Epic Space Read online

  We’re soon done, and I email the drawings to a little workshop off Farringdon Road where they print it out on genuine antique paper. Oh shit, I’ve forgotten the design statement. No problem, says Beansy, and navigates to Reactionist, a random polemic generator.

  After a couple of goes we get: ‘Architecture has entered a new virtual realm of discourse, stripped of the practical and pedagogical contexts that once defined its disciplinary core. That’s why it is vital to remember and honour the Paraffin Lamp …’ I change the last bit to Drawing Board and email it over for parchmenting.

  THURSDAY Lunch with my noble friend Richard, who whines on and on about how nobody listens to him now he’s a Lord. I tune out after a while. No wonder everyone’s calling him Mopey Dick.

  FRIDAY Draft my initial five-point plan for the Betjemanisation of south London.

  1. Comprehensive audit of apsidal chancels, Nonconformist spirelets and schools by E. R. Robson in the style of Norman Shaw.

  2. River idealisation scheme to allow the waters of the Wandle to flow more lugubriously.

  3. Replace ‘workers’ flats in fields of soya beans, towering up like silver pencils with ‘obedient, cheerful Cockney slums in terraced rows, their lavatories without’.

  4. Restore faded Victorian grandeur of buildings now operating as nightclubs by revoking their nightclub licences.

  5. Reach out to underclass with cultural education project, e.g. correct deployment of teddy bear is under arm of young poet, not amid cellophane pilings at ghastly roadside shrine.

  SATURDAY Bump into Andrew Lloyd Webber at a Baroque fundraiser. Result. He’s on board with Project Betjeman and has agreed to stimulate interest in Evensong among south Londoners, via the telly.

  SUNDAY In the recliner when Charles rings. He’s also fully behind the Betj-Up. Suddenly realise this project appeals to all the wrong people. Now I’ve talked myself into a depression. Go to pub to see if I can spend my way out of one.

  November 4, 2008

  The Dreamed Vortex

  MONDAY Meeting of the Olympic Rebadging Taskforce. The gravity of the situation is taking its toll, even on Games Minister Suzi Towel.

  That compulsory Mexican wave we have before Apologies for Absence gets more perfunctory each time. Nobody does the good-natured booing now when the wave gets to Treasury Steve and he refuses to join in. Oh sure, Suzi still says ‘Yay!’ every time the word ‘Olympics’ is mentioned. But these days it’s without the exclamation mark.

  Still. Not all gloom. The IOC inspectors came over for a tour of the building site – correction, Delivery Park – and went home happy. It’s amazing how much international goodwill can be generated by a good lunch, a Cornetto on an open-topped Routemaster and a nap on the plane home. No awkward questions about the £9.3 billion budget, which we’re rather cleverly rebadging as being ‘under control’.

  Suzi explains. ‘A dog is for life, not just for Christmas. And the Olympics – yay – is for the sustainable regeneration of east London, not just for a fortnight of world-class competitive sport and various sponsorship opportunities. We’re still three years off, and the budget is very much a puppy. It’s under control in the sense that we’ve taught it to wee and poo outside, but obviously it has to develop into a complete dog, doesn’t it?’

  Meanwhile, we’re further downgrading architectural expectations to Level 2 (‘mild irritant, avoid contact with eyes’), ironically announcing plans to ‘recycle’ the Velodrome, and redefining ‘shit-eating grin’ as ‘brave face’.

  TUESDAY Britain now languishes at the bottom of the World Nomenclature League, and the Department of Entertainment is looking for a Building Nickname Czar. Fingers crossed.

  WEDNESDAY Working on my nicknames. It’s time this country took them seriously. In Seoul or Reykjavik, a new building is automatically assigned an architectural name by the relevant federal bureau of appellations. The result? Some nondescript bollocks is called The Sexy Rainbow Wand or Enfolding Love Bun.

  In Britain we leave all naming to our journalists. Result? Desaturated rubbish such as The Gherkin, The Shard, The – come on, for God’s sake – Cheese Grater. Worse, they always pretend buildings have been ‘dubbed’. When a journalist says ‘dubbed’ it means ‘given a nickname, by me’. Bastards.

