Champagne Supernova

Of course, in Alice’s wonderland of architecture there are many starchitects, but alas Alice isn’t one of them. Of course, I may poke fun those who, with a lot of shouting, fanfare, RIBA awards ceremonies and champagne, unveil their latest way of putting up a structure which looks almost, but not quite, nothing like a building. Odd really, that they have to make such a fuss of putting a roof over the heads of a thousand or so computer drones. Even odder, it has to be the shape of a penis, or a sponge (see below) or something they found on the bottom of their shoe whilst strolling to the new restaurant to eat something that is almost, but not totally, unlike food.

I am not totally cynical, however. One of my fave raves is a Starchitect - no, the word is too small. He is a whole nebula in one rather unpreprosessing elderly man, a Supernova of an architect. He is Frank Gehry. What? You’ve never heard of him? Shame on you, you who call yourselves fans of deconstructivism!

The picture above shows part of his pavilion for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic games. Looks like a fish? Well, yes. Didn’t I mention that the true megaliths of architecture never design buildings to look like buildings? So, of course! A fish.

Not content with that, Frank Gehry smashes up a load of Formica (that’s the deconstructivist bit) and forms it into – yes, another fish. But a bit smaller this time, and he puts a light bulb in it. Lo! A lamp! This is the architect ‘thinking outside the box’ – and as you know, this is very important to us modern thinkers.

Well, Frank was strolling along one day, looked on the bottom of his shoe as he sat on a bench in the sun, and came up with a new range of jewellery. Here it is. What do you mean, it looks like a fish? Are we still stuck on that motif? Where’s the universe – spanning imagination? Well, nothing like milking a good idea - sorry! Creating a brand!

Sponge

Strange. No sooner than TUPC mentioned 'sponge architecture' than a good example turns up in the architectural press. Keen student of architecture that he is, when he is not apprehending perpetrators of crime, I think he has just come up with the new 'big thing' in architecture.

Well, it certainly is full of holes.

Serious critiques only please, to the usual address.

Story of a Landmark

Yes, it is a building. Selfridges new store in Birmingham, to be precise. But of course, you keen students of modern architecture knew that.

Ever wondered how architects such as these design their magnum opus? I have a feeling their inspiration comes from this

I may be wrong. If so, forgive me, o great Starchitects! I only wish my own work was so up to the minute!

Seriously folks, this building was feted in the press (the architectural press, at any rate) as a wonderful innovation in the latest style of 'blob' architecture.

In a about 20 years, it will be vilified as an eyesore, an expensive gimmick that costs a fortune to maintain. In 60 years (if it lasts that long) a newspaper will report that this wonderful landmark is about to be demolished by its desperate owners, who cannot find any commercial reason to keep repairing it and want to be rid of it before they go bankrupt. To the background music of protest groups and ernest BBC reporters, the local council will list it grade 2 star, as an important contribution to the history of architecture. Its owners sell up anyway, getting far less than they would have done if the site had been ready for redevelopment. The new owners are a pension fund, who are quite happy to leave the land gathering value for the forseeable future and don't give a damn about the place, even if they knew where it was.

It will sit empty for another 20 years until Griff Rhys Jones Junior starts a new series of 'Restoration' and raises a million quid.

Ten years after that, and it will still be empty, the million quid sitting gathering dust in a trust account, no-one wanting to take any responsibility at all for deciding which bit of it to repair first.

Ten more years, and it is no longer feasible to repair it, so it is demolished as a dangerous structure.

The End

Aga Syndrome

Why do people who don’t cook always ask me for an Aga? Many of my clients are from the affluent middle class who want their house remodelled. This usually includes a new kitchen, either within my nice new extension or in the existing building. They are busy people, often working all hours as lawyers, doctors, accountants and other high paying professions (not architects, alas), who come home so exhausted they can just about heat a pizza or boil in the bag Tesco curry. The even have an electric kettle, rather than an Aga friendly one which sits on the hob and whistles when it’s ready.

