As I mentioned some time ago, I arrived in London in February 2009 expecting to work on Jean Nouvel's One New Change project. For reasons that are still too emotional to go into in any depth, I was not employed. It grieves me further that in spite of the absence of my creative input the building is nonetheless approaching completion. My only consolation is that the glass is pretty ugly (more here on Flickr).
The building caused quite a lot of controversy when the valiant Prince of Darkness decided he didn't like it and was going to have it canned. This was shortly after his fiddling with the Rogers re-development over at Chelsea Barracks. Those same Qatari developers have their fingers in every pie and they are also responsible for the Renzo Piano monstrosity currently under construction near London Bridge. The core alone is the width of a 20 storey building.
Dark times lie on the horizon for London (literally, as the massive structure will be able to cast a shadow over all of Borough Market).
"Remember the old Simon and Garfunkel song 'slow down, you're moving to fast'? Well that says a lot about life, and about cat massage." Related, 'Glorious Scarves'.
An iron fistful of the weekist links: some news.
CNN asks if there's going to be a 9/11 sequel: I agree, there were just so many plot holes in the first one. Controversial: America the gift shop. Raunchy: Pixxxel (safe for work). Of course, CNN are not the only people who have been making up film titles (Seinfeld). Also film: Creation, a film about Darwin, is not released in the US – supposedly because only 30% of Americans believe in evolution and studios think it will flop. Comments are a laugh.
Pictures of Nouvel's bust... Air France stewardesses like lactating on the great man, but Aer Lingus prefer to simply tell the French they're about to die. Vaguely related, I met one of the guys working on this last year when he passed by Jean's in Paris. I'm not even sure how to respond, to be honest.
A paragraph about social change: watching this video influences public policy, easy as that. Laser graffiti is used to fake a gaol breakout (made funnier because its in Dutch). Homeless man tazered, catches fire– oily skin thought to blame. Man in home oiled, catches fire – portion of Nando's chicken to blame. In the same vein, so to speak: 'fat kid loves bacon.' Related, a man makes some averagely ok art with hamburger grease, but I quite like a plane of strawberries hit by a bird. Bust some space. Related, bust a move: why don't we dress like Grandmaster Flash anymore?
No links, shake a fist. Ramble: I cannot stand women that lecture me on child psychology (for a man with no children, it happens remarkably more frequently than you might think). I really don't care whether a child is incapable of understanding the concept of death before the age of 8 – I'm just going to flat out tell him: Jimmy. Your. Dog. Is. Dead.
Nick Sowers indulges my love for bunkers and all architecture military– to my intense delight (good luck finding the Arrested Development version). An ex-Jockey helps the cops out by running down criminals on horseback. Similar, the amazing Hawaii chair. There are over 50 things that are being killed by the internet, including:
A man recently went through a mid-life crisis, but through quiet negation his wife manages to delude him into accepting his own happiness. What? Effective: one crime solved per 1000 CCTV cameras. Londoners unite: Meta Loca London. Unrelated, Lovefoxxx sells out to Vice, and gets a blog.
Finally, NSFW: after doing a google search for "christian dildo america teenagers" (to settle an argument about statistics, you understand) it lead me to: Christian teens being encouraged to use "saddlebagging" ("unprotected anal sex") as a means to preserve their virginity. Related, I also discovered that Dildo is a bay in Newfoundland, (Canada) just beneath the Spread Eagle, between Chapel Arm and Norman's Cove (map).
For a profound look at our impact on the landscape, you can't go past the photography of Edward Burtynsky.
Tomorrow will be a punchy piece on Venus (yeah, more space, sorry, but the passion is perennial so it's bound to fade soon). In the meantime, a soft roll of links into the gym mat that is our lives: some news.
Kunstler goes on a tirade against the high-line, Myoung Ho Lee questions the boundaries of nature, and it turns out our prehistoric ancestors were just as un-environmentally-minded as we are. The New Museum lost the plot and went ///mad, while Teno Sehgal rolled around on the floor. Art? (It seems very easy, but then as morenewmath points out, "Modern Art = I could do that + yeah, but you didn't") An Australian man is super-glued to a toilet seat as a practical joke, and mining of the Canadian oil-sands continues full speed.
