Category: Roof clutter

Pimlico roof clutter

June 8th of this year was a good day for roof clutter. In Pimlico:

It’s the variety I like, and the mixture of the ancient (the chimney pots (including some quite superior ones)) and the modern (aerials), that I like. The chimney pots are often very decorative on purpose, while the more modern technology is only decorative as a throw-away consequence of how it needs to be to do its various jobs.

In one of them, there is scaffolding.

It helped, at lot, that the weather was so nice. In my opinion, almost anything looks good in really nice weather.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A new Big Thing alignment as seen from the Oval

Yes, earlier this evening, my mate Darren arranged for me to drop by at the Oval to witness day 2 of the first Day/Night game of four day county cricket to be staged at the Oval. However, all I have the energy to show you for now is this new-to-me Big Thing alignment, as seen from the very superior seats way up in the pavilion, where Surrey members like Darren (and his plus one) can sit.

Not surprisingly, these superior seats are one of my favourite spots in London (therefore in the world), because you can see things like the above, and cricket.

What we mostly observe in the above photo is the Walkie Talkie. But behind we also see the newly erected Scalpel. And, eagle-eyed viewers will also be able to discern, from two very small clues, the Gherkin. Yes, that is definitely the Gherkin.

What the thing between the chimney pots in the foreground and the Walkie Talkie is, I do not know.

I especially like the two window cleaning cranes on the top of the Walkie Talkie.

Sleep well. I am definitely about to do this myself.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A view from the Shard

Earlier this evening I did some laundretting, and while I was there, this showed up outside:

I still photo taxis with adverts on them, and I especially liked this one, advertising this.

It made me think of the last time I went up to the top of the Shard, just over a year ago.

So I took a browse through the photos I took that day, and this time around, this one particularly struck me:

That was cropped to confine itself to the one building, and photoshop(clone)ed to resist the dullness of the day and general fogginess of the original.

Part of me wants to say that this is a classic case of the behind-the-scenes bit of a building, a chunk of it that you are not supposed to look at and get all aesthetic about. It is what it is.

But I actually think that this is the facade of the building that the architects of it were most proud. There is an exuberance about this roof, done in the equipment-as-decoration style, that is utterly lacking in the rest of the building. The “official” bits of which are about as dull as dullness can get. They didn’t have the budget to go full Lloyds Building, all over. But they were able to go crazy on the roof, because the politicians whose job it was to tell them to redo the design more boringly didn’t give the roof any attention. They thought they were building a machine for studying in, but only on the roof were they able to go mad with “expressing” that machineness.

I reckon they were delighted that the Shard was later put right next to this block of boredom with a great roof, enabling thousands of folks to gaze down on their favourite bit.. Gotcha, boredom police!

Okay, just a thought, and a thought that could well be wrong. Maybe they really didn’t care how the roof looked. But take a look through these photos of this mostly very dull slab, mostly taken from street level, of course, and see if you don’t share my suspicions.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Orange umbrellas in Lower Marsh

On August 2nd 2013, exactly five years ago today, there was a clutch of orange umbrellas above Lower Marsh. (Also (see bottom right), 240 Blackfriars Road was under construction.) I don’t believe I mentioned these umbrellas at the time I photoed them, and now, I can’t google my way to any sort of explanation of them. But, I think I recall investigating them at the time, and I think they were some kind of advert for an art gallery. This guy agrees that these umbrellas were indeed there, then, but he doesn’t say anything about them either.

Anyway, here they are, as I photoed them then:

The bottom left one looks to me like the head of some kind of oriental feline creature.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Uncluttered French train roofs

When I recently went to France, there was a rail strike on. I even took a picture of the strike, in the form of an electronic sign at St Pancras full of train cancellations:

But, what happened to this strike? Is it still going on? Or has it finished? If it has finished, who won?

I am none the wiser about the answers to these questions, but while seeking such answers, I came across this photo, of French trains, taken by someone looking down upon their roofs:

Not much roof clutter to be seen there. (See below. This is now a preoccupation of mine.) Does the clutter on top of these trains not even exist? Or, is it merely covered up? (More research is needed.)

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A photo-rumination on French rail clutter

6k has Flickred a wonderful little collection of photos he took on a recent expedition to France (he blogs about these here), of which this was one of my favourites:

I particular like the extreme middle of this photo, which I have taken the liberty of cropping out and lightly sharpening:

I love roof clutter. So it’s no surprise that I also love rail clutter. And France, so excellent at roof clutter, also does rail clutter exceptionally well.