As you probably know, Agas are a hangover from the old cooking range, which was made of cast iron and needed blacking every day, continuous stoking with wood, coal, Grandma’s underwear or the kids’ toys; or anything else inflammable in order to keep the thing hot. Let it go out and get cold, and you won’t be eating for another five or six hours after putting the first match to the old newspapers and sticks inside. Of course, they died out pretty quickly once gas and electric cookers became available – clean, ready to use at a touch, no need for vast coal cellars or wood sheds. Women just did not want the hassle with a range any more, especially when they started going out to work. And who can blame them?

But – Aga carries on making something very similar to the old range. They look great – all deep coloured enamel, shiny bits, huge, heavy and just the thing to fill that annoying gap under the chimney breast where the fireplace used to be (or the old range, if this is still the kitchen). Nowadays, they can be fired by coal (messy) oil (large and ugly tank in the garden) or gas (running out and soon to be prohibitively expensive). But, and it’s a big but, they have to be left on all the time. They are basically a very large and heavy piece of cast iron, which takes forever to warm up, and that of course is essential for cooking your roast beef and Yorkshire. Yes, on all the time. Just imagine a summer’s day – windows open, cool breeze blowing through, moving the flower arrangement in an attractive manner – boiling hot Aga. Many people switch it off over the summer and have a normal cooker installed. Come the winter, they realise just how much fuel they have saved and the Aga gets left as a kind of decorative architectural feature.

These things guzzle so much fuel you are on first name terms with the oil tanker driver, who sits permanently at the end of your drive filling the tank. If you have a coal fired one, then you develop muscles like Arnie Swartzenegger humping sacks of it in from the coal shed (which is the size of your garage). As for natural gas, well, why do you think the Russian gas suppliers are so rich?

So, why have an Aga?

One lady client, who had brought up four children and now had seven grandchildren and assorted nieces and nephews constantly visiting, loved her Aga. She was almost always cooking, you see – and it makes sense to have a cooker which is always on, so you can put a pot a jam or soup on it, go out and leave it for three hours. She made her own bread, early in the morning, so there was the Aga, ready and waiting, at the right temperature.

When I visited to carry out a survey of the outbuildings, she asked me in for a cup of tea (it was freezing, as it usually is when I carry out a survey). I walked into the kitchen and breathed deeply of the scented, warm, moist air and sighed with pleasure. The smell was so rich and good I felt as if I were eating it. There was the intense, sweet and sour smell of rasperry jam and sugar. Under it was a string quartet of cinnamon, butter, sugar and lemons. Earthy bass notes came from roasting chicken and potatoes. Oh, heaven.

Tea arrived and with it, a huge plate of lemon thins, the most delicious biscuits, manna which melted in the mouth. I watched her busying with the oven gloves and listened to her chatting, and felt completely at home, and completely at peace. I could have sat there forever.

This is the person an Aga was made for. Not an up tight professional who can’t even heat baked beans without blowing a fuse.

Floodland

Building on floodplains is a stupid idea, scream the newspapers. Hundreds of homes to be built on floodplains, says the 'serious' reporter from the BBC, standing in front of a street scene with buildings up to their windowsills in water.

The trouble with banning building on floodplains is that almost all our cities are built on flood plains, so this would mean no more building within or next to our cities. Why? Hundreds, sometimes thousands of years ago, our ancestors stopped running around naked, painting themselves blue and spearing bull Aurochs; put down their spears, picked up hoes and built little wooden, thatched settlements next to rivers.

Not up mountains, where it was cold, the weather awful, the terrain rough, water scarce and wild beasts roamed; but next to rivers and the sea, near water, fish, warmth, fertile land, ready made defences and ease of travel (the river) and easily traversed flat(ish) terrain.

The Romans arrived, who were many things but above all practical. They were not about to move the established settlements up mountains. They far preferred the convenience of the river for their viaducts and heating, the fertile land for their crops, the water for their ports and the flat land for their amphitheatres. Town defences often consisted of a ditch and walls, all patrolled by the salaried and well organised army.

