all in to start an infantilised organic food company, chirping on and on about their 'yummy bits'.

Mahler - Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

2011-08-11T13:59:00.004+01:00

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen by entschwindet und vergeht
Recently E&V was possessed by the desire to transcribe this most exquisite of Mahler's 'Rückert Lieder', and here is the initial result.

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,
Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben,
Sie hat so lange von mir nichts vernommen,
Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben.

Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen,
Ob sie mich für gestorben hält,
Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen,
Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.

Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgewimmel,
Und ruh' in einem stillen Gebiet.
Ich leb' allein in mir und meinem Himmel,
In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied.

I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!

It is of no consequence to me
Whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am dead to the world.

I am dead to the world's tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song!

The text is your typical world-weary romanticism, but you might notice that the music is very much the prototype for the far more famous 'Adagietto' from Mahler's 5th symphony, and it's generally thought that this lied is very much inspired by Mahler's burgeoning romance with Alma Schindler.

The transcription is not just of the accompaniment, but includes and attempts to render the vocal line in a prominent manner. The performance is admittedly rather sketchy, with great hesitation: this is basically a result of my haste in recording the piece, meaning that the fingerings (some of which are really rather awkward) have not been properly worked out.

I hope this pleases at least one person out there.

Mmm... tasty

2011-08-08T09:40:00.002+01:00

Coming south from hence we passed Stilton, a town famous for cheese, which is called our English Parmesan, and is brought to the table with the mites, or maggots round it so thick, that they bring a spoon with them for you to eat the mites with, as you do the cheese.

Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, p.424

Seriously though, this book is utterly amazing.

2011-08-06T23:27:00.003+01:00

Apropos of nothing, two classic stride pianists taking on classic romanticism. Lambert playing Wagner, & Tatum playing Chopin.

Review - "BDP: Continuous Collective"

2011-08-03T23:04:00.007+01:00

The following is a book review that was spiked by a magazine. I thought I'd post it up here rather than letting it go to waste.

"You know more Crowded House songs than you think you do,"said the advertising catchphrase marketing the greatest hits of that long-running antipodean pop group. A simultaneously proud and yet self-deprecating statement, it suggested that there was an inherent invisibility to the band that was leaving their important yet unglamourous contribution to music easily overlooked. 'Continuous Collective', a book published to celebrate fifty years of Building Design Partnership (or BDP), attempts a very similar form of humble self-promotion, making a case for what they consider to be their easily-ignored strengths of flattened hierarchy, multi-disciplinary organisation and most importantly, a non-egotistical approach to design.
"The 'good ordinary' is a noble standard in building, because that implies the greatest good for the greatest number. Surely this is what the design of the total built environment should be about," writes Hugh Pearman, author of the volume, exemplifying the deferential attitude which primarily defines the book. This is a positive spin on what BDP currently represent, which we might uncharitably describe as the best of faceless commercial architecture in the UK. To reaffirm the image of the practice in this way it helps that BDP has the history that it does, having been formed by George Grenfell Baines in 1961 as a socialist cooperative with a practice structure including all design professions, or in Grenfell Baines' words; "Technology and Art linking together in fruitful dialectic relationships!"
To stress this utopian dimension to BDP and attempt to give it historical consistency, an essay contributed by critic Owen Hatherley examines BDP's early years in the context of the Bauhaus and other radical architectural experiments in co-operation. Siting them in the milieu of post-war collectivity, Hatherley sketches a narrative whereby BDP were at the vanguard of British building rather than peripheral workhorses. It helps here that we have such striking early works as the Preston Bus Garage, a lean terminal dominated by ribbed bullhorn profiles, easily the stylistic equal of Paul Rudolph's car park in New Haven, or the Halifax headquarters, a virtuosic smorgasbord of Corbusian brutalism, Miesian tailored box, hi-tech serviced office and proto-deconstructivist rhomboids.

However, like many architects of a certain age BDP have skeletons in their closet, most significantly the swathe of unsustainable out-of-town shopping complexes they built during the 80s. Lee Mallet's essay traces the development of BDP alongside a broad history of British capitalist culture. After the aforementioned welfare state brutalism of the 60s & 70s fell out of favour BDP had to adapt to the brash and vulgar architecture of the Thatcher era, a change that obviously pushed them far out of their comfort zone ("There were no BDP education buildings and scarcely any hospitals […] during the whole of the 1980s" notes Mallett). After suffering badly during the early 90s recession, BDP were among the leading lights of the new Aalto/Erskine influenced pseudo-modernism that will forever be associated with New Labour's pseudo-socialism.

It is the very fact of BDP's resistance to egotistical design that makes it so apposite to see them as a symbol of British architecture as a whole. "If at first the desire was to change the society, the model has also been very successful at adapting to society's changes" Pearman writes ambiguously, and it's a source of sometimes bitter nostalgia to compare BDP's work with itself, whether it be the difference between the confident, bold buildings for the plate-glass Bradford University and the polite and somewhat insipid fair of later buildings such as Sunderland University, or in the slow transition from exciting modernist graphic design to the aesthetic nullities of the pastel coloured sketches and banal renderings that we are used to now. Even contemporary design as consummately executed as the Stirling Prize nominated Liverpool 1 masterplan is tainted by knowledge that the project is a yet another insidious privatisation of public space for the benefit of commercial interests. In the last few pages the projects suddenly develop into massive city-sized schemes, signifying BDP's move into the emerging markets and their potential futures.

BDP have found themselves in the news a number of times recently: they were recently named by the education secretary and playground bully Michael Gove as the most overpaid architects of the slashed BSF scheme (a wildly inaccurate accusation), a sign of the massive changes that British architecture is once again going through, while it was recently revealed that the architects in charge of an anonymous shopping development in Preston which proposes to demolish the Preston Bus Station - recently voted BDP's most popular building - were none other than BDP themselves, a situation of sublime irony. Overall, BDP can tell us a lot more about architectural culture than we might think, and the final impression of the book is that what first appeared to be just a banal pat-on-the-back is actually a intriguing section of British architectural history.

and from side to side

2011-07-05T21:01:00.000+01:00

and from side to side by entschwindet und vergeht

Look What You Could Have Won!

2011-07-05T19:52:00.004+01:00

It was scheduled to be raised for one of Robert Moses' most cherished projects, the Lower Manhattan Expressway. This road would have slashed clean across Manhattan Island, from the East River to the Hudson, and torn down or sealed off large parts of the South and West Village, Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side. As plans for the expressway gathered momentum, many industrial tenants left the area, anticipating its destruction. But then, in the early and mid-1960s, a remarkable coalition of diverse and generally antagonistic groups - young and old, radical and reactionary, Jews, Italians, WASPS, Puerto Ricans and Chinese - fought fervidly for years and finally, to their amazement, won and wiped Moses' project off the map.

This epic triumph over Moloch left a sudden abundance of prime loft space available at unusually low rents, which turned out to be ideal for New York's rapidly growing artist population. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, thousands of artists moved in and, within a few years, turned this anonymous space into the world's leading centre for the production of art. This amazing transformation infused SoHo's dreary and crumbling streets with a unique vitality and intensity.

Much of the neighbourhood's aura arises from its interplay between its nineteenth-century-modern streets and buildings and the late-twentieth-century-modern art that is created and displayed inside them. Another way to see it might be as a dialectic of the neighbourhood's old and new modes of production: factories that produce cord and rope and cardboard boxes and small engine and machine parts, that collect and process old paper and rags and scrap, and modes of art that collect and compress and connect and recycle these materials in very special ways of their own.

SoHo has emerged as an arena for the liberation of women artists, who have burst on the scene with unprecedented numbers, talent and self-confidence, and fought to establish their identity in a neighbourhood that was fighting to establish its own. Their individual and collective presence is at the heart of SoHo's aura. Early one fall evening, I saw a lovely young woman in a glamourous red-wine-coloured suit, clearly returning from "Uptown" (a show? a grant? a job?) and climbing the long flights of stairs to her loft. In one arm she supported a big bag of groceries, with protruding French bread, while on the other, balanced delicately on her shoulder, was a great bundle of stretchers five feet long: a perfect expression, it seemed to me, of the modern sexuality and spirituality of our time. But just around the corner, alas, has lurked another archetypically modern figure, the real estate man, whose frantic speculations in the 1970s have made many fortunes in SoHo, and driven from their homes many artists who could not hope to afford the prices that their presence helped to create. Here, as in so many modern scenes, the ambiguities of development roll on.

Marshall Berman. All that is Solid Melts Into Air, 1982, 337-8

A Trip to SE22

2011-05-18T20:45:00.013+01:00

Hello hello, two posts in two days, what's going on?

A couple of days ago I decided to make the trip to go see a building I've been meaning to visit for quite a long time, located half way across the city from where I live. This is a brief report of that journey.

The first steps to be made were to join the new extension to the East London line to take me south of the river. It's a strange thing, the East London Line. I used to live on it before it shut down and it was a strange, disconnected, slightly eccentric relative to the wider network, only really connecting with the Jubilee line, and feeling very much the Victorian relic. My favourite station was always Wapping, for the exciting way you would descend the drum to reach the platforms, the massive sculptural beams holding the walls of the station apart, which were black and ominous, super-dramatic as rain would fall from an unseen lightwell above, to the very narrowness of the platforms (surely the most tight on the whole network), to the hilarious late 80s/early 90s illustrations of media companies occupying the old warehouses on the river, all shoulder pads and brick-sized phones. I was so very relieved when I saw that all the murals of the old stations had been retained during the improvements, as it would have been all too easy to have gotten rid of them. Indeed, I was tempted to get off my train for a second to take pictures, but thought it best to keep my travelling time short.

The new lines feel strange however. They are indisputably a good thing - it is important civically to link up the east and the north, and to somewhat ease the Hackney Hole of transport options (which was never as bad as people made out). But at the same time, as you travel down through Hoxton, looking into the windows of the warehouse flats whose owners never expected to be visible to anyone, gaining strange vistas of areas one thought one was already familiar with before passing through the contested Shoreditch borderland discussed in the previous post, you're forced to wonder about the changing face of the city. You might find your increasingly bourgeois surroundings to be increasingly unpleasant, but you played your part in that process after all. It all feels like the end of something, a cycle concluding, as the East End takes its place next to Islington in the 90s, and further back Notting Hill, and so on. So many people of my class are being pushed further north by the incoming elite, but this is to be idly swept along by these changes. I'm reminded of Robinson's quest for bohemia in the suburbs; perhaps it's high time to abandon the search for large and cheap space close to the centre.

