I've been asked to explain myself, and give some sort of justification for this whole blog-writing business, haphazard as it is. So I've identified three reasons, two of which do me no personal credit whatsoever:
1) Laziness - why write long emails to lots of different people when you can just put a link up on Facebook, or not even notify anyone and just expect people to check back periodically to see what you've been up to. It's this modern ailment of not being bothered to talk to anyone directly, which I'm wholeheartedly embracing. In my defence, the odds are that the internet in its facilitation of this cold, impersonal communication is really often replacing a sharing of information that never would have occurred, rather than better quality contact.
2) A near-pathological aversion to repetition - I hate repeating myself. It annoys me. I remember very clearly a stand-up fight with my mother many years ago over the vacuuming of my bedroom: the hoover hadn't been working very well so although I had done the chore the original goal had not really been fulfilled. Nevertheless I refused to do it again on the basis that I had done what I was asked once already and it was unreasonable to expect me to do it again. Ok, maybe there was an element of the laziness I just referred to, but for the most part I just couldn't stand the idea of doing the same thing again.
The same applies to conversation, and a consequence of this is that I tend to speak as though people know things that I have never bothered to tell them but did describe with thrilling vivacity to someone else. They then appear not to appreciate the development of that same theme. So instead of a) having to tell people all the same things about my time in Madrid or b) remember what interesting and different things I've described to each person it's easier just to write a load of stuff down and go from there.
A similar difficulty applies to forming any kind of routine or developing a proper hobby. It begins to feel boring, repetitive and claustrophobic and I find a new thing to obsess about for a bit. This is the reason I still can't play the guitar and will never succeed at any competitive sport.
3) Writing makes me think better. This is a good one, I think, and should help me get more out of this whole foreign travel and work business.
I did it in previous years, when I was travelling and it was a good way to pass the time, but I don't know if it was (a greater degree of) immaturity or the fact that it was entirely private that made me write this travel diary with even lower editorial standards and an even greater level of self-obsession, along with a lot of the assumptions of familiarity that I mentioned above.
A public forum, albeit one that few strangers will find or ever bother to read, focusses my ramblings to be a) more succinct and b) less about facile chronological diary entries and more about abstract things that I find interesting. Additionally, as I articulate my thoughts about things I find more then occurs to me. It also can act as a impetus to continue doing and seeing interesting things, so that I have something to write about.
In that spirit, it's 3.30pm on a Friday so I'm off out to sketch the city, maybe from a terrace, with a caña in hand. Next blog post is likely to be about Piranesi, engineering and drawing and how they all fit together. Or potentially Herzog and de Meuron's Caixa Forum building. Or mountains or the beach.
Friday, 27 July 2012
Tuesday, 24 July 2012
Less of an icon - terrace life in Madrid
One of the things I've been enjoying on the few occasions I've managed to sit down and write this blog is the way I start remembering things. Specifically in articulating what I think about buildings and the city I find myself remembering some of that dearly purchased knowledge that came from four years of architectural study.
A big thing, love it or hate it, in architecture is the concept of the 'iconic' building. That big, shiny white elephant on the corner that people will travel miles to visit and everyone stops to photograph but that has real meaning to no-one at all because they don't live or work there. It's not a part of (almost) anyone's daily existence.
Cities fall over themselves to embrace the Guggenheim effect, while architects chase that big competition win. Architecture students try to conjure hypothetical landmarks on the street corners of provincial towns, unfettered by either cash flow or gravity but well versed in what makes an 'Icon'. Engineers are complicit, too, when we award prizes to buildings that we see little merit in beyond the fact that they are bigger and more expensive than the next.
The elegant little bits of design that sit silent but efficient in the corners of buildings (their very invisibility testament, often, to their ingenuity) are attributed no more praise than the shanty communities that develop unplanned yet seem to function on a basis of community engagement and shared ownership, albeit in the informal market. These need to be explained and promoted by their creators, as well as watched for and appreciated by building users. The architectural press, to their credit, has a nice line in appreciation of fine detail (the Detail section of the AJ, particularly, springs to mind as an example) while engineering journals can often veer wildly between incredibly broad-brush and uninformative or offputtingly dry and inaccessible.
As an aside, my brother and I both recently read a great book called Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand, which deals at length with the effective informal administrative arrangements of shanty town communities and the potential of developing world in general. Different parts of the book, which explores a wide range of topics all running along the lines of 'How do we save the planet?', seem to have relevance to conversations on a regular basis, so we keep referring back to it. I still harbour some doubts about some of Brand's comments about building without regulation or design in some of these (extremely seismic) areas of the world. Professional building designers may in the eyes of many be entirely superfluous but there is a critical safety component to what we do.
What was originally going to be a little pre-amble into a description of a nice, low-key square in Madrid has turned into more of a rant than I intended, for which I apologise, and I assure you I have more than my fair share of white elephant photographs. I like those buildings, a lot of the time I'm making my living from those buildings, and I do see the value to our culture of having more criteria than 'Can I eat it, make money from it or live in it?'. Construction is one of the few areas left that, even with the widespread loss of traditional craftmanship, has a substantial niche for the bespoke.
The problem is that the building of ambitious construction projects in Spain with dodgy financing and even more questionable business plans has been identified as one of the major contributors to the current woes of the country. One of my colleagues was telling me today about a huge €1.1bn airport in Ciudad Real that was operational for less than three years before going into receivership. It's one of many examples that I hear about every day, when all the while I'm never far from the marching, shouting indignados on the street outside.