  THURSDAY Prep notes for a lecture at the Institute of Plasmic Arts. It’s called ‘The Misery of Excellence’ and will convince everyone that I’m in the middle of writing a sarcastic masterpiece about how architecture has been sidelined into a zero-risk compliance culture, even though I’ve only actually written this sentence so far. ‘He who lives by the kitemark, dies by the kitemark.’ That sounds good, I might say that.

  FRIDAY The Architectural Nickname Czar gig would look great on my portfolio, which this year runs to half a page of A4. I email the following universally deployable building names to the entertainment department:

  The uPod. The Kebabel. The Shiny Tumulus. The Chamfered Cock. The Glazed Rictus. The Parenthesis. The Fat Bonus. The Clumpty. The Saucy Dalek. The Eco-Eco-Bang-Bang. The Big Ask. The Dreamed Vortex. The Petrified Discharge. The Stilty Lump. The Sentient Plume. The Perpendiculon. The Urban Stook. The Skyfister. The Messaging Ascender. The Pishtank. The Iconic Pandemonium. The Chip Naan. The Very Hungry Fuckerpilla. The Bosh. The Cloverfield Thunderbolt. The Laughing Prolapse. The Extrudel. The Batard. The Carbon-Retentive Colon. The Vertical Conga. The Paranoid Fishcake. The Aircosh. The Digital Tampon. The Niggling Appendix. The Satirical Standup. The Shish. The Glandmark. The Convincing Wig. The ! The Crispy Beacon. The Megaphor. The Arrested Gush. The Token Block. The Aerodoodle. The Heliographic Slatfarm. The Lifecake. The Courgetto. The Lesbian Tongue. The End.

  SATURDAY Absolutely no response. Sod them. Decide I’ll get absolutely wankered at lunchtime. I’m meeting my old friend Darcy the architecture critic and his overdressed dachshund, Bauhau.

  Then a text cancelling lunch. Odd, not like Darcy at all. And as excuses go, ‘Bauhau’s got a migraine’ seems a bit feeble.

  SUNDAY Oh lovely. Brilliant. In the Creative on Sunday, a drivelly piece on The Preciousness of Our Named Heritage. ‘By the entertainment department’s new Architectural Dubbing Czar, Darcy Farquear’say …’

  There’s a photo of him holding what looks like a squirming Beef Wellington. It may be a small dog in some sort of fashionable polycarbonate sheath. Or not, who cares?

  March 5, 2009

  Simpering Psychomuff

  A quiz for ARCHITECTS ONLY. Are you a national architectural treasure? Let’s find out …

  QUESTION 1 We begin with that basic indicator of architectural genius, innovative cladding. Have you specified any of the following materials recently: zipped leather, decommissioned weapons, bubblewrap, knitted fibre-optic cable, chainmail, an energy plasma field or a biodegradable medium – toast, say?

  If you have, proceed to the next question. If you haven’t, you are neither pushing boundaries nor challenging perceptions. You’re definitely not a ‘national architectural treasure’. You’re not even a player, fool!

  QUESTION 2 Do your buildings rise dramatically from the site as a fluid and organic whole, igniting the environment and creating a dynamic beacon of optimism in a world numbed by negativity?

  If yes, proceed to the next question. If your buildings just sort of sit there like big fat lumps, you’re rubbish. Abandon this questionnaire.

  QUESTION 3 Have you been photographed by a magazine recently, pretending not to have noticed the camera, surrounded by inert props and apparently mumbling to yourself about how we have to rebrand the profession? Yeah? Then kindly leave the page. National treasures do not discuss such things.

  If, on the other hand, you’ve said in interview that space is a material shaped by dreams and that you strive for an architecture which goes beyond mere form-making into a systemic alchemic polemic whatever, congratulations. You’re a probationary treasure.

  QUESTION 4 Do you disdain Britain’s suburbs and its human contents? Do you think peo
ple who’d rather go to a carpet warehouse than the Donmar Warehouse are at least misguided, if not actually in breach of international law?

  Do you think barbeques in/and/or gardens are utterly selfish? Do you say things like Good Taste is the Enemy of Creativity, or Comfortable Furniture is the Enemy of, I don’t know, Standing Up?

  Of course you do. You’re an architect. It’s a trick question.

  QUESTION 5 Do you use ‘critique’ as a verb, all the bloody time? If not, you’re fired. Please leave the national treasure boardroom.

