wandering architects
With a rare combination of sunshine and an early rise we explored more of the Forth & Clyde canal on our first weekend back this year. Winding through the somewhat seedy industrial past of Maryhill (below), through the less than salubrious Possil – avoiding some of its more famous residents – we made it past the outskirts of Glasgow to Possil Marsh before in true Scottish walking tradition the weather turned nasty hastening our retreat.
Sorry for the absence – Chhay has been hogging the ‘puter looking up real estate as our landlord is selling our fabulous flat 🙁
To recount, a brace of Chhay’s french relatives popped over across the new year to briefly take in the delights of Glasgow and the heady atmosphere of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay.
On a damp and gloomy day we did an extensive walking tour of Glasgow, including Chhay’s first visit to Glasgow uni (below) which dominates the view from our windows.
Hogmenay was as I expected, busy damp and and a little bit dull (especially as I was driving). We did catch a rather drunken set from King Creosote who we had been meaning to see for a while, but apart from that and the fireworks the evening mainly seemed to consist of queuing in the rain. Once we got back to Glasgow we had much more fun blethering over our friends kitchen table till the early hours of the morning.
While the weather is rarely accommodating Scots are definitely up for a party for Hogmanay – even as we were leaving at rather too close to 5 o’clock in the morning on New Year’s Day there were several parties still going strong in the neighbourhood.
Our only small escape over the Christmas break was for a couple of days to Dunoon – a small former seaside holiday town on the Firth of Clyde very similar to Rothesay (including being home to a new jmarchitects school).
We stayed at a colleague’s little cottage in a village called Sandbank on the outskirts of town and despite fairly awful weather managed a couple of walks along Holy Loch (above) through Puck’s Glen (below) to the local botanic gardens.
We had a few hours wandering around the town centre (especially when we missed the ferry back) but for some strange reason struggled to find the usually ubiquitous fish & chips anywhere!
Continuing our partyish season up to Christmas, our friends Mike & Emma took us all to catch up on the famous Christmas tale ‘It’s A Wonderful Life”, which by some quirky twist of fate (or general avoiding of Christmas movies) none of us had seen before. Our favourite movie watching institution the GFT (Glasgow Film Theatre) puts this 1946 movie on every day for at least two weeks, every Christmas!
In the final wash it was great – slapping on the sentimentality layer by layer, with not a dry eye in the house by the end. Although aparently having seen it 10 time previously, as most of the audience seemed to have done, only increases the effect.
We followed the movie with a choice discovery of a fantastic new basque restaurant called Pintxos in supposed new dining hotspot of Thornwood (I couldn’t acutually see anything else open at the time), before chilling out in front of a roaring fire at Mike’s sisters Christmas party at her fantastic new house in the somewhat gritty southern suburb of Govan.
Apologies for the lack of posts – I haven’t actually been busy just never got around to posting while relaxing through the break. A few catch up posts from before Christmas should follow this one.
Having kicked off our 12 parties of Christmas season with our hall party we followed up with a much milder event – dodging the hordes of neds while circumnavigating one of George Square’s many statues on ice. Imbued with mulled wine and heartened by clear skies it was great fun circling the Scott Monument for half an hour despite the crappy ice and packed arena.
Our whole apartment block (all three of us anyway) teamed up for a fun party in our slightly opulent entrance hall last Friday. A (mildly illegal) open fire, strong mulled wine and the odd drape of tinsel created a great atmosphere that lasted until only slightly later than expected (the 6:30 am bedtime certainly wasn’t planned).
Our friend Jamie Flett performed an impromtu set accompanied by only the crackling of the fire, there was doric incantations, and even slightly surreal ‘ninja rug’ bouts introduced by our downstairs neighbours – was a great way to end the year aND fun to combine with every one else in our building!
While it might be possible to hold an outdoor festival in the middle of winter in benign Byron Bay, surely festival season has wrapped up months ago here in the UK. Not so fast however however – there is a solution – the ultimate in family holiday fun – Butlins Holiday Camps and the kind folks at All Tomorrow’s Parties & Portishead to the rescue.
It was time for a road trip, destination – deepest darkest Somerset, with a pile of CD’s, hire care and a map of Britain that filled the windscreen it was a seven hour trip from Glasvegas via the M6 & M5.
We broke our trip with morning tea in Birmingham in the basement of the funky Future Systems‘ Selfridges (above), and watched the sun set with a homage at Portishead harbour (below).
As the band named after the town were curating the festival it seemed that most of the acts were either – bands from Bristol or on Portishead member Geoff Barrow’s Invada Records label. Portishead themselves played both Friday & Saturday nights – we saw their second set – very laid back and polished with many of their new tracks thrown in.
Other headliners Julian Cope and Aphex Twin were more of a mixed bag. Julian Cope was entertaining with his motley crew of bikers and ended his set with a garrulous five minute rant. Aphex also played twice and we saw parts of both sets – they were a little commercial and not eclectic enough for my taste.
Our highlights for what they’re worth were:
Chrome Hoof – the new genre of doom disco spearheaded by this ten piece multi-instrumental silver lame clad outfit is heading your way – either dance or duck!
Autolux – artful poppy noise from LA, with some beautiful drumming courtesy of the female drummers loose style (and perhaps her bionic elbow?) – great website too.
Fuck Buttons – danceable electro laptop beats from – you guessed it Bristol – these guys were so good early on that they were put on again to close the event.
