Epic Space

by Ian Martin

  After an hour’s immersion in a dork miasma, I think I’ve grasped the brief. They want a 10-acre long room that feels like a classic 8-bit game, divided into ‘zones’ with an end-of-level boss (Spak) and rewards along the way such as magic jellybeans and actual bags of money. I pretend to take a call from Rupert Murdoch, awkwardly indicate a ‘British high five’ to the unresponsive disdainful pricks, and leave.

  THURSDAY On way home. Dream up new global reality show, City Swap, in which inhabitants of say London and San Francisco swap locations for a month, then consider problems with customs, e.g. gun ownership.

  FRIDAY Have worked out my Facebook campus zones, based on jetlagged oversleep and a panicky mind-trawl of American culture:

  Urban Terror, Black Rural, New York Deli, Chic Shaker Prayer Hall, Jolly Hispanic, University of Buffy, Unoccupied Wall Street, Life-Affirming Prison, Porn Dungeon, Bling Crib, Post-Apocalyptic Pixar, Civil War Paintball, Graffiti Hangout, Pimped Ride (Interior), Wild West Platinum Lounge, Suburban Psychodrama.

  SATURDAY Still no word from Facebook Spak. Poke him. Apparently now I am ‘de-friended’.

  SUNDAY Attempt to re-ignite my trans-Atlantic excitement by drinking miniature bottles of scotch until I fall asleep in the recliner.

  September 20, 2012

  Metarchitectural Sausages

  MONDAY To London for a demo – Justice for Environmental Auteurs. It’s disgraceful that clients are seeking to link our fee increases to rises in global temperature.

  We all chant, ‘Inflation should be the yardstick for both remuneration and self-regard!’ and soon feel 3.5 per cent better.

  TUESDAY I’m designing a big scallopy thing in Singapore, full of trees. Fingers crossed – it has an immensely collaborative feel, various radical and technical examinations, experimental aspects and exciting lines of enquiry, converging in a coveted award, with any luck.

  WEDNESDAY Lunch with my old ‘friend’ Darcy Farquear’say, who has pissed me right off. His latest act of cultural treachery: ghosting an important weekly feature on ‘metarchitecture’ for the Creative on Sunday. In a fairer world that would be MY gig.

  Please don’t ask me what metarchitecture is. I thought I’d made that perfectly clear. Metarchitecture is an internalised Q&A about future epic space and how we should be thinking around the corner. Simply start a sentence with ‘What links …’ Then do a list of stuff. Then categorise it.

  What links the quiet symmetry of a Georgian building, Lady Gaga’s upper body strength, Skylon, tin mining, the psychogeography of New York delicatessens, a contrapunctus from ‘The Art of Fugue’, the geometry of tulips, an acid jazz disco, T S Eliot’s Homburg, the M62 westbound, migrating geese, an aerial view of Glastonbury and harvested rain? Metarchitecture.

  See? It’s an easy two-step: mince up some random subjects, then shape into a meaningful chain of cultural sausages. Metarchitecture may be just extruded zeit-gristle but it is nevertheless part of our HUMAN DISCOURSE. However, the pretend ‘author’ of the new CoS column is Bauhau, Darcy’s dachshund, now apparently a cultural sausage in his own right.

  Ever since the newspaper discovered that a querulous dog in a Marc Jacobs retro-grunge plaid wrap can connect with readers more effectively than a jaundiced architecture critic in a silly hat, Darcy has suffered the humiliation of being content provider for his own neurotic, brainless, yapping pet.

  Except now Darcy’s lost that too. Sinking his fourth Sarcastic Mary, he reveals that he has custody at weekends only. During the week Bauhau stays with his new agent, the fearsome Victoria Spong of Fusilli Spong Talent Agency. And Spong’s had Darcy sacked as ghost writer for the metarchitecture feature. Architecturally critical interns are much, much cheaper.

  Poor Darcy doesn’t know what to do, beyond a fifth Sarcastic Mary. I tell him he’s got to retaliate. Dump Bauhau entirely. Get another dog. One that looks good in Stella McCartney stuff. He gives me a hard look and a grim smile. We clink glasses.

  THURSDAY Freezing. Time to dig out the high-density polystyrene overcoat!

  FRIDAY Design a ‘funagogue’ for some lighthearted Jewish clients.

