Brian Micklethwait

Sardar Patel goes large

I do like Dezeen. Mostly it’s just Posh Modernism, but every so often it reports on something a lot more interesting.

Like: what is now the world’s tallest statue, four times the size of the Statue of Liberty, recently erected in Gujarat state, India.

This looks for all the world like it’s Photoshopped, but it truly isn’t:

Vallabhbhai Patel (31 October 1875 – 15 December 1950), popularly known as Sardar Patel, was an Indian politician who served as the first Deputy Prime Minister of India. He was an Indian barrister and statesman, a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and a founding father of the Republic of India who played a leading role in the country’s struggle for independence and guided its integration into a united, independent nation. …

Prediction: a Global Big Statue Race.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A halo for a blind dog

I follow the actor James Dreyfus on Twitter, because I liked him in Gimme Gimme Gimme and The Thin Blue Line, and because his opinions seem to be refreshingly un- and often anti-PC.

Dreyfus recently tweeted about a device that the owner of a blind dog had made for the dog, to stop the dog bumping his nose into things, and instead bumping the device into things before his nose got there. It looks like a sort of horizontal halo, with a curve curving out in front of the dog’s nose. As a result, the blind dog became willing to wander around, whereas previously he’d been too scared of bumping his nose on things. There’s video, showing how this device works and what a difference it is making.

James Dreyfus is in favour of kindness to animals, as am I, and he complimented the owner for his kindness and inventiveness, as do I.

When I went a-googling on the subject of blind dogs, I discovered that you can actually buy a device like this, as one of Dreyfus’s commenters points out. It’s called a halo guide, although it doesn’t do much in the way of guiding. It just takes the hurt out of bumping into things. But, it is sort of guiding, because presumably the dog gets to learn his way around.

But, these halo guides are quite expensive, and anyway, how would you know beforehand what are they called, or even that such a thing already exists? How do you go looking? I got lucky. (Before I realised that a commenter had said this.)

However, what I was trying to find out was if any blind dogs are assisted by guide dogs. But if you google that, Google just sees “blind” “guide” “dogs” and assumes the dogs are for blind humans, as they mostly are of course. Try telling Google that you want to know about a guide dog and a blind dog. Can’t be done. I couldn’t do it, anyway.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

BMdotcom financial quote of the day

In this:

Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook have a combined market capitalization of $3.7 trillion, equal to Germany’s gross domestic product last year.

Quoted at Instpundit by Stephen Green, who says that this is an “incredible figure”. It certainly is very big, if that’s what “incredible” means, when you are describing a very big number.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

More modern architectural colour

I recall speculating here (by quoting Bill Bryson) that a reason why Modernism is so monochromatic is that there was a time about a hundred years ago when the two hardest colours to get right in painted form, and hence the two most modern colours, were: black; and: white.

Early, monochrome photography was also a big reason for architectural modernity not to care about colour. The most modern buildings were the ones that looked like black and white photos.

This has been a long time changing, but changing it finally is. There was Renzo Piano, and his brightly coloured buildings near Centre Point in London. And now here comes this, by Jean Nouvel:

It’s the right hand of the two towers that I’m concerned with here, not with the other tower, or not with the crane or the bridge, bonuses though the latter two undoubtedly are.

Jean Nouvel has tricked his tower out in red, white and blue. It’s in Marseille, and is called La Marseillaise.

My immediate reaction is: a bit of a mess. Looks like he did this with three cans of spray paint, and in about twenty seconds. But, if I got to see it in the flesh, with all the complexities of the detailing, I might well like it a lot.

But my opinion about the beauty or lack of it of this building is beside my point, which is that colour is finally creeping into fashion, as part of architectural modernity.

It has taken a long time, because architectural fashion always does take a long time. This is because architects, unlike more regular artists, peak very late, a bit like classical conductors and for the same reason. Which is that architects (like conductors), in order to peak, have to be very powerful, by which I mean, liked and supported and paid for by lots of other powerful people. Powerful people tend to be old.

And sure enough, when I looked up the architect of this tricoloured tower, Jean Nouvel, I learned that his is now 73, having been born in 1945. In other words, he is now entering the architectural promised land, that land being where he can design buildings exactly as he pleases, and the clients build them and reckon themselves lucky to have got him.

I could now add other coloured modernism photos, and make further points about why this trend is now happening, and happening so powerfully. But the trick with blogging is to keep it brief, and if a subject matters to you, to come back to it again and again, while linking back to earlier pieces which make the same big point.

So, expect plenty more here about coloured architectural modernity.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Cranes caught in the searchlight

This is the third consecutive posting here based on photos I took, two days ago now, while walking from the Angel to Barbican tube.

The reason for the abundance of photos from that walk was the light. It was a classic London early evening, when the sky above was getting grey and dull, but when there was a gap in the clouds out west, and the sunlight came crashing through that gap horizontally, light a searchlight, picking out random things that were sticking upwards, above the point at which old London stopped going upwards and only new London protrudes. Not everything doing this got caught in the beam, just some things. Behind them or next to them there would be objects entirely unlit and already fading fast into darkness.

Things like cranes:

That’s a fairly conventional photo for me, because the darkening sky is the background, as it often is when I photo evening sunlight crashing into cranes.

