london, london

just a quick note on some recent reading:

as I've noted before I like Rowan Moore's writing in the Observer a lot and last weekend he wrote yet another very good piece, this time on the differences between public and private space, especially in relation to the City of London.

and while on that subject - the City of London, that is - here is Bob Stanley, of Saint Etienne fame, on the proposed system of elevated walkways meant to reach most parts of the Square Mile. of the parts that were built there's not very much that is still in use bar the walkways through the fantastic concrete maze that is the Barbican.

london belongs to me

as I touched upon it in the last part of my previous post I feel it might be time for a digression on memory, dreams and the city.

the first time I went to London I was almost 25. that means that for at least 20 years I had watched tv programmes and films set in London, and for more than ten years I had listened to music set in London, and read books and articles about bands in London. I was basically steeped in references to a city I had never visited. so finally coming there, for a rushed two-day trip where we were meant to stock up on clothes (at the time my travel companion and I were both living in Dublin and, as much as I love that city, it really wasn't the place to find clothes) and records was a weird experience.

everywhere we went I encountered names and places I'd read about but didn't really have any actual relation to: Neil's Yard, Wardour Street, Portobello Road, and, most puzzlingly, Ingestre Place. Ingestre Place was a mystery, suddenly we were standing in this tiny cul-de-sac surrounded by anonymous walls, and it had been me suggesting we'd go in there. because I had seen the street sign on passing and it stirred some kind of memory: I knew, I knew there was something that had been important to me that was related to Ingestre Place. but, to be honest, there was nothing there to even give a hint what that thing might have been.

way later, after having moved back to Sweden, I was rummaging through my LP's looking for some record or other when I cast a glance at In the Beginning There was Rhythm and there it was: Soul Jazz Records, 12 Ingestre Place, Soho, London W1F OJF England.

suddenly it made sense, suddenly it fit, something that was very important to me did have something to do with Ingestre Place. just not the actual street because to me Ingestre Place was never that cul-de-sac, never those office buildings. to me Ingestre Place was Soul Jazz Records, the company that had released some of my favourite compilations. and in the same way Parkway is Saint Etienne's London Belongs to Me, rather than the actual street. even when I last walked along it – in dreary January weather – I was transported to a lovely lunch in Regent's Park from years ago.

I have never really encountered this phenomenon on any other of my travels, not in Tokyo, not in Berlin nor in Milan. I guess it's because London is ubiquitous for those taking part of any kind of pop-culture. it's probably the same with New York, at least for those of a more American leaning even if not to me. it was strange, though, the feeling you knew this place but not having a clue why or why you'd even like to know this tiny little street in the middle of a bustling city.

please allow me to introduce myself

I'm a man of impeccable taste; I've even got a diploma that says so. five years of my life I've spent in a government-sponsored correctional institution to make sure I have good taste. and I like things that are to my taste, or what I like to think of as my taste: neat, slender and ordered. so how come I like this:

Parkway* in Camden?














this is not the kind of of bad taste architect's prefer to quote when trying to be edgy or showing off their oh-so-risky guilty pleasures (which I'm fully aware is kind of what I'm doing just now). Parkway is just too banal for that: there's nothing clever about it, and nothing particularly upsetting either. it's just a stretch of road lined with terraced houses of yellow London brick. the houses themselves aren't particularly coordinated with parapets changing level more or less with each building and on the ground floors there are shops. fronting the shops are hideous shop fronts in every kind of garish font imaginable.