  SATURDAY To Battersea. I’m architectural dog shopping with Darcy. All he has written in his Moleskine is ‘BBC4-ish. NB FOUR LEGS. Eclipse Bauhau’s intellect with fresh insights? THINK CANINE VERSION OF YOUNG ALAN YENTOB’! Not that much to go on, to be honest.

  There’s quite a nice poodle, would definitely look good in something punky. But as Darcy says, that might come across a bit ‘arch’. A Weimaraner missing most of an ear has a certain rugged appeal, but is too butch for this flimsy, skittish age.

  Then we spot a border collie, unpretentious and intelligent. The handler explains that the dog is very shortsighted and needs to wear glasses. ‘You know what would suit him?’ babbles a smitten Darcy. The dog looks at him, vaguely. ‘Round-framed. Black. No. Dark tortoiseshell …’

  The handler laughs. ‘Never mind the spectacles, check the particulars, love. She’s a BITCH!’ Darcy does that rapid clapping thing and squeaks with delight. The collie strains to interpret the instruction and settles for sitting up and giving an enigmatic, quizzical look. Perfect.

  SUNDAY To a special animal church for the new dog’s christening. She is to be called Bess of Hardwick. I’m a bit choked up actually, never been a dogfather before.

  At the reception, Bess is already wearing her new Corbusian glasses, a fetching black velvet suit and an Elizabethan ruff. She looks ready to take on the male dachshund-dominated world of architecture. As soon as we can find her a theory.

  We both imagine Bauhau quaking in his little boots; that’s his default setting. ‘Bring it on!’ hisses Darcy. Bess dashes off to herd a drinks waiter our way.

  October 11, 2012

  Looks Nice Theory

  MONDAY Off to Cumbria this week. My old friend Darcy the architecture critic is undergoing his most thorough image overhaul since that time he gave a lecture at the Royal Academy – Post-Modernism is the New Skiffle – dressed as a pirate.

  Darcy’s renting a farmhouse on a bleak fell near Shap, trying to thrash out the next big new architectural theory, desperate to regain his preeminence in the highly competitive field of epic space. He has forsaken the metrosexual tension of London for a simplified rural life.

  The capital holds too many unhappy memories for him. Bauhau the dachshund for instance. Once Darcy’s constant companion, Bauhau now lives with his agent, the powerful canine impresaria Victoria Spong, in a converted East Putney mews cottage. She’s holding auditions this week for a new human escort.

  ‘Occasional original thinking required, though specifically seeking a resonant fashion sense (matchy matchy) and a willingness to express opinions in accordance with the Bauhau Brand, putting metarchitecture at the heart of public debate.’

  TUESDAY Packing for Cumbria. Thinking about Spong and Bauhau and metarchitecture, the Emperor’s New Clothes of aesthetics.

  Imagine yourself in a room with a ladder. Go up the ladder. The room looks ‘better’ because you’re looking at it ‘metarchitecturally’.

  OK, now imagine a client has asked you to masterplan a private university campus somewhere expensive on the south coast. You can stroll around the proposed site – let’s say it’s public parkland at the moment, or an area of surplus natural beauty – to get a ‘feel’ for it. The psychogeography of the place. The ghosts and the dreamlines and whatnot. You can think ‘oh, this place could really generate creativity’.

  Or ‘if we dumped a high-density doughnut of PFI student housing here and put a pub, kebab takeaway, pizza takeaway, Indian takeaway, a non-threatening nightclub and a cash machine in the middle, we’d be laughing’.

  But that’s the non-metarchitectural approach. This proposed campus. What does it look like from the sling of a microlight? What does it look like as a Flickr slideshow? What does it look like as binary code, printed out and scribbled over in coloured crayons by schoolchildren? Today’s artist must find a hidden pattern, all
ude to it in abstract terms, and THEN maximise profit. It’s not the interconnectivity of space and form that matters. It’s calling it metarchitecture.

  Ridiculous. This orthodoxy must be smashed. But by WHAT?

  WEDNESDAY Darcy picks me up from the station in a muddy tractor. He’s done up like a gentleman farmer. His new muse – Bess of Hardwick the border collie – is cheerful and alert in her tweed coat and round-framed tortoiseshell spectacles. I won’t lie, it’s a hot look for a dog …

  Whatever. We have no time to lose. Darcy and Bess are booked to go on Newsnight next week to argue against metarchitecture. They’ll be facing their nemeses: Bauhau and Spong. Darcy sets his face to the wind. ‘Aye-oop. Bauhau and SPONG? Sounds like one o’ them fancy kitchens, eh, girl? Bugger ‘em oop t’arse fi nowt …’

  Sweet tottering Christ. Darcy’s gone Northern.

