Architecture – Page 39 – Brian Micklethwait's New Blog

“This world needs more eyesores, more carbuncles …”

London’s new Tulip skyscraper is great, but why aren’t more people embedding sharks in their roof?

Well, I can think of quite a few answers to that question, but I get the point that Joel Dimmock is making and I like it very much.

Is there starting to be a hum, as the late Chris Tame used to call it, in favour of people being free to build whatever crazy buildings they want to build with their own money on their own property?

One of the more interesting facts about the quotes quoted above is that they appear in The Independent. Okay, in the “Voices” (clickbate?) section, but still, The Independent. Is The Independent starting to be in favour of … independence?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Peter Burke’s Assembly at the Woolwich Arsenal (again)

The designated starting point of my walk beside the river last Monday was Assembly, the sculpture assembly outside the Woolwich Arsenal next to the river:

Those are some of the photos I photoed, and they are pretty much the photos everyone else photos of these metal men, and pretty much the same as the photos I photoed when last I visited these men (LINK TO THE OLD BLOG). That was in April 2011. It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, which I think is because these metal men, once seen, are not soon forgotten.

Assembly is the work of Peter Burke. My googling skills are such that I often have to have several goes at a subject before I find my way to the stuff that I find the most informative and interesting. I can just about remember visiting the Peter Burke website, but I don’t recall ever reading this biography of Peter Burke before. Nor do I recall learning that this Assembly assembly began life somewhere else. Or maybe he did an Assembly for that rural setting, and then did another Assembly for outside the Woolwich Arsenal. Yes, probably that. Burke is big on mass production, like his contemporary and mate (apparently) Gormley.

And, I certainly never watched this video of Peter Burke speaking until now. As with all artists talking about their work, I see rather little connection between what he says about his work and what the work says to me. But at least what he says is mostly accurate, in that he mostly describes how he made it. There is hardly any pretentious art-speak bollocks of the sort that would get him sneered at at Mick Hartley‘s.

A key to why I like Peter Burke is that before he started doing art he was a Rolls Royce engineer, working on aero-engines. He liked and still likes how stuff like that looks. Snap. Unlike me, from then on, he knew how to make it.

But someone could do all the things Peter Burke describes himself doing when he does his art and produce art that says nothing to me at all. Insofar as he does describe what he thinks his art actually means, he pretty much loses me. Which might explain why I only like some of his art, such as Assembly.

What I get from Assembly, as well as the obvious military vibes I wrote about in that 2011 posting, is something to do with stoicism, emotional self-control, being a man, being a man under extreme pressure while keeping your manly cool. Even to the point of looking rather comical while doing all this.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Nuclear Rabbits From Outta Space?

On June 13th 2008 I was wandering about in Quimper, photoing photos. Mostly the photos were of such things as Quimper Cathedral with its twin spires, photoers photoing Quimper Cathedral with its twin spires, that kind of thing.

But in among all those, and with no accompanying explanation (like a context photo with less zoom (memo to self: always photo a context photo if it might help)), this:

KanaBeach seems to be some sort of Brittany based clothing brand (“Kanabeach est une entreprise de vêtements bretonne”), which a few years later seems to have crashed and burned, after which catastrophe it may or may not have made a recovery. (A recovery attempt which involved a giraffe, for some reason.)

But, I have no idea who Jean-Francois Kanabeach is. And I am similarly baffled by the Nuclear Rabbits From Outta Space. Google’s basic reaction to that was, first off, to ask if I meant “Nuclear Rabbits From Outer Space”.

A rabbit was, so it says here, launched into space in 1959. And the Chinese did some stuff on the Moon in 2013, with something called the Jade Rabbit (aka Yutu). But Nuclear Rabbits, from Outta Space? Quesque c’est? Usually the Internet has something to say in answer to questions like this. But in this matter, rien.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Tulip approved

So tweets City AM’s Christian May.

