Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Playing catch-up
Somehow I've managed not to look at City Comforts in a while. Tonight I decided to rectify that. Stuff I've learnt:
The word malfeasance.
The word obsurantist. I don't know what it means though. It doesn't help Google responds with a "did you mean...": which might actually be what was meant, but I'm not sure. Anyway, it's not good.
And I've been reminded of the wonderful word legerdemain
Where the name Samizdata comes from (ok, so I'd never bothered reading the site before, as I seem to spend my time trying not to find new must-read blogs - because the old ones still need reading, and there isn't enough time).
Ponderings on Samizdata about the Vortex [Right]. The Vortex being a new Norman Foster building to be built in London but I can't remember where - that's according to my brain's interpretation of the recent press. So in fact the Vortex is by someone who has left Foster's, and is merely an idea, a design without a site. It's an architectural concept car.
Turns out that as a revolutionary design it suffers slightly from having already been done. In Kobe. Though I can't tell if that version uses the cunning geometric features of the not-quite-Foster design. The nqF version features an apparent spiral formed of straight girders [if you want the proper name for this feature go to Samizdata or City Comforts, as I keep wanting to call it a hypothetical... when it's a hyperbolic whatever]. There must have been some news item or television programme about it, as I can visualise someone demonstrating with a glass full of drinking straws [not the bendy ones]. Think of spaghetti in a saucepan before the ends soften and it falls in.
As one of the comments points out, the Vortex is doing pretty well for promoting itself and it's designer's new practice, for an ephemeral building, based on a geometric curiosity. So, it's a hyped-up, hypothetical, hyperbola of revolution. And the betting, when it's built, someone describes it as hipnotically hip?
So... where should it go in London? Next to the Gherkin? Nope, as they'd be too obviously made from different curves. Standing alone way out west? Where out west, and I'm not sure it would actually work all that well with nothing around it. I think it would probably need the cushioning of other tall buildings, and straight vertical lines to toy with. So a cluster of bland long boxes is needed to act as the best background. Hmm, somewhere on the northern end of the Isle of Dogs sound right? Well, now that the great glass phallus has sagged into the bumpy mess of glass testicles and steel pubes [plus a cluster of stone warts], Canary Wharf could do with having something curvy to raise interest again.
And anything will be better than Will Alsop's "you know what's better than a bright yellow building? A yellow and pink building". Can't find a pic as Alsop's work site is worse to navigate than Skyscraper News [click the poppy. Alsop's site appears to blame Cesar Pelli, but Pelli's site makes no obvious mention of the building]. I can't help thinking what it will be like in 30 year's time though. Anything like those buildings of the 1960's and 70's which were clad in funky purple and blue plastic or ceramic tiles? The one which either shed their tiles (or parts of them), and so leave exposed crumbling grout and mortar, or have scuffed and faded, and generally not worn well [who'd have thought pollution would turn plastic grey and pit the surface, or that sunlight would cause it turn yellow and craze? But it looked good in the architecture magazines]
[The yellow and pink building turns out to be called Quay House, and it's on Admiral's Way, South Quay. It's not apparently on Alsop's site. But according to assorted messageboards, there's some row because it was described as being part of Canary Wharf, when it's not and the site isn't even owned by the Canary Wharf developers. I'm surprised they haven't sued yet over the use of Canary Yellow (only Alsop would think that was anything beyond a poor joke)].
[Is it anything beyond coincidence that file name for the Kobe Tower is "Kobetawa"? Which sounds a bit like a transliteration straight from English (a la Taksi [Welsh] and Guvana ya Polisi [Swahili]). Does this mean towers didn't exist before the outside world was allowed in, or is it only reserved for gaijin style buildings? Or is the similar word purely coincidence?]
A couple of other things. Discovering that the term for the clustering of habitations along a transit line [railway, motorway] is called the String of Pearls model [regardless of whether it was designed that way, or grew from the presence of the transport? (see Ashford in Kent versus the M4 corridor)].
Resource intensive suburban sprawl, or a viable response to changing demographics? The Cottage Company design and build groups of small houses. Which are very reminiscent of holiday homes, or almhouses, or a combination of the two - retirement communities, whether the formalised nursing home, or merely a coastal collection of postwar prefab huts and bungalows. The designed communities seem to mirror earlier idealised "a little bit for everyone" schemes. Unfortunately, they only seem to survive as long as market forces take no interest. When that happens neighbouring plots get bought out and blocks of flat appear in their place (if planning laws allow it), as the sites are already higher density multihabitation areas.