But this next one, taken rather later as I neared the Barbican, seemed to me to be something else again:

I have a kind of check list mentality when judging my own photos. I have a list of things I like, and the more such things are happening in the photo, the higher the photo scores. Cranes, tick, with the evening sun hitting them, tick. Another is interesting architectural silhouettes. Of such Big Things as the Gherkin, the Walkie Talkie, the Shard, and so on. And although those Barbican towers are not the prettiest Things in London by a long way, their silhouettes are distinctive, because of that saw tooth effect you get at the sides. I also like the understated roof clutter there.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

22 dwarfs 42

A year ago I did a posting about Twentytwo Bishopsgate, which is about to be the tallest Big Thing in the City of London Big Thing Clump. It featured this explanatory image of what was then about to happen to that Big City Clump:

I’m not sure what the current status of “1 Undershaft” is just now, which is potentially the biggest Big City Thing of the lot. I seem to recall reading that there were delays. The internet now seems rather coy about this project. 22 Bishopsgate, however, is roaring upwards.

And no photo I have so far taken of 22 Bishopsgate illustrates the scale of this roar better than this one, which I took yesterday, when on my way from Angel to the City, which means that I was approaching the Big City Clump from a northerly direction:

What we see there is what used to be one of the City’s biggest Big Things, the NatWest Tower, or “Tower 42” as they now want us to call it. Behind it, dwarfing it, still not as big as it will be, is 22 Bishopsgate.

When I took this photo, such is my eyesight that I wasn’t sure if I was looking at the actual Tower 42, or a reflection of it in the glass surface of 22 Bishopsgate. It just seemed too small to be the actual Big Thing itself. But clearly, it is.

In the graphic above with all the names, Tower 42 is now so small and so antique that it doesn’t even get named. It’s the dark one on the left, behind where it says “Mitsubishi Tower”.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The light at the end of the Beech Street tunnel

Today, I was meeting a friend in the area of Angel tube, and then, because the weather was so good, I decided to walk a little, to the canal nearby, and then south, towards the City. I took many photos. But as often happens when I photo ordinary things but in better than ordinary light, one of the best photos I photoed was something of a surprise. It happened right near the end. It was getting dark before I reached the City, and a signpost sent me along that strange tunnel near Barbican tube, to Barbican tube.

This is the tunnel I’m talking about:

I googled “Barbican tunnel” when I got home, and soon learned that this is apparently the Beech Street tunnel, although all it said on google maps was “B100”. Earlier this year, there was a apparently some sort of light show on show in this tunnel. But this evening what got my attention was the light at the end of the tunnel, which looked like this:

The natural pink and yellow of the sunset is what makes this, but I also like the non-natural green of the traffic lights, and the green reflections in the tunnel roof, joining in with those green roofs beyond.

In the distance, a crane. In London, cranes are hard to avoid. Not that I’d want to.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

At the Grafton Arms (after recording a talk)

Recently I and Patrick Crozier visited the Grafton Arms. I rather like this pub. These guys also like this pub, because of the Goon Show. Apparently the Goons wrote some of their scripts there, in an upstairs room.

A fact commemorated by this mirror behind the bar, which I only noticed on this visit:

If you look carefully there, you can see me and my camera. Well, it is a mirror. I should have tried to include Patrick.

What took Patrick and me to the Grafton Arms was that we had just been doing one of our recorded conversations, and we needed refreshment. Tune in to the latest one, by going here.

My favourite of these conversations so far has been the one we did about WW1, concerning which Patrick is something of an expert. Our next, or so I hope, will be about transport, concerning which Patrick is also something of an expert.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Nine comfy chairs and nine people

My meeting last night (Tom Burroughes talking about Brexit) went well. I never feared that Tom’s talk wouldn’t be good. I merely feared that a humiliatingly small number of people would show up to hear it, and the better his talk was, the more frustrating that would have been. However, although a few who had said they’d try to come didn’t show, quite a few others who’d not said they were coming did show, and it all went fine.

Nine people doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough to make for a very interesting conversation, so long as they are a good nine. They were.

Nine comfy chairs and nine people is no coincidence. This kind of thing has happened too often for it to be chance. When there were fewer comfy chairs, there were, on the whole, that number few people. Conclusion: if I would like more people to attend, I must increase the number of comfy chairs. Up to twelve, which is towards the maximum number of people for good conversation, and the point at which it begins to turn into a “meeting”, in the wrong way. With people who actually had interesting things to say instead sitting there in silence, feeling left out.

I am taking steps to accomplish this.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The performing horses of Warwick Castle (2): After the show

Remember those performing horses of Warwick Castle, galloping up and down on a thin rectangular arena, telling the story of the Wars of the Roses. Course you do. I showed you a spread of photos of them, but wasn’t that impressed with how those photos came out.

Well, after the show, all of us friends and family of one of the performers went backstage, so to speak, to shake hands with the guys in their armour and to say hello also to the horses.

And the photos I took of the horses seemed to me rather better:

It helped that the horses were standing still. It also helped that the background was much easier to choose and mostly looked quite different from the horses heads.

I also prefer the way horses look when they aren’t wearing complicated costumes. There’s nothing like quite like a horse, unclothed, in sunshine.

That hoods that a couple of the horses are wearing are not cruel. They’re to keep the flies off their eyes.

The actual war horses that fought the Wars of the Roses would have been a lot stockier and heavier than these horses. These ones are retired race horses. Which is okay, because they are actors.