"We put it in a black plastic bag", Irishman Fitzharris explained, when asked by incredulous archaeologists how he managed to retrieve a 3,000 year-old barrel of butter from a bog. Los Angeles is planning to re-create a section of the Berlin Wall to celebrate the 20th anniversary (also in California, a teetering bunker, a bit like my own). Meanwhile, Texas is going to Agent Orange up to 130 miles of dense foliage along the Mexican border. Archi-ninja asks 'who is the most over-rated architect?': Zaha finally builds something. 10 things you'll never hear an architect say.
Lightning has been caught doing something rare, going up into the sky, while the mushroom cloud remains firmly buried underground. Nokia avoids playing catchup to Apple by not releasing an iphone rival, and a new engine has been invented powered by ice and aluminium. Michael Wolf, the link you love and then forget about, and then love again. Curbed investigate an apparent property fraud by a resident of Nouvel's Soho building (here he is having his head lactated on by an air hostess). The Conservative alternative to Youtube. Finally, KFC releases burger made with two pieces of chicken in place of buns, and Prince Charles' buildings are falling apart.
An eye for an eye: if Prince Charles thinks he can meddle with modernism, than surely modernism can mess up his mum's house. My proposal for the removal of the Palace, to be replaced by Buckingham Children's Hospital.
Bonnie Prince Charles is up to his tricks again. The British papers call him "the scourge of modern architecture", and with reason. The royal Anti-Modernist has been plastering his antiquarian views all over the shop, arguing that all new developments should be built in a mock-neoclassical style. To illustrate the point he had a town constructed, called Poundbury. Within it he designed a dumpy Georgian palace disguised as a fire station.
But it all really kicked off a couple of months ago when he got involved with Richard Rogers' £3 billion housing development for the Chelsea barracks site. He wrote to the owner, the Emir of Qatar, "one royal to another" to express his disapproval, in an act many called anti-constitutional. As a result Rogers lost the project, which put 5,000 workers out of a job. He is now suing Prince Charles. The worst part of the tale is that the scheme Rogers proposed was indeed pretty bad, making it hard for Modernists to argue its merits.
His most recent act of villainy has been directed at One New Change, Jean Nouvel's mall opposite St. Paul's Cathedral. Nouvel has been having quite a lot of problems with upstarts recently – he only just got back from NY, where he was forced to defend his Tour Verre. Stoically, even though he must think the whole world is against him right now, Nouvel said we shouldn't listen to Prince Charles or any other man that supports "pastiche" architecture.
Nouvel's One New Change, I heard in Paris that he turned up for the first meeting, put a toy Stealth Bomber on the desk and said "my building will look like this".
Charlie also recently threatened to resign from the National Trust unless they become more conservative, although his demands to gain veto power over all new Trust architectural developments are largely heresay, as documents pertaining to Royals are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
My one-time boss and long-time idol Jean Nouvel is relaunching the French magazine "l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui" (Today's Architecture). I was amazed by how little information can be found on the web, in either English or French, given the significance of the magazine – it doesn't even have a wikipedia page. Founded in 1930 by Andre Bloc it ran until 2007, when it hit financial difficulties. It was a magazine instrumental in the dissemination of Modernism, particularly as a mouthpiece for Corbu and his cronies in the post-war rush to build the least functional suburbs in the world. Nouvel cites it as one of the ways he first heard about Claude Parent, his mentor [Parent worked extensively with Paul Virilio, and his fascination with bunker architecture can be seen in projects like the Eglise Saint Bernadette. I am still trying to find a copy of their 'Architecture of the Oblique', which has been out of print for some time.] Other participants in the relaunch include Shigeru Ban, Gehry, Winy Maas and Philippe Starck. Definitely worth keeping an eye out. A video for Francophones.
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Originally nothing more than a blog, MP is approaching a climax - to transform from the rambling reflections of Jack Self (AA, AR) into a think tank and collective.
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What (if any) is the role of architecture as an agent of social change? Are we more effective reformers (or revolutionaries) as citizens, or as architects?
Where are the limits of architecture? What is (or should be) the relationship between the citizen and the state, the individual and the metropolis, building and landscape?