Part of me is sceptical (What happens when land values go up? What happens if they go down, or the community runs out of money?), part of me glad (it's very egalitarian) and part wonders if there isn't a better way (small detached houses, each with a separate services system and the inefficiency that entails. Wouldn't some other shape be better? Like a traditional block which shares walls and occasionally services. A terrace, or block of flats, or subdivided larger houses, or building cloisters and courtyards or whatever. Perhaps they would lose some privacy and insularity from their neighbours, but then the cottages are all within earshot anyway. And that only matters if the people in the community are robustly individualistic, which if they're paying $200 to ensure everyone abides by the rules, they're not going to be).
Ok, so my response to a need for many small units would probably end up in a le Corbusier type design. And we know how they turned out (in this country at least). But that's only because they didn't retain money. They were largely built as council housing schemes, and councils have a tendency to build flagships for greatest publicity. They like to be seen doing grand things. And once the grand thing is built costing more than it was expected to, the council is then trying to raise money for the next big thing. So the first building suffers continual cutbacks when there was unlikely to be enough money allotted to maintenance anyway. So the flagship is stripped back down to the utter basics, which then start developing faults. Faults can't be fixed by the council as they don't have enough money for repairs, and probably have taken out the fault monitoring and reporting system. The residents only rent their property and so think they won't gain from spending money to repair what isn't theirs. And it's into broken window syndrome. The thing looks uncared for, and each fault puts more stress on the remaining systems [broken window lets in rain, so the floor and window frame rot, and the walls get damp and mouldy, and then the plaster starts falling off. Someone comes into the building and it smells, things fall off in their hands, the floor doesn't look too secure. It gets perceived as being unsafe, and may even get classified as that. People say it's dangerous, don't go near there. So people stay away. Except for the children doing all the don'ts. Either they get injured and a lawsuit later the bulldozers and boarding comes in, or the children manage to set light to more than they meant to. One ex-building].
The more things don't work, they more they are expected not to work, and so maltreatment kicks in because there's no reason not to. What's it matter if the lift is used as a urinal if the thing is increasingly reluctant to move? If it doesn't work as a lift, what use is it to anyone? If the light bulb has blown, why's it matter if it gets smashed? And as for the rest of the bulbs getting smashed, well they always flickered anyway, and were about to break, so why difference does a few days make.
The building is condemned by resignation. What's the use, it never changes anything, nothing ever happens at all. The building passes from being unloved to despised, no-body wants to go near it. The problems are ignored, and escalate, and so become unknown. It's just bad.
And the council have a problem on their hands. Their flagship, is listing heavily to port, and they can't afford a bilge pump. If they're lucky they can reach the port of subsidies and grants. They might be able to make repairs and renovations, or they might be able to scrap this ship and get a different model.
All this because someone in the past wanted it all, and they wanted it now [well, then]. Have these people not seen that diagram of building costs, as demonstrated by Stewart Brand's book, How Buildings Learn [if you haven't read it, find a copy and do so]. The one where the initial build cost is not a big proportion of the overall cost of a building measured over its lifetime. Maintenance and renovation by far outweigh the original cost of the new building. But councils think no-one gets elected for unseen maintenance. Politicians aren't renowned for wanted to do just enough to keep the status quo [or being thought to do so].
How did I get on to this? Never mind.
new buildings could not be set back from the street, and the height of new buildings had to be no greater than existing buildings
And my goodness, whatever has happened to the BBC? It's gone like the Guardian, and put pre-watershed swearing on it's website. This is despite the likes of the Washington Post delicately skirting round the direct quote. Some how I missed the Veep [as the Americans call POTUS Junior] swearing in the Senate. He apparently said something that roughly translates into British Parliamentary speech as "with the greatest possible respect" [damn, I can't find the Yes Minister quote that explains the system]. I've also learnt that "go forth and multiply" is apparently a euphemism so this act. Is this a good point to say I've never heard it used in this context, and always assumed it was from the bible.
I agree with pretty much every commentator out there, that claiming swearing made Cheney "feel better" is one the worst possible excuses I've ever heard (though I'm not sure saying so made me feel better).
So from one outburst to ... an outbreak of lewd Braille [ta muchly Neil at GfB]. For years there have been t-shirts with suggestive slogans (suggestive in this context includes outright commands). Well now there's slogans in Braille. So how exactly does one read those? Oh, I get it now. Presumably they get misread on cold days.
So how long before FCUK nick the idea?
Oh dear. And, of course, there is no way of mocking up Braille using characters [guess who wanted to use a series of colons and full stops to spell out "fuck yourself". Strange that Cheney dispensed with the usual preceding "go"].
Anyhoo,
Somehow I've managed not to look at City Comforts in a while. Tonight I decided to rectify that. Stuff I've learnt:
The word malfeasance.
The word obsurantist. I don't know what it means though. It doesn't help Google responds with a "did you mean...": which might actually be what was meant, but I'm not sure. Anyway, it's not good.
