You wait all day for a sustainable superstore and then two of them turn up at once

A 'super green' 'eco store' designed by Chetwood Architects for Sainsbury's and built in Greenwich in 1999, with a design life of fifty years and expected actually to be able to last one hundred (Will we still be buying anything in 2113?), and nominated for the Stirling Prize is to be demolished to enable IKEA to build a larger store on the site, whilst Sainsbury's relocates to a new store three times as big.

IKEA says:

‘We are planning to demolish the Sainsbury’s store, as the current building is not fit for purpose to be turned into an IKEA store. We need a larger space, and therefore inevitably we need to demolish the existing building to provide this. However, we have made a commitment to reuse and recycle all of the salavagable materials from the existing Sainsbury’s store.’

(How many bookshelves will it make?)

Sainsbury's says:

‘We are relocating our Greenwich store to a bigger site so that we can offer our customers the full Sainsbury’s range. Our new store, which has already successfully gained planning permission, will be fully fitted with modern sustainable technologies.’

(What would it be like, I wonder, to gain planning permission unsuccessfully?)

The architect (Paul Hinkin, now of Black Architecture) says:

‘It is an absolute outrage. A building with a useful and productive life is going to be demolished. It is an act of vandalism.'

"bombs and architects"

Rem Koolhaas's De Rotterdam

"This is our longest-running project. It began in 1997, but it only became possible to build it during the financial crisis – when the contractors were cheap enough to do it."

But is it anything more than an optical trick, a game of dancing facades best viewed from a distance? "That's all you need to see. The rest is just a cheap office building," he says, before leaving me to explore the interior for myself.

There is a sense of nostalgia in his voice as he drops me on the street corner, before driving off to his next appointment. "The weird thing is that this building might look cold or harsh, but we get grandmothers now writing to us saying they like it. Which has never happened before."


I much recommend Oliver Wainwright's article - all human life is there (well, some of it).

Fifty shades of white

the proposed new Apple 'campus' by Foster Associates. City of Cupertino

“There was a very surreal moment during the development of those glass fins,” recalls a former Foster employee. “There was a $30m mock-up made of a whole section of the facade, with five versions of the fin in different shades of white. The Apple guys were looking at them for ages, saying one's a bit too blue, the other's a bit more cream – but they all looked identical to the naked eye.”

Like Oliver Wainwright, it would seem, I have my reservations about both Apple and Lord Norman Foster, but, as for the whites, I have been there before them. Some years ago I did a job for a London architect, a little less stellar than the good lord, who was fitting out his own stairway and kitchen with shelving and cupboards. Unlike Apple, his intention was not to get the 'right' white (how can it be right when each is different from itself in different lights?), but to use the subtle differentiation of several different shades of white in the same job. The picture does not really do it justice. It is true of course that the one white will look different in different parts of the room, but a single range of, for example, cupboard fronts will all look the same, thus giving the justification for differentiating them with different shades to echo the effect of varying light.

Unencumbered upscale

"The pendulum [for residential development] has swung in favour of east London, Canary Wharf is becoming the truly 21st century part of London because it's unencumbered by the small period properties prevalent in the rest of the capital; developers can create larger, more international-style buildings."

Dominic Grace of estate agents Savils commenting on the news that a £1 billion residential skyscraper is to be built at Canary Wharf. Look for it in the 'Business' rather than the 'Culture' section of the Guardian.

Architecture in the City

gleaming spires ...

... or looming towers?

It depends upon your point of view.

Swivel eyed loons 1

Michael Gove, secretary of state for education, champions the government's relaxation of planning controls because "we cannot think of our built environment without thinking of beauty" and we should welcome the prospect of new Chatsworths, NashTerraces of Regent's Park, Edinburgh New Towns, and Salisbury Cathedrals that the government "reforms" are about to unleash upon us. These new buildings of "grace and beauty'" will not only "ravish the eye and lift up the soul" but will provide new affordable housing for thrifty, aspiring, freedom-loving, socially mobile families. (Why be mobile when you live in a Chatsworth?) "No-one who believes in social mobility, in aspiration, in pro-family policies, in thrift and in freedom can be anything other than delighted by the release of more land for housing." The fact that "too few modern buildings can aspire to real beauty is a challenge to the architectural profession". That is the architectural profession which he has recently shouldered out of the business of designing new schools. The property developer "profession", hitherto bound hand and foot by those wicked mediocre architects, is not mentioned, but it is believed to be as delighted as Mr Gove.