I was on my way to visit Long & Kentish's Jewish Museum and when arriving I was presented with a sombre door set in a rendered ground floor wall. and this is something I could have designed myself, this is what I really like. I even remember being impressed by the detailing of the door. so how come – when I later look at it in photographs – it looks so dull? I mean, I still am impressed, and feel this is what I like, but it looks objectively dull. in a lot of ways there's nothing particularly wrong with dullness, one might even say there are certain activities that need the dullness to preserve an air of dignity, but if this would be all there were to cities then they'd be terrible places to spend your life. a city needs the unplanned, the ugly, the left over.

what I'm getting at is this: at times when work are hard to come by voices are raised to protect the function of the architect. unfortunately I think the result would be utterly horrible. that is to say it would be charming, beautiful, well thought through and very tasteful - but also dead. because to a profession educating someone means to train them so they have the skills society expects of that profession. unfortunately, when it comes to architects, that also means to train their taste, to teach them to appreciate what an architect is supposed to appreciate. what an architect is supposed to appreciate is the well behaved modernism so beloved of the progressive upper middle classes at the beginning of the 20th century. I think (or deludes myself into thinking) that's what I've liked all my life – so I'm fine with that – but what about other people whose tastes aren't catered for in architecture schools, why shouldn't they be allowed to influence what our cities look like? and when they try to, by changing their shop front say, why should their wishes be mediated through consultants who have been trained to have good, government approved, taste?

*the first time I heard the name Parkway was in the St. Etienne song London Belongs to Me, and I must say that compared to the loveliness of that song the reality is pretty meagre, but as a city street I find it quite exciting.

two sisters

my last post made me reread Neave Brown's article The Form of Housing (Architectural Design, September -76). this in turn had me thinking about two recent housing projects which might, in different ways, be said to relate to Brown's theories as expressed in that article and in his housing at Fleet Road and Alexandra Road in London.

first I should probably acknowledge that Douglas Murphy has already pointed out the similarities between BIG:s 8 House and the Smithsons' concept of streets in the sky.

I've mentioned one of the projects – the 8 House in Ørestad, Copenhagen – and the other is O'Donnell + Tuomey's Timberyard in Dublin. what these two projects – if very different in scale – have in common is the wish to relate the single dwelling to the surrounding city at the same time as it's relating to all the other dwellings that make up the project.

in his article Brown argues against the free-standing British post-war housing and its tabula-rasa approach to the surrounding city and for housing that acknowledges its context and adapts to existing street patterns. he thought that the concept of streets in the sky was a step in the right direction but that it wasn't going far enough, there were still 'a no-man's land' separating the different buildings and the city. according to him housing is characterised less by the differences between different types than by what they have in common and he wants to give back to housing 'the traditional quality of continuous background stuff, anonymous, cellular, repetitive, that has always been its virtue'. this was something he found in the traditional British terraced house. unfortunately that model could no longer handle the demands of modern society so it couldn't just be replicated, instead there had to be innovation to give these qualities to mass housing.

Brown claims that 'it is the architect's job to structure the environment, incorporating in a single form all the concepts that have a claim to inclusion. to make a perceptible order requires more than an assembly of parts, more than the recognition of meaningful relationships by the tactical arranging of the pieces. it requires the integration of all the pieces into a single gesture in which unity and interdependence can be recognized at whatever level they are perceived'.

like Brown's own Alexandra Road both the 8 House and Timberyard excel at this integration of pieces into a single gesture. unfortunately things aren't as straight forward as they were back in Brown's day, no longer content with just being part of a collective we all want to be individuals. so when in Alexandra Road different kinds of apartments hide behind almost identical elevations both O'D+T and BIG go out of their way to make monolithic buildings in just a few materials but whose plan shape and more detailed massing create a diversity within that unity. to differentiate further both buildings, just as Alexandra Road, employ a sectional layering of different types of apartments. in the case of Timberyard it constitutes of both maisonettes and one-storey apartments and the layers in the vastly bigger 8 House are -from ground up: commercial space and offices, row houses along a pedestrian/cycle path, apartments and finally maisonettes entered off another outdoor path (for a further explanation from the architects watch this film).

the main part of accommodation at Alexandra Road stretches along a pedestrian path between the community centre in the east and Abbey Road in the west. to the sides of this brick-clad path the dwellings are stacked in two artificial ridges of concrete and glass, the northern eight storeys high and the southern four. all apartments are provided with outdoor space in form of a terraces and in some cases this terrace also functions as a front yard from which you reach the entrance.

