by Ian Martin
One of the sepulchral planners explains, without moving his mouth, the purpose of this tour. It is to give me a frontline view of how the fake shopfront can be a valuable tool in the forward masterplanning toolbox.
I’ve halfway screwed up my face into the obligatory Sneer of Ultimate Disdain when he adds they’d like me to advise them on how this civic optimism might be expanded, and mentions a very attractive fee.
I amend my face to a Look of Serious Thought.
THURSDAY Dash off an edgy, urban scheme that both celebrates and modifies the concept of free will in a pluralistic society, then gaze pretentiously out of the window, savouring my maverick genius.
FRIDAY Put the finishing touches to my Shitley pitch. Obviously, I’ve loaded it with all the usual signifiers and called it ‘an outline proposal to develop economic denial into the 21st century’. I’m suggesting the following:
• Plant seeds of hope in the indigenous population by getting out-of-work actors to be ‘professional people’ travelling on buses.
• Environmental improvement stickers fixed everywhere, erroneously confirming that improvements have been made.
• Tackle social development with extra, wholly fictitious, members of the social development team.
• Pump-flood the shopping centre with ‘fragrances of success’, e.g. sushi, cologne, imported beer, exotic spices, new second car, private paddock.
• Build a fake extension to Shitley so it looks twice the size on Google Earth.
(Memo to Self: check when the phrase ‘into the 21st century’ is due to expire in local authority circles as a futuristic indicator.)
SATURDAY Five-a-zeitgeist theoretical football. Baggy Urban Zoomorphic Upgrade 0, Unpastoralised Rural Dreamworld 0.
SUNDAY Pretend to be in the recliner, then later actually be in it.
March 11, 2010
The Slightly Underground Railway
MONDAY I have been asked to re-imagine absolutely everything, as part of an ambitious but tentative government initiative.
The working title is Britain Plus. It aims to change the way we think about the whole environment by adjusting our ‘cultural minds’. It really is that simple.
For example, this country is awash with premium architectural content. Over the next year I’m proposing that this content be fast-tracked to World Class Architecture status. How? By putting all British buildings of merit on the BRITAIN PLUS TRAIN that’s how, details to follow. Other key points in my Britain Plus Prospectus for Change:
• Separate the definition of Architecture into two parts: ‘archi’ meaning ‘professional interest group’ and ‘tecture’ meaning ‘disposable asset’.
• Make sure our maritime heritage is properly valued, in doubloons and pieces of eight.
• Upside-down maps of Britain to encourage the Hebrides and the Isle of Wight to rethink each other.
• St Paul’s Cathedral to go ‘high definition’ in time for the Olympics.
• Identify valuable parts of Britain’s heritage with a red dot in the corner and a Britain Plus sticker.
TUESDAY Invited to ‘recession-proof’ myself by joining the Freemasons (London Architectural Division).
WEDNESDAY I’m IN. The dress code swung it for me in the end. I do look fantastic in a Gothic apron.
THURSDAY My Probationary Member’s Pack arrives. It includes a ‘Freemasonic Screwdriver’ to get you through locked doors.
FRIDAY Transport for Tamworth has at last unveiled images of my ‘slightly underground’ station on the new East Tamworth Line.
It’s taken years of pushing, niggling, redesigns, strategic sulking, threats of legal action, misunderstandings, actual legal action, financial collapse, virement of copyright, restructuring of the development team, recalibration of expectations, emotional firefighting, base-touching, pub lunches, compliance, grid-thinking, ennui and dark, dark misery to get this far.
Still, now the Offa Park transport interchange/retail/office/miscellaneous project is finished we all feel very proud. As well as being the 21st century’s first slightly underground station, it is also the most potentialised, flexibility-wise.
As well as cramming generic ‘shops’ and new-generation 3-D adverts into every available space, we’ve also put in lots of polished concrete and glass bits. In the air-rights layer above this, a PFI polyclinic and Commuters’ Wellbeing Centre. On top of that, an assortment of ‘sexy, sleek, urban, chic living spaces’.