  THURSDAY Our quest for a new architectural theory begins, in a windswept field. Horizontal sleet. Pewter sky. Air so sharp it’s like breathing in atomised raw onion.

  Our minds are blank. Darcy fronts it out with some gruff shrieking: ‘Fetch, girl! Coom by! Get on! Fetch us a theory, girl! Fuck! Shit! This suit is totally RUINED! I mean, aye, aye coom by girl!’ He attempts a shepherd’s whistle but just makes a noise like a punctured water pipe.

  Bess dutifully scampers off round the field looking for something to worry, but her glasses are all steamed up and rain-spattered. She crashes into a hedge. Darcy and I decide she’s more of an indoor muse.

  FRIDAY On a hunch, we settle Bess on the sofa and Google some contemporary architecture. Interesting. She barks at some, but not at others.

  ‘What’s that, Bess? Tha durn’t know owt abaht art’te’ture but tha knows thee preferences?’ I tell Darcy to dial down the wide-spectrum accent, and concentrate. Is Bess responding to buildings that just … ‘look nice’?

  SATURDAY Astonishing. By breakfast, Darcy’s mapped out something called Looks Nice Theory.

  ‘Basically, you dump all that bourgeois drivel. Sever all ties with an elitist commentariat. Align yourself with the ITV and Nando’s crowd …’ He suppresses a shudder, remembering the new him. ‘Aye, if it Looks Nice, that’ll do, eh? Eh, Bess?’

  She gives a little bark and looks clever.

  SUNDAY Back home in the recliner. Darcy and Bess and Looks Nice Theory will BURY metarchitecture. Ha ha. Bye bye, Bauhau …

  October 25, 2012

  Battle of the Styles

  MONDAY Great excitement in the world of epic space. It’s Battle of the Styles Week, which happens every five years like a General Election but people get to elect an architectural theory instead of a political conspiracy.

  This time it’s personal. There are only two contenders. The ridiculous, nebulous theory of ‘metarchitecture’ is championed by dandy meta-dachshund Bauhau and his insufferable companion, the theatrical agent Victoria Spong. I’m backing ‘Looks Nice Theory’, devised with my dear friend Darcy Farquear’say the architecture critic and his muse, the border collie Bess of Hardwick.

  It’s an architecturally theoretical dog-eat-dog world. And Bess is going to have Bauhau for a light, wholly inadequate English breakfast.

  TUESDAY In the morning, freestyle a design for an inflatable bridge over the Seine for the mayor of Paris.

  In the afternoon, devise some oxygenated rhetoric for the mayor of London.

  WEDNESDAY Submit my independent report for the government’s Home Solutions Discount Unit on how to create hundreds of thousands of affordable new flats and houses. I’ve kept it simple, in accordance with my modest fee. As usual there are five key recommendations:

  • Houseprinters Charter. This would allow investors to buy really good synthetic house printers, then let them out for a steady lifetime income.

  • Red Tape Cull. A select number of authorised consortia will be licensed to kill – humanely and in accordance with the Human Rights Act – any local authority officer identified as a ‘carrier’ of red tape.

  • Cheers for Heroes. A housing boom is being persistently talked down at the poorer, more chaotic end of journalism. This has to stop. All media entities must now take a much more upbeat line or stand accused of hypocrisy. Please use hashtag #smilesbuildhomes.

  • Wheels Within Wheels. For too long, wheelchair users were ignored, especially during that Labour government before the last one. Now is the time to make wheelchair users even more visible by creating Wheels Within Wheels – hubs of excellence at the heart of areas of commercial opportunity, liberated from the constraints of sentimentality and wheelchair access requirements, whatever, tidy this up later.

  • Lightbulb Momentum. If Britain is to prosper it will be as a creative powerhouse. We need to pool our ideas. That’s why the government is inviting ideas – any ideas at all, from anyone at all – about how profitable housing might be built without the private sector having to bear a disproportionate burden. We look forward to lots of ideas!

  Then just put ‘Yours sincerely, The Government’ at the end or something’?

  THURSDAY Day off for tax purposes.

  FRIDAY Here we go then. Battle of the Styles on Newsnight. A lot at stake here, and Darcy and Bess have cleverly turned it into a caninefocused class war.