After passing through Shoreditch where, to extend the Keillerian motif, three kinds of people co-exist uneasily (Bangladeshi working-class, hipster middle class and the onrushing wealthy) the train plunges underground, not to surface again until New Cross, before essentially joining the larger rail network. Forest Hill was my goal, an area whose first striking characteristic is that it has terrain, a ludicrously rare commodity near the Thames. Walking up towards my destination, I began to take pictures.

This small building stood out boldly, and further investigation revealed a strange, supernatural quality about the building.

I thought I heard somebody saying something about owls, but I couldn't be sure.

And then, a portal to Sheffield opened up before me.

And then to drift past the Horniman museum. A fine art nouveau-ish effort by C.H. Townsend, he of the Whitechapel Gallery and the Bishopsgate Institute fame, with a fairly hippyish 90s extension to the side. One day I'd like to pop in there, as I'm a fan of the stuffed glass display case mode of display, whether that be the Pitt Rivers or a Joseph Beuys retrospective, but this time I was a man on a mission. However, I did let myself be drawn towards the back of the buildings where...

... my nose for iron & glass sought out a little beauty. This is late 19th century, which is obvious from the elaborate leaf like panes of glass and the profusion of filigree decoration. Towards the end of the iron & glass boom the buildings became increasingly more fiddly in their expression, exemplified by those in Brussels or Vienna, from a similar time to this one here.

A great place to come and work. Perhaps some other time, when it's raining maybe.

A further drift into the grounds and I saw this artifact, a walled concrete bowl with goals at either end. Two sets of people were having a kick-about, but I just couldn't figure out the rationale behind the space. A court like this really needs its own game, like the idiosyncrasies of the yard at Eton written into the rules of Fives.

And then! Oh! There it was, appearing from between the vegetation, a crystalline vision atop the next hill.

Ziggurats? Castles? Defensive Walls? No, Dawson Heights.

But first, there was the uncanny sensation of finding one's self in a parallel neighbourhood. I personally grew up in an estate of 1930s semi-detached houses similar to these, on a small hill in the West End of Glasgow. The character of this zone seemed to be highly similar, there were schoolchildren everywhere, cats a plenty, garages fallen into total neglect, the velux windows betraying signs of loft conversions.

Even the plethora of old telephone lines stretching everywhere. An very strange feeling indeed, almost a dream.

But this unheimlich sensation was quickly tempered by a spot of interesting municipal modernism.

Which had a hint of the Giles Gilbert Scott about it...

...especially seeing as it housed transformers.

If there is not already a band out there called 'DANGER OF DEATH', who use precisely this isotype as their logo, then it's going to have to be me who does it.

And here is the death of which there is a danger. I've always looked at the trees in graveyards with suspicion, wondering what they've been eating down there.

The lack of terrain in Central London means that difficulties like this never arise. Here the architect has allowed his brickwork to express the falling land in a stepped fashion. Modern architects would be much more likely to set up a 'datum' of some kind that would spring from the top of the hill and find itself above the entrance at the bottom.

And then to rise up again.

These houses are far more salubrious than the ones encountered on the other side of the hill. These are 19th century, and thus have more decoration, more generous floor to ceiling heights, and possibly even a pantry.

And finally, arrival. At the car entrance it presents a fairly blank face to the street, but it becomes clear why soon enough.

Dawson Heights, like any good housing estate, has its own little language of signs and titles. There are two blocks on the site, Ladlands and Bredinghurst.

And they've been generous enough to give us a plan! You can see here that the two blocks are essentially slabs, albeit staggered and concertinaed around the landscape, and oriented directly to the views north (and south).

And like so many blocks of its time, it expresses the stair, lift and service core as the fulcrum of the building, almost separate from the slabs of flats which it serves.

A the bottom of the towers is a rather humungous bin chute. I considered hanging around there in the hope that something would be dropped down from the top of the building, hopefully creating an almighty racket, but there was nothing doing.

In many respects the building has a lot in common with other large housing blocks of a similar time. From the fact that the decks only appear every three storeys we can surmise that the building is made up of maisonettes, either 'in and up' or 'in and down'. This arrangement (with external deck access) can be found prior in Park Hill (perhaps that's what the earlier sign was referring to!) and later in Robin Hood Gardens. Variations of the 1-2-1-2 massing can be found in Balfron Tower and Ben Johnson House (which is perhaps the most successfully massed of all the Barbican blocks).

Another comparison to Robin Hood Gardens (which was built 10 years later) can be made - that of the two blocks encircling a public space, with cars banished to the exterior of the courtyard. There's really very little difference between the two ideas, which perhaps testifies to the disconnect between the perceptions of a place like this and the hellhole that RHG is supposed to be.

Dawson Heights was designed in 1966 by Kate Macintosh for the GLC. She was 26 at the time(!) which is quite frankly ridiculously precocious. You should really check out her contribution to 'London Utopia', if you can. But look at the confidence of the massing of the blocks here! My goodness, it's consummate, with at least four scales of primary form (balcony, corridor, 3 storey 'finger', block) all readable at once, with a similar sense of depth and relief that you can find in the baroque.

And cleverly, at either end the building reduces in scale until you have small blocks of flats in the Ham Common mode.

Which marks a strange aspect to the project - it seems to be riven in two directions between both the force of the sculptural, hard modernism (perhaps erroneously called brutalist) and the more picturesque Pevsnerian modernism. This was an intellectual battle going on at the time, and you can see it writ large here.

But my gosh! How confident is this arrangement? How forceful and yet picturesque!

With the chiaroscuro of the voids in the entrance tower acting as focal points of the entire blocks.

The blocks which stand like the cliffs of volcanic plugs in the hillside.

And yet, it can be as cosy as this little wee ramp at one end of the blocks.

And then to leave. There were a few people around, some mothers and children in the park, and some teenagers returning from school. I wasn't around to see what it was like when people returned from work. You turn away from the building, and there's Canary Wharf.

Turn a little further, and you're faced with this pissy little attempt at a modernist building, which isn't even fit to be blocked in Dawson Height's shadow.

I descended down the hill towards the centre of the great city, down a steep slope overgrown.

The city lurking in the distance. I would dearly loved to have been able to visit one of the top floor flats in there, and get a sense of the space and the view!

Looking back up at the blocks and you can't help but admire their boldness and nobility, set in the parkland, like some ruined castle in a romantic scene.

I mean - tell me that's not magnificent!

My final glance at Dawson Heights as I descended back down towards the floodplain. I decided to drift down towards Peckham, although steering clear of East Dulwich due to the very slight chance I might bump into a ghost. The streets around there are mile upon mile of mile of late 19th century railway suburb, although I did come across -

- a lovely pair of pre-fab houses sitting incongruously inamongst the red-brick.

You don't see many of these any more. These looked to be in ok condition, although one set were far better looked after than the other. The walk descended towards Peckham Rye.

Where I was unfortunate enough to meet this academy building, a perfect reminder that the days of Dawson Heights are long gone, but they must return quickly, otherwise there's no other option but to go through another period of Victorian hyper-exploitation before a massed slaughter before we can begin to achieve anything similar again.

ACHIEVE! INSPIRE! ENTERPRISE! INNOVATE! ASPIRE!

Go to hell, aspiration, I have but one of you now : I want to live in Dawson Heights.

My Favourite New Building in London

2011-05-17T22:46:00.006+01:00

SO let's be honest amongst friends here, you can trust me. I know that it's hard to admit because you've made such a massive investment in trying to believe that it's not the case but nobody's going to look down on you for just admitting it:

Today's architecture is officially useless.

It's not like people don't try hard, god knows it's difficult! But everything's stacked against good buildings these days. The most interesting and powerful materials leak and pollute, there's no certainty of expression, while clients are either so tight that they threaten to cancel the project if they're expected to build anything more urban than sky-high sardine-stuffed trading floors with a disgusting 'Pret' at the bottom, or they're spending god knows how much of their money on unbearably juvenile monuments to their own vacuity and serendipitous slide to the top. There's no joy in technique any more either - the cutting edge no longer looks forward but is becoming so involuted it's in danger of cutting its own guts out from the inside. So when someone asks me, as they occasionally do; "What's your favourite new building in London?", I usually just flounce around like a gasping fish, changing the subject as quickly as possible.

BUT! These days I have something I can actually enthuse about, a building that is actually interesting, refreshing, formally inventive and historically rich. It's the golf range at Broadgate!

Ok, so it's a golf range. But just look at it! It's situated on what has been derelict land for quite some time now, situated next to the Light Bar (where I've only ever drank once, I think, at a terrible time when I was worried that a loved one might be very ill, and the barman couldn't even make my Guinness properly). Anyway, the site immediately to the south recently had the Broadgate tower built upon it, a thoroughly banal tower of spec offices for besuited arseholes to not be at all productive within, while the site upon which the golf range sits is earmarked for a bad Foster's building, of which there are a bunch to the immediate south at the utterly wrecked Old Spitalfields Market. We’re very much at the frontline of the City's expansion into the East End, a situation we are surely seeing the endgame of now, what with the depressing arrival of private members clubs, Gucci shops and posh idiots who didn’t even go to art school, not to mention 'pop-up malls' and 25 storey blocks of luxury flats that 'respect the small-scale urban grain'. That said, the golf range (and the five-a-side football pitches beside it) are essentially pop-ups as well, although they seem less about slimy commerce cynically grabbing cultural capital and more about using cheap space for a limited time - London's more old fashioned and somewhat purer commercial initiative.

The building is shaky and fragile in appearance. Sparse scaffolding reaches up to a height of nearly 10 metres, running asymmetrically along the sides of the range. Between these inadequate structures is stretched netting, creating a ghostly veiled form into which the balls are whacked. Into one end is plugged a two storey structure from which the golfers do the whacking, and they gain access to the whacking platform by paying a bit of money at a small booth, and that's about it.