Timberyard is located on Cork Street in central Dublin. that street has recently been lined with fairly hideous and blandly modern apartment schemes with retail space on the ground floors, the less that's said about them the better. O'D+T opted to refuse the retail space asked for by the planners and instead chose to let as many apartments as possible be entered directly off the ground. to be honest I must say I kind of miss the commercial element, not the hangar-like spaces from further up the road, but a small office or shop facing Cork Street could have been quite nice.

just as Alexandra Road is built along a pedestrian path so is Timberyard focused on a semi-private courtyard set in brick (coincidentally the same material as the path in Alexandra Road). it is off this courtyard that most dwellings are entered and it is here that the communal space is located. to make the transition between public and private space less brutal all private entrances on the ground floor are set back slightly and the entrances provided with external benches. towards Cork Street the building line is pulled back somewhat with planters keeping the line of the footpath and a narrower path between the planters and the entrances to the apartments.

the 8 House is an aluminium-clad block at the very extreme of the new Ørestad area of Copenhagen. at the moment it's even more remote than what is intended as the economic crisis of recent years have slowed down construction. this means that it and a neighbour are the only buildings within a couple of hundred meters. having said that the building makes the most of its edge condition with slopes and different heights that aim to provide as many apartments as possible with views out over the adjoining nature reserve.

as the lowest floors are taken up by commercial space and offices the different apartments can't have as direct a connection to the ground as in Timberyard or Alexandra Road but the architects have instead extended paths from the ground up on top of the offices and the so called row-houses are entered off these paths through a small front yard. the same applies for the maisonettes on the top two floors. just as in Timberyard this is done in the hope that it will create a feeling of community amongst the inhabitants. in-between these row-houses and the maisonettes are several floors of apartments clustered around stair shafts. that these are entered from the street on the ground floor should help to counter the risk of the surrounding streets becoming dead as soon as the businesses close for the day.

comparing the two schemes I can't help but to think that Timberyard is the more successful. one of my problems with the 8 House is that even though it's mostly built up right to the edge of the pavement the width of the road coupled with a canal before reaching the closest neighbour make for a very un-urban streetscape which I find unfortunate. having said that it's hardly the architects' fault and achieving the gritty urban character of a thousand-year-old part of the city in a yet-unfinished district on virgin land is obviously hard.

the 8 House does boldly continue the intentions of Alexandra Road, though, and on such a heroic scale it's hard not be impressed. it is also much better urbanistically than any of the previous PLOT/BIG projects in Ørestad, eschewing the piloti of the VM Houses and the Mountain Dwellings, but there is still something slightly odd about how it touches down. I'm not sure why, it might just be that the vertical aluminium fins prevent any diagonal views to the interior which makes the building feel more closed up than it actually is. Timberyard on the other hand feels like the end result of serious contemplation about a specific city and what can be done to fit modern accommodation into it without entirely rupturing the atmosphere of the place. there are still things that are problematic about it but it surely is a type of accommodation more suited to Dublin than any of the other new buildings along the rest of Cork Street.

official site for the 8 House
Alexandra Road on Modern Architecture London


acknowledgements:
photos of the 8 House by SEIER+SEIER

song for a friend

this link I post for purely nostalgic reasons; Maiden Lane once a start for something that is now over.

too bad I can't see myself managing to go to London while the exhibition's still on.

cemetry gates

I just saw a post on Tony Wilson's nicely asymmetrical gravestone as designed by Peter Saville and Ben Kelly. it made me think of the great concrete headstone at Patrick Caulfield's grave at Highgate Cemetery in London. at the time I saw it I hadn't got a clue who it was for, but it is a great gravestone indeed. during my visit I did all I could to find Sandy Wilson's grave. unfortunately, though, I had no luck. it would've been interesting to see.

more on gravestones (and architects); here's a cut-out of Mies' grave by Sam Jacob of FAT.