Rail clutter embodies the exact same aesthetic contrast that roof clutter points to. One part of what you are looking at is obsessed over, aesthetically. The facade of a building is minutely contrived to look the way it should look. And then on top of it, you can just shove up anything you like, to let out smoke, receive and send signals and generally do stuff on the roof. Well, rail clutter is a lot like that. The trains (especially the trains in France (and especially the high speed trains in France)) are aesthetically magnificent, or at least are intended to be are are considered to be by their creators (and I happen to agree with them). Yet all around them is rail clutter, to feed the power into the trains, and this clutter is built in a totally functional manner, to do that job, no matter what kind of a jungle of mess that results in.

Let’s see what the photo-archive tells me about how this obsession played out on my own most recent expedition to France.

Here are two rail clutter photos, both featuring one of those beautiful trains, and both taken at Quimper railway station:

On the left, you can pretend that the rail clutter isn’t there, if you really want to. But on the right, the photo is photoed in such a way that you really can’t do that. Look at that clutter! I lined it all up with itself, just like 6k did in his rail clutter photo.

Here are a couple more photos of Quimper, taken from the footbridge over the main railway line off to the west of the city, right near where my hosts live, and in particular of the twin towers of Quimper Cathedral. These two photos point to that same rail clutter aesthetic contrast by shoving it next to a cathedral, instead of next to a train. But it’s the same point. The cathedral has been obsessed about aesthetically for centuries. The rail clutter just looks how it looks and to hell with that.

But for me, perhaps most interesting of all, here are a couple of photos which point to a closely related phenomenon, which is the matter of clutter actually on the top of the trains. That’s right. Trains also, themselves, have roof clutter on their roofs:

I remember noticing this phenomenon, pretty much for the first time (as in really noticing it), when I took this little clutch of photos. From that same footbridge in Quimper.

I have the feeling that British trains are not so roof cluttered. Memo to self: look into that. But that can wait. There’s been more than enough cluttertalk for this posting.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Quota cloud

Indeed:

Photed by me in Warwick Way, this afternoon.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Big Thing Alignment with an appropriate slogan in the foreground

Photoed by me last Monday, from the train on the way back from Denmark Hill (which is where I also photoed that helipad (better to scroll down to that)):

The train being the explanation for that reflection, on the right there.

At the time, of course, I was merely going for that rather splendid Big Thing Alignment, of The Shard with The City Big Thing Cluster. And at the time, I was merely regretting that it probably wouldn’t come out quite as sharply as I’d have liked, and so it proved.

What I was not going for was a machine in a foreground with the words “REACH FOR THE SK…” on its arm. Presumably reach for the SKY. Which is, I think, rather suitable.

Shame I didn’t quite get all of that little slogan, but I got enough for the photo to be worth showing here.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

One Kemble Street and the ME Hotel Radio Bar photoed from the Royal Festival Hall

Yesterday, before Gurrelieder, I had twenty minutes to fill, and ran up to the top of the RFH and took photos.

This was one of my favourites, of a favourite London building, and a favourite other place to photo London buildings.

That’s Richard Seiffert’s One Kemble Street, with its seldom noted other than by me hairdo of roof clutter. And lined up right in front of it, the ME Hotel Radio Bar, from which, a while back, I photoed those seven London bridges:

There is also some older-school roof clutter to be seen there, in the form of a chimney array. You see those a lot. If you want to, that is.

The funny thing is, I didn’t need to be attending a concert in order to make this short climb. I could just go to the RFH, go in, go up to that viewing spot, photo my photos, go down again, and leave. Memo to self: do this, soon, and quite often.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Peak and its window cleaning crane

It is called, at any rate by the people who built it, The Peak. What it is called by others, in the event that they notice it at all, I don’t know. But it’s more likely to be something along the lines of “that peculiar and asymmetrical lump outside Victoria Station with the big curved metal roof on it, that looks like it was stuck on the top during a refurbishment of some ugly old block built in the sixties or seventies”.

Today, personal business took me to Victoria Station, but before descending from the main concourse of the station into the Underground, and encouraged by the spactacular not-a-cloud-in-the-sky weather, I took a look around outside.

And saw this:

That being the top of “The Peak”, and on top of that top, the rather splendid window cleaning crane that periodically emerges from that bizarre roof. I love these cranes, especially when they have odd hats on the way that one has, to make them merge right back into their roofs, when they resume their hibernation.

But today, that peculiar curvey metal bit that sticks out on the left, as we look, was also looking wonderful.

Although almost any building looks good on a day like today was, that particular combination of sights particularly appealed to me, and made me particularly pleased that I had interrupted my journey.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog