Gone Off

Yes, it has been cold and the snow has been ... a damn nuisence or beautiful and fun, or both.  For works on site, or partially completed buildings, it is the former.  It is impossible to carry out any 'wet' trades in freezing weather.  Anyone spotted bricklaying, plastering or rendering in the last few weeks is not a tradesman, but a cowboy.  Mortar is strange stuff - it doesn't dry' as many people think, it 'goes off'.  A chemical reaction starts, which turns the mortar from wet and gloopy to nice, clean, hard, and dry pointing, rendering, and plastering; it sticks the bricks together, lines the walls or seals joints.  Below a certain temperature, the reaction cannot take place properly, at least not with traditional mortars that contain lime. 

Another time, another lengthy period of freezing weather, snow and ice.  I crept along the road at 15 miles an hour, trying to see the track in front of me where another vehicle had passed to avoid going into the ditches I knew were each side of the road but were invisibly clogged with snow.  My client had rung me, screaming his head off about some problem at his new house, which had to be sorted out RIGHT NOW otherwise he would report me to the ARB, tell the press, and all the other threats hyserical clients tend to come up with.  He had attempted to organise the work himself, using hired trades, didn't need an architect, cost too much don't they, and of course had got into a mess and wanted me to sort it out.  Alice being such a nice natured person.... here I was out in the freezing cold in the middle of nowhere, again, instead of drinking tea and doing some filing in my nice, cosy office. 

The building was half finished, with part of the roof tiled, the rest covered in black sarking felt (it was a long time ago and I don't specify that any more) - piles of materials, a sea of mud, the site hut and store in the middle of the garden, the little builders' loo set over the nearest convenient drain.  Except, today, all was covered in about three inches of snow.  The normally ugly and noisy place had a strange, almost ethereal beauty.  Snow had drifted against the pile of bricks, leaving some poking out, bright red against the white.  There was a large hump of snow over the pile of new pipes, the roof was a complete blanket of white, giving the impression of completeness.  The mud was hidden under a smooth sweep of glittering snow.  The site huts all had hats of white, making them look as if they belonged to the finished building next to them.  The place was homogeneous and beautiful.

I left the car in the road and walked onto the drive, all was absolutely silent.  Snow is a marvellous insulator against sound.  I could not hear a thing.

Sighing, I realised I would not be able to see the building at all, but might be able to see the interior, I opened the door to find a single plasterer, happily boshing away at the first coat.  It was so cold ice had formed on his bucket of water where he would wash his tools.  I asked him what he thought he was going to achieve in that weather.  Without a pause in his efforts, he said he was self employed and time was money.  What happens when all that render falls off?  I asked.  He didn't care.  'Customer wants it finished' he said. He had another job to go to.  He would be long gone.

I took a photo of the beautiful scene and left.  There was nothing I could do for a client who thought cheap, fast and good could be used in the same sentence.

Tis the Season...

...for that last minute rush, where everyone wants everything done before Christmas. Why? No idea. No-one at the Council is going to do anything at all with that planning application until next year, so what's the point?

...for freezing my toes and other extremities off whilst unburying the car from ice and snow, then driving at 15 miles an hour everywhere.

...to cost money. Spend, spend, spend, then wait for January's bills.

...to go to interminable 'networking' lunches, where I inevitably get sat next to the middle aged drunk who doesn't like females in business. Why anyone should be astonished to meet a female architect in 2009 beats me!

...to knock off early, light the fire, open the ginger wine, settle down with the cats stretched out across my cold feet and play some daft DVD.

...to wish you all a health, wealth and peace of mind.

Have a good one, where-ever you are and thanks for supporting this little blog!

Bad

I am both touched and surprised by the comments you all left on my last post. So you like my blog, then? That's great! Thanks for the support and I'll keep writing (if only sporadically) if you keep reading.

Trawling through the links to various other architectural sites, I found this gem, Bad British Architecture. Just take a look at what some of the profession are designing and calling 'architecture'. What is it with some people? No sense of beauty, humility, scale or place. I am not a famous architect, or even a particularly good one, but I do know my limits. Unfortunately many architects who should stick to loo extensions don't.

Oh dear. I have criticised my fellow professionals again. Sackcloth and ashes for a month, I'm afraid.

Archi-blogs

There are relatively few architectural blogs or websites I read. This is partly due to lack of time, but mainly because many of them are so far removed from my own little, tiny, provincial architectural pool they read more like fiction. One of my favourites was Part IV, about what happens after you complete the Part 3 examination which covers practice and management. For most of us, it means tiny little extensions, conversions and the occasional new house or office. For those in large firms - well, they don't have any idea, generally, of how 80% of the profession survives and probably don't bother to read such things. Actually, it might be good for them if they did, for who knows when the axe will fall, and that P45 lands on your desk? Then what? You join the silent majority. For personal reasons, Part IV ceased some time ago, leaving a big hole in my reading material.

Mr B2A, of whose blog I am particularly fond, has stopped rattling his keyboard (according to his recent post, anyway) and I will miss his sparkling wit and 'the Emperor has no clothes' insight onto the dark and murky world of the architectural profession. He believes a blog is pointless unless it ismaintained on a weekly basis (difficult unless you are a professional journalist) and should keep attracting new readers. That puts my blog into the 'pointless' category. Oh, well. I'll keep at it, then, otherwise there will be no blogs from the depths of the archi-pool, the 'pond life', as the RIBA Chief Executive called us.

God?

