Starting Over

Well that was quite a month, everything happening at the same time, but I can't have 'Death' up as the last post for 'Waking Up Is Hard To Do'. It just wouldn't be right to leave it hanging there like that.
However I do associate WUIHTD with the last years of my time in London, and the gradual, or perhaps not so gradual, realisation that things just weren't working for me there anymore.
So what do you do? You make plans, and you hope, that if you keep going at it, if you are persistent enough, those plans will come off. I tell you it is not easy, that process of extrication, not easy at all, and it's not cheap either, the world is so complex that getting out of any situation means you have to pay.
But if you look at it in the longer term, you give yourself a chance, and that chance, in my case and in Julie's, was worth taking. Here we are in Pontypridd, high up looking over the valley, in our back yard (almost) enjoying the big sky and the rich autumn tones, rediscovering how to walk, how to ride, how to see, perhaps even how to feel.
So I'm going to close this project for now, since, perhaps, I have actually woken up. Other nightmares are bound to follow, and I'm starting other projects, projects that will document our new world, and the rather different challenges we face. It's time to make the best of it, we've moved on, what a relief.

Death

I am surrounded by death. My father in-law died on Wednesday, my own father went in to hospital the same day and I'm not convinced he will leave it. All this puts your life in purgatory, largely punctuated by sad moments in pubs.
Meanwhile both Julie and I left our jobs and are moving to Wales. Thankfully we know, solidly, and forever, we exit London town on the 1st October. The sense of discombobulation is extreme, and then there is every body else to worry about.
Amidst hospital visits and every night in strange beds, my brother took us to a record shop in Market Deeping, above a sweet shop. I recommend this bloke. He had some great gear. He even had Aerosmith's Rocks.
But my brother and I both bought the same record, which was a bit weird, both because amidst the collection there were two copies, and that we both selected Dire Straits Communique to take 'home' with us independently. We didn't remark on it at the time but since I haven't stopped playing the record since, I believe there may be some strange significance.
Communique was the first Dire Straits album I bought and there are lovely things within, and in our worry, my brother and I text our appreciation of this record, he says he loves the clarity of the guitar playing, I just love the misery in 'News' and 'Where do ya Think your Going', as well as the clarity of the guitar playing.
I bought the record a long time ago and lost it along the way. So sometime in 1979 I bought it and it meant something. Now it seems to mean more. I'm glad, amidst all this loss, I find something.

Last Day

Picasso 1932

It was Julie's birthday yesterday. It's hot, the bus ride to the Millennium bridge was hardly pleasant. But the giant shop that is Tate Modern was at least air conditioned, even if the circulation, for an architect, remains infuriating. So hot and infuriated, we chose Picasso first, and Shape of Light second. I recommend you see both in the same morning; they offer a good contrast.
We bought just three postcards from the Picasso show. There they are, above, obscuring the rather dull birthday cards you tend to receive when you are over fifty. Considering these paintings were done in the space of a few days in 1932, they come astonishingly fresh.
They hang together in exactly that order, the two on the right larger than the one on the left. The two on the right feature the same aspidistra. I don't care if it's an aspidistra or not, it's just the same plant. And it's the same Marie Terese too; all over the show. You can't help thinking that throughout 1932, she must have spent a whole lot of time sitting around half naked in that particular arm chair. You also can't help thinking how pissed off Olga must have been looking at this endless succession of amazing paintings of Picasso's new love. To be a great artist, it's clear, you really don't give a damn, and that is the biggest lesson of this show.
There is not doubt that the two on the right are masterpieces, they are the two paintings in a big show that draw your breath. Overall, the show demonstrates just how much art a great modern painter could make in a year, and that takes your breath away too, but those two paintings in particular, are just magnificent.
But to be Picasso must have been a bit of a strain. In becoming Picasso, he's also damaged goods. That's the second lesson from this show; there's just too much him.
Moving in to Shape of Light, across the opposite side of the third floor galleries, you'd be pressed to find any personality at all. Thats the thing about photography, it's a thankfully more introverted pursuit, sitting in that dark room, carefully working print after print, looking for perfection. Where Picasso is large and immediate, photography is small and time consuming; literally often enough; small enough for you to notice the mounting and the framing. Julie said that's why there are more girls; stashed away in those dark rooms; avoiding display. I couldn't help thinking 'the oldies are the goldies'; the photograms from the Bauhaus era whisk you away. Whisk you where? To a space of optimism and faith in the future. What's telling is that as you move through that exhibition, you slowly lose it; you trudge forward to fuck all; to screens. So you might think photography over in a 'click' but it isn't. The thing about Shape of Light is the realisation that it is precisely not about the moment or the personality, but of that time secluded in the dark room. Instagram it is not, craft it is, or was.

Chucking it In

I was tempted to title this blog 'At Last I am Free' but the Robert Wyatt reference is perhaps a little over considered. 'Chucking it In' could be a Dr Feelgood album title, and feels slightly earthier; more Canvey, more me. Yes, so I've finally chucked it in, after twenty seven years at the university enough suddenly became enough, the camels back bent one bit too far, the end of tether was reached, and, thank goodness, they let me go.

I may not have the severance package exactly in my pocket yet, but the dopamine levels certainly shift upward. I smile in the street. People use the word 'elated'; like you must be 'elated'. They use the word freedom a lot too. I'm not sure exactly what I feel personally, all I've noticed is that propensity to smile in the street and a sudden recognition of records that suddenly seem highly appropriate in a way they never did before; Ramble On, Freebird, Further on up the Road; all these have acquired new significance as if made exactly for me, and when they suddenly crop up in one pub or another, it's as if the gods are smiling on me personally.

Why did I do it? is it time of life or time of man? Both. We have to build our house in Wales or we will never do it. Meanwhile, education is being decimated by both technology and endless stupidity. This, of course, a consequence of capitalism/consumerism/call it what you like; but over all it has become impossible to render the spade as a spade, or accept the shovel, the chance to shine becoming the endless pursuit of so called innovation, with the product the equivalent of extravagant Christmas decorations; useless and trivial. 

I supposed for a long time I've functioned as some kind of hand brake on my own institution's fantasies, but brake pads eventually fade. Now I look at that long list of posts floating in on Facebook; lovely stuff from students complimentary on this or that. That makes me smile too, but I know now, it's time to fly away, yes, Fly Like an Eagle, that's it, just like that.

Aldington at Bledlow

That's not Peter Aldington, the creative force within Aldington Craig and Collinge, but me standing in-front of the trike and Adlington's award winning housing at Lyde End in Bledlow of 1977. It could have been Peter, in some parallel dimension, for he also sports quite a beard, and certainly in terms of empathy, there is so much for me to admire here. I wish I had but a small percentage of his talent. As it was, when I met him long ago, he admired my sketchbooks, but it's in the marshalling of physical building material that Aldington should be admired; in the detail certainly, and in the care of conception. This is a masterful arrangement of wall, roof, and infill panel, reminding me of the rigorous work of Ted Cullinan when in California (Marvin House,1960, below), but knitted more agriculturally in to the Chiltern village setting. It even manages, in it's quality, to doff it's cap to lord, master and enlightened patron Lord Charrington across the road, who undoubtedly recognised quality when he saw it (he died this week) reminding us of some old school values sadly disappearing.

