Lots of rather incomprehensible stuff to be seen through this charity shop window in Warwick Way last Friday (i.e. September 27th), and more to be seen reflected in it. But the central message, stuck on the inside of the window, is clear enough:
It would appear that the Festive Season has started even before the clocks go forward.
You can seldom tell where an item of modern architecture is in the world just by looking at a photo or fake-photo of it. But, if you know your modern architecture, you can usually date it. This is because what look-at-me architecture looks like depends on what can, at any particular moment in architectural history, be done. When a new technique is devised, this new technique is used to make a kind of architecture that has not been seen before, and which hence attracts maximum attention.
Zaha Hadid is the firm that most perfectly exemplifies this latest phase of architectural modernity, because they are the people who have taken the latest new-thing-we-can-now-do to its most extreme limits:
Picture (hard to tell if it’s fake or real – guess: bit of both) found in this dezeen report on a new mega-airport in China.
What-we-can-now-do is keep track of lots of different bits and bobs in a building, so different that almost all these bits and bobs are unique in shape, with … computers. Time was when, if the Big Boss said: I want it to look like … this (draws weird shape on back of restaurant menu) there then followed a long to-and-fro argument between Big Boss and the Underlings (speaking on behalf of what is doable as opposed to merely dreamable), until the slightly weird but usually deeply disappointing and mis-shapen object finally appeared. Occasionally, something truly weird, like the Sydney Opera House, did emerge, looking remarkably like the back-of-the-restaurant-menu original. But, mostly the fantasy-versus-actually-doable back-and-forth took all the juice out of the original. It would have been simpler to scrap it and do something a bit more creative than usual with easily drawable and trackable rectangles.
Now? Big Boss can draw the weird shape, and then the massed slaves can duly construct the Big Thing, so that it really does look like the cover of a science fiction story.
Computers can now draw, and – crucially – redraw, anything. When a curve needs to change a bit, to fit in – I don’t know – some more luggage handlers or passport inspectors or a bigger private lair for airport surveillance creeps – the computer can redraw the new design, as re-ordained by the Big Boss on the back of another restaurant menu, in seconds. That kind of rejigging used to take months and frankly, couldn’t be done without costs crashing through the weirdly but in the end rather disappointingly shaped roof.
Give it a few years, and this Because-Now-We-Can! style will look horribly passé. For many, I’m guessing it already does. But for now, we now build buildings like this … because now we can!
Here.
Here.
Clues as to what you’ll see, if you click on that, in the category list below.
Happy birthday to me, that is, because today has been my 72nd birthday. Several emails have arrived noting that various Facebook friends have been wishing me a Happy Birthday. I find Facebook baffling and useless as a means of personal communication, so am unable to access any of these messages on my Facebook feed, where I can detect no sign of them. So let me say here, to Robert L, Bjorn, Tim, Rob F, among others: thanks for all the good wishes.
In this computerised era, everyone is prompted by their various machines to do this, but it still means something that they actually do it.
Also appreciated were various phone calls. It tells you something about the experience of Getting Old (see the category list below) that all of these conversations included, in among the birthday greetings, medical discussions of various bodily malfunctions and of the efforts of the NHS, such as they have been, to correct these. My various friends and family are also Getting Old, you see. Older, anyway.
The general lesson from these medical conversations seems to be: if you want the NHS to start being properly on your side, get yourself classified as an emergency. Let me clarify this. You need to be threatening to die. Then, the NHS seems to stir itself into action. But if you are merely rather damaged and you are able to get worse before death looms at all threateningly, the NHS can’t seem to persuade itself to be that interested. It focusses its attention instead on manipulating the various queues it puts you in, in order to made its statistics look better than they actually are. Basically, it tries to keep you in a queue before it allows you to join the actual Official Queue, the one it wants to keep short, and thereby make itself look good. One of the friends I spoke with today said he had recently photoed a bench in a hospital corridor with the words “SUB QUEUE” attached to it.
Birthdays, when you are rather old, remind you that you are Getting Old. Which might explain why, to celebrate my own birthday, I have, by way of giving myself a present, chosen to have a good old grumble.
Photoed by me, just over two years ago, from Lower Marsh:
Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between scaffolding and actual building.
Indeed:
Photoed by me in September 2013.
I have labelled this photo “NearlyEverything” because for me, it has nearly everything. Scaffolding, roof clutter ancient and modern, a crane, Magic Hour light, the lot. Well, not the lot, there are things I like that are not present in this photo. But a lot of the lot.
There is even present a favourite item of London public sculpture, in the form of the statue of Mercury that adorns a building on the north bank of the River called Telephone House. If you follow that link, you’ll learn nothing about this sculpture being there. But it is.
Googling for “mercury statue” is greatly confused by the fact that a statue of pop singer Freddie Mercury has recently been on display outside the Dominion Theatre, across the road from Centre Point.
You never know with British weather, which is why we talk about it so much. There was a heatwave last February, at any rate in London. And there could be another in October or November. But (see above), yes, I think I may just have watched the summer of 2019 end.
I was at the Oval today, courtesy of cricket buddy Darren, who is a Surrey member. It was this four day game, between Surrey and Notts.
We chose today to go to the Oval with more than half of our eyes on the predicted weather, and as is usual with British weather forecasts, the predicted weather duly turned into the real weather. The morning was, as predicted, summer. The afternoon turned autumnal, again, as predicted.
Here are a few of the photos I photoed, chosen to illustrate how the weather changed:
Photo 1 was taken at 10.42am, assuming my camera was on top of things (but that fits my memory), and photo 12 was taken at 3.16pm.
Photos 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 were taken from the top of the big OCS Stand that curves around at the north western side of the ground, looking out over London. Photo 5 is also from the top of the OCS out over the ground. Photo 7 is the only ground level photo of these. Photos 8-12 were photoed from the top of the Pavilion, where members like Darren congregate to watch the cricket, from on high, in line with the wicket, and from where I can also photo the Big Things of central London.
Between photo 4 and photo 5, the floodlights came on. But oddly, this did not prevent bad light stopping play. I guess that, what with this being “red ball” cricket, instead of “white ball” cricket, floodlights don’t accomplish much.
Noel Gallagher of pop combo Oasis on Liam Ditto:
He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.
Heard it (from actor Ralf Little) while TV-channel hopping. Then googled it, and it turns out there are nineteen other amusing things said by Noel Gallagher to enjoy also.
