This quote is from Jonathan Glancey in today’s G2:
“It is nearly always a lovely day in Architecture World. Happy, shiny, gym-fit young people living today’s latte-fuelled urban 24-hour lifestyle, stride through sparkling, quango-approved “regeneration” utopias. In these illustrations it never rains. The wind never blows. Snow is an alien concept.” Lamenting the fact that so many architectural renderings of future developments look blandly sunny, he rightly points out that many drawings are done with the same standard bits of software so every scheme looks much of a muchness.
Structural engineers on the other hand could do with a little more sunny weather. While the architects are worrying about what the building will look like in the sunshine, engineers are more bothered about whether it will stand up in the wind. Those who are (un)lucky enough not to know about these things may like to know that a significant portion of a building’s structure is there to stop it falling over in the wind. And once the wind is catered for, the weight of a dusting of snow on the roof – by no means insignificant – has to be accomodated. And of course there is rain water to look out for, collecting under joints in steel and causing rust in hidden places, getting into cracks in the concrete and coroding the rebar or just making stuff rot. When all this is said, I quite like the sound of Architecture World.
On the subject of gym-fit people walking through these shiny utopias, I am often interested by the care that goes into choosing the people that architects put into their drawings. The people in a landscape drawing I was working from for a gallery were wearing the most skin-tight jeans (These architects were obviously certain that this project would be finished before next year by which time drain pipes will habe bewly returned to fashion’s gutter). I can imagine the meetings where architects sit around a table and work out how the people in their drawings can best represent the desing ethos of the company. I imagine Richard Rogers (Pompidou centre and Lloyds of London) proposing that the people they use have all their veins and digestive systems on the outside! On a more serious note, I do know of a project where the architects were asked by the client to remove two people from their drawings because they looked too homosexual. Doesn’t sound all that utopian to me.
Rosy
Ah Oli, I was thinking of you this morning as I drank my tea, poring over the review section of The Observer (or, as I poured my tea, drinking in the review section). Deyan Sudjic, their architecture critic, is leaving the paper to become director of the Design Museum – and so writes a retrospective this week of some of the lovely things he has seen, and why he thinks the UK ‘has seen a truly remarkable renaissance, resulting in some of the most audacious and brilliant buildings of the post-war era’:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1853974,00.html
…In particular, he remarks that ‘What makes architecture such an all-absorbing, endlessly fascinating subject to write about is that it is so intimately connected with the hard stuff of power, politics and city building. Architectural creative energy is irresistibly drawn to those places in the globe that are going through the fastest transformations. It reflects ambitious cities and individuals determined to make a mark and the birth of new economic and political systems in a sometimes-lurid glow.’
– Which I agree with, but after having spent time with you and your Civil Engineering crew, my eyes have been opened to how glibly chaps like Sudjic pass over the contributions of the engineers – as illustrated in your post today. He goes on to say ‘But to focus just on how these towers will look is to miss much of the point. What really matters is to try to understand why people would suddenly think that building tall in London is a good idea after so many years in which it seemed like exactly the opposite.’ …which would have been a good point at which to pay tribute to how things like the shard of glass will actually work. I shed a silent tear for you, Oli, and shall be campaining for a civil word to be said in your honour 🙂 Xx
marystevens
I love the new header. YES! tres cool. Juste comme toi. xx