It is tempting to say Aldington created a repertoire of building details from first principles (and I learnt a few of these when working for Donald Wilson as he set about fashioning doors and windows for some cottages in Dorset in 1980) but they are unusual. To set plate glass directly in to a brick wall with the aid of not much more than craftsmanship and mastic is unconventional, so is letting glass slip down to eliminate the cill (a Wilson trick) and you might expect a high risk of failure. However, returning to Lyde End after forty years the place looks as fresh as a daisy; all that bespoke stuff worked!

In a world now obsessed by smooth, floating singularity, transfixed by the malleable in all senses, this is a refreshing return to the world of articulation part from part. Each element is not expected to do everything, but to play it's part and find expression in doing so. A concrete beam slips six inches further out than where it might stop, a window detail within clapboarding is different to that within masonry. Each material either goes around a corner or finds itself butted and secured against something else. Further, nobody has forgotten the garden and the husbandry that mirrors that of the building art, they compliment each other; after all, a rose is not a tulip.

Cardiff via the Lighthouse Road

Cardiff city centre is one of the most pleasant of any large city, largely down to it's urban grain of streets and arcades. The arcades accommodate the smaller businesses that keep the place lively, as opposed to the deadening effect of yet another John Lewis. That's not to say that Cardiff doesn't accommodate those behemoths too, but if the department store dies as a type, the multiple arcades could sustain all sorts of activity. 

Conventionally, you'd drive into Cardiff on this dual carriageway or that, but we dropped off the A48 at Newport to take the coast road (B4239) via St Brides and Peterstone; the Lighthouse Road. It's not much more than a track crossing the salt marsh and must be the strangest way to enter a city imaginable. These are the badlands, not literally perhaps, but certainly an area yet to be caught up with; an area of rubbish and wildlife and tethered horses, catteries and kennels and shacks. For somebody from Essex, it has charm. Approaching from the east brings you in to the docklands and Rumney; roundabouts, trucks, potholes and anonymous warehouses; lots of them, and ahead, the acrid air of demolition. The road skirts the remains of the big piece of industry (above) in a fog of dirt and suddenly your in a line of filthy traffic moving like some kind of ragged military convoy; signposted to Cardiff Bay.

This I suppose, is regeneration, but you can't be happy about it. The buildings of our 'new' industries are hardly less depressing than those of the old; stock built wrap arounds sporting various attempts at pattern making; as two dimensional as the means of their production; that occasional wonky angle nursing a sterile meeting room; or an atrium of bad chairs. This kind of architecture has now began it's march on the city centre itself, and it's a terribly sad thing. Such buildings are essentially good for nothing. They are as thin as the bank notes and contracts they represent. 

On The Road

This is one of those seemingly innocuous on the road photographs, we're beneath the castle in Chepstow, where a gang of pubs conveniently huddle, even one with a beer garden overlooking the car park, which is handy for us, because the trike gets a good deal of attention. And we didn't know any of those things were there, other than the castle, we just guessed, took our luck. 'We'll find something somewhere around here' we say, pointing at the map, and we generally do. There we sip our mineral water and enjoy a cheese and onion sandwich as if it were ambrosia. Notice the difference? Of course, on the road there's no beer during working hours, and you feel grateful for everything. I joke with Julie that we should treat riding like mountaineering, and the discipline, and effort, for somebody more used to just thinking aloud, is unbelievably gratifying. For instance, in the situation above, you have to know where the bulldog clip is that you use to attach your parking ticket to the windshield, you have to have discovered that bulldog clip as the best solution to Pay and Display on the trike, and have probably solved that 'problem' several ways that were less simple. Tessenow's maxim, 'The simple is not always good, but the good is always simple' comes to mind.

Technology beyond a certain level, such as Sat-Nav, would just take the enjoyment out of it. But we plan and pay a great deal of attention to the technics, the equipment, the packing and the strapping, the state of the battery, the petrol gauge, tire pressures, the speed limit; we look after our gear, we do not 'script' the 'experience' beyond one thing, when you arrive at your final destination there is always that same, brilliant, feeling. Part of that must be that riding means concentrating, anything can happen, but sometimes, as yesterday on the A48 between Chepstow and Newport, where we saw hardly another vehicle on a perfect road, and could spin along at a constant 50mph, it felt fantastic.

Most people realise that living out of hotel rooms is an art, or do they? With so little stuff (not even a book to read) there are little tricks; do your washing while your taking a shower, like treading grapes!

All a bit Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Well yes, but it's better than living in a paranoid technological bubble.

Ten Years After

Looking back ten years we see the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Northern Rock, RBS and so on, and the exposure of the crooked means to artificial wealth that wasn't really supposed to happen. The banks were bailed out because otherwise the whole system would crumble (which means, technically, it still could).
We tend to move on from day to day without realising the cause and effect that follows through after such events; we're stupid, we hope for the best, we're a 'virus in shoes'. We forget, and we get clogged in the present.
Gordon Brown was Prime Minister and George Bush the President back then, and we might smile. But there followed ten years of 'depression'. Personally, we have suffered this less than millions of others. But not now.
Who would have put on a bet we would now have Theresa May as Prime Minister and Donald Trump as President? That we would have voted to leave the EU? That we would have experienced the disastrous consequences of yet more wars we do not understand, that we would have the concept of 'fake news' almost legitimated? Or that we would have machines predict our speech patterns in communication, or social media platforms that predict and influence our choices to the point of determining them? Are these things related? There appears chaos but there is underlying, rampaging, order. The Loch Ness monster might pop up in front of our balcony, or a Church of Ra erupt opposite the Cash Converters, but I guarantee there will be more, and more obvious, heroin addicts lining up for their just-in-time delivery tomorrow just across the street: that business might as well become a legitimate franchise.
I owe (much of) the content above to John Lanchester, whose essay at the front of the latest LRB arrived today. What's funny, if you can call it funny, is that I now longer suffer observations like his at a distance. The veil may have risen slowly, but I no longer look from a position of privilege at some strange world happening somewhere else. Last night both Julie and I celebrated (with considerable vigour) our own potential severance from institutions that have supported, or perhaps 'been' our lives for in my case 27 years, in hers a little less. Why? Because the situations we thought we worked in have transformed in that decade in to those we absolutely do not want to work in; because not only instead of presidents do we have fake businessmen, but instead of vice chancellors of universities, we have fake businessmen.
The digital world is probably killing knowledge itself, because knowledge might kill your ability to make money, or operate 'successfully' as a pariah in the late capitalist world. This is the new dark Ages; this is fucking terrible; this is the assassination of the intelligent in the name of 'business'. This is the end of the enlightenment, the end of reason, the end of virtue. So this really is the end of times; this is no joke.
I sat in a hot room yesterday being quizzed as part of course validation. The conversation, such as it was, was almost totally orientated around issues of branding and box ticking; on our place in the market and our mission for the future and the level of our conformity to 'standards'. Now if I were selling cars, I might say my Jaguars were 'sporty saloons', I might understand the mystique of 'British quality' that gives them 'value' (even if the company is owned by Tata). It's harder to do this with people; I would hate to 'define' my student body other than to compliment its individuality.
Meanwhile, we used to have a rather valid place in the market, that is before they decided to put it on the market! Then, suddenly, we couldn't fit in; we could only become the Bash Street Kids at the bottom of the table, our maverick status was inconceivable within hands-on management devoted to hands-on management. To be the Bash Street Kids of architecture was unacceptable no matter how appealing it might sound to the marketplace! Draw your own conclusions there.
So we have to conform. It's a form of tyranny. It is also the means by which we will fail, for others to gobble up the spoils. But I reckon the more universities act like corporations, the more they cease to be universities.
And as for that 'mission' for the future, I have long revered Keith Richards remark: 'to keep breathing'. (Plus, of course, to keep doing what he loves doing, and no matter what he endured with junk, I give a nod to the no doubt highly dubiuous aristos who kept him alive.)
So I sat in that room amidst a quagmire of fake status (rather than honest qualities) and I sank. I was disgusted.