  QUESTION 6 Of course, of COURSE, we all condemn violations of human rights. Especially when it involves the exploitation of construction workers hired like expendable human donkeys, risking their lives to build preposterous and effete creations coaxed from the imaginations of architects by morally neutral tranches of fee income, in parts of the world now designated as hedonistic face-stuffing shop-filled ethnically cleansed pampering playgrounds for callous shitheads who believe it’s their right to be fawned over like fat demigods when they’re on holiday.

  If your policy is either to refuse to work on such projects, or on a point of principle to be not successful enough to land any, your hopes of becoming a national treasure are slim.

  If, however, you can keep a straight face and say things like, ‘I am committed to supporting our client in achieving equitable working conditions’, and once went to an ethical fundraiser where Sting played his fucking lute after dinner, congratulations. You certainly sound like a national architectural treasure.

  QUESTION 7 Rearrange the following words to make a coherent sentence: is, urban, masque, provocative, the, integrated, resonance, lifeview, of, freestyle, curvery, and.

  If you tried to do this, I’m afraid you are not a treasure. If, however, you suggest that the randomness of the elements has its own occult interconnectivity, you could be on to something. If you imagined the individual words scattered across Photoshopped montages of city streets at night with coloured blobs and jagged lines, you’re probably already a regional treasure at least.

  QUESTION 8 Do you ever think about writing poetry? If you do: sorry. The national treasure express has pulled out, leaving you dithering in the waiting room unsure of what your true vocation is. If you bashfully explain at dinner parties that your architecture IS poetry, well done. That’s exactly the sort of simpering psychomuff the Pritzker lot love.

  QUESTION 9 Who do you think you are – GOD? Ah-ha! Got you. You were doing so well, too. A genuine national architectural treasure does not believe in God. They believe in a universe of infinite self-confidence with, at its theological centre, an omnipotent sulk.

  QUESTION 10 Have you ever done an icon? If not, please produce one, then retake questions 1–9.

  June 11, 2009

  The Vegetable Liberation Front

  MONDAY The Tamworth Design Festival has been running annually since the late eighth century and has over the years showcased some truly innovative products. The demountable Witch Detector, for instance. The Snook Rack. The Pig Recycler.

  These days it’s mostly furniture. But the artisans of Mercia have lost none of their native cunning, creating hugely desirable conversation pieces at imaginative prices. Today we’re judging the Seating entries.

  The winner is Sadface & Gentley’s ‘Recession’, a clever reworking of the sofa narrative. A giant Spacehopper the size of a Ford Fiesta, partially deflated, with stumpy little ironic legs. It asks existential questions via the user. Whose face am I ‘actually’ sitting on? What do the apparently redundant giant ribbed handles signify? HOW much? Etc.

  TUESDAY A lot of steam has gone out of the Olympic Rebadging Task Force lately. Even under the giddy guidance of Games Minister Suzi Towel – ‘Akela after too many Lambrinis’ – our old esprit de corps is crumbling. All the consultants are talking directly to the Shadow Olympics team now, and all the political people are lining up jobs as consultants.

  Suzi calls the meeting to order with a Mexican Wave. ‘Come on people!’ she roars. ‘The Olympics (YAY!) won’t rebadge itselves!’

  We need to make ‘roads and sheds’ sound more important, as this will basically be all there is to see by the time Voters Go to the Polls. Infrastructure may be dull but Mr Blair taught us that the public sector must have a giggly subtext to make it more competitive. With itself, if necessary. That’s why a ‘public library’ is now an ‘ideas store’. Why a ‘health clinic’ is now a ‘wellness hub’. Why a ‘council swimming pool’ is now a luxury apartment block.

  After some thought, we rebadge the new roads as ‘go channels’. We rebadge the sheds where the roadbuilding machinery is kept as ‘power bases’. Then it’s Any Other Business, or ‘lunch’.

  WEDNESDAY Winner of the Tamworth Design Festival’s Lighting category: The Butchlamp by Connor Chance. Scaffolding pole with a 60-watt bulb at the end, £1,095 plus VAT.

  THURSDAY It’s easy to see why everyone’s a little in love with Amy Blackwater, the extreme ecological activist. She’s easily the most attractive woman in a balaclava I’ve ever met, her default setting is ‘engagingly enraged’ and, compellingly, she winds architects right the fuck up. She and her friends in ‘the collective’ are the nearest thing the profession has to a guilty conscience.