Making the East Tamworth line slightly underground was my idea. I knew it would play well at planning. ‘We cannot match the Victorians’ reckless endeavour’ I concluded. ‘Creating an underground railway now would be historical insolence. Also, prohibitively expensive.
‘Therefore in compliance with contextual and Wikipedia-based concerns, we commend this hommage in italics to our industrial past: a slightly underground railway.
‘We think this is exactly the sort of scheme you should be approving. We took the liberty of having a conversation with Daniel, your chief executive, and he totally agreed. Best, The Development Team.’
SATURDAY A game-changing five-a-zeitgeist rhetorical football match between Parametric Wanderers and IKEA.
Under the haughty captaincy of Franz Kobbelmensch the Parametrics had a good first half, deploying sound management rhetoric ‘to deliver all the components for a high-performance contemporary life process’. Playing IKEA at their own game clearly paid off, with early goals from key players Spine and Nurb and a breathtaking late header from new signing Subdiv.
IKEA struck back in the second half, levelling the score with goals from Socker, Klippan and Ektorp-Murbo. But corporate momentum was with the IKEA team, who played their own rhetorical game right back at the Parametrics and, crucially, raised it by promising ‘to deliver all the components for a high-performance contemporary life process BUT LOOK: new lower prices, same great quality!’
This extra pressure from the 2009 Champions of the Euro Minimalist League was enough to unsettle the Parametrics, who conceded a rhetorical own goal after they took their eyes off the metaball, pronounced it ‘meatball’ by mistake, and then collapsed into a non-pluralist defensive heap.
IKEA may have won the match but the real winners are ordinary people, for whom pretentious architectural bullshit is now a rhetorical reality. Summary: the age of Form Follows Function is over, the epoch of Substance Follows Style begins.
SUNDAY Reclinerthon.
May 13, 2010
An Abridged Larkin Poem
MONDAY Charles calls. I can tell immediately that this is going to be hard work. He’s got that sulky belligerence in his voice that signals A Period of Sober Reflection.
‘Why does one bother?’ he grumbles. ‘It’s just the sheer vindictiveness of these grotty little developers, seeking to alter the course of history. They’re not democratically elected, are they? Or their puffed-up, sanctimonious, tieless bloody architects. Not accountable, do you see?’
He drones on like this for 15 minutes. I am sympathetic, but still manage to order a pub lunch, go to the toilet and hold a conversation with someone else while he’s on the phone. ‘One will NOT be ignored,’ he says. As usual, he’s partly right.
TUESDAY In the morning, work up my House for an England Footballer. It has all the features you’d expect. ‘Georgebestian’ facade. Triple garage done up like a giant goal. Three lifesize gold lions having it large by the outdoor jacuzzi and so on.
Inside, however, it’s a more muted and introspective feel with flashes of gilt. A mostly dull interior with little intellectual challenge, apart from a mock-Jacobean library for the Xbox games. Overall, I’ve gone for a philosophically minimalist feel to help develop spatial awareness, especially at the back, although obviously there are plenty of trappings in the sex dungeon.
I’m interrupted by an urgent call from Snorty. Sounds like she’s ringing from the stables. Either that, or she’s out on the lash with her ‘Sex and the Countryside 2’ set again. She and ‘the girls
’ have been known to bray their way through a pitcher of Cosmopolitan each.
Any chance I could pop up and see her and Charles? ‘He’s terribly down. I’m worried he might do something silly’. Oh God, you don’t mean … ‘Yes. Seriously considering announcing his pre-abdication in a special interview with Piers Bloody Morgan. Plus, the silly arse wants to dedicate the next five years to building that sodding Goon Museum of his. Come tomorrow. And bring fags.’
WEDNESDAY A relaxing journey to Gloucestershire in the back of a Royal jag. Why should I feel bad about it? I’m a taxpayer like everyone else. As HRH’s friends keep telling one another, we’re all in this together.
As the scenery slides past like an abridged Larkin poem, I can’t help thinking he was really stupid to oppose all development in London higher than the Greenwich Observatory. It’s not just the goodwill he’s forfeited, although that had built into something quite substantial.