People's Daily architecture

What do they call this in Beijing?

Signature buildings are now everywhere. As one looks downstream in Dubai-on-Thames, crossing Waterloo Bridge, the cityscape is now dominated by them, even as the monstrous 'Walkie Talkie' rises still to its as yet unreached bloated heights, making the slender and much talked-of Shard appear almost insignificant. The Gherkin still holds its sway, appropraitely, as the building that, whatever its merits or demerits, opened the way to a host of clamorous successors, a signal that conspicuous architecture cannot divorce itself from Mammon. The public is right to ascribe nicknames to these buildings, which may, some of them, be 'world class' (if that is a good thing) when seen from a distance, but are seldom world class to the folorn pedestrian who skirts their bases- or even pause to afford him a minimal respect.

Turner Contemporary, Margate - a question of respect?

'World class' was a phrase much beloved of Michael Heseltine, the tory politician and perpetual would-be prime minister who famously (and unacceptably to patrician tories whose extinction we now lament) 'had to buy all his own furniture'. I found myself momentarily warming to the late Margaret Thatcher (who also must have bought her own furniture) when I read that she supposedly said of Michael Heseltine that he had all the attributes necessary fro political success except intelligence.

Donald Winnicott, about whom BBC radio recently ran a programme, used to applaud the ordinary 'good enough mother'. Perhaps we need more ordinary good enough architects. Sadly we are likely to find them, as we find ourselves, as we are so often reminded now by our politicians, in a 'global race' on every side (a phrase that has won out over 'world class' in the great uplifting cliche flat race). We are, however, seldom, if ever, told what lies at the winning post of these global races.

Architects on or off the hook?

The Architectural Journal, rather distortingly, headlines "Critic blames 60s Brutalism for Boston marathon bombings".

If ones looks at the actual article on James Russell's blog one finds the refelctions are more tentative, reasonable and sensitive than the AJ headline leads one to think.

The journal, however, springs to the defence of its constituency with an editorial that turns Russell's tentative musing, why did the Tsarnaevs become alienated in Boston, explicitly back on him: "Why did James Russell suggest Brutalist architecture caused the Boston Marathon bombings?" The deputy editor provides no answer to his own question, but accuses Russell of being "crass" and "going over the edge", even though the picture the AJ chooses to illustrate its own article looks far more alienating then those Russell uses and the editorial fails to engage with Russell's particular criticism, but simply suggests "he can start by letting Rudolph off the hook".

There is an interesting question, is bad photography to blame for modern architecture preservation battles?, which could be usefully expanded into a consideration of the role that photographs (good and bad), drawings, models, computer visualisations play in the perception of buildings both built and unbuilt (and even of furniture for that matter) - perception in the minds of architects or designers, critics, public, clients, planners. However, the question I am suggesting here is what are the consequences of bad debate, or a failure to engage properly in debate.

The journal concedes that "there are questions architecture critics can ask". It might be better if they were asked by architects themselves, but they turn out to be of a distinctly "get on with the job", unquestioning sort:

"Will lockdowns influence new urban design? What is the value of a public realm that can be so speedily militarised?"

The editorial goes on to ask, but not even begin to answer (though it is posed in a strangely particular context), a larger question: "When freedom of movement is so heavily restricted, what does it mean to be a citizen today?"

What does it mean to be a citizen today very much depends upon whom one is asking. Nation states attach much significance to citizenship and its forms when they are granting it, but if the new citizen gets into the wrong circumstances and is not of the general socio-cultural type as the majority population of the state, their formal protections may count for little, on either side of the Atlantic.

Paul Rudolph in a bad photograph

It's all architecture

The Guardian has an article on the Milan Furniture Fair in which its correspondent identifies the "best gadget".

The "gadget" in question turns out to be a steak knife. "Gadget": origin obscure, originally in nautical use: a small tool or piece of mechanism; an accessory or adjunct especially of a trivial nature. This is as much as the Guardian is willing to show us of the small tool.

Perhaps it thought that as the complete item costs £170 that is as much as we needed.

The designer is John Pawson, the highley regarded architect:

"People are surprised by how long it takes to make something as apparently simple as a knife," says celebrated architect John Pawson of his new steak knife. The blade, created for When Objects Work, a Belgian company that produces exclusive objects by leading designers, took three years to develop. "When it comes to a house, people understand a life cycle measured in years, but for me it's all architecture – there's essentially no difference in the way I set about designing a building or a table." Made by Kai, the Japanese master craftsmen and makers of Samurai swords, the Damascus-steel blade features 16 ripple-like marks. The ebony handle is elegant, slender and beautifully balanced. £170

Architecture: the art or science of constructing edifices for human use.