  We’re having a pint in the Victorian Farm, a dilapidated pub in rural Essex reborn as an experimental theatre venue. Smoking is allowed on the condition that all drinkers are ‘performers’ taking part in a ‘piece’. At least half of us are drinking, eating and smoking through balaclavas. There are a few new concealed faces today – religious fundamentalists, here to show solidarity with the ecomentalists in the ongoing War Against Living Walls.

  Over the last few weeks Amy and co. have been carrying out night raids on buildings with living walls and turning off the water pumps. ‘It’s sick!’ splutters Amy. ‘These captive plants might as well be veal babies, yeah? They’re being sustained by a life support machine – itself guzzling up Earth’s Precious Resources – in some Frankensteinian nightmare. How is this ecologically sound? In a world divided into gluttony and starvation it’s about as morally defensible as CAT FOOD!’

  God, she is wonderful. Her nutty Christian friends think so too. They reckon living walls are the new Tower of Babel – a symbol of heathen hubris. A manifestation of evil. Architects, once again, believing they are omnipotent. ‘If bloody architects want to grow things round their stupid buildings,’ says Amy through a cloud of roll-up smoke, ‘let them stick geraniums in a pot. Or have a bloody Virginia Creeper. Or …’

  Ooh, I know. Hanging baskets. Architects LOATHE them. In fact, hatred of hanging baskets is a totally dependable bourgeois signifier. Amy looks as thoughtful as anyone can inside a balaclava. Hm. Direct action to liberate living walls, AND a hanging basket guerilla campaign? Yes!

  FRIDAY Winner of the Tables category: The Planolith, by Daughters of Radon. An artist’s impression of a ‘hard air’ rectangle on bubblejets of psychic energy. Not yet in production.

  SATURDAY Sketch out a reassembled Euston Arch, with hanging baskets.

  SUNDAY Cross-culturally-reference self in the recliner.

  September 24, 2009

  The Shitley Experiment

  MONDAY A breakthrough with my research project for the Bow Window Group, a conservative think tank, provisionally titled Affordable Homes for Affordable People.

  Working late into the night in my alchemic laboratory of ideas, I accidentally spilled some notes from the control group into the experimental flux capacitor. After the dry ice cleared and my nausea had subsided a bit I discovered that I had somehow merged the cultural notions of homeless chic and moral bankruptcy to create a new sociological construct: Affordable Poverty.

  I think the tank’s going to love the sound of this. It faces squarely the twin challenges of inadequate housing for the poor AND the aspirationally underperforming constituency living in it.

  If we as a nation decide we can afford to sustain this delicate ecosystem, possibl
y at a lower cost in the future, then the minority of people enjoying the fruits of poverty had better shut up if they know what’s good for them.

  TUESDAY Add psychogeographical layers to my Birmingham Hippocampus Scheme. Then erase them, leaving an imagined ghostly imprint of enigmatic drivel for insurance purposes.

  WEDNESDAY To Shitley, a relentlessly average town in the North East, where the local authority is conducting an interesting experiment in economic denial. They’ve started fixing fake shop facades to empty high street properties so that ‘retail areas remain as theoretically vibrant as possible’.

  The initiative is part of Shitley District Council’s inward investment programme and is clearly aimed at the opportunistic businessman glancing from the back seat of a car and thinking ‘Oh, that’s impressive. They’ve got a continental delicatessen here. AND several vaguely defined lifestyle-related boutiquey shops. This place must have a sizeable bourgeois hinterland. Sharon, get me the chief executive of Shitley District Council, stat. I’m in the mood to invest and I’m feeling SAUCY …’

  It’s obviously not aimed at pedestrians, who are taunted with a phantom bagel kiosk here, duped by the hollow mockery of a counterfeit halal butcher’s there. I’m taken on a promenade along the high street by what local paper The Shitley Chronicle solemnly calls ‘council bosses’. To wit:

  • Three grey-faced planners in identical fleeces.

  • Two metres of sulking iPod-dependent teenage work experience from Economic Development apparently called Jack.

  • The fat, short mayor of Shitley wearing a heavy chain of office and looking like an airbag’s gone off inside his fucking head.

  • A hungover, barely functioning hack who might be from the council press office, or The Shitley Chronicle, or both.

  • A Smoke Freedom Enforcement Officer in high-vis tabard.

  • A random hanger-on complaining about the government who is a) on a Shopmobility scooter and b) off her meds.