Category: London and Paris

Hello St.Pancras

For all the publicity in London about the opening of the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, passengers leaving Paris on its inaugural day wouldn’t have been any the wiser. The lack of Parisian interest in the new London terminal was underlined by the ticket prices: while it would have cost me over £100 to book a place on a train leaving St.Pancras that day, the cost of a ticket in the other direction was just £29! I can forgive the lack of excitement from that end of the line however. When it comes to high speed train networks, France’s is in its late twenties whilst Britain’s is still teething.

Until yesterday, once the tunnel had been crossed and England reached, passengers were treated to a short stretch of tantalizing high-speed rail (the first part of the new link has been in use for some time now) before the trains slowed to a dismal trundle on the old line. Well, no more. Unfortunately it was dark so I did not get to see all that pristine Kent countryside that had seen routes for the line changed so many times. Before I knew it, a tunnel under the Thames, then we appeared to be over-ground and then back under again. We popped up for air again at what I guess was the building site for Stratford International before tunneling our way under North London. I remember five years ago a friend of mine living in Highbury had complained of rumbling under his basement flat for a period of about a week or so. He found out, from the council I believe, that those noises had been the tunnel digging machines digging those very tunnels that I was zooming through significantly faster.

The train popped of the ground one last time and we were cruising into the magnificently lit train station. Words do not do justice to what an amazing site the new station is. Passengers off the train for the first time on these platforms walked in eerie gob-smacked silence. The train shed, with its arches of ‘heritage Barlow blue’ which soar over the tracks to support 18 000 panes of self cleaning glass, makes for quite a destination. Indeed there were plenty of people there who had just come for the opening. At the end of the platforms they posed for photos beneath the 9m tall sculpture of a couple kissing. Europe’s longest champagne bar was not long enough to accommodate the masses who came to toast the new station.

I was grabbed for an interview by BBC Radio London who were broadcasting live from the concourse. I think I ticked a few of their boxes: not only had I just stepped off a train from Paris, but I was an enthusing engineer (and, as a bonus, someone whose father had arranged the medley of French songs played that afternoon by the LSO Brass section as part of the opening celebrations). On air, I was asked about how long it must have taken to paint the roof, a question to which I had no answer but assured them that it must take less time than that for the Forth Rail Bridge.

For me, St Pancras represents the first completed major engineering project university colleagues of mine have been involved with during their summer placements. St Pancras celebrates the engineering of a bygone era, is a fine example of how old can become new, and puts international rail travel back into the national consciousness. Not a bad start!

November 18, 2007
Au revoir Waterloo

Last Tuesday evening I bid farewell to Waterloo International, the last day that Eurostar will serve this station before it transfers to St Pancras ‘in the (other) heart of London’. Before I even arrived I had fears that the Eurostar staff had packed up and gone as all the signs directing travelers from the Underground up to the terminal had already been whited out. How wrong I was. I arrived on the main station concourse to the sound of live music and the sight of dazzling lights. In the sunken entrance level to the Eurostar terminal, a stage had been set up and a band were playing, none too aptly, “Waterloo Sunset”.

I am happy to admit that I am a station spotter and have long been. It is cooler than being a train spotter as you get to talk about architecture, your subject doesn’t move so you don’t have to stand their waiting for it, there are plenty of food shops so no packed lunches required, and you can wear any clothes you like. This last advantage makes the station spotter hard to spot. I have blended in all these years and have simply thought that I was alone in my pursuit, unaware that other station spotters were all around me. That is until that evening when they showed their true colours and, in droves, they headed down to Waterloo International to wish it farewell.

The police had crowd control measures in place to stop people pushing into the sunken entrance area. If your name wasn’t on the list (read, if you didn’t have a ticket) you weren’t getting in. By the time I got in, the show was wrapping up, leaving only video footage of the new station projected onto the wall. It felt like mass train station hysteria; one woman had a tear in her eye. Staff stood around beaming, journalists were interviewing. With all the publicity for the new St. Pancras terminal, international train travel has recaptured the public’s imagination. But from this train station 81,891,738 travelers over the last thirteen years have already trained it, internationally. And so one can understand people being sad to see it go.

But go where exactly? It is all very well to wish a station farewell but it is not going anywhere. What are they going to do with it? Scuttle it? The plan as I understand it is to make the platforms available for comunter trains to use. But what of the long arrival and departure concourses? When I was twelve or so, I saw an architectural model of the terminal with it’s snake-like blue roof. It is hard to believe that this structure will now lie largely obsolete.

The party was over on the other side of security (the real bouncers). The place has felt tatty for a while now. I can’t imagine the maintenance budget has been kept up in recent months. Shops lay half empty of stock which was annoying as I badly wanted an adaptor. There were girls handing out free cake. Just like at the end of a party.

The squashed arch roof of the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin

I rode the escalator up to the platforms beneath their wonderful blue roof. This Grimshaw structure arches over the three platforms. Like that of the Hauptbahnhof (photo above) in Berlin the curving roof is made from a squashed arch which means that the roof in both Waterloo and at the Hauptbahnhof can cover the tracks without having to rise to high. By contrast the un-squashed arch of St Pancras’ roof soars high above the cityscape. Squashing the arch induces bending in the structure. In both cases the structure follows the exact form of the bending moment diagram giving a very pure structural aesthetic. At the Hauptbahnhof the arch is four-pinned and symmetric. At Waterloo, the designers chopped a third off this symmetric arch, giving it its asymmetric shape.