Overall the concept for the festival works brilliantly – the crazy circus tent covered ‘street’ that spans between venues, bars and tacky amusement arcades (below) creates a very civilised festival atmosphere (complete with people picnicking on the ‘grass’ coloured carpet!). Achingly cool hipsters wandering around in such a searingly cheesy setting further enhances the surreal impression. And the cabin accommodation in endless barrack style rows is a very pleasant step up from the usual tented quagmire that accompanies summer festivals.
Our sleepy journey home was broken only by a quick visit to Bristol where we took in Clifton and its famous suspension bridge (below) before hightailing back along the motorway.
There is a great exhibition at Glasgow’s kewl Lighthouse Centre for Architecture, Design + the City – Scotland and the Mackintosh School of Architecture’s favourite modernists Gillespie Kidd & Coia. Some beautiful brutal poetic post war architecture – and yes some crap leaky grey boxes. Their churches are definitely worth looking at for any architects out there (we actually have a great example around the corner from our place) and the abandoned St Peter’s Seminary at Cardross is amazing – we have yet to (illegally) visit but it is high on our to-do list.
It was also good to see where all the Mac trained architects are coming from as the two principals of GK&C ran the school for about twenty years influencing many of the current crop of Glasgow architects.
While we tried to keep our usual architouring to a minimum to avoid totally ruining our friends holiday we did manage to sneak in a few select gems on our trip.
In New York firstly I was a little disappointed with the new MoMA – I felt it lacked coherence and any clear rationale. There were some interesting spaces, particularly the main sculpture hall (above) – animated by people circulating through the gallery but the exhibition rooms themselves were fairly bland (ok maybe it should be about the art).
PS 1 in Queens (above) was a much more interesting space – situated in an old Primary School the only real architectural intervention is the wall at the front creating a serene courtyard, the interiors still feel like the kids only left yesterday (although the standard of their finger painting was pretty high). At times it was eerily like Toul Sleng in Pnom Penh – quiet neglected corridors filled with evocative imagery.
On our final day in New York Chhay & I snuck off for some more focused architectural voyeurism. We started with the new New Museum by SANAA (above) which was only days away from completion and looking fantastic – an ethereal series of stacked boxes, at once gritty and urban in the Bowery context yet at the same time light and delicate. The cladding of galvanised mesh over fibre cement was so utilitarian yet diaphanous – a true delight. It was a pity we missed the opening as would like to experience the interior of one of their buildings.
We followed that with a visit to a tired looking yet still successful Storefront for Art & Architecture (above). They had an exhibition of new Danish work including a lot of work by BIG, a firm that should we ever end up in Denmark I would love to work for – I really enjoy their playful yet well researched approach. Staying in the same area we had a rather damp look at some of the new ‘starchitect’ apartment blocks in SoHo – Nouvel’s 40 Mercer (below) & Herzog & DeMeuron’s 40 Bond, all very glam but fairly restrained overall, apart from the lower level cladding of H & DeM’s baby.
With the weather getting steadily worse we abandoned any attempt to see more buildings and legged it to diller + scorfidio’s The Brasserie (below) where we seriously lowered the tone – especially once we realised that cocktails were half price!
Once in San Francsico we were in capable hands with our hosts interest in architecture.
As I mentioned previously the Federal Building by Thom Mayne (below + top) was our first stop. Although it is quite brutally inserted into its 3-4 storey context the level of detailing and polish is amazing. There may be a little too much going on for some tastes but it was one of the best high rise office buildings I have encountered. Unfortunately it was a Sunday so we couldn’t get inside (I’m not sure we would have been allowed in even if it was open).
The other major contemporary San Franciscan building is of course the new DeYoung Museum by our old friends Herzog & DeMeuron (below). It occupies a slightly surreal setting in the Golden Gate Park next to the Academy of Sciences sporting some new Martian looking green roofed domes – part of a Renzo Piano renovation.
The detailing by the swiss is fantastic throughout although the entrance to the museum is very understated. The perforated copper cladding refracts the light in different ways depending on the varying apertures of the perforation, and the screened twisting tower sneaks in between mature trees providing great views of the park. Once inside light is brought in through glazed gardens with minimalist eucalyptus softening the light.
On our final night we managed to tick another Phaidon Atlas building off our list somewhat unintentionally. James took us to an art gallery opening which happened to be in a fantastic apartment in the Yerba Buena Lofts complex by Saitowitz Natoma. Although we only saw it at night it is a magnificent sleek concrete box with projections and recesses forming balconies and creating varied double height spaces in the apartments – it gave me plenty of food for thought for shaking up multi-res design here is Scotland – so much of it poky and unimaginative.
Interpol played Glasgow last night – giving us our first taste of the Carling Academy – which part from being named after an awful beer (think the West End Institute for any South Australians) is actually an impressive converted former cinema. We were up in the seated balcony area though – so although the sound was great and the trendy New Yorkers produced an extremely polished sound from a very fancy set including some really cool screens that appeared to be totally two-dimensional – it didn’t quite capture the atmosphere of the last time we saw them. Then we had waited for close to three hours at the front of a packed and sweaty Splendour in the Grass tent (including watching the Beautiful Girls – an endurance test for Chhay). However their set list included plenty of classic tunes which had us rocking ever so politely in the aisles.