Everybody is now bitching about this Thing, just like they did with the Eiffel Tower. Do “we need” it? Blah blah. Well guess what: I want it. And more to the point the people paying for it and wanting to build it want it.

Although, I did agree with the Dezeen commenter who said that maybe a Tulip is not the sort of thing you want in the middle of one of the world’s great financial districts.

LATER: Julia H-B:

Like all of London’s new skyscrapers, I’ll hate it.*

*Until I love it.

Precisely.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A new (remote) control tower for City Airport

Today, in the spectacular weather that had been promised and which duly occurred, I took a walk along the river, from the Woolwich Arsenal back towards the centre of London in a westerly direction until I got to the Dome, ak these days a the O2.

I saw many things, but I only now have the energy to tell you about one of them. This:

Click to get a more panoramic view, with more context.

After much futile searching with Google Maps, I eventually just took a guess that it might be something to do with London City Airport, and so it proved. (Scroll down there and all is explained.) This is the London City Airport Digital Air Traffic Control Tower. Thanks to this structure, and thanks in particular to its numerous superzoom surveillance cameras, the people who do the Air Traffic Control for London City Airport can be miles away. Either they already are or they soon will be:

London City Airport has announced it is to become the first UK airport to build and operate a digital air traffic control tower, with a multi-million pound investment in the technology. The innovative plans are a flagship moment in the airport’s 30th anniversary year, and mark the start of a technological revolution in UK airport air traffic management.

Working closely with NATS, the UK’s leading provider of air traffic control services, London City Airport has approved plans for a new tower, at the top of which will be 14 High Definition cameras and two pan-tilt-zoom cameras. The cameras will provide a full 360 degree view of the airfield in a level of detail greater than the human eye and with new viewing tools that will modernise and improve air traffic management.

The images of the airfield and data will be sent via independent and secure super-fast fibre networks to a brand new operations room at the NATS control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire. From Swanwick, air traffic controllers will perform their operational role, using the live footage displayed on 14 HD screens that form a seamless panoramic moving image, alongside the audio feed from the airfield, and radar readings from the skies above London, to instruct aircraft and oversee movements.

That announcement happened in 2017. The tower no longer needs to be a computer graphic, because there it now is. But, I suspect, only rather recently. I think the reason I couldn’t find this Thing on Google Maps is that Google Maps has not yet caught up.

Scaffolding is not a category for this posting. It may look like scaffolding, but it’s not. That’s it.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Recent Big Things looking good

About a fortnight ago, I wandered along the south bank, and although the City Big Thing Cluster wasn’t the main focus of my attention, I couldn’t help noticing that the Scalpel in particular was looking very fine:

As was the Gherkin, not least because, from that particular spot, you can still see it.

And as was One Blackfriars:

I especially like that one of One Blackfriars. Because of the contrast between what the fading light does to its glass surface and what the fading light doesn’t do to all that brickwork and concrete (to say nothing of the ship at the front), it looks like One Blackfriars has been Photoshopped in from a different photo. But as you all surely know, I could never contrive an effect like that.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A photo of somewhere

Looking out over the gloom of Bermondsey yesterday, with maximum zoom, from the balcony of a friend’s flat:

Despite the dreariness and consequent blurriness, you can clearly see the Big Olympic Thing there. Next to it, right behind the tower of the crane, you can also see, if you look a bit harder, the top of the London Stadium, now the home of West Ham United.

What this photo illustrates, among many other things, is the enormous contribution to a city made by Recognisable and Big Things. Most of what you see in that photo is dull Unless you are a craniac like me) and generic. You could be anywhere. But once you see that contorted red shape, however dimly, you know at once where you are looking and what you are looking at. These Things aren’t called “landmarks” for nothing. They are like giant squirts of solidified piss from God. They mark the landscape. They give it shape and structure. You know where you are with them, but without them, you don’t. Without them, you could be anywhere. With them, everywhere becomes somewhere.