But we can see other things in this building: perhaps the most obvious reference would be Cedric Price's aviary at London Zoo, a steel tent kept up much longer than was ever intended, but a marvellously intangible piece of modernism nonetheless. Beyond that we can see that it has a certain affinity with that period of architecture in general - it is lightweight, it was quickly deployed and no doubt will quickly vanish when the time comes to build the Fostrosity, and it could probably be redeployed elsewhere at some point. But we can go even further, and see parallels with contemporary wibble architecture in its complicated and irregular forms. But it's the formal intrigue that comes not from playing around with computers and then deploying spurious metaphorical justification, but from draping some old netting between rudimentary scaffolding.

Indeed - it has another virtue: cheapness. Nobody gets cheapness right in the city. There's basically two kinds of building built in London these days - an expensive, tailored architecture at the high end of the scale, and then all the half-hearted attempts not to be out-done, built from Kit-Kat wrappers and bog roll, which are almost worthy of greater contempt. If you don't have the budget, you shouldn't pretend that you do - embrace your cheapness! Go further with it! Don't wait for your client to insist you cut the budget, cut it yourself! Make it so cheap it will terrify them, so that they won't recognise it as architecture, make it unbearable to them! Damn the tailored neo-modernism of the contemporary order - let us not forget that every time there has been a modernist lurch in architecture it has learned from rudiments, from what doesn't count as architecture, be it the shed, the silo, the crane, the airship - whatever. Today, architecture is as uptight and constipated as it was in the late nineteenth century, craven and obsequious. I look at this dumb golf range and I see the only building around that has even a hint of modernist energy these days. It is stupid, yes, but no more stupid than anything else around it.

Oh god, what have I done?

2011-05-12T00:34:00.000+01:00

Mashup Hell by entschwindet und vergeht
About a year and a half ago I was overcome with diabolical inspiration, and I created a mash-up. Well, it just happened to me again - around ten minutes ago I was visited by the demonic muse, and was duty bound to create the mash-up above, for which I am truly, truly, truly sorry.

There's no excuse really.

E&V fodder.

2011-05-11T02:13:00.002+01:00

So let me just get this straight: Lars Von Trier's new film is called 'Melancholia', it's about the end of the world, and it's soundtracked by Wagner's Prelude to Tristan & Isolde? Ummm...

E&V - Driven Home Wasted

2011-05-03T23:16:00.004+01:00

Driven Home Wasted by entschwindet und vergeht
Isn't it strange how the last few years have proven Mark and Simon right to a level I'm sure even they didn't expect? Hauntology has become such a significant part of the pop landscape that it's strange to think that it was less than five years ago that they first started to identify the ghostly tendency. The method, exemplified along one axis by Burial and along the other by Ariel Pink has gone on to spawn such a massive proportion of the phantasmagorical pop that currently dominates the critical consensus.

One of the more significant poles of the current state of the tendency is Tri-Angle records, whose artists mostly delve into woozy memories of a certain branch of eighties synth pop, drowning in the usual dreamy half-recollections, although now it seems to be bad Simpson/Bruckheimer movies that are providing the material for twisted reminiscence.

On the one hand, it feels as if people are finally, finally making good postmodern pastiche rather than kitsch, but then at the same time it's as if there really isn't a single crack in culture that would allow anything 'new' to break through, as everyone just wrings the last drips of aesthetic satisfaction out of old forms, desperately not trying to look the future in the face.

With that in mind, and in conversation with my flatmate, (who it must be said keeps abreast of all of the latest shit, going to all the clubs etc, perhaps not quite sharing my despairing outlook), I decided to get back in on the act. So I made an example of your typical melancholy hypnagogic pop song. It's not so hard!

Chopin - Prelude No.14 in E flat minor - Guitar arrangement by E&V

2011-05-03T23:12:00.002+01:00

Chopin - Prelude No. 14 in Eb minor - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht
Here's another arrangement that I recorded the other day, as usual it's bloody scrappy...

I think...

2011-04-04T23:52:00.000+01:00

... that I might be beginning to understand Brahms.

Surplus surplus surplus

2011-03-29T22:49:00.007+01:00

Here are more things to look at:

A video from the NYT about an unfinished Venezuelan skyscraper that is heavily squatted. If you disregard the pretty clunky politics then it's rather interesting.

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Two brilliant posts by Adam Curtis. I've mentioned it before, but his blog really is something else. As the nuclear accident at Fukushima rolls on, Curtis dug out a near-20 year old film he made about the nuclear industry, which is -as you might imagine- prescient.

And then, what with the fact that we Brits are suddenly and without warning committing belligerent acts in North Africa, Curtis has prepared a potted history of humanitarian intervention, which is consummate. It also features a brilliant final line which is well worth sticking around for.

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An excellent post on Bahrain by Bauzeitgeist, about revolution in a landscape of malls and business parks.

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There's a Xenakis Symposium down at Goldsmiths, this weekend. I might pop down if I get the chance, and you should too!

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The incomparable Giovanni Tiso has written a piece at his Bat Bean Beam blog that is just blistering, about Blair and his mediations. If you don't know it yet, his blog is both consistent (one big post a week), and consistently excellent.

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Francois Roche is being weird, as usual. Is this a rare example of a principled architect, or is it simply him showing off and playing up to his status as 'crazy frenchman'? I think I've met only one person who studied at Sci-Arc, and they were an arrogant cock, so there you go... Actually, hang on, I interviewed Benjamin Ball from Ball Nogues and he was lovely, so scratch that!

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Chopin - Prelude No.2 in A minor by entschwindet und vergeht
Another arrangement by yours truly. I'm trying to record them now; as I've written (or almost written) so very many, I have gotten archive fever. This one is a bit sketchy but it's done, so I can move onto something else.

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Geoffrey Hill's inaugural lecture at Oxford is online. I'm fairly new to his work compared to some people I know, but well, you know, everyone loves a bit of 'pinnacled corn'...

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And there is far far far too much news right now. Thoughts go to the Japanese, of course, and Libyans, and Bahrainians, and Yemenis, etc. etc.

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Back here in Blighty, we had a march the other day, which I attended.
I attended because I care about other people in the world, and also because I think that those in charge of our government and economy are thoroughly incompetent and must be immediately stopped from enacting their spiteful, vindictive, petty, damaging, greedy, myopic, thuggish agenda. It's as simple as that really.

Hell Yeah!

2011-03-23T16:25:00.004Z

I have nothing more to say about this image.

Parody and Pathos

2011-03-22T22:32:00.005Z

(Eschenbach going very very slowly indeed...)

SO the last month was quite a strange one, all told. Inamongst all the shocking banalities that were the sum of my life and yet couldn't possibly be of any interest to you, I did manage to see two different performances of Mahler's 9th Symphony in the space of a week. The first was at the Royal Festival Hall, the London Philharmonic conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, preceded by Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Overall it was very good, although the sound was somewhat lacking in the hall - none of the crescendi ever actually made that much of an impact. Eschenbach handled the irony and grotesqueness of the two inner movements well, with the percussion in the Landler occasionally giving the impression of rimshots accentuating sick jokes, and the Rondo-Burlesque blasting along at a thoroughly sarcastic pace. Unfortunately however, I really didn't get the way Eschenbach handled the finale. The best recordings I've heard of the movement have always been determined, and in fact rather consistent in tempo; there always seems to be a sense of drive about them. But the way Eschenbach repeatedly brought the movement to a near halt, a near silent halt at that, meant that the performance required a blasting insistence from the three climaxes that was just not forthcoming, losing much of the movement's power in the process. And by the time the final pages arrived, it was almost as it had bottomed out too early, leaving Eschenbach a little bit lost in a sea of uncontrolled coughing, as we waited for his hands to drop into the silence.

Gergiev, at the Barbican with the LSO a week later was very different, if a little more conventional. The first half was Shostakovitch's Cello Concerto No.2, a piece I didn't know, but which was an inspired choice, with its sarcastic almost-disco moments inamongst the gloom complementing the Mahler's self-undermining nature excellently. For the Mahler, the sound was far better than at the Royal Festival Hall, the orchestra sounding far more full, the strings very much in the soft and silky mode, the climaxes packing real punch. But compared to the Eschenbach, the two ironic inner movements were played less for laughs and more for angularity, which I felt to be a flaw. Mostly this approach backfired, although a moment near the end of the Rondo-Burlesque - when Mahler gives us a melody on which the sugar has been laid so thickly it's almost sickening - came as such a shock out of the brutal rush Gergiev was in that myself and my companion both nearly burst into fits of laughter. For the finale, Gergiev played it exactly as it should be played, with the almost Beckettian insistence of the writing totally apparent, and the three major climaxes really leaving you exhausted. Eventually, after the final attempt of vitality to assert itself fails and the music drifts off towards nothingness, the quoted melody from the Kindertotenlieder in the last few bars made my hair stand on end, as it bloody well should do. Not exactly a ground breaking performance, but it's one of the finest works in all of music so if it's done well then there's really not much better to be had, period.

Mahler 9 Finale (excerpt) by entschwindet und vergeht
Afterwards, I made this arrangement of the first 18 bars of the finale. It's not very appropriate to the character of the music, but I felt compelled to do it, so there.

Well hello there!

2011-03-22T22:25:00.006Z

I guess it's been a long time.

Anyway, without wanting to get into the changing (read: receding) landscape of people wot write on the internet and so on, here are a few wee photos of the thing I did at the Barbican the other weekend. It's hardly spectacular, but the children all seemed to really enjoy it, which is the main thing at the end of the day. In fact the best feedback will have to have come from the child who poked his head into the space while we were setting up and said, eyes wide with awe: "WOW, IS THIS A DEN?"

Quick! Quick!

2011-03-05T00:53:00.003Z

If you have young children and live in London, come down to the Barbican tomorrow or Sunday, because myself and two lovely friends have designed a big musical den as part of the Barbican's 'Weekender' programme, and it will be played by percussionists from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Guildhall.