With the fanfare far behind, I boarded the train and as we pulled out was reminded that it was not the station that was the problem but the line. As the train bumps through Vauxhall, the carriages bottom-out their suspension. We creaked round a sharp left turn and then screeched through Brixton, presumably deafening those on the platform. By Herne Hill, the train slowed further to skateboard speed. However, after forty minutes of this bumping and grinding, a reminder of what the new route will bring, as the the Eurostar joins the already-open section of high speed track and accelerates towards France.

And so Waterloo must close. I am sure that station spotters such as myself will get over it soon enough. The start of services to St Pancras, for example, might offer a suitable distraction. With this opening I am certain that a whole new generation of station spotters will be inspired into being

November 18, 2007
Finishing my course – travelling to Iran by train

Since my last post, I have been rather busy! The lack of posts on this blog since then can be attributed in part to the large amount of work my final year project has required in order to get it finished. The project has changed direction many times along the way and even the end point of the project had not been set until my final week at the company where I had my placement. But as of Friday it has all been wrapped up.

But it hasn’t all been work. In between we have managed visits to Brittany’s gale-force wind-lashed coast, Bratislava and Alsace as well as to marriages in the UK and Madrid.

And now the summer beckons. My plan is to travel with a friend from Paris to Iran and back by train. The route takes me from Paris via Strasbourg to Zurich and then overnight to Zagreb and then Belgrade. The next leg from Belgrade through Macedonia brings me to northern Greece on the second day. After a couple of days rest, the overnight train takes me to Istanbul where I will be meeting Dan for our onward journey across the Bosporous and into Asia. The direct train from Istanbul to Tehran takes three days. After two days crossing Turkey, the train reaches lake Van in the east of the country where we must board a boat across to the other shore where we pick up the train again down to the Iranian capital.

Once in Iran, we will spend three weeks visiting the major cities of Tehran, Isphahan, Shiraz, Yazd and Mashad before heading back along the Caspian Sea coast back into Turkey and back along the Black Sea coast to Istanbul and back through Europe.

So many people have asked me why Iran? The trip itself is the end product of an itinerary that looked very different at the beginning of the year. But my interest in Iran is manyfold. All I have read about the country tells me that it is a beautiful place with some unmissable places to visit. Iranian friends I have told about the visit are at pains to emphasise just how well we will be welcomed. And yet, this impression of the country is a far cry from that held by those who rely on western media for any ideas about the country. This difference in points of view is one of the reasons that I want to go to Iran and experience the country and its hospitality myself.

And why go by train? Well, apart from the enormous carbon footprint associated with flying, I find it hard to imagine going by any other means. The journey from Europe to Iran by land is one that dates back to the silk route. Travelling by land is a way of feeling physically connected to a land that in the press feels far away. Ok, so six days of travel is not exactly close, but these trains do go slowly! And I am looking forward to seeing how the landscape, climate, architecture, people and language change along the way. Flying can’t give you that.

I am also lucky that I have the time to make such a journey. The website seat61 and Thomas Cook international rail timetable are in part responsible for my choosing this route. It also turns out that I am taking the same route as that described in Paul Theroux’s Great Railway Bazaar in which he describes his journey to and from Singapore by train. He made his journey in the 1970s. Since then, a lot has changed along his route, and I look forward to comparing notes.

I will be writing up my journey on this website upon my return, and will be publishing it on this blog.

July 31, 2007
Metro entrance – TGV promotion on stilts

Going home from work is always such a pleasure when it’s such a beautiful day…

On my way home through Gare de Lyon I saw three stilt walkers dancing avant-garde style to music played by a live saxophonist. They were all wearing green and white clothes, the colours of the new TGV est eurpoéen. I really wish I could have been at the marketing meeting when they came up with this idea.

May 4, 2007
Things to do in Paris ⋕1: Go to Lyon

This Monday I did “le pont”, which is when French employers give their staff an extra day off between the weekend and a bank holiday, in this case, on a Tuesday. But rather than have a lie in I put myself on the 06h50 train to Lyon for a day in a city that I have wanted to visit for many years. France‘s first TGV line was built between Paris and Lyon linking France‘s two largest centres of population in just under two hours.

I had two sites of design interest on my wish list. The first is the awe-inspiring Calatrava -designed TGV station at St.Exupery, Lyon‘s airport. Trains running directly to the centre of Lyon do not in fact stop here as St Exupery is on the branch that bypasses the city and heads down to the Med; in order to get there I had to catch a train to Marseille and remember not to fall asleep. The station was conceived to fulfil three roles: as a show piece to mark the opening of the newly built TGV line to the Med, as an entrance to the airport and thirdly as a symbolic gateway to the Rhone-Alps region.

When I stepped off the train at 8h30, I was virtually the only person there and it felt I had the entire station in all its magnificence to myself. I took photos of the magnificent train concourse and of the arching atrium over the ticket hall, but it was only by sketching different views of the building that I was able to decompose the anthropomorphic structure and understand its underlying logic. In the end I spent the rest of the morning there and I hope you will see why from the photos that I will post over the next week.