Charles was lined up to make a special guest appearance during the Gorillaz set at Glastonbury, reading the Book of Common Prayer over some dope looped beats. But then his giggling letters to a mysterious Saudi pal known as the ‘beheadmaster’ gushed all over the media like a fractured oil pipe and he suddenly became non-ironic again.
More seriously, he’s completely undermined his own hard-won authority in the world of epic space. It’s only a year since he beat Lord Rogers in a topless wrestling match to determine who could speak for the nation on architectural matters.
As he stood there, manboobs glistening in triumph, his opponent morally vanquished and on his arse, we thought that had settled matters. At last Charles could forget all those years of everyone sniggering at his views on plant psychology and spiritual aerobics.
Now people are laughing at him again, even when he’s not doing one of his funny voices.
THURSDAY A claustrophobic day spent in what Charles is calling his ‘Downfall Bunker’ – a massive summer house dominated by the Map Room. A Dad’s Army graphic shows a plucky HRH circled by Nazi tabloids.
The fightback starts here. For a start, the similes he used in those sabotaging letters were really bad. ‘Looks like a thingy for storing CDs’ is simply not good enough when you’re taking the piss out of a Pritzker laureate.
FRIDAY Snorty and I spend most of the day smoking outside while Charles thinks up some better architectural insults. By teatime all he’s got is ‘a pornographic slug’, ‘a diseased ovary’, ‘a pile of poorly stacked bedlinen’ and ‘bit like a squashed cake or something?’
It’s going to be a long haul.
SATURDAY Epiphany. HRH should stop criticising shape of Lord Rogers’ buildings, start criticising shape of Lord Rogers.
SUNDAY Back home, leafing through Charles’ list of ad hominem insults. They’re both illegible and unprintable.
July 1, 2010
That Giraffe’s Head Was
Always Coming Off
MONDAY My pop-up architecture school’s nearing completion in Godalming. It’s only there for a fortnight, so will cost a fraction of the usual intolerable seven-year mountain of debt. It incorporates a chip shop too, to show poorer students how non-elitist the plastic arts can be.
TUESDAY To Godalming for the popping-out ceremony. Access could be easier – it has been popped-up on a roundabout – but it does encourage students to engage directly with the environment (no toilets).
WEDNESDAY At last my £200 million, 46-storey Lump in Birmingham is ready for occupation. What a journey it’s been.
It was nicknamed The Lump on the planning application, more than five years ago. Partly because it resembles a glittering sugar lump, but also to plant the idea in the city council’s mind that they might want TWO Lumps at some point, to ‘sweeten’ the urban landscape. Then everything went wrong.
The neurotic, hyperactive councillor who was championing the scheme in the face of some pretty fierce apathy at city hall had a breakdown. He appeared late, and naked, at the first committee meeting, shouting about minimalism and his mother.
Then our client, The Lump-It Development Company, went bust after bankrolling a floating leisure resort for Dubai in the shape of zoo animals. The slightest disturbance from a nearby marina and that giraffe’s head was always coming off. ‘Pontoon’ and ‘luxury living’ can be difficult concepts to reconcile.
Then earlier this year the main contractor, AAAble Builders Yes We Can Ltd, went into administration by accident, thinking it was a commerical subdivision of the university sector, and remains trapped at the top of the Yellow Pages. Still, we got there in the end. Here’s what the press release says:
‘The Lump is pure dynamic form, a dream world, shimmering like a futuristic metatrope over its gutsy surroundings. The exterior features millions of tiny, magical fragments of surprised astatine, glistening in a fantastic cloak of synthetic biomass. This then gives way to a wholly unexpected interior of 388 flats, a 66-bedroom hotel, offices for the regional department of the Fraudulent Disability Investigations Agency, a car park and 9 floors of shops.’
THURSDAY Now toying with the idea of pop-up urbanism. Only because I want to print leaflets promising ‘express piazza delivery’.
FRIDAY Finish sketches for my Tamworth Museum of Bad Language. I’m hoping it will be a premier destination for the visually impaired, as there will be textured surfaces all over the place, much of the interactivity will be based on Spoken Swearing and the whole thing will probably be shit to look at anyway after the client’s taken all the good bits out.
