Industry Beaver

Summer's here and the time is right for dancin' in the street

2011-05-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

Can I tell you a guilty secret? There's things in life I know I should like, and no matter how much I try, I just can't. Top of the list is poetry (aside from Ted Hughes, T.S Elliot and Lewis Carrol. Unless Dr Seuss counts too), opera and dance - any dance really that you have to watch instead of do, but especially ballet. Frustratingly, I know that on paper these should be the things I enjoy - I'm not proud, I've tried to learn; from ballet in the Kremlin to handing over sums of money equivalent to a small African nation's GDP for tickets to the ENO. But I find my aversion to dance particularly galling. Watching the seemingly impossible bendiness of limbs and gravity defying trickery I couldn't help but ask: "But why?". It just didn't click, until one of my much wiser and long-suffering friends took me to the Laban (that's Lahhh-bun, not La-ban, pronunciation geeks).

As I discovered watching Russell Maliphant's Critical Mass, there's something in the appreciation of the pure forms created, and the spaces defined and even recharacterised by the movement of bodies in space which draws strong analogies with architecture (or at least, the kind of architecture I like). The play of light upon a surface, the ability to creative a narrative within silence, and the reliance upon symbolism and implied meaning and structure, forming language using the movement in place of words or materials. Like an artistic installation, the performance requires an understanding of the scale of the space, the audience's experience from their given vantage point, the ebb and flow of emotional engagement.

A sense of interaction with place is even made explicit in Wim Wenders' Pina, a film which manages to use 3D technology for good rather than shiny mundanity, and which reappropriates the buildings, streets and transport structure of the wonderfully named Wuppertal as integral characters within each dance piece. One dancer describes how the choreographer sees the surfaces of rock, water and soil as surfaces which are to be moved on, over and through, in terms of pure interaction with context - however artificial - rather than passive engagement.

So it transpires that the key to my quandary may lie in the fact that "but why" is actually something I repeatedly find myself asking of modern architecture, not modern dance. All this shape-making and structural ingenuity simply has no narrative without the understanding of place and context, the experience of the audience. And not stepping on others' toes.

But you won't catch me down Saddlers Wells any sooner than you'll find me swooning over a Make planning application.

Thesis for breakfast

2011-02-11T01:31:00.000-08:00

If, as Cedric Price posited, "The City is an Egg", then surely a sausage and egg McMuffin is an entire MVRDV thesis.

Sanctuary, White Cube Mason's Yard (24 Nov2010 - 8 Jan 2011)

2011-01-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

By shifting his usual modus operandi from creating artificially lit, staged and orchestrated versions of real situations, to capturing the crumbling artifice of Rome's Cinecitta Studios in all its brutal reality, Gregory Crewdson could not have picked a more appropriate analogy for the state of contemporary architecture.

Like the face of a grand dame of the theatre many years beyond her prime, the once regal and seemingly solid walls of this pseudo-Roman settlement are buckled, cracked, falling apart at the seams. What once seemed built to endure the worst that time could throw at it is revealed to be naught but a feeble veneer, a basic off-the-peg structure wrapped in a mere wallpaper-thin skin of architectural intent.

Shuttered windows look out from walls which no longer stand. Doorways reveal portals through both time as well as space, providing a threshold between levels of paving from ancient Rome and the gaffer taped scaffolding of more decent decades.

And as ever, the soft foliage of natures armory mocks these human intentions, poking through abutted walls to reveal the artifice of their character much like a child assistant brought onto a magician's stage finds a trap door and releases the white rabbit. For once again, it is nature who wins out, and the studio lot for all our sweat and toil, is once more returned to the same state as before we ever interfered.

Visually, it's as beautiful as it is challenging intellectually. If you can travel to Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin or the past to catch this exhibition, I would highly recommend that you do.

Fairy Tales and Gleaming Towers

2011-01-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

The reason I find it hard to write about architecture these days is that I simply don't believe in it. Not in the way that I don't believe in Santa or the Tooth Fairy, but in fairness it doesn't have any of their redeeming qualities either. Architecture should epitomise the moral and social ambitions of its native culture, to give us something that excites and surprises us, something that we look forward to being moved by. Remember that feeling as a child, as you forced yourself to go to sleep with a tooth under your pillow or a stocking at the end of your bed, giddy with the anticipation of the rewards the morning would bring?

There have been such occasions when architecture has elicited the same response from me, even as a 29 year old woman. Taking the tram out to Palmeira near Porto, my eyes strained against the shoreline, eager to catch the first glimpse of Siza's teahouse. My palms were damp, I was fidgety and untalkative (it does happen). My whole world was suspended on that skyline.

And lo, it was perfect.

I giddily clambered all over it in a manner completely unsuitable given the shortness of the skirt I was wearing, but I had to see it ALL, take it in, capture it on film, hug it and squeeze it and keep it in my pocket forever more, to preserve the memory of how it made me feel.

And for all their aspirations as our city's new Ivory Towers, I just don't get that from projects like the Heron Tower I'm afraid. Nor the Cheesegrater. One New Change is nice an' all - dodgy 80s fretted glazing aside - but I find it raises my adrenaline levels about as much as the weekday anticipation of the lunch break. So please, dear architects, next time you're designing a scheme, remember the Easter Bunny.

