T&C – Page 9 – wandering architects

hadrian's wall

At the end of October we combined work, travel and family with a quick little jaunt down to Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England.

In particular we visited Housesteads Roman Fort, the new visitor experience for which should be keeping me occupied for the forseable future. We met my cousin Celia escaping from her purgatory in Leeds for the day, and despite the less than appealing weather managed to get up the hill to the fort itself.

The fort was a little underwhelming (definitely in need of its new facilities), apart from the uk’s best preserved roman loos (top) but we had a great lunch from a local pub, with an amazing selection of pies on the menu, and the whin sill scenery (above) was stunning if a little less dramatic than the Scottish highlands.

robert forster & the tennents mutual launch

tennents mutual

A mad Saturday catching Robert Forster of the Go Betweens fame , in an epic (and early) performance at local venue Oran Mor. His new albumn is excellent and for some reason we had been listening to the back catalogue in the last few months and the live set didn’t let us down.

Emerging just after 10 pm a feeling a little bored we popped into town for the opening of the Tryptich replacing Tennant Mutual ‘concept’ at the ever interesting CCA. Findo Gask were the highlight with their exuberant electro-rock.

venice

out there

My new office kindly took us all to Venice for a weekend to witness the opening of the 11th Venice Architectural Biennale, in particular the opening party for the GHA designed Scottish Pavilion. I had nothing to do with it as it had all happened before I joined the practice but was kindly taken along for the ride, and Chhay joined us along with a solid contingent of WaG’s (and not forgetting the HaB’s too!)

I was excited to visit Venice for the first time despite the tourist mecca that it is renowned to be. The combination of lots of boats, windy lanes and Italian architecture is too close to my heart to ignore. Our explorations of the maze of alleyways was limited by torrential rain on the Saturday, which we spent tucked in another of my ideal urban ingredients – a tiny corner bar open to the street and plastic bag clad masses.

Sunday proved to be a little drier so we packed an architectural meg day, starting in the national pavilions in the Giardini before a hyperspeed tour of the architectural (or sculptural really) delights of the Arsenale, where the starchitects had come out to play – with swoopy, eye candy from the likes of Zaha and Frank.

Highlights were the Belgian pavilion filled only with tonnes of confetti in an exploration of emptiness, the indescribably beautiful pencil drawings on the walls of the Japanese pavilions and the mind numbing, literally disorientating saturation of ideas bursting out of the Italian pavilion.

Naturally a weekend was not even close to enough time to explore it all, and the next biennale may provide the perfect excuse to return in a few years time!

edinburgh art

jc & gbm @ fruitmarket

Apologies for the long break in posting – a couple a big submissions at work combined with excessive watching of ‘The Wire’ have left me with limited time at the computer. Will be summarising quite a bit in the next few posts so don’t expect too much detail.

We missed most the Edinburgh festival season this year as we were away in France but did sneak over on the last weekend in August to catch a couple of art exhibitions still running.

Initially we got up close and personal with Tracey Emmin’s personal effects at her first retrospective at Modern Art Gallery, a lot of her stuff was quite moving, although the tapestries were a little difficult to interpret.

We then caught Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller‘s fantastic show at the Fruitmarket Gallery, beautifully whimsical, the animatronic, interactive, sensory, soundscapes were magical, and even if they are one trick ponies as cityofsound alludes is his review of their show in Sydney – it is a damn fine trick!

annoch eogoch ridge

Episode 3 of my mountain goat adventures took us to the challenging north ridge of Glen Coe – one of the best ridge walks in Scotland and topped in difficulty by on the Cuillin Ridge in Skye.

Thankfully dDespite low cloud cover the weather stayed dry, as I think I might have been out of my comfort zone if it had rained. As it was there was some fairly hairy scrambles up and down craggy chutes of rock, but the views and sense of accomplishment at the end were properly exhilirating.

basque country

Apologies for the serious lack of posts – I have a tender due out in a couple of weeks and we have been quite busy.