Four thousand six hundred years ago, King Djoser of the Two Lands of Egypt instructed his architect to design and build his burial place. The result was this enormous, powerful monument, standing in the desert about three hours by horseback from Cairo. It is the first great stone building in history, the first to use the step design and the first tomb of anything like this size in Egypt. Riding towards it, there is no real concept of the size until you are quite close, it is vast. The design is an innovation - previously, Pharoahs were buried in 'mastaba' tombs - the word literally means 'bench' - a low, square or oblong structure often not much larger than the size of the body beneath it. Here, several of the mastaba shapes have been stacked one on top of another, forming this imposing monument to the greatness of Djoser the King.

Unusally for the times, the architect is well documented and known by name - Imhotep. He had the envious titles of Doctor, First in line after the King of Upper Egypt, Chancellor of the King of Egypt, Administrator of the Great Palace, Hereditary nobleman, High Priest of Heliopolis, Builder, Chief Carpenter, Chief Sculptor and Maker of Vases in Chief. A very important man indeed, and a true polymath as many architects are (or were, until we started giving away our skills to all and sundry - more later).

As a doctor, he was known for a treatise on medicine that did not make any mention of magic and could be the first true medical book. His bravery in cutting out the mumbo jumbo is astonishing. In many periods in history, he would have been strung up as a heritic, but amazingly, he was revered both during his life and after his death.

Two thousand years after he died, he was deified as the god of medicine and worshipped until well into Ptolemaic times.

Architect as God.

I'll keep trying hard at my little extensions and houses. You never know.

Down the Pan

My fellow blogger, the excellent Mr B*******s to Architecture, has already poked fun at this one, but having looked at the RIBA Crapper of the Future competition myself, I could not resist some further derision. For some reason, the RIBA is fascinated with various methods of enclosing the space to point percy at the porcelain and decided that what we need in the middle of a wretched and miserable recession is a competition for reinventing the wheel - that is, a totally new design for a bog.

Surprise, surprise, the big boys have all come out on top - although I wonder if any of us pond life actually had the time to piss around and enter what must be the competition of the year when we are desperately trying to keep the bank from demolishing our businesses.

If I was going to enter, what would I consider the ultimate in bog experience? What would be toilet heaven? As a female, my perspective is slightly different from you men, so please forgive me if this doesn't appeal to you.

1. Whatever shape it is, whatever silly blob or shard shaped shed it is housed in, it must be clean. To be clean, surfaces must be easily wipeable, therefore shiny. No cutting cash corners by using bare block. It has to be tiles.

2. A comfy seat. To me, it has to be timber, as it tends to be warm when sat on.

3. A damn good flush. None of those wretched things sat right on top of the pan - I like high level cisterns which deliver a good 'whoosh!'

4. No evidence that anyone has ever used it before me. This means a little room to house an attendant, the sort who keeps the place so clean you feel you should take your shoes off before entering, and no I don't mind leaving a few coins for her (not him - I cannot stand male cleaners in that most female of places - a ladies' loo)

5. Warm water and soap, and the kind of hand driers that nearly blow your skin off. Or clean towels - what is the use of those things that puff airy fairy amounts of luke warm air at you, leaving you to either wipe your hands on your trousers, or grab loads of loo roll to dry off properly?

6. Industrial amounts of loo roll in huge rollers that don't run out by the minutes.

7. Cubicles sealed from top to bottom - I don't want to hear next door's efforts, thanks.

8. Lots and lots and lots of cubicles. Whoever designs women's bogs just doesn't understand that two cubicles for an entire cinema audience just won't do it. Why are there never any queues outside mens' loos? Because they don't have to get undressed to pee. Think about it.

Notice I have not mentioned the building once. The best loos are not these sad stand alone things that just ask vandals to give them a good kicking, they are incorporated within another building. As for daft boxes shaped like Hercules, or with coloured flaps on the top - what is the point of that? Just a nice door within a warm public building, supermarket, railway station, cinema - etc with a big sign saying 'TOILET' will do.

As for our glorious president, where's his head at? Up his bum? He certainly ain't listening to us.

Swine Flu

Ha! That got your attention! No, I have not had the relatively mild and hysteria inducing illness that is infecting the entire country and is going to wipe out what is left of the economy. It does make me laugh, though - whatever would happen if a really serious disease arrived here?

Cast your minds back, if you will, to the winter of 1349 and 1350. That is the year the Black Death crept into a population weakened by war and bad harvests. There was no Tamiflu, no paracetemol, no aspirin and no comfort or relief from a truely awful and disgusting illness - where all the lymph nodes in the armpits, neck and groin swelled up grotesquely with huge, black, pus laden buboes. The only relief came in the form of a swift death, between four and seven days after infection. Between a quarter and a third of the entire population of Europe died. Imagine the horror - think of all the people you know and love, then take a third of them away.

Of course you all know that the 14th century was a great period for building, when some of the greatest cathedrals and a huge number of parish churches were either under construction or were being enhanced, extended or generally showered with gifts from rich benefactors. There were huge numbers of skilled tradesmen, stonemasons being the top of the heap, with carpenters, glaziers, painters and metal smiths all busy producing the best of their crafts.

The great cathedral at Wells in Somerset is covered with sculpture,, the skill and care of the masons is breathtaking. Inside, the capitals are decorated with what is known as 'stiff leaf' carving, a stylised form of foliage which has the roots of its tradition in classical architecture, as shown in the photo above. These capitals can be seen all the way down the nave... hold on. As we walk towards the west, following the sequence of building, the capitals become mere buds, malformed and ill favoured. You can probably guess. The skilled masons had the Black Death, there were few of them left to carve capitals and the job was given to the boy. With the economy in such a poor way, it is likely that there was little money to pay for such luxuries anyway.

This is only one tiny visible part of the scything effect on the population of such a dreadful disease. The consequences for the economy, the Church, the law and family life were permanent. And we're worried about swine flu. Puts it in perspective, doesn't it?