There is a tiny flicker of light inside me that is not always already snuffed, and this weekend is a chance to see it.

More Fragments.

2011-03-02T00:08:00.005Z

'Be not solitary, be not idle.' - Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

'Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.' - Beckett, Proust

Anywaaaaaay... here's some things to look at:

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I'm currently collaboratively working on a thing as part of the next Barbican Weekender on the weekend of the 5th & 6th of March. The piece is called 'Salvaged Sound' and is an installation to be played by members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Guildhall musicians. If you read this blog and have young children, there are many much worse things that you could be doing this weekend!
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Here is my Icon review of Patrik Schumacher's 'The Autopoiesis of Architecture'. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get a chance to finish writing my guide/critique to his book, and of course whether or not I've just wasted my time worrying about it at all. Steve Parnell's review in the AJ was much much better than mine, although I am in broad agreement with him.
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Speaking of the AJ, I had a review of 'Neo-Avant-Garde and Postmodernism in Britain' in there a couple of weeks ago. It's a really fascinating book, adding more to the Stirling and Brutalomo resurgence.
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Carl reminded us of 'Vids' over on the amazing 90s blog.
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Some great stuff over on Fantastic Journal:
Digging out vintage books on London architecture...
And some fascinating photo essays, one of which provides the image above...
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Speaking of vintage architecture books, on a recent trip to 'Barter Books' in Alnwick (where that godawful 'Keep Calm and Carry On' thing was discovered) I got a hold of 'New Directions in British Architecture', 'New Directions in German Architecture', 'New Directions in Swiss Architecture', & 'New Directions in Japanese Architecture'. All of these were published in 1968. I'd love to show you some of the gorgeous things that are contained therein.
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'Utopia London' is playing on Friday the 4th March. As spotted on Infinite Thought
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Anyone fancy a shot on 'Waiting for Godot : The Video Game'?
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A Samuel Beckett documentary, which I haven't had a chance to look at myself. Maybe you can let me know if it's any good.
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Right, I'm off to bed, but for what it's worth:

LONG LIVE THE NORTH AFRICAN REVOLUTION!

Bad News Travels Fast...

2011-02-16T23:37:00.003Z

...in an upward direction.

Well Now!

2011-02-16T23:19:00.005Z

How about this then? It turns out that on the 1st May 1936, Anton Webern conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Alban Berg's Violin Concerto. The CD of the performance seems to be out of production, but we are ever so lucky to have the piece uploaded to youtube.
So here you go, this one's for you, dear reader! Sit back and enjoy 30 crackly minutes of pure modernist-romantic masterpiece...

Movement 1:

Movement 2:

Allein zusammen

2011-02-14T20:41:00.000Z

Allein zusammen by entschwindet und vergeht

Here's a little Valentine's day ditty for you. Enjoy!

Plugging away...

2011-02-08T23:10:00.005Z

Just thought I'd plug this month's contributions to ICON. I've written about the new Morphosis building in China. It's strange; when I was an undergraduate I got really into the deconstructivist lot, which even then was pretty retro, but I was intellectually fascinated by it all. Before I'd read enough to call him out as a dipstick, I thought that Eisenman was spot on (and even now, I'd be prepared to mount a defence of 'House X' and the 'Guardiola House', and possibly a few others, despite him), and I had the typical egotistical architecture student's infatuation with Zaha Hadid style-extravagance. Not so high on my esteem list were Gehry and Thom Mayne, but nowadays they're the ones actually deserving respect, partly because they are both constructors who show their working, as it were, and partly because they're not half as pretentious as the other late-80s lot. The 'Giant Group Campus' by Morphosis is another of those sprawling suburban corporate centres in China, much like Steven Holl's Vanke Centre, which I also wrote about last year. Think of an out of town business park with ambition and a budget, and you're almost there - a typology that doesn't seem to have much of a correspondence in Europe any more.

I also write about Foster, for the first time in a non-academic/historical context. They've built a zero-energy building in Abu Dhabi which they are all obviously very pleased with as it resonates with the technocratic Bucky Fuller-esque dreams that Foster started out with before he became the corporate architect of choice, and before he made the airport typology his own.

And finally, I have reviewed Patrik Schumacher's Autopoiesis of Architecture. I've been writing a more full critique for the blog, but I haven't been able to finish it yet due to work commitments. I promise I will try, although people have insinuated that perhaps I am the only person who would have actually bothered to read the book even if they weren't reviewing it.

There's also some great writing from Sam Jacob, Nina Power, Will Wiles, Kieran Long & Charles Holland, and features on Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson & Dan Graham. Worth the price, I reckon.

Recent Activity.

2011-02-07T22:58:00.004Z

An great article by Hugh Pearman on Jim Stirling's Runcorn Housing, yet another seemingly cursed work of his, demolished around the turn of the 1990s. There's a lot of Stirling around at the moment - I recently got hold of the book on the 'red trilogy', which is excellent (see Owen's review), and there is a forthcoming show of his work at Tate Britain. I've been recently fascinated with the buildings from the end of the 1970s, such as the Olivetti Training Centre and Runcorn, both of which seem to be simultaneously Brutalist, Postmodern and also Hi-Tech, an eclecticism that is strangely thrilling. Musing about this, we came up with the new, stupid term 'Brutalomo', to be used for those strange buildings from that period that defy easy classification, with the new material and referential palette still being expressed through modernist formal arrangements.

How about this creepy video of Bill Hicks standing outside Waco? As seen on Found Objects

Which is where I also found this, essentially a propaganda video for the new town of Stevenage. It makes me rather sad to watch.

Levi Bryant has posted up an essay on Derrida from an OOO perspective. I must say I'm quite excited by the prospect of an extension of Derrida's work out into the world of stuff. I thought that there was something similar when I read bits of Harman's work on withdrawal, and so it's interesting to see it being pushed further. A development to watch.

This, Adam Curtis' most recent blog, has been getting all sorts of coverage, and rightly so. He really does have one of the best blogs around, scurrying away in the BBC archives, digging out all sorts of conspiracies. It's really impressive.

There's a really interesting piece at Spillway on Gavin Stamp's 'Britains Lost Cities'.

And this, this is really something. Paul Mason over at the BBC, blogging about the current conjuncture. "The world looks more like 19th century Paris"...

YOUYOUIDIOTS

2011-02-04T23:19:00.001Z

Just in case you were interested in what people think about the title of this blog, here's a small collection of what the internet says about it...