Reaching back into the depths of August we had a fantastic week in the south of France to celebrate the 30th birthday of our friend (and early introducer to all things Glaswegian) Nathalie. It appears that much like kiddies parties which are all bouncy castles and hired entertainers, the requirements for 30ths are escalating somewhat – we met someone on the weekend who is hiring a Scotish castle for his!

In any case a dozen of us had a fantastic time in Nathalie’s parents village having rented an enormous house for the week. Our days centred on wine, cheese & ham with the occasional effort to get out of a hammock and check out the surrounding countryside, wineries, mountains or the Basque coast at St Jean-de-Luz and Biaritz for seafood and sunsets (above).

Even getting there was quite fun as we tested the limits of the Europe by rail approach with an epic 14 hour trip right through from Glasgow to almost the spanish border in one day on the way there, with a more lesiurely sleeper to Paris, a days traipsing about and an afternoon train home on the way back. A highly reccomended way to travel with minimal security, delicious picnics and free wi-fi (for the UK leg in any case) making for a much more dignified mode of transport (and in this case it was even cheaper than flying!).

a sunny day in glasgow…never

a sunny day in glasgow t-shirt

On possibly the wettest night of an exceptionally wet summer we popped into Nice’n’Sleazy’s to catch friends of the Zebra’s Je Suis Animal, whom we had missed at indietracks. We were expecting twee scandinavian pop (and them to be headlining) but instead walked in toward the end of their interesting somewhat noisy set. They were followed by solid local boys Wake the President before the proper headline act: A Sunny Day in Glasgow hailing perhaps from one of the ten versions of our current home town in the US of A. They were quite delightful if sometimes a little erratic, however definitely not as rare a sound as their eponymous event in scotland.

indietracks

In amongst a hectic six weeks in July & August we managed a road trip to Derbyshire for possibly the most obscure of the packed British summer festival circuit. Called indietracks were were there to catch up with our friend Katie – now member of Melbourne based popsters the Zebras. The low profile of the event made for a blissfully relaxing weekend, chilling out on grassy slopes in bright sunshine while esoteric lo-fi indie pop entertained us. Not a queue for anything and no sign of the mess and nutters that ruin most festivals, we even managed to catch a gig in the goods wagon of the steam trains that puffed there way through the site periodically.

On our way home we took the scenic route through the Pennines for some delightful and very English countryside (complete with cricket game on the village green).

london in the summertime

We snuck down to London for the first time in over year at the end of July, to see friends, catch the tail end of the London Festival of Architecture, visit a few galleries and generally see London in summer for the first time.

It was a great weekend, we popped by the just opened Serpentine Pavillion by Frank Gehry (above), although we couldn’t get in because of a fancy pants party, as well spending a fantastic half a day in the Psycho Buildings exhibition at the awesomely brutalist Hayward Gallery. I suppose it was to be expected given our profession but the artists interpreting architecture lent itself to some absolutely brilliant pieces in my opinion – including a spooky dolls house city by Rachael Whiteread a surreal frozen explosion by the Cubans Los Carpinteros and the chance to paddle about on the roof of the gallery courtesy of Gelitin’s Normally, Proceeding and unrestricted without title (below)

We caught up with old friends and farewelled some too, there aren’t many Australians left it seems. We had time to more fully explore the east end of the city wandering about the hipster paradised of Hoxton & Shoreditch, getting our fill of vietnamese (as we can’t find any in Glasgow) and trying out the eco-friendly Waterhouse – which in it’s suitable obscure location served up excellent fare although I was skeptical about prawns flown in from Thailand irrespective of the sustainability of their production.

little sparta

On another quiet weekend this month we spent a pleasant Sunday investigating Ian Hamilton-Findlay’s Little Sparta garden. On a par with Charles Jencks Garden of Cosmic Speculation in terms of influence in the landscape art world it is on a much smaller more intimate scale and while it has intriging moments I found it less compelling.

On our way home we stopped in to our friends parent’s house in Leadhills (the 2nd highest village in Scotland) and had a fantastic foursies in their garden – which it turned out had almost as much to offer as Little Sparta.