I arrived in the centre of town about 13h00 with no map and no plan. I found a FNAC and bought a guide, and then made it my first task to walk up the very steep hill just next to the town centre and get an overview of the city. Lyon is built on the confluence of Soane and the Rhone rivers. The city centre is on the long spit of land known as the presque-ile which reaches out to where the two rivers eventually join. From the top I was able to see all this and beyond.

Then it back downhill and up again in the district called Croix Rousse. In this area was based Lyon‘s formerly booming silk weaving industry. The district is full of secret passages that link streets and buildings up and down the hillside. Unfortunately there was too little time to discover any and if ever I go back, a return to this fascinating area will at the top of my list.

Back in the centre, I positioned myself in a café in front of the Opéra de Lyon which had its extension designed by Jean Nouvelle. Unfortunately the building was closed for the bank holiday which was a shame as I would have liked to have taken a tour of the new rehearsal spaces at the top from which, the view is apparently amazing.

Late afternoon was spent drinking coffee with a friend in the town by the town hall, followed by a tour of the campus of the Ecole Normal Supérieure. The tranquil wilderness of the glade in the middle of architect Henri Gaudin’s plan for the school makes for such a pleasant respite from the hustle and bustle of the city beyond its walls.

As evening drew in, there was just enough time for a beer on a floating bar before the thunderstorms rolled in, forcing me to take shelter in a pizzeria opposite the central station.

I really enjoyed my visit to Lyon. It is a city that seems charged with youthful energy and it is in the middle of a region of France that I would really like to get to know better. My visit was rathe quick, but it will serve as a good taster for when I go back, for I am sure that I will do.

May 2, 2007
Pre-‘fab’ wooden house in Hackney

Over the last few days the way we live, architechnophilia, and inhabit have all been covering a new pre-fab wooden house in Hackney designed by David Adjaye. Pre-fab does exactly what is says on the tin. It is PREfabricated and it allows the construction of some FABulous buildings in less time than it takes concrete to set. I remember seeing a documentary about a pair of artists who dreamt of building their own house for their retirement. In the end chose to have a house designed by a German team who specialise in pre-fab metal structures. The house arrived in pieces on a flat bed lorry and within a matter of days, a team of five or so had ratchetted the whole thing together in a latter of days (if any readers remember seeing this programme and know who they were I would be much obliged if they could share the knowledge!).

There are quite a number of streets in Hackney with grand old Victorian semi-detached houses set back from the road, especially around London Fields and Victoria Park. Every so often however there is a house missing, presumably victims of stray second world war bombs in this area of East London. And quite often these gaps are filled with new and exciting architecture. I haven’t seen Adjaye’s house for myself, but I can well imagine it filling such a void.

ps If anyone reading happens to be going to Hackney this weekend (I’m sure one of you will be) and happens to be passing, could they get me a picture so that I don’t have to steal somebody else’s… thanks

April 27, 2007
Fischli and Weiss at the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris

Last night I went to the brilliant and rather amusing Fischli and Weiss exhibition “Flowers and Questions” at the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris. To say rather amusing is somewhat of an understatement: I spent so much time smiling, if not laughing out loud, that if ever I left one of the exhibition rooms without the corners of my mouth turned up, I was inclined to feel it was a bit boring. In fact I think this happened only once.

This pair of artists play on our perceptions of materials and our sense of scale. One room was filled with jet black objects all apparently made from different materials: a tree trunk, a stone facia for a fireplace, a cutlery rack, a leather pouf. They were all in fact cast in rubber. More unbelievably, in another room which appeared to be an artists work shop filled with tools, rotting food, furniture, cargo pallets, razor blades, cigarette packets etc etc, I was stupefied to find out that every single object had been cast in plastic and then painstakingly painted. We were permitted to pick up a plank of “wood”. It was in fact a plank of plastic that seemed to float up with no effort. This illusionary game played with materials made apparently everyday objects unusually tactile.

In front of two video projections is where I spent most of my time. One was the ultimate childhood dream. It showed footage of one of those chain reaction sequences that kids dream of but apparently only grown ups get to build. Something falls over, it tips something else, a bowling ball rolls down a spiral etc. Only in this system, it wasn’t a ball that was kept moving, but a flame. Paraffin flows, and catches fire, balloons burst fireworks rocket up tubes and set off detonators, fire extinguisher foam dissolves blocks of sugar cube that support a vat of chemicals on the point of tipping over and so on and so on.

From the sublime to the ridiculous in the second video. A nature video but with our two heroes in a panda and mouse suit living out their animal existence.

In fact, I loved it so much that I am going to go back.

Showing in Paris until 13^th May.

April 26, 2007
Presidentials

There has been an obvious lack of posts on this site for some time now. I would like to be able to say that the reason for this is the amount of time I have spent following the build up to yesterday’s first round presidential election, but then that would not be entirely true. With the media hype, maybe you would think it was impossible not to be aware of the daily twists and turns of the presidential polemic. In fact, over the last couple of weeks, this has not been the case for me partly, I think, for the following reasons.