Now we see it; now we don't

The view, that is; not the thing itself. We shall see the Shard for ever, day or night, until we have a return of the 1950s smog, or, as the politicians like to threaten us from time to time, the lights go out, or until the fall of the king of kings.

In a strange way, it has come to seem as if the view is the only thing that matters, as if we have so exhausted ourselves debating the unanswerable question whether the building is a remarkable thing in the wrong place or a remarkable thing in the right place that all there is left to do is to contemplate not the view of the Shard but the view from the Shard. Something of a relief if we can ignore the building itself, like M. Piano as he takes his monthly lunch in the shadow of his true flame, the Pompidou Centre.

The whole history of this building is rife with strange distinctions. Originally it was thought the developer had but a slim chance of doing what he wanted with his site, but middle eastern money came to his aid, as did the architectural kudos of Renzo Piano who, by making the building slimmer than ever, substantially beefed up its chances of seeing the light of day, and night.

Yet, rather like the Cheshire Cat's smile, all we seem to be left with is that view. There's no gainsaying the view. And, just as the cat may look at the king, anyone may look at the view, and the suggestion is half made that the view is the public benefaction: this is development with the new, magic ingredient, 'public space' (only necessary since commercial development became so large, so intrusive upon the public view and recently came increasingly to gobble up what once was public space - the new urban enclosures). You don't need to go to the expensive restaurant to enjoy this 'public space', still less inhabit one of the doubtless suitably astronomically expensive apartments. ('But the biggest factor [underlying the trend for taller development] in many cities is said to be a sharp increase in prices for luxury apartments.' Architects' Journal reporting the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.)

There is the slightly inconvenient fact (regretted by the architect, but he tells us he was instructed to keep his nose out of it) that it will cost Joe public £24.95 (on-line advance booking - in the spirit of the latest cultural block-buster at the Royal Academy) to get to see the view, and 'also be treated to a visit to the Shard’s exclusive loos on the 68th floor, which offer dynamic [sic] views of the city' - I am reliably informed that reports that the waste products are ecologically processed at 300 metres and vapourised into the upper atmosphere are premature. Nevertheless, tickets for the first two days are already sold out, and there is always the cost of the London Eye (from £17.28) to be called in aid - conveniently ignoring the fact that the London Eye exists only to whisk people up in a scenic orbit and is not a piece of commercial real estate expecting to make vast profits from the public grant of development permission.

That indefatigable populist, supporter of the new financial capital (in both senses of capital), that mayor over the water, Ken Livingstone, has the answer and has proposed that every London schoolchild (Harrow and Eton excluded) should be given one free admission to the floor with a view, rather in the spirit I suppose in which, when I was a schoolchild, we were each given a coronation mug stuffed with sweeties in the expectation that it would make us royalists for life. 'People will feel [the Shard] belongs to them,' Ken predicted a year ago.

It's the view, stupid. Originally the planning logic was that a small number of new skyscrapers should be allowed at major London rail termini, so that presumably the drones could be trundled in on their cramped commuter trains and taken straight up to their work stations aloft without cluttering the pavements. So much for the convivial city, and maybe that's why, if you are just ambling around savouring the bustling built fabric of things and, coming upon the Shard, you decide on an impulse to go up for the view, it will cost you not £25 but £100. (Someone pointed out that if you were in a group of three or four you could hire a helicopter flight for no more expense.)

A view is a view is a view, one might say, but, ironically, on most, less than clear days, the view is a view of ourselves, or rather of the humbler built detritus below. Perhaps the developers of tall buildings will start buying that up to replace it with more picturesque scenery for the benefit of their denizens as, in Lord Foster's words, they 'ascend up into the light'. Yet for the meanwhile the view remains a less spiritual experience than it might be, and perhaps the 'exclusive loo' (that's presumably the cubicle you can lock from the inside) remains the most appropriate seat from which to contemplate it. 

Then there was a requirement that these few new skyscrapers should be of exceptional architectural distinction: there is of course an inexorable logic that the extent to which planning policy relies upon 'architectural merit' is in inverse proportion to any agreement as to what constitutes such merit (whereas we can all agree on what makes a good view - chiefly height).