• I miss you, you idiot. I miss you so much that I can't think.
• I just told you, you idiot. I'm going to send out the ragdoll monster to attack those good guys when they're not looking.
• We're talking in private because I don't wanna be seen talking to you, you idiot. Bad enough they know I exist.
• Because I love you, you idiot. i want to really lose weight ive been overweight for far to long :/
• The rule for space combat is that you have to find the enemies before they find you! You idiot!"
• Nobody's gonna tell you, you idiot! That's like asking, "Hey! Does anybody have a combination to their bank's vault?"
• I LOVE YOU, YOU IDIOT!! ;]. TAN-AS-HELL. P.S Your boobs look great in that shirt.
• I wasn't re-rating you, you idiot. You're still a 7.
• he's using you you idiot hes saying that so you do thigns for him sexually good job go find a real guy.
• No she just doesn't like you, you idiot!
• Fuck you you idiot......Got to hell bitch,
• By that I meant "I like you, you idiot." Sometimes girls are to afraid to voice that they like a guy.
• She is sitting there because she loves you and she can't leave you alone because she missed you! You idiot imbecile!
• Alex: Because I love you, you idiot! So much it scares the crap outta me.
• He whole bloody family is superior to you! You idiot, I won't dare call you my own son if you keep acting like this!
• Did you feel the urge to extend your arm upward with your palm down and shout Sieg Heil? Oh my, you are really getting in to this aren't you? YOU IDIOT!
• HE'S SUPPOSE TO SUGGEST YOU, YOU IDIOT
• Jimmy i know its you, you idiot!
• I had this buddy icon that said, "I love you, you idiot," you know the line from Gilmore Girls, my favourite show.
• I love you,you idiot. 23.I love you isn't it enough.
• I'll tell you, you idiot on the right, Fox News lied in 2000 when they said George Bush won Florida
• I Love You. "…You idiot."
• is it just me or did the guy with the camera say after the shot went in "I TOLD YOU I TOLD YOU YOU IDIOT"?
• Of course I missed you, you idiot. You're my closest friend
• I love you, you idiot!" and Mir is like "O///O" now
• "And neither are you, you idiot. Farkel". you're a putz.
• "You... you idiot!" he yelled, as a single tear fled from his eyes down his cheek and landed on Blinky's face.
• And they say: 'Not you, you idiot, we mean Richie.
• She is out with everyone looking for you, you idiot, come on in, look at you need a bath, you smell like fish, have a bath and I will fix something for you to eat.
• Not you, you idiot. Geraldine.
• They want to stone you to death Mr Hughes and YOU, you idiot, are fighting the so called "islamophobics" amongst the non believers.
• Steve on Victorian towns evacuated Mark, your comments are moronic,hope Karmer catches up with you,you idiot!!
• The big curfuffle came from all the IDIOTS out there (Yes I mean you you idiot) that did not read the patch notes each time Facebook updated itself
• otherwise i know its you you idiot i out thought you, i gave you enough rope to hang yourself fool
• "I'll kill you, you idiot!"
• 'My heart belongs to you, you idiot' she always felt like saying that out loud.
• She wanted to say it—I love you, you idiot—but she just smiled back at him, trying not to let the hurt show on her face.
• Hey estupido, who took care of you you idiot and where did you get your education cause it sure wasn't at harvard!
• Nice to meet you." You IDIOT!!! That's all you came up with??
• MAYBE OUR PLAYERS WILL DRIVE TO SUFFOLK TO PAY TRIPLE REGISTRATION AND PLAY HALF A GAME FOR YOU YOU IDIOT.
• I am not a demonic sociopath like you you idiot.
• you dont tell your boyfriend that he is bad kisser and then expect him to kiss you you idiot.
• your letting a useless piece of shit walk all over you. .....you idiot....
• It was so corny... the whole "I need you you idiot! Don't die! Bawwww" thing almost killed the movie for me.
• Fuck you, you idiot. You don't know shit....
• "I THINK I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU, YOU IDIOT!" ...
• why dont you, you idiot! woow this guy rilly ... woow this guy rilly sux if i was him yd kill my self.
• When I find you, you idiot psychopath, I will definitely kill you!'
• "Do you like anybody?" "Nahhhh(Thinking: YOU, YOU IDIOT)"
• Like the present I gave you?"."You idiot! How many humans you wanna kill to attract our attention?"
• You put on the lights so other drivers can see YOU you idiot!
• the “I love you, you idiot!” Rory/Dean scene was classic and very well done. :)
• There's a reason I love you, you idiot.
• “You know I can't shoot you, you idiot,” she answered, a single tear sliding down her cheek.
• like ive told you,you idiot your flank hair matches a silver- back gorillas,a dog,and domesticated pig.
• "About what's upsetting you, you idiot! I'm not having this infuriating talk with you for my health!"
• Not you, you idiot.
• Scorpion you're not comprehending what I have said havent you, you idiot?
• i never agreed with you, you idiot.. You just a stupid moron..
• She clench her Fists and began to whack him with her Mallet "YOU-YOU-YOU IDIOT!" sh yelled.
• "I'm hugging you, you idiot," Another short silence. "And just for the record, it was her that was foolish. Any woman would be crazy to not want you. ...
• "I love you, you idiot !"
• Wasn't talking to you, you idiot! :P.
• Thank you, you idiot!
• I'm giving way to you, you idiot.
• Emily's like.. in love with you, you idiot.
• YOU ARE the Chief of Staff? are you that retarded about your constitutional responsibilities? or is everything a hypothetical with you, you idiot?
• 'What I've lost is you, you idiot. I'll drive until I get you back. Which way?'
• If some guy posts "Fuck you, you idiot!" and then retracts that shitty comment, perhaps with a brief apology for losing his head, because he honestly realizes he shouldn't have posted such a shitty comment in the first place, ...
• W: Between you and who? R: AND YOU, YOU IDIOT!
• "I love you, you idiot. I'm so sorry I forgot but I'll make it up to you. Just please do not doubt me. I saved you from vampirism didn't I?"
• ;; i love you , you idiot. !!
• And let me explain something to you, you idiot, knowing about political happenings has nothing to do with intelligence, it's acquired information that any fool (like you) can learn.
• I believe in what? lol…i am an atheist you, you idiot. I know religion is a fantasy. Science has nothing to do with religion you ignorant moron.
• "I CAN'T HEAR YOU" You IDIOT,
• Dear Nick: Grow some fucking nuts and bone the blonde girl. She wants you, you idiot. FUCKING DO IT ...
• That is you you idiot just getting them on_
• Livid with rage, I growled, "I will kill you, you idiot!" The resentment and rage began to grow within me.
• -Because I love you, you idiot!!
• RubberSoulMann you, you idiot<3
• It's not like they were going to just magically forgive you, you idiot! You majorly screwed up all of their lives!
• "You...you IDIOT!" Sayrike screeched. "What, you think that I haven't cared? That I haven't cried, haven't despaired? Just because I've only been with you for one day doesn't mean that you know a SINGLE THING that I've gone through!
• I love you, you idiot (:
• Never managed to post a deal yourself though have you, you idiot!
• That Progressive enough for you?...You Idiot.
• Okay so first, let me be clear with you, you idiot, your are not the author of the story,
• I can already see the comfusion! I shot YOU!! I shot YOU!!!! You idiot i'm ...
• I dropped a capsule in and sat here watching the poison dissolve; then you; you idiot, show up and drink the whole thing!
• I didn't need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back.
• I'm sitting right here next you you idiot! That dude.
• English-Latin translation for The blood of Christ, shed for you, you idiot,
• I Love You You Idiot
• I love you you idiot images, I love you you idiot pictures, and I love you...
• Typical Ste that he needed Cheryl to spell it out for him in massive lights: HE LOVES YOU YOU IDIOT.
• I love you for being my knight. Thank you, you idiot
• Now we don't have a house elf any more, you - you - idiot!
• This woman knows you, you idiot. She knows you're not supposed to be around, or I'm guessing you wouldn't be hiding. She will tell someone, and they will find you. And if anyone fucks with what I'm doing here, I will kill you first.
• No Mate, I work for R&D just like you. You idiot ,
• Next morning I turn it on there it is again, the white text, black bachkground stating that you "you idiot you did not shut down right"
• Fuck you, you idiot.
• Dear you, yes you... you idiot, Why do you do this to yourself?

Ain't it Grand...

2011-01-30T23:30:00.001Z

from 'The London Nobody Knows'

On the Concept of Hipsters

2011-01-28T00:18:00.002Z

Expensive reproduction. - Society is integral even before it undergoes totalitarian rule. Its organization also embraces those at war with it by co-ordinating their consciousness to its own. Even those intellectuals who have all the political arguments against bourgeois ideology at their fingertips, undergo a process of standardization which - despite crassly contrasting content, through readiness on their part to accommodate themselves - approximates them to the prevalent mentality to the extent that the substance of their viewpoint becomes increasingly incidental, dependent merely on their preferences or the assessment of their own chances. What they subjectively fancy radical, belongs objectively so entirely to the compartment in the pattern reserved for their like, that radicalism is debased to abstract prestige, legitimation for those who know what an intellectual nowadays has to be for and what against. The good things they opt for have long since been just as accepted, in numbers just as restricted, in their hierarchy of values just as fixed, as those of student fraternities. While they inveigh against official kitsch, their views, like dutiful children, are allowed to partake only of pre-selected nutrition, clichés against clichés. The habitations of such young bohemians resemble their intellectual household. On the walls the deceptively faithful colour reproductions of famous Van Goghs like the 'Sunflowers' or the 'Café at Arles', on the bookshelf the boiled-down socialism and psycho-analysis and a little sexology for libertines with inhibitions. Added to this the Random House edition of Proust - Scott Moncrieff's translation deserved a better fate, cut-price exclusivity even in its appearance, the compactly economical 'omnibus' shape, a mockery of the author whose every sentence put out of action some received opinion, while now as a prize-winning homosexual he fills a similar need for youth as do the books about forest animals and the North Pole expedition in the German home. Also the gramophone with the Lincoln-cantata of some stalwart spirit deeply concerned with railway stations, together with some duly marvelled-at Oklahoma folklore and some noisy jazz records that make you feel at once collective, audacious and comfortable. Every opinion earns the approbation of friends, every argument is known by them beforehand. That all cultural products, even non-conformist ones, have been incorporated into the distribution-mechanisms of large-scale capital, that in the most developed country a product that does not bear the imprimatur of mass-production can scarcely reach a reader, viewer, listener at all, denies deviationary longings their subject matter in advance. Even Kafka is becoming a fixture in the sub-let studio. The intellectuals themselves are already so heavily committed to what is endorsed in their isolated sphere, that they no longer desire anything that does not carry the highbrow tag. Ambition aims solely at expertise in the accepted stock-in-trade, hitting on the correct slogan. The outsiderishness of the initiates is an illusion, they are merely biding their time. To see them as renegades is to assess them too high; they mask mediocre faces with horn-rimmed spectacles betokening 'brilliance', though with plain-glass lenses, solely in order to better themselves in their own eyes and in the general rat-race. They are already just like the rest. The subjective pre-condition of opposition, unco-ordinated judgement, is dying out, while its gesticulations continue to be performed as a group ritual. Stalin needs only clear his throat and they throw Kafka and Van Gogh on the rubbish-heap.

-Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, pp.219-21

On the Ephemeral in Photography

2011-01-26T23:45:00.015Z

Right now there is a rather excellent exhibition at the Hotshoe Gallery, which is on until the 5th of March. It's a mix of contemporary and historical photography, curated by Daniel Campbell Blight and Brad Feuerhelm. I also had something to do with it, so this post counts as a bit of a plug, but I'd be impressed with the show even if I wasn't marginally involved, so there! My contribution is a text in the show catalogue / newspaper, which I've posted below with kind permission from the gallery.

------------

Sigmund Freud's short essay of 1915, 'On Transience', offers us what might be described as a formula for the ephemeral: "Transience value is scarcity value in time". By this he means to assert that decay and disappearance need not be a source of anguish, indeed, he suggests that the perishable nature of objects makes them all the more valuable and worthy of our contemplation. Freud states that even though we are able to comprehend and fear that there will come a time when there is no longer any human consciousness remaining to comprehend anything whatsoever, this should only increase our enjoyment of what we create and what we examine. If we are to contemplate the ephemeral qualities of photography, we could do worse than to begin with Freud's assertion that the veridical fact of disappearance makes objects of desire all the more valuable.

David Maisel, 'Library of Dust',

But we must admit that things are perhaps not quite as simple as this - the ephemeral haunts our being more profoundly than just through our admiration for the preciousness of fleeting beauty. At a fundamental level, self-consciousness is the simplest quality of human life, the perception of a totality of thought, the singular there-ness of being. But we are constantly alienated, not only by our bodies, subject to the dragging weight of matter in time, but also by knowledge, or more particularly the awareness of the inevitability of things that are also impossible to imagine. Think of Samuel Beckett's famous statement at the end of 'The Unnameable' - "I can't go on, I'll go on." - our undead drive mocks us, whispering to us that we are everlasting. As humans, we find transience both inevitable yet simultaneously unthinkable.

Mikael Gregorsky, 'Untitled',

Things are complicated even further by the fact that we make marks, we create. We mark because we are subjects to the will, it is our very vitality exceeding us, but as soon as a mark has been made it is filled with death - it belongs to its maker but it is independent of them, it makes them both more than they were and less than they were. It creates a ghostly body of knowledge, an archive which depends upon consciousness for its ability to mean but is capable of existing beyond it, without us. Derrida once argued that "the structure of the archive is spectral", meaning that the marks we make are inextricably bound up with a logic of ghosts, that representation is in itself haunted, as in the ghostly trace of human presence, but also that our own haunted finitude is made clear in the making of the mark. In short, our history is the history of our own haunting. Derrida - as a thinker of the archive or of the 'body of knowledge' - argued that the ghost was a more appropriate figure for our being than any fully present human subject: instead of ontology, he proposed a hauntology.