Authoritarian Regimes

People think that authoritarian regimes are based on ideas. That's not true. Authoritarian regimes are based on group based paranoia; who's is in, who's out, who's on the bus who isn't. It doesn't matter where the bus is going (usually 'to hell'). And it doesn't matter if you are a rock band or a political party, the principle of closed rather than openness is what sustains the regime.
Meanwhile, when you are on the outside of a regime, life can get very uncomfortable, so you might create your own counter regime. Both are probably as bad as each other.
Perhaps as a consequence, authoritarian regimes can base themselves on very stupid ideas (so the quality of idea hardly matters) but that is not the core mechanism for the authoritarian regime to work. The core mechanism is the implementation of power.
The enemy can be, often is, invisible. To the Nazi, the threat wasn't an actual Jewish person of a particular consciousness, but a notional section of the population to be blamed. Blaming people (but not real people) when things get tough is happening quite a lot these days; there is the notion that if we excluded certain people, things would be better - when actually, they would be incomparably worse.
There was a handy saying that anybody who wanted to run an institution should never be allowed to do so. Oscar Wilde famously declared 'I won't belong to a club that accepts me as a member'. Such a view is, I suspect, correct, and all clubs, presently, are fending off, and part of, the overwhelming opportunity that 'freedom to know' might provide; that the internet might have provided if it hadn't been co-opted in to the service of consumerism and surveillance; a tragedy that could have been foreseen, should be fought against, and may yet be undone. The phenomenon is now totally evident in our universities, where professors are not there for what they might profess, but to 'manage'; or rather to stabilise, or prop up, a system that is (potentially) wildly anachronistic.
At last night's 'Free Range' (A collection of the country's photographic schools, all doing their end of year thing on Brick Lane, East London) the overwhelming sense was one of exhaustion; that there was nowhere for photography to go anymore. The pieces above, by Jake Gill, were neat, really neat, but the blub was, once more, 'mental health'. Surely people should realise this 'mental health' as a construction, and what's more a nasty consequence, of a horrible way to run the world.
We will have the same sense at every end of year architecture show. That is until there is a fundamental shift in the 'means of production'; towards joy. (Joy would seem a reasonable, all encompassing, alternative where presently there lies 'exhaustion'.)
Authoritarian regimes become stronger the more they are threatened. Today, the clubs are more threatened than ever, and they become more intense as a consequence. When the RIBA can no longer legitimately function as a passive organ of polite society, it flogs itself off as a 'brand' of deep consequence, which it isn't, and never has been; it mortgages itself to a dying system.
Stupid people join authoritarian regimes. Don't be a stupid person.

The Polish School of Architecture 1942-45

The Polish School of Architecture joined that of Liverpool University between 1942-45. The harrowing times experienced by Polish emigres may be acknowledged in the skies in the Battle of Britain, as well as in other military and other services at the time, but I came across a compendium of Polish students design work when attending the school hidden deep in a second hand book store in Abergavenny, and what a read, if you like reading drawings that is, it is. You are transported to another world.
The book, published by Liverpool University Press at nearly 250 pages in 1945 is a time capsule, and represents an effort altogether different than you will find up on the walls of architectural schools today. The bacon factory, above, is especially captivating. Whilst I have seen rather wilful urban pig farms in recent years, spinning yards of narrative in an atmosphere resembling total doom, here is one cheerfully holding, slaughtering, bleeding, dissecting, cleaning and confecting the polish sausage no doubt sadly missed by it's author in drawings absolutely matter of fact, and how refreshing that is. I suppose when our image of a bacon factory is polarised simply in to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall on the one hand and an ginormous anonymous shed in Denmark on the other, that's what attracts. Here is how it is done, in a process organised and for all to see in a modern building by a potential architect who is heading right back to Poland to build such a thing any minute now. And along side him in the studio were his friends all imagining (and also collected in this volume) other bacon factories, jam factories, newspaper headquarters, hospitals and so on all in the same optimistic vain, with not a hint of irony or distress. Meanwhile they were all dragooned into drawing fabulous plans and sections of historic Polish architecture; vernacular, secular and religious before they could set about their bacon factories, and that almost makes you cry.
Of course I wonder what happened to this third year student, he may have suffered reservations as to return at the close of the war, but what a book. A bacon factory; you wouldn't even set that project today, whilst a jam factory, in the midst of bloody carnage, would be seen as macabrely ironic.

Spaces of Rebellion

I was very pleased when the AR dropped in to the post box today with this essay within. Under the surface, there is some tough talking on what architecture can and cannot do:

The Spaces of Rebellion

There are no de facto spaces of rebellion. Rebellion involves a good deal of furtive scurrying about and the co-option (baths, bars and back stairs come to mind) of spaces designed for other purposes. Even meeting halls are intended for participation rather than insurrection.

That is not to say there isn’t some element of planning required; Lenin gave purposefully un-motivational speeches to avoid a false start to revolution, holding it back until he was certain they had a chance. But architecturally all he needed was a megaphone, a balcony, and pamphlets. Initially, rebellion means re-programming rather than building.

As somewhat the romantic idealist and man of all in-compassing vision, Le Corbusier tried to build it in. In laying out what in prospect looked an extraordinary sequence of public spaces across the Capitol at Chandigarh, he included a series of intriguing structures; including a ‘Trench of Discussion’, ‘Tower of the Winds’ along with the symbolic ‘Open Hand’, to set off his masterful hulks of administrative power (themselves not without their jokes; the assembly chamber looks like a cooling tower, and what do politicians create? Hot air!) Until you find yourself ‘down in a hole’ or ‘digging the trenches’ these vernacular evocations might seem strange, but there’s practicality at work too: being in the shade, invisible, up in a tree and so on. But even the great master of order was thwarted in his attempt to marshal the forces of change, just as he was unable to manifest his pinnacle to top it all off; the Presidents Palace, deemed politically inappropriate.

Given the volatility of the Punjab all this comes as no surprise. The architect’s heroic total composition would be thoroughly compromised, to the point when last time I was there, I peered across those vast swathes through barbed wire as tumbleweed drifted and a lone bicyclist circled in the distance. Pathos indeed.