Of course, despite it all, even if the powers that be cannot tell an architectural gem from a carbuncle or a pile of money, they do have a directory of starchitects in their bottom drawers. And somehow, with their noble aid (and a bit more of that oh-so-sovereign wealth), the skyscrapers have escaped from their terminal pens and are striding across London, ready for Hong Kong or King Kong - whichever gets here first.


Kong perches


For myself, I just wonder why they built it upside down.

Blairchitecture: 'Ascend up into the light'

Here's one I designed earlier: Pyramind of Peace and Accord

The Pyramid of Peace and Accord was commissioned from Lord Norman Foster by the president of Kazakhstan in Astana, to where Nursultan Nazarbayev moved the state capital in 1997.

The building was conceived to host a congress of world religious leaders. It contains an opera house in the basement. "As you ascend up the pyramid you ascend up into the light," Lord Foster said: his intention was to build a pyramid "so light that it will appear to float away".

Nazarbayev expressed anti-religious views when he was president during the Soviet period, but since the breakup of the union and his continued presidency (most recently endorsed in a 2011 election in which he received 95.54 per cent of the vote) he has stressed his Muslim beliefs and undertaken the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Kazakhstan, which has significant hydro-carbon reserves, is now sometimes referred to as 'the Singapore of the Steppes': not only has its president been lauded in a recent book by Jonathan Aitken, the former British government minister imprisoned for perjury in 1999, but it enjoys, for a reputed £13 million fee, the advice of our former prime-minster, Tony Blair, and his contacts and associates.

Culture and anarchy

Jean Nouvel's Philharmonie de Paris

Jean Nouvel's Philharmonie de Paris, though currently running at twice its projected budget, has been judged too far advanced to cancel or modify by the new government of Francois Hollande, which is casting a crtitical eye over the previous government's grands projets.

Public space

The Shard

"Renzo Piano's creation, the tallest building in western Europe, finally opens its 69th-floor viewing platform to the public – at £25 a ticket. What does that buy you? Digital telescopes, jokey panels sending up famous London dwellers (George Orwell installing CCTV cameras, Karl Marx and Margaret Thatcher on a tandem), and of course views stretching for 40 miles."

We have learnt a thing or two in the past several decades. Owen Luder's now demolished, much reviled, and featured in Get Carter Gateshead Trinity Square carpark included a restaurant on the top - which was never used, because of technical problems and a lack of commercial interest.

When the market picks up... 2

Birmingham Central Library

"A minority of people [support the library] but it's very easy for them to make comments when they carry no responsibility for the economic viability of the area." Clive Dutton, Birmingham City Director of Planning and Regeneration.

Wher I live in West Dorset the chief officer of the local planning authority is jnown as the Director of Environment: planning it seems is a Cinderella for those charged with responsibility for its execution.

"I have never been very certain as to the value of tangible links with the past. They are often more sentimental than valuable... As to Birmingham's buildings, there is little of real worth in our architecture. Its replacement should be an improvement... As for future generations, I think they will be better occuppied in applying their thoughts and energies to forging ahead, rather than looking backwards." Herbert Manzoni, Birmingham City Engineer, responsible for the reconstruction (regeneration?) of the city in the 1960s.



The new library, by Mecanoo, on a separate site



When the market picks up...

Preston bus station

An unfortunate necessity

"The modern architectural drawing is interesting, the photograph is magnificent, the building is an unfortunate but necessary stage between the two."
Harry Goodhart-Rendel, architect, 1887-1959

Tower news

Goldman Sachs, which used to do God's work for him in sepulchral silence but has now been unwillingly brought into the public eye, is in need of a new European cathedral and is in talks with a number of architectural practices to see whether they might possibly consent to design a new head office building for them. It will be little surprise to learn that Goldman Sachs already own the site in London: only a few grade-two listed murals by Dorothy Annan on the exterior of what was once the largest telephone exchange in London stand in the way of redevelopment. Annan's murals are highly regarded but have mostly disappeared as the buildings on which they were located have been demolished to make way for ever greater architecture. Only three of her major public murals are believed to survive – the largest single example, the Expanding Universe at the Bank of England, was destroyed in 1997 a good decade before reality caught up with art, presumably in case the public, by looking at it, got wind of what the financial world was up to.

Amongst the architectural firms so honoured with Goldman Sachs's enquiries are Foster and Partners, who, unlike the other two, American behemoths, can be relied upon to raise anyone's cultural credentials. 

Gander sauce with all the trimmings

One of the reasons the international financial markets are said to be dubious about the economic prospects of Greece is that it has few flourishing industrial sectors.