Rut Blees Luxemburg, 'Black Sunrise', 2010

But this was not an entirely abstract or poetic observation; it describes a concrete condition. We can expand upon Derrida's statement thus: all media, in some way, are spectral. All marks made create a fragmented image of the human who inscribes them. All forms of media, or representation in general, proliferate spectral images and resonances that create fragments out of single identities. All media evolve as methods of recording, of externalising our memory. The archive begins when a mark or an image is stored in some way that it becomes repeatable. We write because our memory degrades at a faster rate than an imprint in inert material, for example. But all forms of media are still subject to that fragmentary condition that defines memory - as mentioned before, all material is still transient, prone to disappearance, even the archive itself is made up of ephemera.

So against an naïve romantic notion of transience, whereby a decayed object is a simple memento mori, aestheticised and thus somewhat neutralised (we could say sublimated), and beyond Freud's notion that the knowledge of its disappearance multiplies the pleasure one can take in an object, even in its perfect condition, 'spectrality' is the dual and simultaneous process whereby the marks humans make both extend their memory and rob them of their very presence.

Julian Stallabrass, 'Untitled'

Each medium or technique necessarily has its own particular spectral characteristics. Writing might be thought of as the petrified voice, the setting of speech into stone and symbol. A psychoanalyst might tell you that speech itself is evidence of a phantom, both irreducibly personal and somehow alien. The introduction of the phonograph and recorded sound is perhaps one of the more perfect examples of spectral media - the disembodied and projected voice is inherently uncanny, in the sense that its repetitions occupy space and time in almost perfect fidelity to their original occurrence.

But what of photography?

To return to Derrida, he notes -

"It is the modern possibility of photography (whether art or technique matters little here) that combines death and referent in the same system […] the immediate proof given by the photographic apparatus or by the structure of the remains it leaves behind are irreducible events, ineffaceably original." - Derrida, 'The Deaths of Roland Barthes'.

For Derrida, after Barthes, the photograph haunts us with its effortless likeness. This perception of photography as brute, unadulterated representation is what allows it to work as an archival process - the strength of photography qua document or evidence testifies to this quality. But at the same time, photography and its mute realism freeze at an irreducible, irretrievable point. Compared to cinema (once described by Derrida as "the art of ghosts"), which unfolds as both sound and image in time, the stasis of photography has a different phantasmic quality. Photography's arrested likenesses provokes in thinkers such as Derrida and Barthes a pierced experience of death in its very impossibility, but simultaneously the infinite weight of the present in all its reality. Or, to put it another way, the spectrality of photography is not only that of seeing a ghost, but of seeing the ghost in oneself.

Jefferson Hayman, 'More Unfortunate than Criminal', 2009

But of course, photography is not half as 'truthful' a process as it might appear. If anything, however, its artefacts only make it more spectral. For example, it is worth recalling that among the very first to make intentional use of the flaws of the photographic process were mediums and ghost hunters, who were able to play games with exposure to create the illusion of semi-present spectres on film (in fact; ghosts are perhaps the most enthusiastic pioneers of each new communication technology!).

Roger Schall, 'Soho', 1935

The material substrate of archival material also creates its own distortions. Fading, scratching, these distortions upon the surface of historic material alienate us from the image depicted, they veil it - they become figures in their own right. This is where 'spectrality' becomes an aesthetic quality in itself, when the degradations of material become figures for work.
An example, a vulgar one at that: consider that the attraction of the degraded image may be found in the applications that mimic Polaroid photography for digital cameras. This process does indeed use spectral qualities as an aesthetic condition, but it is born of dull nostalgia, the attraction of the 'vintage'. It is a reactionary manoeuvre, the equivalent of having an old-fashioned telephone sound emanating from one's state of the art mobile telephone.

Roger Schall, Nuremburg Cathedral of Light, 1936

But this fuzzy, cuddly, aesthically lukewarm effect is indeed a symptom of a genuinely critical aspect of digital culture. As I have mentioned, each medium is spectral, and almost none is so in a more troubling way than digital media. In fact, we might say that digital media tends towards a limit condition of spectrality. Digital media and storage are fast approaching a point where the archive is effectively absolute. Of course, this absolute condition is impossible, insofar as all material is guaranteed to disappear eventually, but when compared to the cognitive capabilities and comprehensible timescales of the human observer, the minimal decay of digital material, its functionally infinite reproducibility and its functionally infinite capacity for storage spell the practical end point for our own capacity to experience the decay of the archive, which is what connects it to our own experience of memory - a perfect and unchanging body of past knowledge is by no means the same thing as history. But at the very same time, the immateriality of digital media is the very experience of this ephemerality taken towards its limit. Digital media is the both the end and the triumph of spectrality, in that the digital is both the most immaterial yet faithful reproductive apparatus.

Rut Blees Luxemburg, 'Faith in Infrastructure', 2010

This full spectrality of digital culture - the end of the ephemeral - is a deferred promise of modernity. Recall Marx & Engels’ description of capitalist abstraction: “All that is solid melts into air.” The digital archive is the latest, perhaps one of the last stages of this process of spectralisation, and its effects are complex. One can trace this spectral abstraction in the forms of media themselves, but also in how artistic works relate to these processes. The last decade has seen great critical focus on 'haunted' practices in experimental and art music, with the sounds of decayed media being brought into the foreground of the work, or with references being drawn from half-remembered utopian histories, phantasmagorias of other futures. To trace this out within photography: moving on from the digitally simulated fake ‘vintage’ aesthetic, we might consider the attraction of the obsolete, which can be witnessed in the fascination with superseded equipment, which are minor monuments to a different regime of materiality. We might see it in the attraction of ephemera (in the historical sense), lost postcards and trivia, fragments in the Benjaminian sense, like withered corpses, testaments to disappearance, while simultaneously totems to ward it off. Jefferson Hayman's images are testament to this mood, slyly inhabiting the historical garb of the 19th century. But if we can take this dialectic further, it is possible for work to further abstract these qualities; one approach might be to introduce decay into photography. This could be abstracted in a narrative sense - the lurid colours of David Maisel's 'Library of Dust' take on an unbearable weight when one learns of their provenance. But decay here might be a controlled and abstracted figure – take Mikael Gregorsky’s photography, with its dusty phantasms. Gregorsky's portraits, although entirely contemporary in terms of setting, dress, character, technique, cannot but help to bring to mind Victorian ghost photography, as the dust introduced into the development process becomes akin to the ectoplasmic expulsions of a channelling medium. And we might find also think of ghosts of history, whether that be images of long lost objects, buildings, places, or the mute horror of scenes of historical tragedy - this spectral sublimity can be witnessed in the image of the 'Cathedral of Light', Albert Speer's horribly stunning climax to the Nuremburg rallies of 1933, the ultimate point of modern architecture as a dematerialized space of communion. But spectrality also deals with the ghosts of the future, which we can understand through the fixation on resonant utopias that we see in Rut Blees Luxemburg, whether that be in the post-war architecture of the welfare state, transfigured by long exposure to the night, or in the encounters with the skeletons of World Expositions, temporary monuments to the future, now dilapidated; left behind. They represent material promises of a different, better modernity, haunting in their very refusal to vanish.

Steffi Klenz, 'Untitled', 2010

To think of media in this spectral fashion is to attempt a synthesis of approaches to history, psychology, memory and technique that is undeniably post-modern, but offers the chance to escape the trap of irony that this might normally suggest. The figure of the ghost identifies an aspect of human existence that can be traced variously through space, the individual, the collective, and time. It is compelling way of theorising mediation and our relationships to the labyrinthine archive of human work that we are always lost within.

Soixante Huit Cumbernauld

2011-01-23T13:55:00.002Z

I previously mentioned 'Between Channels' putting up a series of photographs that they got hold of, but they've really upped the ante this time, with a series of photographs of the Cumbernauld Shopping Centre, award winning megastructure and Britain's most hated building.

I'm less concerned with the quality of the architecture as we all know that it's not a great building, for various reasons, but the photos are textbook 'h---------' (which god knows seems to have descended into endless bad-nostalgia for shitty witch-related tv programmes...), the grain, the bleached colours, the emptiness, the sense of futures past... They remind me of this set of photographs of then contemporary architecture, all pristine and yet faded.

Two things stick in my mind, however: one is this image of what looks like a stunning bookshop, with that now deeply unfashionable use of timber panelling:

And the other is this image from Iqbal Alam's collection of photos:

This shows the construction of the Cumbernauld Shopping Centre, and is perhaps as close to a genuine early Archigram structure you'll ever get.

Up n Coming

2011-01-17T22:30:00.007Z

Here are a few things that are happening now/soon, or are just worth looking at:

-Mark Fisher and Nina Power will be talking at the ICA on Saturday the 22nd, and it's free. The press release describes the event as "A public discussion on how the dissemination of artwork and information on blogs’ and websites has altered the way that artists distribute and discuss their practice."

-Between Channels is posting a wonderful series of photographs of UK towns in 1968 that they found. They're gorgeous in their own way, and in the words of Mr/Ms Channels: "This is just everyday life as it once was, and never will be again."

-A really rather terrifying post from City of Sound regarding the Australian floods.

Trailer – The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History from the Pruitt-Igoe Myth on Vimeo.

-There is a film that has just been made about the reality behind the architectural myth of the Pruitt Igoe flats. Hopefully there will be showings in the UK at some point in the future.

-A post on 'We Make Money Not Art' highlighting some fine art photography of 'La Vela' in Napoli, one of the most notorious housing estates in the world.

-If you're into philosophers who have spies telling them when you've sarcastically mentioned them on twitter, or even if you're just into some of the most interesting young thinkers currently active, then there is a new collection of essays, 'The Speculative Turn' which can generously be downloaded from here.

-There is a little exhibition down at the Nunnery in Bow, where artist Simon Terrill has created a massive photograph of Balfron Tower and its residents. There is a symposium on Thursday the 20th of January with Edward Colless, Nigel Warburton and Owen Hatherley.