There will be strong language from the start i.e. in the reception area, then visitors will be taken on a journey through the history and culture of swearing. Though, as I say, the culture bit may have to go as part of Coalition Cutbacks.
Of course there will be critics who say that Tamworth doesn’t need a Museum of Bad Language at all, that the redundant watershed should be converted into something more appropriate. Already there is a strong local campaign in the local press to get Jamie Oliver to turn it into a ‘sustainable Italian’ restaurant using only seasonal staff and locally sourced customers.
In my view museum deniers should beware of what they wish for. If people start rolling their eyes and groaning every time a new museum opens in a British town, it won’t be long before architects work exclusively abroad, where they are treated with respect and admiration. The creation of new museums is now a globalised industry second only to war in its importance to the world economy.
Yes, we may have reservations about the gearing of the sector – by 2050 it is estimated there will be one museum for every 25 people on the planet – but make no mistake without museums, architectural civilisation as we know it would collapse and in no time we’d be hurled back into the Dark Ages.
We have moved on from county architects’ departments and their obsession with schools and homes – building types that do not, by the way, typically accommodate gift shops and ‘light bite’ restaurants.
SATURDAY Five-a-zeitgeist football. Art theory propositions of polemic form-givers 0, The virtualisation of extra-terrestrial desire 0. Match abandoned after ugly scenes of pretension.
SUNDAY Breakfast in pop-up café, drinks in pop-up pub, afternoon in fold-out recliner.
October 21, 2010
Twitterborough
MONDAY A very important day. Not just for me, but for the future of this country. I am scribbling some ideas (literary and spatial) in my monogrammed Moleskine memepad and I have to say they look BRILLIANT.
Obviously, as they’re scribbles, they only look brilliant to me. When people realise what I’m ‘saying’ with wobbly pen lines, thinking doodles and question marks they will definitely agree. These scribbles will carry a great deal of cultural weight in posterity as they represent an auteur’s impression, which is always more interesting than the artist’s version.
TUESDAY I’m working the scribbles up into a series of ‘conceptual blockouts’ to communicate more immediately the true essence of my scheme. Details of the scheme remain se
cret for now, but when it’s time to communicate, these blockouts will be invaluable.
WEDNESDAY Articulate my conceptual blockouts with enigmatic captions, or ‘clutch points’. It’s important at this stage not to lock down too many conclusions about how the vision could be taken forward, so for extra safety I leave the clutch points in neutral.
THURSDAY Some bastard close to me has leaked my scheme to the Creative on Sunday! I decide to spoil their exclusive by confirming to Epic Space Online that I am indeed the creator of TWITTERBOROUGH, a futuristic suburb near Corley Services on the M6.
Twitterborough will be part of a series of grand projets to mark the transformation of Ancient Mercia into a trimmed-down, fit-for-purpose England. Proper values. Astonishing architecture. World-class users. Yeah, good shit like that will be standard when Tamworth reigns again as capital city.
‘Back to the eighth century!’ That’s the motto of New Mercia. Unfortunately this motto has attracted a number of inappropriate would-be constituents: nutty religious types, law and order fetishists, time travellers. Although nobody’s complaining about the T-shirt sales.
The Mercia/Coalition Liaison Group is making great headway with its draft paper for the geographical rationalisation of England. Admittedly no actual timetable has yet been set by the government for the return of regional development agencies (or as they’ll once again be known, kingdoms) but it will be ‘as soon as practically possible’. That sounds pretty encouraging to me.
Meanwhile, Epic Space Online and everyone else is impressed by the sheer scale of Twitterborough. It will be about the size of a small nationally owned forest, and a short distance from Junction 3. Once the forest has been bought and the middle’s been scooped out it will be converted into a massive ‘actual space’. This will echo stylistically the vast tweet-sprinkled tundra of real Twitter, but in ‘natural 3-D actuality’.
Girdling that will be a rich blend of luxury living, niche monetising opportunities and high-end corporate filler. This might all on paper look like a terrible idea, but at a later stage we’ll put in some water-saving, energy-scrimping bollocks and then it’ll be an amazing beacon of environmental truth.