Firstly, the equal coverage of each candidate, enforced on the media by law, had a strangely distorting effect. For example, in the mornings when I was most likely to listen to the radio, I had all the information I needed about where the most minor of candidates had taken their soap boxes, but add this up over twelve candidates and it made for a lot of noise and not a lot of perspective. Also, in order for it to be equal, it was difficult to comment about one candidate’s policies without having to list the other twelve’s. I think that this equal coverage has many merits. It gives the smaller candidates a platform, and without which I am sure the success of Olivier Bescanenot (almost 1.8 million votes in the first round), an exciting voice for the future, would be diminished.

The second phenomenon is that at work no one talks about the elections, or if they do, they only talk about who they are not going to vote for. Interestingly, more than one developer has pointed out the terrible consequences for the construction of large-scale projects if Sarko doesn’t get in. A little short-sighted perhaps if they actually want find anyone to build their projects… Outside work, it is a similar story. North-eastern Paris is not exactly a stronghold of the right. In the bars where I hang out there is little chance of finding a Sarko supporter. That said, until the eve of the first round, I was yet to encounter anyone who was really behind Ségolène (interestingly, Ségolène gets corrected to semolina on my computer). There was still fear of a repeat of 2002 when the left was divided, leaving a rightwing and an ultra rightwing candidate to choose from in the second round. And so, despite their dislike, or in some cases loathing of her, she was quite likely to get their vote, and no wanted to talk about it because the choice was rather depressing.

Last night, in a vegetarian thai restaurant (with a tantalizing menu that deserves more attention from me) a friend rushed in who had just returned from the polling station where she had been helping with the count. More than 50% of the 11^th Arrondissement had voted Sego. Apart from the three guys I met at party on the eve of the election – the first Sego ‘militants’ I had encountered in a social context – I am sure that plenty of those votes were cast with gritted teeth.

And so onto the second round… Which way will centrist bronze medallist Bayrou’s 18% share of the vote go? Will enough transfer to the Sego camp for her to pull through? One thing is for sure: any shame at voting Sego – the tactical vote to some – has past with the first round. I am sure that those in the quartier that gritted their teeth in the first round can unclench their jaws in the second. There is no-longer a choice to make, and in anycase they won’t be voting for Ségolène, they will be not voting for Sarko…

April 23, 2007
Pigeon sympathy now out of fashion

It is possible that in my previous post I may have shown some sympathy toward pigeonkind. Well, all that is over with, as this afternoon, one of their number disposed of their digestive load on my head (unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which way you look at it, I wasn’t wearing my hat). I hope they all get bird flu.

April 7, 2007
Birds of a feather mourn together

I noticed this dead pigeon at the bottom of the Rue de Faubourg St Denis. It was surrounded by several other pigeons who were just staring at it. Then, one by one, they all tried, albeit unsuccesfully, to fly off with their dead friend in their clutches. This seen went on for about five minutes, until birdfood again seemed more interesting than mourning. I wish I had started filming earlier

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMiwfNfgy8s]

April 6, 2007
Flying the TGV from Paris to Strasbourg

It’s not just about the trains. It’s about the track, the gentle curves, the tunnels, the soaring bridges…

click this link to fly the route of the TGV Est Européen from Paris to Strabourg in 5 minutes, stopping at all the major bridges along the way, naturally…

April 5, 2007
Trainspotting: TGV at 578 kmph

Choose life, choose reducing your carbon footprint, choose highspeed train travel instead of flying

Thank you SNCF, for making trainspotting cool, at least for a day. Yesterday, a especially modified train with bigger wheels and go-faster stripes set a new train speed record of 578 kmph. The only thing that is faster on rails is the Maglev train, which doesn’t even touch the rails, and at that, only goes a few kilometres per hour faster.

It is fair to ask whether this record attempt was worth the 30 million Euro price tag. Travelling along France’s more minor train routes, there the decay and tattiness to be seen that is indicative of the large sums of money that have been diverted into the TGV programme. That said, France’s highspeed network is a great asset: where there are highspeed lines, flying simply takes longer. The development of the highspeed network has also pumped large sums of money into structures research, especially in the domain of bridge design. This record is in part another stage of that research process. The data recorded from sensors on the trains, tracks and bridges will help improve the understanding of these components under the intense vibrations that a train travelling at these sorts of speed can generate.

There is no doubt however that a significant reason for spending so much money on this attempt is the hard sell. France wants to export highspeed technology to South Korea and even to the United States. It is just possible that a train that travels at over 300mph is enough to make even the US, where internal flights rule the day, sit up and take notice.

Check out this trainspottingtastic coverage from France2:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8skXT5NQzCg]

April 4, 2007
TGV in 354mph record attempt – 1pm

As part of the preparations for the eagerly anticipated TGV Est-Européen, which will operate from June 10th between Paris and Strasbourg, the SNCF are hoping to break their previous high-speed train record. As might be expected, in France this is a media event. I heard it mentioned twice on the breakfast time news and it will be broadcast live on the lunchtime news. Read more here…

Also, I spotted this on the arrivals board last night at the Gard de Lyon. Anyone waiting for a friend on the 19h06 train might be waiting a long time…

April 3, 2007
Gergiev and the LSO at the Salle Playel for a spot of Stravinski and Ravel

Last night I was lucky enough to get tickets to see the LSO perform at the Salle Playel. The auditorium was reopened back in September after being fully refurbished. The art deco styling of the fixtures and fittings is evident throughout, even including the overhead lighting gantries.