  First there’s a filmed piece by a sixth former in a moustache walking through Cumbernauld, explaining with archive film and classic pop music how architectural theory has been shit for decades. Back in the studio, against a collage of contemporary buildings taken from interesting angles, the BBC’s Emily Maitlis separates the combatants.

  On her left Bauhau and Spong, in what look like matching camouflage pyjamas, are already barking away. ‘Metarchitecture means looking at the whole sandwich, not just the filling!’ ‘Arch arch arch! Rough rough rough!’

  The new, very northern, Darcy remains impassive in his modest tweed suit, refusing to make eye contact with Bauhau. When it’s their go he casually consults Bess, who’s looking all calm and no-nonsense in her Cumbrian fleece and spectacles.

  ‘Aye, Bess reckons this fancy theory, this so-called metarchitecture, is just a middle-class conspiracy. You could get everyone who actually understands bloody so-called metarchitecture sat comfortably in a small community-owned pub garden with a complimentary bottle of wine between ’em. She says it’s high time architects started doing buildings that JUST LOOK NICE …’

  Spong tries to interrupt but Darcy’s unconquerable. ‘We like old buildings, right, cos they’re the best thing about t’past. We like new ’uns too cos they’re best thing about t’future. They just want to LOOK NICE.’

  He whistles. Bess does a crouching growl at Bauhau, who evacuates his bowels. Emily moves on to the crisis in Greece.

  SATURDAY Result’s still too close to call. Even Twitter is torn between ‘thickos’ and ‘poshos’.

  SUNDAY Oh NO. The Creative on Sunday has ruled that the prevailing architectural theory for the next five years will be Redactivism, devised by social commentator Emma Shoe – and Pussy Riot, her fucking CAT!

  November 1, 2012

  The Hard-Working Class

  MONDAY Sketch out some ideas for the redesign of Japan’s national stadium, using the latest thought-to-shape app, ‘Fast Mental’.

  It’s incredibly responsive. By lunchtime I’ve shape-thought a fossilised dolphin, a melting pocket-watch, a landscaped vulva, an unplumbed jacuzzi, a ball of glittering yarn, half a spermatazoon, a discus of light, cupped giant hands made of digital carbon and a translucent pancake filled with brightly coloured metaphors.

  Retire for an afternoon nap with a huge sense of achievement and a terrible headache.

  TUESDAY In the morning I moot a transcendent footbridge. In the afternoon I dream up a zero-helium mosque based on colour-coded ‘sexy mathematics’.

  Memo to Self: turn off thought-to-shape software after lunch.

  WEDNESDAY I’m impressed with the ambition of my latest architectural remodelling commission. I will be architecturally remodelling The Entir
e Notion of Social Housing for a consortium of Tory councils.

  Westminster, Kensington, Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham have formed a terrifying mega-borough of compassionate conservatism, and now it means business. This might be unwelcome news for anyone affected by issues of compassionate conservatism, but there are great opportunities for others.

  My client contact, Tish, briefs me. ‘Yah, imagine us as totes a sort of new municipal hipster-fogey developer collective? We’re keen as moutarde to revive the notion of council housing but sans that boring old baggage all held together with builder’s tape and string? I mean really: poor people? Flat caps and cigarettes, tripe and onions et cetera? Merci, non!’

  This new Transformer mega-borough certainly sounds powerful. A political ‘Optimus Prime’ representing the middle class, a community demonstrably marginalised by decades of derision and income tax.

  Now it’s payback time: the middle class getting council make this prohomes built for THEM. My task is to position seem somehow irridiculous.

  Tish isn’t helping. ‘Thing is, the housing we own’s worth two and a half BILL? Sadly, the inhabitants aren’t? At all? Look, we’re doing our best to create a culch of ambish in our boroughs? Mixed and vibrant communities, absolument, people with interesting jobs, spendy clothes wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome, adorbs? The homelesses clogging up the sys? Disappeared somewhere more in keeps with their circs, e.g. Middlesbrough, stat? But peeps gonna hate? That’s why we need new rhetty infro?’ New WHAT? ‘New rhetorical infrastructure? Laters …’

  THURSDAY Work up new rhetty infro for Megaborough Deathstar. It’s a matter of balance, I think.

  I agree ‘council housing’ sounds as old-fashioned as ‘National Health Service’. But there’s a reversible principle at stake here. Gentrification is a good thing. It accounts for roughly 92 per cent of architects’ fee income, architects are morally beyond reproach, end of story. It’s what Tish would call ‘no-brainsy’.