By contrast what architecture can do, within limits, is control; from our cathedrals and churches, to perfected fortifications for the dukes of the Renaissance, to our fascination with the Panopticon, or a stroll down a Haussmann Boulevard, we recognise our traditional relationship to power. That ability to control has brought out our best (and today, our worst; think retail). Until modernity that is, and the chance to join the other side, and work out how we might do things differently if we could. 

First we avowed functionalism verging on utility, just as we might today in our garages, kitchens, operating theatres and even living rooms. Over time, the space of rebellion (outside architecture’s capabilities) seemed best addressed by ‘undoing it’, or messing this up, as Jane Rendell memorably reflects upon in her essay Rhetoric’s of Architectural Abuse(1999). Meanwhile, autonomous projects evoking freedom, but not predicated on change in the means of production (Fun Palace anyone?) began to look a bit thin.

Existing academies, being essentially conservative, could never house the modern architectural revolution. Corbu railed at them, and in starting again, academic resumes were consigned to the distant past; your qualifications were who you’d worked for and what you’d done. Here it’s easy to recognise consistency: even when new radical schools appeared, from Bauhaus to Black Mountain, no matter how influential they became, they were characterised by rather short lives.

Yet in the mind’s eye, since the 1960’s, it’s universities that foster agitation. Yet only in certain departments at certain times under influence of some highly creative people. Such moments burn bright in the history books; they tend to be the catalysts for change, but only against a grey background. 

But today even these institutions, forced to turn themselves into businesses, and selling the short term ticket over long term knowledge, caught up in the marketization of late capitalism, are either up in arms, or have simply capitalised on the opportunity. Dedicating yourself to professionalism, career, entrepreneurship, innovation whilst being force-fed late capitalism’s palliatives; ‘emotional intelligence’, ‘wellbeing’ and so on, may not sit well with scholars of classics, but it is the very stuff of branding.

Who knows what will happen, but as a wise (and unusually radical) professor of mine told me the other day ‘However or wherever it happens, this system won’t hold; history shows you cannot supress human creativity for ever’. And these days, ‘creativity’ is done, sadly, by the book, like playtime.

Once over the initial stage of revolution our instinct is to monumentalise the heroes. Adolf Loos understood the only venue for art in architecture (emotion) was the tomb and the monument. Hence, there might be no ‘space’ of rebellion until (long) after the fact. That should take the smile off our faces; reminding us of the fate of the hero; death and subsequent commemoration. 

But both media and monuments are now treated as cheap. Living in echo chambers of misinformation and advertising, drowning in a digital soup, it’s likely that ourspace of rebellion will belong to those who survivedigital enterprise. What is the monument now? The monument to the Paris uprising of 1968 was an arts centre, the Pompidou; the active monument, the un-monument. ‘You’ve had your revolution, now get on with some art’ seemed to be the message; except you couldn’t, because what was actually facilitated was the march of international capital within the art market towards Tate Modern or Guggenheim global; perverse spectacle. Rothko tea towels anyone? Exit via the gift shop, or paint balling, or an away-day!  

Being genuinely angry is not a bad thing. My father was once ousted from his office by Trotskyists. They were very polite. ‘I’m sorry Brian…but we are taking over the factory’ (Gardner Engines 1980). I understand this well since my father became rather difficult, yelling he would ‘die for capitalism’ as he chased me round the house. I don’t blame him now, and both of us have come, almost, to revere those ‘Trots’; since he’s now ninety-five, blames it all on the fat cats, almost admits to socialist tendencies, and admits to the fact they may well have been right.

Dionysus vs Apollo

Duality, difference, articulation, offence, all these are tricky issues these days. Our language seems to continually want to square the circle; 'emotional intelligence' is my favourite (there are others; 'focussed pluralism' came up the other day). Why do I hate the term 'emotional intelligence'? Because it's a simple contradiction; if you are behaving emotionally, it's unlikely you are thinking straight, you are not thinking wrong, you are just thinking, well, differently. The Ancient Greeks had this far better worked out with their opposition of Apollonian thinking (maths) from Dionysian feeling (dancing). Both were necessary, one might even follow the other in the glorious continuum of life (get drunk, then get back to work on your dissertation).
This seems to me a very handy device; I wouldn't want a Dionysian mechanic, and I would be disappointed by an Apollonian rock act. At the same time, I recognise these binary oppositions might be difficult; woman is not opposite to man for instance, although undoubtedly different. What is the opposite of red wine? Roland Barthes (clever chap) suggested 'milk'.
Neoliberalism prefers and accentuates the middle ground, yet frustratingly human archetypes persist; even if the message is for passivity, emotions will boil underneath. When I hear about mental health issues in university students and staff, this is what I think about; the huggable impossibility. There are many cruel truths the present educational environment cannot accommodate: not everybody can make it (get real!) Just because it's your dream doesn't mean it's going to happen (get real!) These messages suggesting everybody can are economic imperatives a function of government and fed down the line, they are nothing to do with individuals as people.

A Strippers Requiem

Julie put on a really good show at the Doomed Gallery last night. With openings one is never sure whether people 'get it' or not, but people were looking thoughtfully at the documentation and the work on the wall, and Edie Lamort gave a smart little talk on how the stripping world was now shit. As far as Julie's work is concerned, I see it as (almost) Gerhard Richter on 'strippers', and I was very proud indeed.

But what sticks in my head was a very poignant and adult (rather than Adult) remark made by 'Billy' afterwards in the pub. She said (words to the effect that) 'I've been turning men on as a career for the whole of my adult life'. Well you could say, 'of course', but the matter of factness she gave to this expression was fabulous, as if 'don't you realise, thats what I do'. Of course, I was immediately 'turned on' if that is acceptable for a man of my age at this time in so called Western Civilisation.
Strippers tend to get really annoyed with guys who either want to 'save them' or want deeper meaning behind their entertainment; as if each man wants to get closer than anybody else and get some kind of secret. Blokes seem to thrive on that sort of competition, and the girls understand it, but it is at the same time rather pathetic. It is an unfortunate male trait; Homer understood it via Helen of Troy.
But when Billy said that simple phrase, I immediately 'got it' in a way I don't think I had before; it's a job, don't look into my life, pay me, and we are done. The fact she does this by rubbing her arse against a potentially erect dick makes no difference; it's a job, no worse than mining or steelwork I guess.
Edie Lamort had said much the same thing, but in lecture format. 'Why is there a problem with so called objectification? There is no problem for me!' This talk also rang with profundity; the garbage that surrounds discussion of this profession mirrors the garbage that litters our lexicon in general; 'emotional intelligence', 'wellbeing' 'focussed pluralism' are all attempts to square circles to a middle ground of limp dick. When 'Billy' said 'I've been turning men on as a career for the whole of my adult life' ; honestly and meaningfully, and even going on to describe the process in her terms; the bullshit was suddenly thrown in to the meaningless neoliberal trashcan to which it belongs.
Homer would have understood this too. No wonder strippers get bad press, they are some of the best, most honest, fun, people I know.

The show, who's subject is the East London Stripper Collective (ELSC) is open this weekend, and information is available via the Doomed Gallery website. Meanwhile, you could always contact Julie (who will be there over the weekend) via juliecookphotography.com. The image above is property of Julie Cook.