Carbuncular

2010-08-24T05:41:00.001-07:00

BD's annual Carbuncle Cup causes more discussion about architecture in our office than anythihg else. We don't half love a bit of controversy - who wants to hear about the smug success of the Stirling? Or the Lubetkin? No, we want savagery.
But why do it then, when it's built, inflicted upon the face of a much loved friend?
The Bezier Bum at Old Street was a worth contender this year, with most of the contention coming under whether something could actually "blight" Old Street roundabout. But these architects didn't seem to raise so much as a whisper when it was in for planning. As far as I am aware, only Anthony Thistleton of Waugh Thistleton has been fighing Squire's Flip Top Bin on the Foundary site.

What's in a name...

2009-09-20T01:36:00.000-07:00

Don't you think that maybe, with all this furore over protection of title, maybe - just MAYBE - we should instead insist that architects produce Architecture (withacapitala)? Would that not be more beneficial not only to the profession but also to society as a whole? No?

RIBA sponsors

2009-07-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

So Alan Davidson's gone and got his huff on that a Chinese company working in the same industry has stepped into the breech and sponsored the RIBA's Stirling Prize Awards this year. What I fail to see is quite why.

Crystal had already won the visualisation contract for the Olympics before the proposed sponsorship came to light, so his claim that "that some RIBA members will lose their jobs and their livelihoods” is completely unfounded.

Should the RIBA be only by its people, for its people? Should they only support and accept gratuities from members, like the mafia? And more to the point, if Hayes Davidson saw the sponsorship as so lucrative, why didn't they stump up the cash?

Put your toys back into your prams please gentlemen.

However, this does raise the issue of whether the RIBA should themselves expect an ethical approach to the conditions under which people in architecture for their members - either directly or indirectly - are working.

Olympic trivia

2009-06-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

I've always stressed the importance of professional practice, always subscribed to the view that CPD was worthwhile, that learning about architecture was a constantly evolving process which didn't finish with Part 3. Yet I'm learning of aspects I've never previously even considered at my new practice. I give you four examples:

1) 10% of all ambulant toilets in Olympic Park venues must not face Mecca.

2) There must be no green in the internal decorations, and in particular there should be no green tiles or fittings in bathrooms and toilets. The Prophet Mohamed always dressed in a green cloak and it is considered sacrilegious to use green in any connection with sanitary and domestic facilities. (This fact from Lord David James of Blackheath, nonetheless. No wonder the Middle East are so pissed at us - think of the 80s penchant for avocado bathroom suites)

3) Washroom and changing cubicles must be able to carry the weight of a human body, should the athletes choose to use them for chin ups during training.

4) Three dog "spending areas" are required throughout the Olympic park, with benches, watering hoses, 1:1 ratio of hard surface to grass, a slight gradient and wheelchair accessibility.

Every day is a school day.

2009-04-16T02:05:00.000-07:00

This time last year, London was littered with tourists basking in the late afternoon sun on whatever patch of grass (or concrete) happened to be nearest. The Barbican, Tates, Hayward, British Library and RA were all hosting incredibly interesting exhibitions. Various gigs and shows were on that would have blown me away. But they didn't. And how do I remember all this so vividly? Because last year was the year that never was for me. No Easter, no Birthday, no summer. Because I was right here at this desk, preparing for my Part 3.

It took a year of hard graft, learning contracts inside out, assessing the pros and cons of various procurement routes, analysing the different approaches I should have taken in my career and my case study. So after a full 11 month slog cut off from the rest of humanity, I was overjoyed to receive my sparklingly yellow ARB certificate declaring to the whole world that my mother could finally refer to me as an Architect at dinner parties with her friends.

Whilst I spun around on my chair in subdued celebration and anticipation of the champagne quaffage to come (which was in fact replaced with the aforementioned redundancy letter), one Scandinavian member of our office looked over my shoulder and said "Oh yes, I should really send off my forms for that".

Forms? Just forms? No exam? No revision? No comprehension of the responsibilities of an architect? No understanding of the legally binding contractual documents? And all this beside the fact that I had to explain what Building Regulations were earlier that week...

Now I've worked with architects from the States, one of which was the most highly competent architects I have ever worked with. Yet for a US "architect" - who has run multimillion pound jobs on site, designed entire urban schemes from scratch to resolved detail, coordinated international construction projects - to become a UK Architect, they have to start from Part 1. Which seems like a waste of time to everyone involved for me, but a highly profitable source of revenue for EhAreBee.

If such draconian measures are in place to enforce regularity of standards across the board, shouldn't they be applied to all members? Or not at all? Why not make everyone sit the Part 3? And why should this contravene EU Regulations?!:

Putting the "F" in "utility"

2009-04-15T04:39:00.000-07:00

I have, it transpires, surpassed the lifespan of the late, great Tim Buckley. It's an oft-cited tragedy that the world will never know what musical delights we have been deprived of by his death in the mid seventies. From an entirely selfish point of view though, it's also a personal tragedy - Buckley Snr had managed to produce nine studio albums (some with Herb Cohen) and six live albums, had toured the world, embarked upon an (albeit ill fated) acting career with OJ Simpson and spawned another musical legend who would later be cut down in his prime. And what have I done? I've qualified as an architect. And the day after that I was made redundant. Makes you wonder.

In the event of an emergency

2009-04-15T04:34:00.000-07:00

Lets talk hypothetically: You run a practice, and are facing financial difficulty. What's the first thing you cut back on?
a - your daughter's first-class, round the world flights?
b - your monograph book buying habit?
c - your four-digit gifts to your PA?
d - taxis around town in addition to your central London parking space?
e - lunches out. And lunches in?
f - the daily cleaner?
g - all of your fee-earning architectural staff?

Answers on a carrier pigeon please.

*Update* Apparently the financial manager has gone now too. That seems like a smart move...