And I've been reminded of the wonderful word legerdemain
Where the name Samizdata comes from (ok, so I'd never bothered reading the site before, as I seem to spend my time trying not to find new must-read blogs - because the old ones still need reading, and there isn't enough time).
Ponderings on Samizdata about the Vortex [Right]. The Vortex being a new Norman Foster building to be built in London but I can't remember where - that's according to my brain's interpretation of the recent press. So in fact the Vortex is by someone who has left Foster's, and is merely an idea, a design without a site. It's an architectural concept car.
Turns out that as a revolutionary design it suffers slightly from having already been done. In Kobe. Though I can't tell if that version uses the cunning geometric features of the not-quite-Foster design. The nqF version features an apparent spiral formed of straight girders [if you want the proper name for this feature go to Samizdata or City Comforts, as I keep wanting to call it a hypothetical... when it's a hyperbolic whatever]. There must have been some news item or television programme about it, as I can visualise someone demonstrating with a glass full of drinking straws [not the bendy ones]. Think of spaghetti in a saucepan before the ends soften and it falls in.
As one of the comments points out, the Vortex is doing pretty well for promoting itself and it's designer's new practice, for an ephemeral building, based on a geometric curiosity. So, it's a hyped-up, hypothetical, hyperbola of revolution. And the betting, when it's built, someone describes it as hipnotically hip?
So... where should it go in London? Next to the Gherkin? Nope, as they'd be too obviously made from different curves. Standing alone way out west? Where out west, and I'm not sure it would actually work all that well with nothing around it. I think it would probably need the cushioning of other tall buildings, and straight vertical lines to toy with. So a cluster of bland long boxes is needed to act as the best background. Hmm, somewhere on the northern end of the Isle of Dogs sound right? Well, now that the great glass phallus has sagged into the bumpy mess of glass testicles and steel pubes [plus a cluster of stone warts], Canary Wharf could do with having something curvy to raise interest again.
And anything will be better than Will Alsop's "you know what's better than a bright yellow building? A yellow and pink building". Can't find a pic as Alsop's work site is worse to navigate than Skyscraper News [click the poppy. Alsop's site appears to blame Cesar Pelli, but Pelli's site makes no obvious mention of the building]. I can't help thinking what it will be like in 30 year's time though. Anything like those buildings of the 1960's and 70's which were clad in funky purple and blue plastic or ceramic tiles? The one which either shed their tiles (or parts of them), and so leave exposed crumbling grout and mortar, or have scuffed and faded, and generally not worn well [who'd have thought pollution would turn plastic grey and pit the surface, or that sunlight would cause it turn yellow and craze? But it looked good in the architecture magazines]
[The yellow and pink building turns out to be called Quay House, and it's on Admiral's Way, South Quay. It's not apparently on Alsop's site. But according to assorted messageboards, there's some row because it was described as being part of Canary Wharf, when it's not and the site isn't even owned by the Canary Wharf developers. I'm surprised they haven't sued yet over the use of Canary Yellow (only Alsop would think that was anything beyond a poor joke)].
[Is it anything beyond coincidence that file name for the Kobe Tower is "Kobetawa"? Which sounds a bit like a transliteration straight from English (a la Taksi [Welsh] and Guvana ya Polisi [Swahili]). Does this mean towers didn't exist before the outside world was allowed in, or is it only reserved for gaijin style buildings? Or is the similar word purely coincidence?]
A couple of other things. Discovering that the term for the clustering of habitations along a transit line [railway, motorway] is called the String of Pearls model [regardless of whether it was designed that way, or grew from the presence of the transport? (see Ashford in Kent versus the M4 corridor)].
Resource intensive suburban sprawl, or a viable response to changing demographics? The Cottage Company design and build groups of small houses. Which are very reminiscent of holiday homes, or almhouses, or a combination of the two - retirement communities, whether the formalised nursing home, or merely a coastal collection of postwar prefab huts and bungalows. The designed communities seem to mirror earlier idealised "a little bit for everyone" schemes. Unfortunately, they only seem to survive as long as market forces take no interest. When that happens neighbouring plots get bought out and blocks of flat appear in their place (if planning laws allow it), as the sites are already higher density multihabitation areas.
Part of me is sceptical (What happens when land values go up? What happens if they go down, or the community runs out of money?), part of me glad (it's very egalitarian) and part wonders if there isn't a better way (small detached houses, each with a separate services system and the inefficiency that entails. Wouldn't some other shape be better? Like a traditional block which shares walls and occasionally services. A terrace, or block of flats, or subdivided larger houses, or building cloisters and courtyards or whatever. Perhaps they would lose some privacy and insularity from their neighbours, but then the cottages are all within earshot anyway. And that only matters if the people in the community are robustly individualistic, which if they're paying $200 to ensure everyone abides by the rules, they're not going to be).