Willin'

Lowell George died at 34. Like so many who died so young, he really wasn't very good at living, even if he was gifted beyond belief. The drugs and the booze; bottles of brandy and pencil sharpeners full of coke for lunch; well, they got him, not that he didn't know. Listening to Little Feat now, and especially 'Willin', probably their best known song (and certainly my favourite) has me asking why I like this song so much? What is it about it; a truck drivers lament for Dallas Alice as he remains 'Willin'' after diving 'every kinda rig that's ever been made' to be 'movin'?  Really that has fuck all to do with me.
George was notoriously unreliable, and he knew that too. He let people down, but he could write it. His trio, 'Long Distance Love', 'Willin' and 'Twenty Thousand Things To Do' resonate of his failure to do stuff, but  also of the hope that he might. How can that not bring tears to your eyes? It should certainly give us a new perspective on 'Fatman in the Bathtub' (with the blues), a song that doesn't make any sense at all when you are eighteen, simply because when you are in the bathtub at that age, you are likely preoccupied with other things.
So it is perhaps George's distress and self awareness, as well as his hope against all odds, that gets to me. 'Willin' is one of very few songs I can think of that talks of simple, stoic, optimism, or perhaps, resignation;'Yes I'll do it....' and I'll do it again. It's not Springsteen, it's not licking the chrome off the fender, it's not Jagger/Richards, that glorious, boisterous, swagger, it is a poetic, plaintive thing, and that would seem to me to be very hard to do indeed in the theatre that is rock n' roll.
Perhaps he was a git, but you recognise a difference between any Feat track where he's on it and any that he isn't. He wanted it perfect, whilst he wasn't.

Vindication

Vindication is not a pretty word. Perhaps to be proved right is not something intended to roll easily off the tongue. As a sound, there is acidity to it. Karma on the other hand is almost the opposite, a nice word, whilst meaning almost the same thing. Otherwise I just refer back to my rock psychology, remembering the lilt of 'the same people that you use on the way up.....you might meet up with on the way down'; track four on Little Feat's Dixie Chicken, but written by Alain Toussaint.
You don't get proved right in education, students roll in and they roll out, thats the way it is. You love them but they leave you, and it takes a heavy toll. You never expect a student to turn round and say you were right about this or that, it's just not the way it is. Perhaps that is why David Dunster once said to me, 'remember teaching isn't your real work'. I think he was right, and I certainly took him seriously at the time and have always pursued my own stuff. Teaching is a conduit and it can take up a great deal of your time, but in the end there is nothing but that which leaves in the mind of the student, sometimes to be appreciated years and years later. But what you do outside that becomes a thing of your own. Those who confuse teaching with doing are using teaching to substantiate themselves via an entourage, and whilst we all might have been guilty of that at one time or another, this is probably not such a good idea.
But sometimes you can come home feeling that awkward word; vindicated. I had a student studying housing, he's spent pretty much the whole year studying the hows and whys, and right at the end, in our last tutorial before he hands in his dissertation he said something very beautiful. He said (words to the effect that) he'd spent the whole of his six years studying with me avoiding the subject of Le Corbusier, because he knew it was my thing.....but then added... 'but you know what....the solution is the unite'.
I leapt up and grabbed that Last Works off the book shelf to discuss the section drawings of the Firminy Unite. I could have laughed or I could have cried.
Meanwhile, they are beginning to strike the scaffolding from Yates House, our home in Bethnal Green, and I gaze up in wonderment. All those fucking awful meetings, all the miserable encounters along the way, and Romeo, our construction manager, the last of many many construction managers and the one who has stuck it out and done the job, is now walking around like a cat who's got the cream. I talk to the workmen and thank them from the bottom of my heart! Who could have believed it. Together we resuscitated 1959, and isn't she beautiful.
Sometimes, the struggle is worth it.

Cleaning My Machine

There's a joke that Harley riders take their machines out for half an hour than then spend three hours cleaning them. There is much reason behind this apparent madness, and much psychological stuff too.
It's something Harley Davidson themselves understand. You clean the brightwork because it is there to be maintained; if you didn't you'd be a slacker. After all, you've just pummelled your lovely machine for hundreds of miles and you and it are filthy. Sometimes you get to like that road dirt, you appreciate it as evidence of the struggle, but sooner or later, there is the obligation to clean. By cleaning you don't just restore your machine to start all over again, but inspect it for faults; you are running your fingers over everything.
Cleaning a motorcycle or, in my case, trike, is not like cleaning a car. My brother gets furious that in Lincolnshire, people can't be bothered to clean their cars. Actually, he gets furious that local folks don't do it and the market is secured by enterprising Poles. That's not the point for me. If you don't clean your vehicle yourself, you stand no chance of understanding it.
There are many tools for the job, from toothbrushes up, and there are many custom devices to clean difficult or inaccessible parts. It is even a methodical process, clean this before you clean that, clean that with this, clean this with that. Your life, after all depends on it.
It's an exhausting process almost as much as riding itself, but the pleasure in making sure the bright bits are still bright makes you check every bolt and connection, so you are in the process of identifying with your machine. Matthew Crawford's book The Case for Working With Your Hands is a kind of contemporary Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It has much to say about a world, as in the film Wally, where humans drift about staring at screens with a sense of entitlement to do so; a world without engagement with such things. Even Wheeler Dealers' Ed China quit the show when the knew owners found the bits that made the show interesting, the fixing bits, too arduous for a millennial audience.
An old lady said to me, in passing, that you could live in my garage. Well no, but it does represent a form of second life. Even walking there, I find myself standing a little taller as I approach. I methodically release the locks, always in a particular order. If that order wasn't there, there would be more chance of error; both on the trike, and in life.
Julie smiles at my indulgence with the calendars; it's quite a collection.

Doing a Lecture

Preparing a lecture (see earlier post) is different from doing one. To recap, I'm thinking that my going to the pub beforehand is some kind of transcendental preparation, because you never know what's going to happen when you actually engage with an audience. And engage you have to, for the experience should be unique. Of course this runs directly against notions of order and structure now built in to whole tomes of university documentation, which attempts to condition exactly what a student might get, and exactly what a lecturer might say.
As far as it goes, this might as well mean that eventually material will soon (and inevitably) be sold facelessly over the internet, and universities seem oblivious, or perhaps embrace, such a concept; it appears safe. The fools! Such an approach will destroy the point of their existence! So I suppose this is another occasion where I fundamentally oppose the technological fix; which will end up with robotic, synthetic, inhuman (and bad) communication.
I never know what is going to happen in a lecture, it is pretty much spontaneous. OK, to paraphrase Keef, if I'm dancing around it's either going very well or very badly, but dancing around
I do anyway. It is an age old method towards engagement. Sometimes the gesturing surpasses the words.
By the end of it, I'm generally pleased of smiling faces, but there can be a horrible comedown. 'Christ .....what did I actually say?' might creep up, like some spectre of self doubt, the morning after. After all, I'm trusting Dionysus over Apollo. And after the immediate effect, you are, pretty much, left on your own. When I realised on Monday evening at Doomed Gallery (above) that my performance more resembled a political piece of rabble rousing than the dispensing of information, I collapsed into morbid circumspection.
But a colleague of mine was once very circumspect herself about that sort of thing, she said, 'Well Paul, you are a critic, you don't just dispense information'. Just as Dave Hickey demands the world splice in to farmers and pirates, I might be satisfied that maybe lecturers divide into those providers of information and 'critics', those infused with a quest, a spirit, that even they don't understand.
Academics don't trust the Dionysian spirit, especially these days. They too have become cow-tailed in to procedure, to method. Whatever their revolutionary credentials they never trust to luck, which is to my mind a fatal flaw. If, politically speaking, you believe humans are basically OK, don't browbeat them with theory as a prop; in teaching terms, don't worry too much about the referencing, but consider what might be being said, or at least enjoy the manner in which it has been delivered.