The programme, conducted by Valery Gergiev, included Debussy’s La Mer and Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune as well Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: the charismatic Gergiev bringing new energy to these repetoire pieces. From the front row, it is difficult to hear the full sound of the orchestra, but instead you get the expression on the faces of the violinists as well as the sound and sweat of Gergiev conducting. This is what I mean when I say I went to see the LSO play. The Stravinsky was earth-shattering, played with unstoppable momentum right until the penultimate note which Gergiev left hanging what felt like an age before the final bang.

April 2, 2007
Ugly Duckling / Le Vilain Petit Canard

April 2, 2007
Wobbling la Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69NA8E11IDM]

I was invited on Wednesday to go and help wobble the Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir (previous posts here and here). The wobbling was being sollicted in order to conduct ongoing tests on the bridge’s dampers. The tests were being conducted by the CSTB (France’s centre for building science, where I almost ended up doing my projet de fin d’études).

Bridges such as this one, and infamously, London’s Millenium Bridge, are susceptible to wobbling caused by the excitation of one of the bridge’s natural frequencies by the pedestrians who use it. As well as forcing the bridge deck up and down with their footsteps, pedestrians also exert a sideways force as they alternatively plant their left and right feet on the deck. This sideways movement is of a similar frequency to the transverse vibrational mode of lightweight bridges such as this one and the Millenium Bridge. When a bridge does start to shake noticeably, there is a tendency to ‘lock-in’ whereby pedestrians synchronise their steps with the vibration in order to stabilise themselves, but in doing so, give more energy to the vibration. The first time that this lock-in phenomenon was observed was at the opening of the Millenium Bridge.

This sort of vibration is unlikely to cause any damage to the bridge itself but it does make the people onboard feel quite uncomfortable. It is therefore an issue of serviceability. In order to reduce its effects, such bridges are installed with tuned dampers designed specifically to damp out these effects. And in order to check if these dampers are working or not, it takes a group of fifty or so enthusiasts (usually engineers) to jump up and down to see just how much they can get the thing to wobble. I tell you, we got some funny looks from passers by…

March 30, 2007
Tube Challenge – Project update: wobbly floors

Tube Challenge
I always dreamed of doing this when I was a lonely and boring teenager. All the tube stations in one day. Thanks to Mary for sending me this link from Jon’s blog. I will add this to the reasons to move back to London list, a list that I hope will soften the blow of leaving Paris in the autumn.

Project update
This is just the briefest of project updates. Things have been super busy recently in the office. Most of last week was spent researching how different types of floor structure vibrate when people walk across them. Unfortunately, the classical mechanical methods that we have been taught are not very useful for the design of office buildings as the calculations quickly become unwieldy and unreliable. Instead, the literature in this area gives empirically derived formulas for checking for excessive vibrations. The problem with these quite specific methods is that it is difficult to see how applicable they are across the board to other types of flooring. In the next few days I will be talking to the manufacturers of various different flooring systems to find out which is best suited to the building that I am working on. They will provide their own methods for checking for vibrations, but it would be nice if I didn’t have to rely on them to provide the method with which I will be testing their theory!

I have also been a little more involved with preparing material for meetings with the architects for whom, being American, it is useful to prepare stuff in English. All of a sudden, from languishing on the sidelines, I have been thrust into the middle of it all. That’s fine with me!

March 26, 2007
Opening of the Cité national de l’architecture et du Patirmoine

Last night Lorenzo (a fellow engineer from work) and I blagged our way into the opening of the permanent exhibition at the newly refurbished Cité National de l’architecture et du patrimoine, France’s national architecture museum. Neither of us had thought to check if this was and invite only event and indeed, it was. Luckily, a few charming smiles and a couple invitations made themselves available from the large group loitering outside the front door and then we were in.

The Cité is housed in one of the wings of the Palais de Chaillot, that splendidly curving art deco building opposite the Eiffel Tower on the other side of the Seine. Unlike any other architecture exhibit that I have visited, this one had not one model of a building. Instead, the main exhibition space, itself a long and wide curving corridor, was filled with fifty odd floor-to-ceiling screens onto which a series of short films were being projected. Every film was about a project, but every film had been shot differently: some showed in speeded-up time a building going up, others showed people flowing in and out, the building through the different seasons. There were images taken from satellites that showed whole areas being redeveloped. My favourite was a series of photos taken from a balcony, of an American city skyline. The photos start in the 60s and go on, lets say one a month until the present. As the images tick pass, the downtown skyscrapers grow like mushrooms after a rainstorm. One by one the pop up out of a hole in the ground, until eventually, one pops up right in front of the balcony and the view is completely obscured.

It is not just buildings that are showcased. One video was taken from a car driving across the Milau Viaduct. Another, from a helicopter flying over an offshore wind farm.

I think that the exhibition rather successfully shows the dynamic side to buildings. How they change, during their lifecycle, fro, construction, to use, to decay, to demolition and also how people interact with them. None of these aspects are static and so the moving image is an ideal medium for communicating them. My one criticism of the exhibit is that in the dark room where the videos are projected, it is difficult to read the programme that tells you what the projects are. Maybe you are just supposed to know already. I wonder?