Ok, so my response to a need for many small units would probably end up in a le Corbusier type design. And we know how they turned out (in this country at least). But that's only because they didn't retain money. They were largely built as council housing schemes, and councils have a tendency to build flagships for greatest publicity. They like to be seen doing grand things. And once the grand thing is built costing more than it was expected to, the council is then trying to raise money for the next big thing. So the first building suffers continual cutbacks when there was unlikely to be enough money allotted to maintenance anyway. So the flagship is stripped back down to the utter basics, which then start developing faults. Faults can't be fixed by the council as they don't have enough money for repairs, and probably have taken out the fault monitoring and reporting system. The residents only rent their property and so think they won't gain from spending money to repair what isn't theirs. And it's into broken window syndrome. The thing looks uncared for, and each fault puts more stress on the remaining systems [broken window lets in rain, so the floor and window frame rot, and the walls get damp and mouldy, and then the plaster starts falling off. Someone comes into the building and it smells, things fall off in their hands, the floor doesn't look too secure. It gets perceived as being unsafe, and may even get classified as that. People say it's dangerous, don't go near there. So people stay away. Except for the children doing all the don'ts. Either they get injured and a lawsuit later the bulldozers and boarding comes in, or the children manage to set light to more than they meant to. One ex-building].
The more things don't work, they more they are expected not to work, and so maltreatment kicks in because there's no reason not to. What's it matter if the lift is used as a urinal if the thing is increasingly reluctant to move? If it doesn't work as a lift, what use is it to anyone? If the light bulb has blown, why's it matter if it gets smashed? And as for the rest of the bulbs getting smashed, well they always flickered anyway, and were about to break, so why difference does a few days make.
The building is condemned by resignation. What's the use, it never changes anything, nothing ever happens at all. The building passes from being unloved to despised, no-body wants to go near it. The problems are ignored, and escalate, and so become unknown. It's just bad.
And the council have a problem on their hands. Their flagship, is listing heavily to port, and they can't afford a bilge pump. If they're lucky they can reach the port of subsidies and grants. They might be able to make repairs and renovations, or they might be able to scrap this ship and get a different model.
All this because someone in the past wanted it all, and they wanted it now [well, then]. Have these people not seen that diagram of building costs, as demonstrated by Stewart Brand's book, How Buildings Learn [if you haven't read it, find a copy and do so]. The one where the initial build cost is not a big proportion of the overall cost of a building measured over its lifetime. Maintenance and renovation by far outweigh the original cost of the new building. But councils think no-one gets elected for unseen maintenance. Politicians aren't renowned for wanted to do just enough to keep the status quo [or being thought to do so].
How did I get on to this? Never mind.
new buildings could not be set back from the street, and the height of new buildings had to be no greater than existing buildings
And my goodness, whatever has happened to the BBC? It's gone like the Guardian, and put pre-watershed swearing on it's website. This is despite the likes of the Washington Post delicately skirting round the direct quote. Some how I missed the Veep [as the Americans call POTUS Junior] swearing in the Senate. He apparently said something that roughly translates into British Parliamentary speech as "with the greatest possible respect" [damn, I can't find the Yes Minister quote that explains the system]. I've also learnt that "go forth and multiply" is apparently a euphemism so this act. Is this a good point to say I've never heard it used in this context, and always assumed it was from the bible.
I agree with pretty much every commentator out there, that claiming swearing made Cheney "feel better" is one the worst possible excuses I've ever heard (though I'm not sure saying so made me feel better).
So from one outburst to ... an outbreak of lewd Braille [ta muchly Neil at GfB]. For years there have been t-shirts with suggestive slogans (suggestive in this context includes outright commands). Well now there's slogans in Braille. So how exactly does one read those? Oh, I get it now. Presumably they get misread on cold days.
So how long before FCUK nick the idea?
Oh dear. And, of course, there is no way of mocking up Braille using characters [guess who wanted to use a series of colons and full stops to spell out "fuck yourself". Strange that Cheney dispensed with the usual preceding "go"].
Anyhoo,
"lewd", "suggestive" and "fuck yourself" all in the same post? You're getting the hang of this "how to get more hits from search engines" idea aren't you?
Neil, I once made the mistake of talking about nepotism, spam and my Texan aunt, in the same post.
Whatever you do, never include the words Texas, incestuous and porn in the same entry. (Some of the search engine hits went into a bit too much detail).
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Whatever you do, never include the words Texas, incestuous and porn in the same entry. (Some of the search engine hits went into a bit too much detail).
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