Along came William the Conquerer. Ready made cities, river for transport, flat fertile land - was he going to build up mountains? No, of course not. New castles were built on natural outcrops ( such as Edinburgh) or on man made mounds (such as Norwich).

And so on. Yes, flooding was occasionally a problem, but did not happen often enough to make it worth moving up mountains.

Of course, there is the little problem these days of rising sea levels, partly due to global warming and partly due to the south part of England sinking, as Scotland rises - the whole island is still returning to its natural levels now that the weight of ice from the last ice age has stopped pressing Scotland, and the bit of Earth's crust it sits on, into the magma. Sinking land in the south means we either take rising water seriously and put in some stonking great flood barriers, or we do not build on the Thames corridor. This is rather more than a flood plain, it is the mother of all marshes. Building here really is rather silly. How many ancient settlements can you see on it? Er...

Loathing

Another day, another survey of an ancient house, one of many owned by a city landlord.



I get mixed reactions when I visit - from joy to complete indifference, but very rarely do I get the feeling that a tenant actually hates me. Usually at worst I am just a nuisance, or a slight inconvenience: at best I am the only visitor the elderly tenant has had for a month, and out comes the tea, scones, buscuits and comfy chair.



The house was one of a terrace, a particularly gracious, rendered Georgian house, four storeys high with those tall sash windows and beautiful traced fanlight above the door. The render on the facade was formed into quoins and traced with horizontal and vertical lines to suggest stone, a common feature of a time when brick was still considered humble but stone was simply too expensive for its builder. At each storey there was a fancy cornice, with lead weathering, and a parapet hid the slate roof behind. Arched lead covered dormers punctuated the roof, all perfectly lined up with the windows below them.



I reached the white front steps and considered the curly railings and the broad, panelled front door. The knocker was an old brass lion with a ring in its mouth; there was an old fashioned bell pull and a wide brass letterbox. Two elegant fluted columns sat either side of the door, holding an arched pediment, which beautifully matched the dormers. It was the kind of house that makes you feel a quiet peace, everything from its chimneys to its basement windows looked so right, so perfect and in exactly the right place.



I knocked on the door. Heavy footsteps approached and, after scraping of chains, locks, latches and bolts, the door opened. I was looking at a squat woman in an apron, rolls of flab bulging over the top of her grubby trousers with a strong odour of stale sweat. 'Architect?' she said. 'I suppose you'd better come in' and she stomped off.



I followed her wobbling bottom and trodden down shoes down the wide hall, through the ornate doorway at the end. She turned suddenly 'I suppose you want to go into all the rooms!' she snapped. I don't know if the Countess will want you in her bedroom!'



Realising that this rude object was the housekeeper, I suggested I introduced myself to the Countess. She glared at me and stomped off again. I followed her as she opened a door, said something to someone inside, then jerked her thumb at me. 'Go in' she snapped.



The room was beautifully panelled in shades of white and cream. Antique furniture and oil paintings complimented it perfectly. Long windows looked onto the garden and the sun streamed in.



'Hello' I said to the elderly lady sat in the chair.
'Oh, come to do the snooping?' she said.
I told her I was going to carry out a survey on the direction of her landlord.
'Yes, then you can bugger off!' she snapped.

I made sure I took absolutely ages doing the survey. I asked to go into the attic and asked the fat housekeeper to find me a ladder. I poked into every nook, cranny, loo and boudoir. I wanted the keys for the shed, garage, wood store and cellar. I got her to move the lawnmower, the desk, the chairs and kitchen table. I decided the best time to survey the kitchen was during lunch preparations. At last, I asked the housekeeper to move her car so I could lift a drain cover.

'Oh - arn't you a nuscience!' she shouted, putting the cleaning gear aside for the umpteenth time.

Yes, I thought. And serves you right.