The free lemony champagne was worth the effort it was to get through crowds of people in order to see the exhibit. It is hardly surprising that on the opening night I saw a lot of architects and not a lot of architecture. I shall therefore definitely be making another visit before too long.

March 21, 2007
Metro Entrance Gare St.Lazare

The other morning I found myself in northwestern central Paris around the Gare St.Lazare. This is not my normal stomping ground, so I took the time to go and have a look at the striking curved-glass metro entrance that was built as for Paris’ newest metro line, the driverless 14.

The architects and the engineers on the project were Arte Charpentier and RFR respectively.

The glass has a double curvature: that is to say, like a dome or the saddle for a horse, the glass curves in two different directions. The lateral stability of the structure is assured by the fine metal cross-bracing that can be spanning diagonally across the frames. The frames are in stainless steel, a material that, thanks to its many different crystal faces, reflects light from many different aspects.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to have a closer look at how the various elements are joined, which is always the devil in projects such as this where transparency is the goal.

You can see a slideshow of photos of the Gare St.Lazare station entrance from my engineering photo site by clicking here.

March 18, 2007
“The late worm avoids the bird” and other stories…

I have my cousin Ralph (of Stringfever fame – see link to the left, under music) to thank for that piece of advice, which makes me laugh each time I think of it. Were I a worm, I would quite likely have been eaten by birds of prey at the market this morning. I was there before eight so that I could get some shopping in before breakfast (this is the sort of behaviour that my Marston Street house mates might associate with me when I was sitting finals). It was such a beautiful morning and, well, I like the market. It’s better however, when all the sellers are actually at their stalls rather than in the café. The bio-lady (who has not been treated with any chemical fertilizers) had evidently nipped off for one, and the lady who sells bags of chicory and apples ideal for juicing, opposite, probably went with her. In that spot, the only person left was a man selling bras, who sheepishly refused to take any money on behalf of his neighbour for a bag of her produce.

And now from before breakfast time, to lunchtime, which is an event here at work. At noon, people start milling around the office talking about going down to the canteen (a quick survey of the people in my team confirms rather unscientifically what I have been told, that people here for breakfast have a coffee and a dried biscuity thing at most, so they must be starving by noon). A big group made up of anyone from the director to the draghtsmen (though interestingly not the secretaries) go down in the lift to the underbelly of the building that is the canteen. This vast underground space has a buffet down one side then rows upon rows of tables and benches. The food is very good if you are into meat, and while not cheap, it is still subsidised by the company. And then everyone eats together. Slowly. Several courses are taken, even if one might only consist of an apple or yoghurt. Only when everyone on the table has had their final spoon of Yoplait does anyone get up. The trays go off on the conveyor belt where they get taken to invisible people who magically clear them and make them nice for the next engineer. En masse, we leave one windowless room for another, this time with a coffee counter at one end. Espressos are gulped down at breathtaking speed. Quick as a flash we are back up in the elevators and at our desks without ever having the inconvenience of seeing sunlight or talking to anyone who doesn’t have a diploma from Les Ponts (insert other grand ecole name here if you like). That’s efficiency for you.

Speaking of efficiency, two separate personnel departments are now in a race to see who can get me a social security number first. I still have not been paid for my teaching work at the University of Marne la Vallée. I am sure I mentioned this at the time, but just to recap, the university wouldn’t give me a contract without a social security number, and the social security wouldn’t give me a number without a contract. Someone had to give in, and rightly so it was the university. That was back in November. Now in March and my new job, I need a social security number so that I can get paid at work. Here, they gave me a contract straightaway and are now applying for the number. Given that the university are still faffing around, it looks likely that my new job will get me the number and that I will then give that number to my old employees who should then be able to pay me. That’s inefficiency for you. And before anyone thinks I am having a go at French bureaucracy, I am not. It’s just the university being rubbish.

March 14, 2007
Womb with a view

Paris is slowly encircling itself in tramways. The latest tramway to open, connecting the disparate ends of several metro lines is the T3, which skirts inner Paris’ southern border. As part of the project, the RATP commissioned a series of art installations on or in the vicinity of the route. So it was with travel card in hand that I went, albeit a little too late, one Saturday afternoon, to see what I could see, so to speak.

The trip became somewhat of an art-hunt for all I had to help me was a cutting from a newspaper giving some approximate locations, and a metro map. Unfortunately, I was not able to experience the murmuring benches as the park they were in had shut. And I simply couldn’t find the installation called “Mirage” (even though Mary swears blind that she did). One of the best installations, in my opinion, was realised using just light. Where the tramway passes under the TGV lines coming out of Montparnasse, the bridge’s beams and columns are lit up in orange and blue at night time reclaiming an otherwise threatening space (and showing off the beautiful metalwork on the columns which must have been lost in darkness even during the day).

The tour finished with a sculpture on the middle of the bridge. This installation is by Sophie Calle and Frank Gehry (with RFR as engineers) and consists of a twisted metal alcove or shelter with a telephone inside. According to a sign inside, only Sophie Calle has the number and she occasionally calls the number and to talk with whoever maybe passing by. The sculpture is a a shelter from the wind, a womb high up over the river, isolated, yet connected. If you have a few hours to spare in the south of Paris, I recommend taking the time to take the tram.