Fake Weather

One of the more reliable bits of news coverage might be the weather forecast. You would have thought, with all the meteorological science, the weather is now pretty predictable, at least more predicable than it used to be.
But the recent Easter period of non-stop rain here in Norfolk has had me thinking that this is not necessarily the case, despite the undoubted credentials of the presenters themselves and the science they rely upon. At least on the internet, I brandished one forecast for Saturday showing bright sunshine all day, when in actual fact it chucked it down. Being on the trike we looked at several forecasts and in the end I, personally, didn't trust any of them.
We could put this down to my paranoia, but when it feels like you are on the edge of forty days and forty nights, with Britain sat in an atmospheric war zone between a chilly east and a wet west, and the consequences of global warming on everybody's minds, the relentlessly cheerful countenance of weathermen and women might become suspicious. It is as if bad news is not allowed; there always has to be an upside; like better skiing in Scotland when the rest of us are bloody miserable. Why can't there be miserable news? Just now I even heard reference to 'Dunkirk spirit' on BBC East- smiles on faces no matter what across swathes of soaked coastal resorts- a kind of pushy happiness I might expect from Starbucks.
The charming graphic above occupies a condition where you will even find sexy weather girls on porn sites. Tellingly I found one reference to weather girl sexiness being 'better than porn'. And whilst this image is clearly just a bit of a giggle, I still wonder at whether this TV weather incident might or might have happened, that this is actually quite a good representation of the appeal of Carol Kirkwood. I found it by googling 'weather girl pin-ups'. All credit to it's creator(s), whoever they are, for demonstrating so neatly where we are.
The precursor to my anxiety lies once more in the USA, in Steve Martin's fabulous portrayal of a weatherman in LA Story (1991). He wrote it as a comedy.

Cosmonauts

In the Washington Aviation Museum a very log time ago I did at least recognise that the American lunar orbiter took the shape of a Coke can whilst the Soviet equivalent resembled a collection of onion domes. It was perhaps my first revelation as to the cultural elements that unexpectedly manifest themselves within something you would assume to be pretty scientific and factual. Later it would be German Tigers vs Russian T34's, or BMW vs Harley motorcycle engines that would emphasise the same cultural distinctions brought to technological devices.
But a stirring documentary on the Soviet cosmonauts I drifted in to watching the other evening brought home further geo-political differences of an even more worrisome kind, even if they were rather understated.
The Soviet space programme experienced a great many difficulties despite initial success and ended up being a pretty slow burn affair. The American space race was exactly the opposite; whatever spin off technologies that made it in to the American household, or whatever household technologies were employed to turn the stitching of brassieres in to space suits, it was a competition with a finish line, and once that finish line was crossed, the Americans, or rather the American public, got bored and they ended up playing golf on the moon to keep everybody entertained. This grotesque spectacle should should still raise the quizzical eyebrow, as well as throwing in to perspective the aspirations of both Richard Branson and Elon Musk. Space tourism would seem to me a contradiction in terms.
The Soviets ended up with Mia, an actual space station that was under permanent occupation by human lab rats undergoing 'research'. Where this research would lead was unknown but some people somewhere believed it had to be done in our long-term interests. So long-term was the interest (and so short was the cash) that it was even opened up to non-Soviet astronauts and became the 'International Space Station'.
This effort came to a grim end with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the outsourcing of supply rockets to the Ukraine. In the most entertaining part of the documentary Tim Peake managed an admirable demonstration of the British stiff upper lip when describing his own imminent demise as one of these supply modules approached at ninety degree angle to that which it should with disastrous consequences, and this meant pretty much the end of Mia.
Now if all of this doesn't make us aware of the perilous nature of the late capitalist, neoliberal, trajectory I don't know what does.

Triking

It's pissing down Nr Hunstanton, Norfolk. Why are we here? To get away from it all, and get away from it you do on a trike. I wake these mornings often as not thinking about the Odyssey, as dawn's long fingers splice their way into strange rooms, and a new set of trials await. I want to feel heroic about it. I do that for comfort, because most of the time when you are on the road on a trike you get so disappointed for the rest of the world.
Even with it pissing with rain we had to get to a fishmonger this morning, and even this simple task involves a good deal of meticulous thought and care; I mean you don't want to mangle this piece of machinery up, and you don't want to drop things or loose things or leave anything unlocked. You want the beast to start and you want her to grunt (but that isn't guaranteed) whatever the conditions; you don't want anything falling off. Well so there is a good deal of girding of loins; we even had an argument about the towel I'd got from the bathroom to try and dry the important bits off.
When we got to this fishmonger, part of a small farmers market operation near Thornham just up the coast, I was standing there soaking whilst a lady breezed up in her white 4x4 (I find the white ones particularly offensive) dismounted, and cheerly asked, in one of those very posh, highly mannered voices belonging to the superior and older class, for two fishcakes (total cost less than £3.00). Then she equally breezed off in to the rain, the ever present rain. I doubt she was thinking about anything but her two fishcakes she had commissioned her ghastly vehicle to get. She was cosy, warm and dry, perhaps even soothed by Pachelbel. She didn't care where she parked the bloody thing and she might as well have been wearing her pyjamas, she didn't care about other road users (they never do, those 4x4 owners are the worst!) nor about the woeful extravagance she had just thoughtlessly demonstrated to the peculiar looking witness she had just breezed past. She was certainly not interested in her engine, she was just entitled, the world was at her disposal, and this part of North Norfolk is full of such types, as well of course, as those in their painful servitude.
On board a trike you are entitled to nothing except the occasional joyful waves of truckers. You get by via the selfless help of others who might know the local roads, and by a certain mental strength that sees grit in your expression and eyes ever on the look out. The experience of 'getting away from it all' is pretty extreme. But there is a point to that, especially if you are somebody like me who would normally by happy just reading a book or sitting in the pub.
Because of course, just as in the Odyssey, when your day is at it's end, and you are safely welcomed in some strange place, you get to feast. You have, of course, earn't your rewards, just as those ancient texts demonstrate; there is a morality to it, and that is genuine satisfaction.