-And finally; I will be giving a talk and taking part in a panel with Rut Blees Luxemburg at the London Art Fair. The theme of the talk and the accompanying show is 'the Ephemeral', so I'll be cracking open a can of 'spectrality' and discussing representative media, ghostliness and probably a bit of politics as well.

What goes around...

2011-01-17T00:10:00.007Z

... I might have guessed that this would happen, but Graham Harman has apparently heard that I might unsubscribe from his blog! I've actually seen him lecture before, at Goldsmiths a number of years ago, where he spoke about Latour and De Landa, which I remember partially for being a fascinating, if somewhat mechanically delivered paper, and partially for the fact that he was the first (and only) person I ever heard say the word 'catalysis'. I was even at dinner afterwards, but never spoke with Graham, and now probably never will...

Of course, this being the internet, nothing is actually private. So if you're reading this Graham, I'm sorry I was rude. I find your philosophy compelling, and I have frequently encouraged others to read it because I think it's some of the most important work that's going on in philosophy right now.

That said, I don't care much for the pretentions towards iconoclasm that you and others of your milieu often indulge in, and I often find your writing style to be a little exasperating, my 'favourite' example being;

"Having been deeply perturbed by a personal visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I mean no disrespect to the victims and ruined objects of Japan if I say that the same list of objects is destroyed in a different way by the various philosophies of human access. Human-centered philosophy is a Hiroshima of metaphysics"

-Prince of Networks, p.103

But I do agree that with you that style is important even in philosophical writing.

But anyway, you're right of course, you should be able to write whatever you want about whatever you want, as often as you want, and for whatever reason you want, even if an 'icy cynical, black jacketed poseur' (he's right, you know!) like me might often find it banal. So again, I'm sorry for being a 'wraith spreading grey banality everywhere' (have you been stalking me?). So perhaps it's best that you go on being an important philosopher, and I can go on marinating in my own miserable and resentful black bile. Although, maybe one day we can chat about '26-2', Coltrane's reharmonisation of Parker's 'Confirmation' from 'Coltrane's Sound' (and my particular favourite from that album). I'd like that.

Oval at Café OTO

2011-01-16T23:45:00.005Z

Well I must say that I enjoyed that little concert. Turning up early in order to secure a table, we had to endure two rather amateur and apologetic support acts before Markus Popp took to the stage. He's actually a rather entertaining figure behind his laptop, pulling faces and pouting along to underlying rhythms that often seem to be his alone, and making rather camp swan-neck shapes with his arms as he fiddles around with his computer and mixer.

My companion was totally correct when he said that the performance reeked of ten years ago (I was certainly left thinking of some of Icarus' work from around 2005), and of course Oval is somewhat of a dinosaur, but if you weren't looking for the new wheel then you would be left properly satisfied by the balance between the soft and the raucous, the rhythmic and the chaotic, the harmonic and the noisy. It was the well composed and considered music of a developed artist, and it was a good concert to begin 2011 with.

Coming soon - two seperate performances of Mahler 9, just a week apart. I am trembling with anticipation.

2011-01-14T23:50:00.004Z

RIP Trish Keenan, this is a real real shame...

2011-01-10T22:27:00.002Z

When philosophers, who are well known to have difficulty in keeping silent, engage in conversation, they should always try to lose the argument, but in such a way as to convict their opponent of untruth.

-Adorno, Minima Moralia, p.76

Twothousandandten

2011-01-04T22:44:00.013Z

Don't worry, come back! It's not another list! But it is the end of one year, and the start of a new. It's a time to reflect, to take stock, to blah blah blablah. What I will say is that on a number of levels (although not that many) 2010 was a far better year than 2009. I was employed in what amounts to 2.5 jobs for the whole year, got to write for various people, got to travel across Europe to write, got to give talks to various people, got to travel across Europe to talk to people, even got to do a bit of teaching. During this time I met a lot of wonderful people, many for the first time, and for all this I'm very grateful. As well as this, my carousing became less desperate & less fatalistic, I took better care of myself, and also some loose ends were tied up, writing a less tragic ending to one of the most horrible stories of my last three years. All in all, it was a damn sight better than the year before, although at the end of the day I'm still the same old miserable bastard.

So anyway, what follows are some collected thoughts on the year just passed, apropos of nothing, and not really in aid of anything either. Perhaps this will help me figure out what next year is going to be all about, or maybe I'm just writing this to pass the time, which will pass in any case. But no matter! Onward! Things can only get better!

WORST BUILDING OF THE YEAR!

By far the most embarrassing object to come to my attention this year was the ArcelorMittalOrbit, the ugliest, most aggressively stupid piece of public art I have ever seen, and it's not even built yet. Everything about it, from the anecdote about BoJo the Clown meeting Lakshmi Mittal in the pissers at Davos, to the clichéd sub-Derridean patter that accompanied the planning application, to the banality of the napkin sketch to the already tired digital resolution of the silly shape, nothing signified the moral and aesthetic vacuum at the heart of this pathetic little island better than this 110m tall trinket to be built within stumbling distance from my flat. ARGH!

BEST (NEW) BUILDING OF THE YEAR!
Well this one has to be a toss-up between one of two buildings, one of which I think is better than the other, one of which I actually visited.

The former is the Spanish Pavilion from the Shanghai Expo. I wrote about the Expo a couple of times this year, both in print and on the blog, as well as interviewing Benedetta Tagliabue for ICON magazine around the middle of the year. What I thought was good about the Spanish Pavilion was that it showed a mature attitude both to the implementation of digital technology / fabrication in a building, as well as to its symbolic language.
Regarding technology, rather than any quasi-avant garde-ist babble about CAD plug-ins being the generators of an unprecedented spatial complexity that enacts its very own detournément, this building was digital in that it used computers to resolve the structural gymnastics, without making any hi-falutin claims that don't stand up to expert scrutiny.
The building also understood the architectural value of formalism for the façade, functionalism for the insides.
And as for the formal language, in an Expo notable for its vacuous pop-formalism, its doily facades, its sand-dune buildings, its frankly stupid conceptualism, this building took the dumb gesture, that of the wicker basket, and made something abstracted and complex from it, referring at once to Chinese tradition, Spanish tradition and previous works by EMBT, as well as all of the other architectural clevernesses they're good at. It was good to see them get some credit, after such a long time as being 'the firm that completed Miralles designs'.

The second building was the 8 House by BIG in Copenhagen, which I reviewed for ICON. I'm suspicious of BIG, to be honest. I find the post-Koolhaas overblown functionalism to be a conceptual one trick pony (HEY guys! What's the zoning envelope? Let's just build right up to it! etc…), and of course I find Ingels' hyperactive optimism to be precisely the opposite of my own ideas about architecture, but it was excellent to see people having a go at the megastructural housing block. Basically a yuppiedrome, the 8 House put all the speculative housing completed in the UK over the last year to absolute shame. In fact, even the developer seems like Nye Bevan compared to the scum we've got over here in the UK. Depressing.

WORST EVENT OF THE YEAR!

This shower of bastards sneaked in, and already they're wrecking the place like it was an unfortunate Oxford restaurant. The simplest way I can understand the situation is that these gentlemen have come to the conclusion that the only way to improve the economic climate in the UK (meaning stimulate opportunities for 'wealth creation', i.e. profit extraction for their friends) is to roll back the rights that our parents and their parents and their parents fought so very hard for so very long for. These hooligans have looked jealously at levels of exploitation in the third world and have thought "Bingo! That's what we need!" It beggars belief.

Not only have they managed to sell the country the mind-bogglingly stupid analogy of the economy being a cupboard that has been left empty by the profligate previous government, thus we're all (i.e. just the poor) going to have to starve, but they're also in the process of destroying the state higher-education system, squeezing the poor out of the inner cities, and crippling the NHS yet further.

As an intellectual, an aesthete, and a person with a strong attachment to the notion of the universality of humanity and its suffering (phew!), I've never felt more adrift from the zeitgeist. I want them stopped. They are bastards, and they're trying to ruin it for everyone apart from them and their clique. STOP THEM!

But then, inamongst this genuine anger, and despite the fact that as K-Punk so perfectly put it: 'history is starting again', there is always the looming fact that this is a systematic crisis in capitalist society, one that is of course intrinsically linked to the looming (unfolding?) environmental catastrophe. Perhaps capitalism might not collapse in the next 100 years, but it's going to get a lot more ugly, as if the world weren't already ugly enough. My wild prediction for what to expect from the next decade? Pogroms. Lots of 'em. All over the place, happening to all sorts of people. Maybe not, but something spectacular needs to be pulled out of the hat if we're going to avoid WWII levels of horror in the next generation or so (but of course, we saw WWII levels of horror in the last ten years in the Congo, didn't we? It just goes on and on…)
Trümmer auf Trümmer…

MUSIC OF THE YEAR!
Oh, it's difficult for me to talk about music much these days. I mean, it's still very very important to me, ridiculously so, but it feels strange to be a music lover nowadays. I hardly ever buy music any more, the occasional album by a contemporary artist, mostly experimental electronic-y stuff, but there's just such a hell of a lot of youtube watching, spotify listening and so on that I can discuss at length various aspects of 'the latest shit', without actually feeling any kind of enthusiasm for it. I suspect this is a very common feeling as the crisis of music consumption brought about by the internet becomes yet deeper, as the sense of discovery that once went hand in hand with finding new music vanishes yet further. I did go to see Hype Williams playing in Hoxton, for example, although I decided that I couldn't be arsed with the Salem gig at Shoreditch church.

I continued trying to practice, although business meant that certain projects I had going during the idleness of 2009 are now on the back-burner, perhaps indefinitely. This year I'd like to make recordings of some of the myriad arrangements that I have almost completed, if only to get them out of the way, to give oneself the feeling of having done something, anything!

2010 also saw me give proper time and consideration to Wagner, which led to some (what I thought were) fascinating insights into the High Romantic imagination and its relationship to technology. Verso reissued Adorno's book on Wagner, which is excellent, although I don't know if I can really be arsed reading what Badiou has to say about him in his newly published collection.

FILM OF THE YEAR!