February 21, 2007
The Metropolisians

My mate Ronan is in a band called the Metropolisians. A month or so ago they won their heat in a battle of the bands contest for which the ultimate prize is a gig at the Elysée de Montmartre (Paris’ Astoria for the Londonners amongst you) and a record deal. With their brit-pop charm, stomping rhythms and oodles of charisma, they brought the house down with their second round performance last Friday night.

Appropriately for this second stage the competition was harder to beat, but not in terms of quality but rather the number of people clapping. Bands are rated on the basis of how many raised hands a man at the front can count at the end of each set. There were some pretty ropey high school bands and it looked at one point that one of these bands might have won, having brought half the high school with them for support. But in the end, it was the Metropolisians who got the last laugh with 189 votes to 99 for the band in second place.

Check out their website and if you hear “winkle-pickers” in one of the lyrics, it’s thanks to your friendly engineering correspondant in Paris.

February 19, 2007
Le vide grenier de l’onzième

We were recently asked in one of our French classes to write an article about a business in the style of short piece for a newspaper. The brief included nine words, some more obscure than others, that had to be included somewhere in the text. So for those who want to read a little story about a local bric-a-brac store look no further than below (the aforementioned nine words are in bold)

Le vide grenier de l’onzième

Il s’agit d’un magasin parisien qui existe depuis quarante ans dans ce quartier assez bobo. Sa vitrine est encadrée de bois très travaillé, avec des fleurs et des gargouilles gravées sur les deux côtés : un véritable bijou d’architecture. Derrière on trouve tout un bric-à-brac bizarre en provenance de quelques centaines de greniers anonymes, vidés grâce à cette entreprise.

La famille Tatattic habite à cet endroit depuis la fin du XIXe siècle : l’arrière grand-père Tatattic fut bachi bouzouk pendant la guerre de Crimée. Il traversa ensuite l’Europe pendant vingt ans avec sa carriole en tant que marchand de produits turcs. Il accumula un stock précieux, et quand il arriva à Paris, il vendit la totalité pour acheter un terrain de deux cents mètres carrés à côté de la Rue de Charonne. À cette époque, on était en pleine campagne, bien avant que la ville de Paris soit agrandie.

Pendant les années soixante et le réaménagement de la ville, l’arrière petit-fils Patrick Tatattic vendit le terrain et fit construire un grand immeuble avec un magasin au rez-de-chaussée. Il trouva l’amour avec une jolie danseuse qui s’appelait Kati. Elle fit le clown et le fit rire. Ils se découvrirent en plus une passion commune, les vide-greniers. Après trois semaines, ils se marièrent et commencèrent à explorer les greniers du quartier…

Quarante ans plus tard, ils travaillent toujours ensemble. Derrière le comptoir, c’est Patrick Tatattic, toujours chic avec son complet marron, qui vous accueille. C’est lui qui s’occupe de l’argent et du prix final. Pourtant, il ne connaît l’emplacement d’aucun de ses produits. Pour trouver quelque chose de précis, il faut s’adresser à sa femme.

Kati Tatattic n’est plus aussi belle que dans les années soixante, peut-être à cause de ces quarante ans passés cachée dans leur entrepôt (elle applique plusieurs couches de maquillage et sa peau fait un peu abricot fané). Elle est devenue vieille, comme les trésors que cette femme, sans enfants, surveille sept jours sur sept : c’est passionnant. Bien qu’elle ait quitté la scène depuis son mariage, elle danse toujours avec son mari. Si on regarde par la fenêtre quand il n’y a pas de clients à l’intérieur (c’est souvent le cas) on peut voir les deux en train de valser dans les couloirs.

C’est vrai que le stock est d’une qualité extraordinaire. On demande comment ces marchands peuvent sélectionner les meilleures pièces de chaque grenier au milieu de friperies, de valises et de la poussière qui n’intéressent personne. Leur secret: on dit dans le coin que Madame et Monsieur Tatattic ont un passe-partout pour tous les greniers de Paris, et qu’ils viennent en pleine nuit pour voler les objets de valeur avant que les propriétaires, qui dorment en dessous, puissent les vendre à un prix supérieur. Attention, peut-être sont-ils déjà venus danser chez vous.

February 18, 2007
Too hot in Paris

Austrian windfarm

Originally uploaded by eiffelover.

It has been a gloriously warm day today in Paris. Too warm in fact. I wish more countries would follow Austria’s example and plant more wind turbine seeds so that they too can have fields full of wind turbines and we can stop this place that we live in getting any hotter!

February 17, 2007
Meet Mr Alphand

When Haussmann was busy tearing down and rebuilding large swathes of Paris, he wasn’t doing it all by himself. His chief engineer was this fellow, M Alphand. In this portrait by Alfred Roll, he is standing on the building site of the Petit Palais in 1888. Appropriately, it is now hanging in pride of place in the Petit Palais. As far as our history of art lecturer is aware, it is in the only portrait of an engineer in Paris.