Preparing a Lecture

A.J.P. Taylor famously used to prepare his lectures in the taxi on the way to the BBC. The image of him sitting in the back of a black cab ruminating away captured my imagination a long time ago. To have such knowledge stashed way! To be that good at it! I still admire Taylor, his essay style is equally as relaxed, a pleasure to read as well as on the money, but that piece of information held a lot of consequence for me.
Many people might think lecturing is easy, performing the same old thing year after year must be a doddle. They think that a course, once prepared, is run identically for years. Nothing could be further from the truth; over the twenty seven years I've been lecturing, I don't think I've ever given the same lecture twice.
It may be worth reflecting on the process, and the Philip Guston painting above came straight to mind. That's the bit around four in the morning. Guston hits that on the money.
Implementation, putting the images together, happens later, or earlier, in which case it's like cooking stock. When I first started out the images always drove the process, spread out across a big light box. Pre Google Image, the slide images were your own and they were precious to you; weekly trips to the photographic studio and Joe's Basement in Soho, all the pleasure and palaver of mounting the slides up; sorting and checking the order and that they were the right way around in the carousel; thats all gone now. But more images means more effort in choosing; more composing in the dead of night.
It always takes time, days rather than hours to think a lecture over, but once you've thought about it, actually putting it together takes no time at all.
And I don't prepare or use notes. They would get in the way these days; it's not a script, it's stand up. I don't like 'guides' and instructions either. I say to the students; 'you don't need an instruction manual to write about your breakfast, you need an instruction manual to fix your Harley Davidson'. In cultural terms Architecture is much closer to breakfast. A lecture is a 'live', unique,  thing; don't try and kill it.
I'm always early. there are many reasons for this. Mainly, you have to iron out all the things that might catch you out, because there are so many risks to the task at hand. Getting on an easier bus is a no brainer. Anyway, there are still things to do.
I don't have never given a lecture in the afternoon without going to the pub first- that is not the case in the morning; you have to have boundaries.
That bit of 'green room' is suddenly when you have no idea what you are going to talk about. It just desserts you. I stare in to space. I have no idea why this happens, but experience tells me it's OK. It's part of it and it's my job to hang in there and play with it all a little more, feeling stupid. I try to laugh at myself; 'what a dickhead I am!- all this fuss over a little thing like this'. But you still have to come up with a first line; how are you going to break them in? That has to come from somewhere even if you forget it once your in the room.
I've already checked my pocket for my memory stick twenty times since leaving the house. I leave the pub on the second. I've counted down every minute.
And once your up on the stage, you hardly think about it, and it's as close to rock n' roll as I will ever get.
Twenty seven years and I'm still doing it like this.
.

We Don't Need No Education?

A student pointed out to me the other day, after the fourth lecture on the 'Reputations' of modern architects, that 'none' of the eight exemplars so far discussed was formally educated in 'the academy'. A background in watchmaking or stonemasonry come to mind (just as they would have to Vitruvius- his tenth chapter was on sundials). The student wasn't entirely correct (and that was probably my fault) but what a heroic idea; stepping outside the academy!

His concern, beneath his interest in the architects of course, was as to why his generation were paying for the ticket to success when, empirically, it appeared the ticket to 'success' (at least in the twentieth century) lay outside the academy, and was indeed antagonistic to it. This seemed a pretty good point; the traditional academies were bankrupt given the imminent 'new age'.

Is it possible 'the academies' have lost the plot once again? These days most of the students I teach within architecture don't have much of a clue about 'building'; there are far more interesting things to think about, usually involving words rather than stones. We used to call this radical, but I have disagreed that it is in any way radical for some time. As 'choice' and 'interest' mechanisms work their way down to teaching at even entry level, one of the things you might think is essential to the subject; building (or at least 'the means of production') can get lost altogether. Instead students are asked to demonstrate almost Jesuitical stamina in their pursuit the unreasonable.

Meanwhile changing the means of production is essential to the creating any 'new age' (which is clearly something we might enjoy) and the lack of such change was something the moderns found to their cost.

Alternatively it is possible, perhaps, that the building industry is now so de-skilled that all this doesn't matter, and perhaps the schools are reacting appropriately in casting aside prosaic interests (if they are indeed prosaic, and that those which have replaced them are indeed 'more interesting'). But whatever the case it is likely that todays students know as little about about the machinations of the academy as they do stonework or drains. For myriad reasons, they are just doing what they are told, and late capitalist institutions, like Stalinist ones, take a very dim view of dissent (they are so busy championing themselves) even though, paradoxically, this is the motor for the change they need.

Regulation is required when you give everybody a chance and want everybody to be treated fairly. This is as much neoliberal law as well something one would think of as common sense. Since any 'new' institution still has to engage with endless regulation, perhaps stepping outside the academy is no longer possible! As a consequence, and within, it would seem necessary to synthesise that eccentricity- otherwise there is no change! So an institution that cultivates it's own eccentricity in the face of more and more rules and regulations is rather a paradox, but it's where we are.

Technical Difficulties

Le Corbusier proudly drew the piling for the Pavilion Suisse of 1933. It is a particularly compelling section, since it represents the breaking of the Palladian wisdom, to load the plan equally to avoid cracking, given new technologies applicable to both surveying and construction. Colin Rowe might have dwelt on this in his magnificent essay 'Mathematics of the Ideal Villa' (1947) but he didn't.

Notwithstanding endless technical innovation, I cannot escape the thought that these days such technical innovation lies rather more in the realm of desire (dating sites) than construction (drilling piles). It is possible to think that with the provision of reasonable toilets, effective thermal insulation and heating etc, the job, architecturally speaking, is already done, and this asks many questions as to the point of the technically orientated view of progress within architecture. We still stand up, then lie down, we still piss, we still shit, we still need to keep warm, we still eat and drink, we cum, we learn things, do things and generally need to be entertained. Worst of all we worry, and I really don't need the equivalent of a spaceship to do it all in. This is a continuity with the ancients I cannot avoid.

But Are They Any Good?

I ran a workshop the other day on housing. In the morning we did vernacular housing from the workers cottage to the town house, and in the afternoon the modern apartment block. Using the vernacular as an introduction, it was easier to answer that question that looms unanswered in the blogs below; no matter the utopian vision, is modern housing any good?
In the morning, the drawings that made their way on to the flip chart illustrated an organic progression, where largely pre-industrial methods were marshalled in the service of shelter, heating, ventilation, transport, waste disposal, sociality, so called 'culture' and so on. The section drawing of a London townhouse and mews became quite an agglomeration as crappers and their soil pipes entered the fray, or as immigration and flight disturbed the social consensus. At each stage I asked the question; and where is the architects craft here?
It turned out the wasn't really too much for the architect to do.
On the other hand, by the afternoon the architects role was crystal clear; perfected 'units', cells, or modules get racked and stacked in some kind of frame, with the totality of what was previously 'organic' marshalled all in one go by the architect. Within this conception there were (of course) multiple occasions for creativity, and the role of the architect somewhat delicate; predicated on the need for virtue, working for the greater good in the tradition of the enlightenment.
I still haven't answered the question above, however the principle 'issues' surrounding 'housing' were pretty much solved by 1960, and if the architect was up to snuff, and you didn't mind appreciating his (usually his) generosity, what could be the problem?
It is the latter half of that conception that is problematic in terms of 'quality', for if you acknowledge the importance of so many other factors in constructing the built environment, the argument against modern housing is a bit like the argument for neoliberalism; the whole business is too complex to be controlled by experts. This means you can never (again) have the perfect city; and that mess is the law.
Which is a shame if you are a good architect, and a very good reason for architects to season themselves against the neoliberal establishment.