On a lighter note, and what I was initially planning to write about, the point being that it's not all about the centre of the city, or the big buildings, but really it's all about shoes...
...some time ago now I found myself in the Plaza Dos de Mayo (2nd May Square: named for the same Madrid uprising in 1808 that gives us that day as a holiday here), which is a little way north of the centre of the city. It seemed to be the heart of a great deal of family and community life - I don't know if it's the weather or just a cultural difference, but children seem to be far more involved in the city here than back in the UK. Maybe it's something to do with our reservedness and need to have our own gardens, which we then keep our children in rather than letting them share city squares.
Anyway, it was around the time of the San Isidro (patron saint of Madrid) festival, and as I sat drinking coffee in a cafe in the shade the children were running around in traditional outfits, chulapas, that made them look disconcertingly like very small old people. A number of them were mustachioed. It seemed like they were having fun.
.JPG)
I was sitting in the square having come up to that part of town in search of a shoe shop I had found written about on the internet - they sell traditional Spanish alpargatas (you know, those rope wedges that occasionally find themselves in fashion) and have done for generations. I needed to get some, but like a true tourist had fallen foul of the eccentric opening hours operated here. Of course one should expect a shop to open at quarter to five 'for the afternoon'. It's telling of the attitude toward time of a nation when they don't have separate words for afternoon and evening.
I bought some. I had been distracted by the curious phenomenon of Bubble Tea (more on that another day, I'm sure) by the time the shop eventually opened, but a few minutes late I headed back and I found it full. The proprietor seemed to have a short fuse, and was already at the end of it as a result of two apparently fairly thick English tourist girls so it wasn't quite the idyllic experience I'd been imagining. Good shoes though.
A big thing, love it or hate it, in architecture is the concept of the 'iconic' building. That big, shiny white elephant on the corner that people will travel miles to visit and everyone stops to photograph but that has real meaning to no-one at all because they don't live or work there. It's not a part of (almost) anyone's daily existence.
Cities fall over themselves to embrace the Guggenheim effect, while architects chase that big competition win. Architecture students try to conjure hypothetical landmarks on the street corners of provincial towns, unfettered by either cash flow or gravity but well versed in what makes an 'Icon'. Engineers are complicit, too, when we award prizes to buildings that we see little merit in beyond the fact that they are bigger and more expensive than the next.
The elegant little bits of design that sit silent but efficient in the corners of buildings (their very invisibility testament, often, to their ingenuity) are attributed no more praise than the shanty communities that develop unplanned yet seem to function on a basis of community engagement and shared ownership, albeit in the informal market. These need to be explained and promoted by their creators, as well as watched for and appreciated by building users. The architectural press, to their credit, has a nice line in appreciation of fine detail (the Detail section of the AJ, particularly, springs to mind as an example) while engineering journals can often veer wildly between incredibly broad-brush and uninformative or offputtingly dry and inaccessible.
As an aside, my brother and I both recently read a great book called Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand, which deals at length with the effective informal administrative arrangements of shanty town communities and the potential of developing world in general. Different parts of the book, which explores a wide range of topics all running along the lines of 'How do we save the planet?', seem to have relevance to conversations on a regular basis, so we keep referring back to it. I still harbour some doubts about some of Brand's comments about building without regulation or design in some of these (extremely seismic) areas of the world. Professional building designers may in the eyes of many be entirely superfluous but there is a critical safety component to what we do.
What was originally going to be a little pre-amble into a description of a nice, low-key square in Madrid has turned into more of a rant than I intended, for which I apologise, and I assure you I have more than my fair share of white elephant photographs. I like those buildings, a lot of the time I'm making my living from those buildings, and I do see the value to our culture of having more criteria than 'Can I eat it, make money from it or live in it?'. Construction is one of the few areas left that, even with the widespread loss of traditional craftmanship, has a substantial niche for the bespoke.
The problem is that the building of ambitious construction projects in Spain with dodgy financing and even more questionable business plans has been identified as one of the major contributors to the current woes of the country. One of my colleagues was telling me today about a huge €1.1bn airport in Ciudad Real that was operational for less than three years before going into receivership. It's one of many examples that I hear about every day, when all the while I'm never far from the marching, shouting indignados on the street outside.
On a lighter note, and what I was initially planning to write about, the point being that it's not all about the centre of the city, or the big buildings, but really it's all about shoes...
Anyway, it was around the time of the San Isidro (patron saint of Madrid) festival, and as I sat drinking coffee in a cafe in the shade the children were running around in traditional outfits, chulapas, that made them look disconcertingly like very small old people. A number of them were mustachioed. It seemed like they were having fun.
.JPG)
I was sitting in the square having come up to that part of town in search of a shoe shop I had found written about on the internet - they sell traditional Spanish alpargatas (you know, those rope wedges that occasionally find themselves in fashion) and have done for generations. I needed to get some, but like a true tourist had fallen foul of the eccentric opening hours operated here. Of course one should expect a shop to open at quarter to five 'for the afternoon'. It's telling of the attitude toward time of a nation when they don't have separate words for afternoon and evening.I bought some. I had been distracted by the curious phenomenon of Bubble Tea (more on that another day, I'm sure) by the time the shop eventually opened, but a few minutes late I headed back and I found it full. The proprietor seemed to have a short fuse, and was already at the end of it as a result of two apparently fairly thick English tourist girls so it wasn't quite the idyllic experience I'd been imagining. Good shoes though.
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