The Petit Palais is an interesting place, although not as immediately so from a structural point of view as its glass-domed big brother opposite, the Grand Palais. This mock classical building has frescoes on its ceiling that, first time round, failed to draw my attention. On a second lap however, I was invited to take a closer look at these paintings. Sure, there were the cherubs floating around, but the clouds in which they were flying were not in fact clouds, but smoke rising from factories in one corner, and a steam train in the other. Progress!

January 14, 2007
Making New Contacts

Today I developped the film that I shot while in the south of France over Christmas. It is magical watching the images appear out of nothing in the developping fluid. I was really happy with this set and I hope to be printing some full sized images tomorrow rather than just a contact sheet. ENPC paid for the film and for all the developping chemicals, and now that I know who holds the key to the dark room, there is no stopping me…

January 11, 2007
Happy New Year

hello readers I would like to apologise for the lack of posts of late. This blog was meant to be about engineering and my life in Paris. Well, it seems that I have been rather too successful at engineering myself a life in Paris to have the time to write it all down. But all that will change as New Year and its concomitant resolutions beckon. In the mean time, joyeuse fête! Eiffelover

December 25, 2006
Photography Course

dsc02040b.jpg

Last week I got wind of a course at ENPC in photography. After a little research I found out that it is actually an advanced course for people learning English, the content of which happens to be photography. Since the course takes place during one of my free slots, I tried this week to sneak along. I asked the teacher whether, given my level of English, I could sit at the back and listen. He happily accepted me onto the course but rather than sit at the back and listen he wants to speak up as afterall two native English speakers are better for the class than just one.

The first class I went to was on James Natchwey. We wathced a documentary on how he works and I have to say I was stunned. Have a look at his website to see what I mean: www.jamesnatchwey.com

There is a class blog where we can give each other tips on technique as well as use it to display our photos. I have put a link to this in my blog roll. Most excitingly, the college has a dark room so I will be developping some of my own photos in the not to distant future.

October 26, 2006
Déja vu?

Although I have now been living in Paris for five or so weeks, I only had my first full week of lectures last week. We had to give some indication of the courses that we wanted to take back in April. Ever since then I had been vaguely apprehensive about the classes I would be taking – a mixture really between the fear that they would be too hard mathematically and the fear that I just wouldn’t understand a word of what was being said. Well after one week of full lectures I am happy with the selection so far. In “Conception of Dangerous Strucutres” (there is Ronseal element to some of these course titles http://www2.ronseal.co.uk/) we will be spending the first three weeks looking at designing dams. Then we will move on to nuclear power stations and finally oil platforms. Lots of juicy danger for us to get our risk assessing teeth into. “Bridge Conception” is a tour de force of every time of bridge you could think of, each week given by an expert. Heaven!
The core desgin options – steel and concrete – were not nearly as baffling in French as I had expected. It did however help that we had covered some of this material before at Imperial. The twist here is that we are learning EuroCode instead of fuddy duddy old British Standards, whatever they are. Finally, the one that I feared was going to be the most mathematical, entitled Parasismic Studies, has recently had its maths content reduced after some complaints. Now if this all sounds like a walk in the park then let us not forget that all of the above is in French, as will be my exams. So, all things considered, a little déja vu is no bad thing.

October 23, 2006
Unconventional non-sanctioned corrugated football

Tuesday lunchtime saw the end of the SPEIF (semaine préparatoire pour étudiants ingénieurs en Français – a stunning acronym). With our free afternoon a group of us students had hatched a plan to play football. The day before, one of our number spoke to the manager of the Pont’s sports pitches and said it would be no problem. However, when we turned up on Tuesday we were told that we weren’t able to use the pitches because we were not part of a registered team. I have to say that I wasn’t as surprised as some of my would-be team-mates as I had heard similar tales regarding extra-curricular activities at French universities. The trend seems to be that if it is not sanctioned as a registered team event then the doors or gates will be remain locked. I suspect for example that if I try and set up a band I won’t be able to use the practice rooms unless I can demonstrate my proficiency on the rhythm guitar.

The trouble is that we didn’t want to set up a team, we just wanted to have a kick-around. And even if we had tried to set up a team I wouldn’t have been able to join as I can’t join the sports club, the reason being that I don’t have a vaccine card to prove that I won’t get whooping cough as I step up to the penalty spot and sue the school. In this respect, either I try and dig through the annals of the NHS to find out if I have such a card, or I turn my arm into a pincushion and have all the jabs again at the same time and risk sending my immune system crazy. No, neither of these options were an option, so to speak. I was intent on finding some public space in the Cité Déscarts where we could play. The only large open space that isn’t fenced off is that in front of Les Ponts, a couple of acres that would have been perfect for football had it not been landscaped with long parallel ripples half a metre or so in height that would have made it difficult to play. I might even go so far as to suggesting that it had been landscaped in this way to stop us from playing.

Still, unflapped by another apparent barrier, we used our keen engineering eyes to survey the plot and found that between two of the ridges there was just about enough space if we played partially on the grass and partially on the helipad at one end of the field. With laptop cases for goal posts we were all set.

Apart from Michi who I think has had some pretty top-notch football experience, we were all tired after about ten minutes, (such are the barriers to exercise in France!) but we played for an hour or so. And no one was really keeping score – it was great just to have been able to play.

October 15, 2006