Greek shipping is successful but brings little economic benefit to the country because the ship owners have structured their businesses to ensure that profits are retained in foreign countries. Hardly behaviour of which international financiers would approve.

Greek tourism is said to 'lack infrastructure'. Cue international development enterprises led by billionaires, flamboyant or crespuscular, with top dressing of star architects. See Aberdeen, or Bulgaria. Certainly the Ace of Trumps could never be accused of hiding his light under the scantest bushel, and is now too busy saving his own country to spend much time degrading Aberdeenshire. Is our noble Lord Gherkin crespuscular? One cannot think so, neither in Bulgaria nor here - although someone with potential profits at stake may need to work into the night if they are to overcome the massed ranks of the RSPB (the Conservative Party with binoculars) against the creation of the 'Thames Hub' or 'Boris Island'? Perhaps one of our architects might be persuaded to design something similar to beef up that Greek infrastructure for the returning northern European tourists once the Euro resurgent rises giddily above the Drachma reinvented.

Undeveloped Greek coastline



Virgin Greek countryside

Delapidated Greek public building in need of foreign investment



Greece - step this way?

Gesamtkunstwerk

The Beethoven Frieze was created by Klimt for an exhibition in 1902 and is now permanently installed in the Secession building where it was originally presented in Vienna. This exquisite reconstruction was created using the same techniques as applied by Klimt himself as the original Frieze, a masterpiece of 20th century art, underwent restoration. The Frieze celebrates the unification of all arts – painting, sculpture, architecture and music - and is a prime example of the “Gesamtkunstwerk”, the concept of the total work of art pioneered by Richard Wagner and influential in Vienna around 1900.

The exhibition recreates the sophisticated world of Klimt and his patrons in Vienna around 1900 at the juncture between art, architecture and design, when this intriguing figure was at the epicentre of a cultural awakening sweeping the city. It explores the relationship between Klimt as a leader and founder of the Viennese Secession (founded 1897) and the products and philosophy of the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop, founded 1903) – a highpoint of 20th century architecture and design. Klimt played a critical role in the Viennese Secession, a progressive group of artists and artisans driven by a desire for innovation and renewal. The work and philosophy of the Secession embraced not only art but architecture, fashion and the decorative objects and furniture of the Wiener Werkstätte, demanding the emancipation of fine and applied art in stunning environments.

Earth-bound

Some of my best friends are architects, as one says - well, I know a few - and so I hope they will forgive me for what may appear to be 'architect bashing'. (Don't the bankers deserve a break?) I am in fact in awe of architects, who know so much and, sometimes, can do so much, but what I criticise is more their position in society, and I am acutely conscious that, in this respect, furniture 'designer-makers' are in no position to start calling any kettle black.

We all, these days, in our modest, if destructive, occupations, aspire to the status of artists. Perhaps as 'genuine' 'artists' (note the separate inverted commas denoting a complete breakdown of connected thought) have turned to the contemplation and arrangement of the mundane ('artists' as 'arrangers' as in 'flower arranger' or, more sinisterly, as 'fixers', as in relieving the rich of their money?) there has ceased to be any policeable boundary between 'art' and artifice (not that there was in centuries past).

Architects, as the inevitable hand-maids of Mammon, whose adherents have long dominated (after the public functionaries) the honours lists, for services either to making money or to giving some of it away in their comfortable maturity, have certainly got their feet, and other parts of the anatomy besides, into the pantheon, to the extent that they too are now the recipients of buggins-turn knighthoods and peerages.

It used to be, when I was young, just the musicians who were thus honoured by the establishment, bringing a discreet sprinkling of culture into the grown-up world, as the captains of industry snored at the opera - music being largely a safely abstract form of art. (Thus Victoria gave us Sir Arthur Sullivan, but that unpleasantly acerbic W S Gilbert remained plain Mr.) The visual arts were a little riskier but at least there was the academy to ensure a supply of properly respectable practitioners among the riff-raff. And literature - well it was always plain what that was talking about (more or less), though the recently published list of refusniks has shown a good many modern-ish writers to have declined honours. (I didn't notice any architects there.)

The trouble with architects as artists - and their work is now routinely praised or condemned in terms of a kind of lax art-speak - is that their oeuvre is so much at our feet, or in our face. We cannot avoid it in the way that we can decline to enter the gallery (the modern art asylum) or open the book. In times past, partly for that reason, architects (even the modernists - amongst themselves) subscribed to an order, or something approaching an agreed aesthetic and visual vocabulary. No longer so - at least not deliberately.