Well, it's going to have to be Keiller's 'Robinson in Ruins', which I reviewed for ICON. One of the most striking things about this film was the way that the exquisite melancholy of his earlier Robinson films had given way to a sense of pessimistic dread, as Vanessa Redgrave read quotes of climate scientists earnestly discussing the imminent 'End of Life on Earth'.

Overall it certainly wasn't as good as the previous films - one got the sense that Keiller had turned his RCA research fellowship into a Robinson film only under duress, but I still cannot get over the breadth, intelligence and wit of his work, and I'm totally in thrall to its ability to draw out the embedded history and struggles that are latent in the landscapes we inhabit, while also making comprehensive artistic statements.

BOOK OF THE YEAR!
Accusations of clique-ness are probably well founded here, but Owen's book 'A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain' is a really stunning piece of work, a real demonstration that rather than the current standard of reactionary complacency posing as radical theorising all sheathed in unbearably turgid prose, it is eminently possible to combine architecture and politics in a work of genuine literary quality. Good for him!

Other literature that really stuck with me this year included Jonathan Littel's 'The Kindly Ones', Alisdair Gray's 'Lanark', & reading Geoffrey Hill's poetry.

BOOK OF NEXT YEAR!

In other literature news; I'm expecting that the first half of this year will see the publication of THE ARCHITECTURE OF FAILURE, the short book that I wrote about architecture, technology and weakness last year. Part history, part polemic, it takes a new look at the founding structures of modern architecture, the giant Iron & Glass palaces of the late 19th century. Instead of the triumphant expressions of technical prowess that they are generally understood to be, these buildings were expressions of a far more doubtful culture, which saw fragility, ghostliness and melancholy in their lofty transepts. This historical analysis begins to form a theory of architectural failure, a theory that starts to coalesce in the second half of the book where I apply it to three significant periods of architectural modernism, all of which have established conceptual links to these founding monuments - the 'Zoom' wave of Archigram et al, the Decon lot of the 1980s-90s, and the new generation of digiwibblists.

It will be neither conclusive neither definitive, but I would like to think that you'll enjoy it. I'll keep you posted.

Alfie Meadows

2010-12-10T13:51:00.002Z

Alfie Meadows, lovely Middlesex philosophy student, was seriously injured by the police at yesterday’s protest, suffering bleeding on the brain and undergoing an emergency three-hour operation. Details here and here.

There is a solidarity vigil for Alfie outside the hospital where he is recovering TODAY. Please make it if you can:

URGENT:SOLIDARITY VIGIL with Alfie Meadows at 3:30 in front of Charing X Hospital in Hammersmith & Fulham Palace Rd. Bring banners on Police Brutality. Map here.

Good Luck!

2010-12-09T00:12:00.006Z

I just want to wish anyone who is marching, protesting, occupying, causing havoc, causing mayhem, getting attacked by police, taking over the tube, storming parliament & overthrowing the government tomorrow GOOD LUCK.

Some of us are in this together, the rest... well, we'll see what happens.

UCL Occupation visit

2010-12-07T00:54:00.007Z

This blog has been rather silent of late, in what is turning out to be one of the most 'interesting' periods I can certainly remember. It's so strange, as I know that if I were still a student I'd be getting fully stuck in, but I've been left sat at desks, watching the protests as they unfold on the news and on twitter, wishing that I could be counted amongst the bodies.

So on Friday after 'the day job' I finally went down to the UCL occupation, in the company of Owen and Will and Joel, to see what was going on. Through the quad, the first thing that you notice is the chalk on the walls: in this case it was the old 'the point is to change it', which to be honest rather set the tone for some romanticised-quasi '68 nonsense. Once inside the building we were shocked to see that there was a soiree underway mere metres from the occupation, filled with champagne quaffing funders, seemingly completely unaware of what was going on a couple of doors down.

Past a security guard hanging around nonchalantly in a yellow jacket, up a few stairs, and past a table of people in their early twenties, opening a bag full of beers. Then pass through a pair of doors, and any notion that this is a rag-tag bunch of bourgeois hipsters, acting out while still at Uni is dispelled. There's about 50-100 people sitting around in a circle in front of a large projection on the wall of the agenda for a meeting. There's another 50 or so people milling around the periphery. One chap is trying to push the agenda along, while a young woman to his side is constantly inking a flipchart with points being made. There are laptops everywhere - some are twittering away, others -you imagine- are liaising with one of the many, many other occupations going on at the moment. The crowd are mixed more or less equally between the sexes, although the room is almost homogenously white. When people speak up they are mostly English and middle class - this is not an equivalent social group to that seen at the protests out on the streets in the last few weeks, although it's probably fair to say that more or less everyone in the room had been out there at the protests too.

The meeting is orderly - when people agree they shake their hands in the air, which I was told is something that you could see at the climate camp last year. The air is dedicated, but not necessarily professional, which may well be deliberate. It's certainly democratic, the chairperson merely trying to let as many people be heard while also moving everything forwards. Frequently, at the end of a discussion, someone will stand up and identify themself as the person to speak to afterwards if the point needs further discussion. It's very well organised, with people performing roles such as PR liaison and so on. You could easily run a business in this fashion, for what it's worth.

The meeting is adjourned, and a lot of people move off, but there are still around 100 people around, some off at the sides, and some bringing chairs up to the table. I had arrived thinking that I would just be hanging around, getting a look and then listening to Owen speak, but I suddenly find myself sitting behind the table, having to think up an impromptu talk myself.

Owen discusses 'Student Architecture', the latest ugly property bubble to get underway. Many luxury housing projects shelved when the recession hit are now returning as student flats, in which parents of foreign students are fleeced for up to £1000 a month for rooms that are yet smaller than the yuppiedromes that the developers no longer have the confidence to build. Owen rightly points out that companies like UNITE are among the most rotten and horrible developers in the construction industry, inflicting cheap and shitty buildings onto our cities that only a moron wouldn't recognise as repeating all the worst mistakes of the 1960s housing. It's truly shocking, and yet it just keeps on going.

I quickly try to discuss the uses and abuses of 'radical theory' in architecture over the last 50 years. Inspired by my reading an article about the occupation where architecture students said that they were inspired by the radical theories of Bernard Tschumi and Colin Fournier, I ramble somewhat, but try to get across the idea that if you are a clever architecture student who wants to read political theory that deals with space, don't go looking for it in the writings of architects. I prattle on about how because of the hermetic culture of architectural academia, and because of architects self-appointed renaissance man arrogance, as well as the futile nature of architecture practice in general, architect's theory often ends up as an awkward cloak that envelops all kinds of indulgences in its arcane misused terminology. I try to put across the point that theory has become a method of furthering one's career by doing a few years of academia, with radical theory aestheticised to the point that it can no longer be used as actual critique, and rather just adds a frisson of danger and exclusivity to one's formalism. I also mumble something about reading Lefebvre or Benjamin, but then I would say that, wouldn't I? My talk drifts off into silence, lacking any conclusion.

Will comes up next and discusses the privatisation of public space, and how one can read the subtle hints of it. He utters a great sequence about how classical architecture was intended to instil deference in its relationship with its public, and how modernism - especially post-Corbusian modernism - attempted to break down architecture to a more egalitarian form-human relationship, but then ended up being attacked for the supposed 'inhumanity' of those very forms. Now we have exclusivity expressed mainly through commercial space, seeing as genuinely non-shopping related public spaces are fewer and further between. And of course, this is accompanied by an insidious and worrying privatisation of all public space.

What was most heartening however; was that after the talks a discussion ensues for what I was told later was almost two hours. There are about forty of us, and we have a very interesting exchange of ideas. A few students want to discuss the occupation as a model for 'new space'. I think, yes, of course, it can be seen as an experiment in communal living, and lots can be learned, but at the same time there has been no real shortage of short term small scale experiments of this sort over the last 100 years. One student puts it well when she points out that they cannot say that what they are doing 'works', when they know that they are only likely to be there for a week more at most before being thrown out. I agree with her, in that occupation can only exist as an antagonistic bubble within a hostile wider environment. Owen points out that there were larger experiments with communal living in the early Soviet era - the Narkomfin for instance, and that they have a lot in common with post-war housing, as stepping stones to collectivity.

Another line of criticism is that the speakers have been too negative, offering only critique, and that there is a fertile world of community architectures and so on that need to be addressed and understood. Jeremy Till is mentioned. There is broad agreement from the panel, but also concern that again, the economics of scale have to be considered - I for one am very dubious that isolated examples can spread to become common practice without being adopted by some agency that has huge amounts of capital at its disposal - i.e. the State. Owen discusses Ralph Erskine's Byker Wall housing estate in positive terms.

There are also discussions of the state of architectural education, including the suggestion that the 1 student 1 project final year tradition is well overdue being abandoned as an inappropriate and unrealistic method. There is also a fair amount of 'what is to be done'?

Afterwards there is a performance by Slade students who are in occupation next door. At this point it becomes a bit too hipster-private-view for my liking, but then the occupiers have been working very very hard and deserve some relief, and some of the sketches performed are very funny. We are kindly supplied with a glass of wine, and a number of further conversations continue afterwards.

So… what? I was incredibly heartened by the occupation, but I am also fearful. The State is, of course, powerful, and obviously doesn't plan to stand for this kind of thing. But on the other hand, our dear leaders are fucking lightweights, with a background in PR and no real history of struggle. They hardly have a mandate, and even before any of their plans have begun they are facing massive protests, and the looming prospect of a g****** s*****. Thursday the 9th is coming up, and to be honest the government is going to win their vote. But it'll be an ugly win, one which only goes to show how utterly weak they actually are. The big question is how the heat of these occupations and protests will be kept up between now and March when the unions finally decide to get fully involved.

All in all the occupiers are very serious, resourceful and committed, and I wish them all the best, along with all the myriad other occupations, instant protests and actions.

And I should add that Aaron Porter is an absolute disgrace. It is in times like these that you see who is genuinely capable of empathy and strategy, and who is only concerned with their own well-trodden miserable career path. Scumbag.

My Christmas wish is that the students, the workers and the youth find their common ground and bring this zombie government down. Please Santa?