Things we have learned this weekend........

It’s a funny ole world isn’t it? What IS it like to find one a citizen of this planet at the start of February 2011? 

What have we learned this weekend…..?

In the news this weekend we have learned that today is International Day Against Female Genital Mutilation, that we live in a world where this being a necessary requirement is amongst the most depressing information any human being can receive but perhaps that’s just me. 

That one of my favourite comedians Steve ‘Alan Partridge’ Coogan has been given a whole page to chastise 3 small minded idiots who star on some TV show about cars after coming out with foul idiotic racist comments about Mexicans. 

That a 14 year old girl has been whipped to death in Bangladesh, that we the Brits known world wide as a nation of animal lovers, are concerned that there is an increase in race horses are being sold off for meat products after their useful (sic) racing life is over. 

That the Mubarek family appears to be worth some £70 billion….that’s £70 BILLION!

We have also learnt that there is yet another awarding architect celebrating some diabolical “carbuncle” on the face of Margate as it’s Turner Museum has its opening. Now I cannot do much about Mubarek and the plight of the Egyptian people, I can only sympathise with Sister Fa as yet again she has to bring to our attention the plight of millions of women who have suffered the torture of female circumcision but that by keeping the message 'on song' that men may be influenced to gradually begin to accept that this form of mutilation is unacceptable and that with these strenuous efforts the rate in many African countries is falling for example in Ethiopia, the prevalence rate has fallen “from 80% to 74%, in Kenya from 32% to 27% and in Mubarek’s Egypt the rate has dropped from 97% to 91%”.  Heartening words indeed…….

Most if these issues fill me with a deepest despair that makes one feel as impotent to do anything as it’s possible to feel. But I can have a rant about the buildings that surround us as there is no good reason these panjandrums of the world of architecture foist yet another hideous inappropriate aircraft hanger of a gerbosity on the unsuspecting public.

It is rare I find myself in tune with HRH Prince Charles but we seem to close kindred spirits over architecture.*

The problem is that architects think they are artists. Those I have met are wealthy objectionable and display all the signs of the most immense egos known to man.

They are not artists and yet behave like them whenever the climate dictates they can get away with these monstrous articles littering our country. Indeed I believe that they should be accountable to those of us who have to live with the fruits of their labours (sic - most designs could be forgiven for appearing like they were either designed on a fag packet or actually based upon the fag packet itself.)

Thus showing a complete lack of artistic integrity design, sensibility or the unpopular view that whilst people have to inhabit these spaces they should not be consulted about the design process as they only have to live and work and experience these vast concrete bunker like buildings. Most architects seem to be of the 'Nuremberg Rally School' function over form brigade who might be better off designing gas chambers. A bit strong perhaps but they are able with consummate ease and milllions in their pockets as a result to foist this utter desecration on us innocents like so many proletarian rabble as we cannot understand the ‘art’ that is architectural design and the 9 years training it has to achieve such cheery levels of fascist nonsense.

Take for example the monstrosity that is the new Turner Mausoleum on the Margate seafront "a very secure and wholesome building" according to the ‘master of permanence” David Chipperfield (I was given pause for thought at this name and wondered if he was any relation to the Circus family….)

Just look how it blends in naturally with its surroundings and how the architect has so cleverly taken into account the skyline and the existing local architecture so that it appears to blend in with it’s surroundings almost seamlessly……

From this vantage point what might you assume this building was? A new warehouse storing vital shipbuilding technology? A New TK Maxx superstore? A storage plant for the local sewage service? An Art Museum - I doubt it?

I am given to question architecture and especially that which impinges on my soul and sensitive sensibilities, I spent several years across for the multi-award winning Said Business School in Oxford and was truly incensed to discover this is cited as example’s of fine architectural achievement passed off as centre of excellence in education.

The University school looks like this

This monstrosity has always truck me as being designed over lunch by someone looking at a fag packet rather actually designing something using imagination, artistic sensibilities or moments of inspiration. The tower is referred to frequently as adding a contemporary feel to Oxford’s 'Dreaming Spires' skyline. Not a dream I would have but there you go!

It replaced the ‘listed building’ that was once the old Oxford Rewley Road Station long in disuse but eventually bought and sent to a Railway Museum. It looked like this:

“To be concerned about the way people live; about the environment they inhabit and the kind of community that is created by that environment should surely be one of the prime requirements of a really good architect. It has been most encouraging to see the development of Community Architecture as a natural reaction to the policy of decamping people to new towns and overspill estates where the extended family patterns of support were destroyed and the community life was lost. Now, moreover, we are seeing the gradual expansion of housing cooperatives, particularly in the inner city areas of Liverpool, where the tenants are able to work with an architect of their own who listens to their comments and their ideas and tries to design the kind of environment they want, rather than the kind which tends to be imposed upon them without any degree of choice.

This sort of development, spear-headed as it is by such individuals as a Vice-president of the RIBA, Rod Hackney and Ted Cullinan - a man after my own heart, as he believes strongly that the architect must produce something that is visually beautiful as well as socially useful - offers something very promising in terms of inner city renewal and urban housing, not to mention community garden design.” HRH Prince Charles - 150th Anniversary speech to RIBA

 I hear you ask 'Well Andy, it's all very well moaning but what do you like?'

Less a fan of Cullinan than I am of Rod Hackney and yet here’s a Cullinan project that seem to fit the bill. Yup it IS a modern design……….

These Cullinan projects will do for a start and yes, I do agree with Rod Hackney and his involving the people who actually live in the areas having a say in what their home and buildings should look like

This’ll do………

It is about the effects on people who inhabit these buildings and I truly believe that much of contemporary malaise and depression is caused by the awful building we have to, or are forced to, inhabit

 Neither am I afraid of the 'modern', a stickler for the old traditions, the Georgian and the old fashioned

 This is modern is it not? But it seems to have far more sensitivity to it's surroundings. It has wit and charm and modernism writ all over it seems to me yet does not impinge or shout at us or threaten our well-being and sense of what is......"Beautiful" there I've said it. Beauty!

I grew up believing that the entire planet should be able to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright building and still hold to that. I appreciated Corbusier but he, almost by default, has caused some of the most unworthy architectural disasters known to man. 

The modular system that gave us high rise frighteners and yet if everyone could have lived in a Corbusier maybe we have been OK. Certainly the interest in vernacular architecture is a strong feeling for me and that this is looked down upon by architects comes as no surprise. Scribbling on napkins and designing such hideous “carbuncles” they should be re-trained and have to be given client consultations with, not the commissioner of such hell holes, but the people who inhabit them, seems like democracy and the alternative is fascism.

For this is modular too isn't it?

I am given to like American architecture and especially the vernacular of San Francisco where I worked for art publisher, Pomegranate Inc in Mill Valley I found architecture that I loved and not all of it the homes of the rich in the smaller towns and villages what of urban design I hear you ask well look at this too!

Easy on the eye and on the soul and spirit too! It can be done………

Beauty.....

Modernism...this from just up the road in the Cotswolds

......combined with awareness of its surroundings........

....leads to harmony of design in nature.......

...not lacking in ambition but still at one with those who dwell therein...

art & beauty at peace with its surroundings

achievable whether in Mill Valley, Cumbria or The Cotswolds

that can be subsumed by its surroundings as much as a it can satisfy the dweller therein

 Not impact itself upon the viewer, the human occupant or unwitting drone who has to suffer it's effects

When perhaps these are drawn up

by folks better at symbolising the prisons that most of us urban dwellers find ourselves stuck with 

*

Prince Charles speech to the 150th Anniversary of the RIBA