'Flakes'

There's a Frank Zappa song called Flakes (Sheik Yerbouti), it's about the end of the world. It's the one after the opening track, the scything critique 'I Have Been in You'. Frank was not is a genial mood for this record, he was at his best and mad as fuck; and it's now thirty five years later, he's dead, and everything is worse. California may have got the most of them (flakes) but we are catching up, we got our own little Soviet Union over here in the name of freedom and prosperity; where nothing fucking works and nobody's fussed about fixing it. James May can rant all he likes about how awful Soviet cars were, but at least they ran forever. That, in the built environment, is beginning to look like a blessing.
Of course, I am in recovery from yet another Council meeting. After many many many years of so called consultation (because that's what people want) precisely nothing has happened to refurbish our apartment block. It seems the notion of doing something correctly no longer exists (except in my imagination) It seems impossible for the authorities, if that's what they are, to engage with the notion of quality for the people; impossible. It's a disgrace, it is a world of shit. The home of liberty and we can't even fix a sink that won't spring within a day or two, or rig up a shower that wasn't even designed to work properly in the first place.
'It's a disgrace!' says the barmaid in The White Horse. She won't even let her contractors in to the house. She's  right.

Zaha vs New York Review of Books

Thankfully I'm not drowning in the technicalities of this case, and I'm certainly not going to comment on the particulars, because I don't know them (not even read it); although I do note the author has (last night) retracted. But as an interested blogger who thinks this could be a landmark issue which will soon be swept under the carpet, here's a view.
The opinion in question is contained in a review of Rowan Moore's book 'Why We Build?' With a title like that I'm assuming the book and the review might contain some thorny discussion. It is not called 'How We Build?'; it implies moral questioning.
The review is an American review of a UK writer's book. Meanwhile all sorts of International (Americanish) architectural companies go fishing for work that involves the employment of incredibly poorly paid and unorganised construction labour across the middle east where people die.
There's always one smart arse student who chirps up in my Critical Readings course; usually when discussing slavery in the Third Reich; they say that 'it's always happened!' 'Look at Ancient Egypt!' they say; 'Look at the pyramids!!'
The point is that was then and this is now. You don't get here without revolution and organised labour and human rights and all that, and as Trotsky pointed out; you cannot just append what the west's gilded do dads to essentially feudal situations without asking for trouble.
So much for globalisation then. Zaha feels singled out here, and you can imagine her being especially pissed; all of this could kind of stick in your throat- as a native Iraqi- amidst the Middle Eastern shit storm the consequence of...er...?? (ask yourselves) Especially when her practise has gone out of it's way to comment on the worker issue as opposed to remaining silent. Whether one agrees or not with Hadid director Patrik Schumacher on the subject of 'content' in architecture (an appropriately post modern view) he at least articulates it so that some of us can disagree.

Designing a House Pt2

Too big, first floor all over the place, not exactly E.1027 (not exactly anything) no water tanks, but to scale.

The Great Escape

Whilst it never felt like it when I was a boy, nor while I kept the video safe for miserable days in pre-middle age; now, when I look at The Great Escape, I see one of the most contrived pieces of patriotic bollocks you can possibly imagine; every time I hear 'Dickie' Attenborough say 'But you made me Big X!' it makes my skin crawl.
The Great Escape had more veracity than the Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare for sure, but now I prefer them. In tall tales, I should not expect authenticity. I mean look at the bike (above); it's a modified Triumph, but I'm not fussed about that, it is that whole aura of the 'playing fields of England' that gets to me. The idea of The Great Escape as propaganda, in the early sixties (!) and just like James Bond, but not James Bond, not an individual ostensibly from nowhere, but a whole load of public schoolboys placed in their own camp, with their tuck boxes (parcels) and 'Tunnel Kings' and 'Forgers'. And that the Germans are too stupid to see beyond a sudden interest in gardening or Christmas carol singing or bloody bird watching. They all seem to be playing it like children and I suspect that was the point. If you are interested in fashion you are gay, and have 'chaps' secretly working across the camp on disguises. See what I mean? It's really quite pathetic, it's also why you have to raise the American flag to create the hero, because this bunch of premature upper class twits just can't manage it. And the Scots are short, and unstable, and subservient.
Meanwhile, all credit to those guys who really did ride German trains with no idea of what they were doing or where they were. This demanded play acting on a different scale. Every time I get on a German train I think of that.

PS: Sadly I was not aware on posting this that Richard Attenborough died today. Not so much a lapse of judgement; but certainly bad timing.

Kate Bush

It is clear there are plenty of Kate Bush fans, and they are powerful enough to get there own whole evening of Bush on the TV. It was harrowing experience for most of us however, since we had to listen to them talk about how great she is over and over. Julie and I grumbled and eventually had to turn the bloody thing off, just after paying huge sums to have it put back on again (see post below) but even Scott doesn't have too much of a problem with Bush, despite her being obvious candidate for postmodernist priestess; he finds the ludicrous swirling and wailing occasionally amusing; as in Hounds of Love and the woofing. Apart from the one that goes 'Wow oh Wow oh Wow OH WOW! (deep voice)' the only number I can remember is Wuthering Heights; I must have switched myself off somehow to the global importance of Ms Bush and her feelings after that. Celebrating the absurdity of life should not really be a priority, and I certainly don't see it as a condition of femininity.
Actually, I have Bush firmly positioned in the new Victoriana as a post-pre-raphaelite. She looks that way, acts that way too, Scott, while admitting to her charms, reckoned he wouldn't be able to cope in her actual presence for more than a minute or two. And low and behold, guess who's singing her praises in the Guardian; Jeanette Winterson.
Oh well, good luck to her anyway.

The Cable Guy

The cable guy came at 8am. An hour and a bit later I gave him £180.40 and went back to bed. 'Option 4 followed by Option 5' was ringing in my head, that's life these days, option 4 followed by option 5; we offer three pre-selected sets. Christ I've heard that before, is it Archigram? Maybe I'm dreaming.
The satellite TV hadn't been working since we got back, I thought it was the old digibox. Old digibox has had it I thought, so I bought a new one off eBay, not a real new one, an old new one, that's after the Indian lady I phoned at Sky had promised me one for free that was worth £450, but I couldn't put the numbers in to my smartphone, so that was that.
Now I can watch Soviet Storm again, once I'd followed option 4 and option 5 that is.
This is fuckin' nuts.
A young girl came in for interview the other day. She had been told that architecture was about crumpling up bits of paper rather than drawing on them. On the side, she thought the inspiration for architecture came from body parts.
This is fuckin' nuts
You have to blame almost everybody who was doing anything in the eighties for what amounts to this child abuse, this dereliction of duty (including me of course) those who wanted architecture to be fun, those of us who wanted to liberate it to vaginas on sticks. We were duped by stupid french philosophy that didn't even get us laid.
Well I just don't believe it anymore, I think it sucks.

Designing a House Pt1

'I'm designing this house and I'm going to fucking build it!'

(Note: parts 2 thru 100 might get a bit trickier- but will keep you posted).