P.S. To wit, I woke up thinking about that funnel on the roof of L-C's Marseilles block. Of course it alludes to a ships funnel, but a ships funnel usually slopes backwards in the wind. Then I thought of a cartoon fart. It's a fucking cartoon fart! The Ancient Greeks would have cheered.

Top photo by David Granick. Lower photo Fondation Le Corbusier.

In the Beginning

In Le Corbusier's final testament he states 'in life it is above all necessary to act'. This would indicate that he wasn't interested in idle speculation, in just talking about it. It might also bring to mind that elemental biblical challenge as to our beginning; with the 'act' or with 'the word', but I'm not much of a bible reader so I don't know.
However such a view allows us to revisit his urban planning proposals with the view that he really meant it, and that he really meant his proposals for Paris (as above) of the twenties. But if we imagine ourselves the in the nineteen twenties, they must have looked provocative beyond belief, far from any imaginable reality. Indeed, they are drawn that way, with the perspective drawn as above, which the ordinary viewer would never see. This means these proposals can easily be read as speculative necessity, a seizing of opportunity by the architect who's tools are drawing rather than building, as a vision, and in the end, as 'utopia'.
But if we imagine ourselves in 1933, the mood has changed entirely. If you look at the post below ('Le Corbusier the Fascist') I say of course he was, but within a great many qualifications; such as it is impossible to imagine him holding any of the more idiotic views of Nazism (for instance).
And now, when we look at his 1933 scheme for Antwerp and see that in his endnote to The Radiant City's republication a year before his death; his coda, the end, he raises this to the summit of his achievements; his attempts at a 'Homeric world' we begin to understand why:

We understand that under the conditions of the thirties he genuinely thought he might be able to win that competition and build it. This was the dream worked out. He produced 30m of drawings to prove it; we are confronted not by views from the metaphorical mountaintop, but designs for traffic intersections and underpasses. He was bitterly disappointed when it was rejected.
This further sheds light on the notion of the hero; Le Corbusier's self image as a latter day Odysseus. If your intention is always to act, then you are mostly doomed to fail. Such a notion is embodied in the very concept of the hero, since as humans, how can we expect to be able to compete with figures who are half mortal and half immortal god. This is the difference between me and James Bond; James Bond is a necessary fiction.
So how extraordinary complex these images become, not just as images that might conjour up a bad day in Stevenage, but in the mental construct of their author. Our contemporary technologies are ridding us of the opportunity to act, there are no heroes anymore, but the apparent fallacies that underpin the attempt would seem to be genuine human weakness. It would seem an absolute cosmological necessity not to abolish tragedy.

Harry's Bar Helsinki

Please nobody ever spoil this one. The copper covered column is familiar to fans of Alvar Aalto (and generally used outside- see post below) but this is a thoroughly vernacular version.

Snowflakes in Snowflakes

This was Aalto University this last Wednesday, and this was a great way to see it, a crunchy carpet of crisp snow beneath your boots, wrapped up in your 'Crombie' with a big smile behind your scarf. What a great complex; it was time to look again at what Aalto actually does. I say does because it still matters to me. This is not an architecture with a narrative, not an architecture of fairy stories. You find yourself looking strictly at composition; at how he racks and stacks, how he layers horizontally, how he bookends, and how he manages to break out with lecture theatres and libraries suddenly filled with light and exuberance. And it's all brought together with such finesse, a language of detailing perfected over time and applied according to the situation; you can tell a Beethoven symphony if you have the ears, you can tell an Aalto building if you have the eyes (whatever the present enthusiasm for The Eyes of the Skin). And all this done from that small studio with a handful of trusted assistants wielding pencils!

Julie and I had joined a university field trip for the day, a bunch of nineteen year olds with nineteen year old enthusiasms, which is basically being glued to Whatsapp and Facebook. I had already feared the worst for our future passing through Heathrow. 'Robots, robots, robots' I wrote. The whole place appeared suddenly a prototypical corporate prison to be rolled out across the universe, where if you didn't shop virtually continuously, you were a threat to society, and everybody was noodling crap on their phone.

Even an eighty-seven year old George Soros has noted this as a threat to society. I doubt my sense of this threat is quite the same as his, but all this instantaneous twittering, so addictive to youth (and so levelling; nobody can step out of line- they face instant ostracisation) really makes me wonder (or rather sent me, repetitively to Harry's Bar on Liisankatu, where the old men still read their newspapers in the quiet, while they still can). That ability to concentrate, to actually look at a building (or for that matter the calm interior of Harry's Bar) and appreciate a hierarchy, is what is so compromised with this technology, and it is also when the future becomes just 'robots, robots, robots'.

Teresa/Theresa

Actually I think Theresa might quite like to look like Teresa once in a while. And this is 'to Adam', that original sinner.

This is Me

Sometimes blogs seem rather anonymous, so here's at least a picture of me at home. I bought the Bibendum chair sometime late last night on eBay. I've wanted one for a long time, looking for ages, and then that moment happens; 'vintage, London, and buy now for £175' within twelve hours I'm sitting in it. That accounts for the smile. Sometimes things work out. Bloody good chair the Bibendum.

Le Corbusier the Fascist.

I often hear that Le Corbusier was a fascist, and my best answer to this cry from the audience so far is 'of course he was'. Between the wars it was possible, actually quite usual, to imagine a world benevolently run for the benefit of mankind at large, and this was an inherent quality within European modernism, and certainly Le Corbusier believed in this to the core of his being. Of course, later, this would be considered 'utopian'. Dreams of a better tomorrow are always deemed 'utopian' when they don't work out. Those presently championing a new technological tomorrow might do well to be wary here, for if you do not change the mode of production in the face of great technological change, you will likely get slavery, and your dreams, in turn, will be considered 'utopian'. The modern movement might have imagined changing the mode of production, and Le Corbusier imagined this, but it didn't happen, and look where we are now.

Communism, Italian Fascism, and Nazism all conform to the notion of organisation at the heart of that new tomorrow, and provide the messy bit that is political implementation. When somebody announces that Le Corbusier was a fascist, we might remember that as far as I know he could never have been a Nazi. 'Blood and Soil' and all that nonsense was certainly not for him, even if he skirted around the Vichy government in such pathetic manner as to be deemed a whisker from collaboration during WW2. I think he would have worked for anybody in the hope of realising his dream; remember 'architecture or revolution'!

And of course he did work for the soviets, even if they found him rather hard to handle, and he quickly understood, by introducing his project for the Palace of the Soviets under a funeral shroud whilst a double bass played jazz, that it wasn't going to work out. In the end Le Corbusier needed enlightened clients who believed in him, and that exactly what we see at Marseille, in Firminy and in the surprise appearance of the dominicans from the wings post WW2.

Aside from the detail, the call that L-C was a 'fascist' means something else since we began to use the term against anybody who might favour suppression of the individual in favour of the collective. This gets us in to very difficult territory indeed, because is L-C's provision of 'a little bit of order in all this chaos' necessarily suppression of individual expression? One could argue, for instance, that the housing product created under neoliberalism is infinitely worse for people in general than the models proposed by L-C and other progressive modernists.

Meanwhile, those who were actually card carrying Nazis; Martin Heidegger and Albert Speer find themselves many apologists these days. I wonder if that is a coincidence.