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  • Economic croissants and maps of cheese

    Time is flying by. I am already into my second week of college. These first three weeks are preparatory classes for all the Erasamus students at les Ponts, afterwhich the term starts in earnest. I am being taught in a group of ten made up of two German students, one from Austria, one from Grand Canaria, two Portugese and then the three of us Brits from Imperial. So used to the Imperial timetable (teach 50 mins cappacinno for 10 teach 50 etc) am I that I found the two hour long classes a little hard going to start with. The trick really is to not look at the clock!

    Not that the lessons are boring. No, the course is being taught well and as far as language classes go I think it is the most I have ever been engaged in this sort of lesson with a good mix of group work and class disscussion. The aim of the course is to help us to settle in and to bring our French out of retirement. Part of the settling-in is achieved by teaching us about “French culture”. The material is almost priceless in the way it conforms to a sterotype of what kids are spoon fed in French schools (France’s rivers, mountains and departments, as well as gastronomical maps and economic croissants – the term given to the younger and more productive cresecent from Brittany to the northern Alps). We’ve had gastronomical maps – my request for a map of cheeses is currently being processed. More alarmingly, the worksheet that gave the history of names that you are likely to hear in France failed to note that between 15 and 20% of France’s population are from families of immigrants one, two or three generations ago and so do not have names derived from Asterix or celtic invaders. There was also no mention of the foods that these groups might traditionally eat on the gastronomical map. No surprise there. But on the plus side, I have to say that I am sucker for learning things like maps of cheeses so give me a few weeks and you can test me.

    Right, got to run for my first test…

  • False starts – Grave affair – Breaking & Entering

    Sunday evening I started to pack my bag for my first day of school on Monday, or so I thought… A double-check of a letter from ENPC reconfirmed what Mary has suspected: that I wasn’t actually starting until Tuesday. Brilliant, a free day in Paris, and with my new travel card I could do absolutely anything! I could have started on the Louvre, go for a walk across town, walk across Henry’s bridge, even start a neighbourhood photo diary – obviously being inspired by Sunday’s exhibition. The important thing about being able to do anything is that you must finally settle on something.

    I settled on making tomato soup for lunch with Andy and Liz who were staying with us at the time. To this activity I had alotted an hour, but anyone who knows me in the kitchen won’t be suprised to hear that it was ready only just in time for lunch. It was worth the wait though, even if I do say so myself.

    In the afternoon, Liz an Andy invited me to tour our world-famous local cemetary Pere Lachaise. Amongst its ‘old members’ lie Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf and a whole host of nineteenth centrury notables including Proust, Hausmann (I will surely write more in the future about this legend of town planning) Berlioz and Chopin (I have heard of these latter two that they are now de-composing!). But I am never entirely sure what I am supposed to when I approach one of these heady headstones/town planner tombstones/composer’s coffins/celebrity sarcophogi. I don’t feel sad for someone who has been dead all my life, and whose great works are not contained this cemetary. It also seems bizarre to be happy snapping tombstones when there are freshly laid flowers all around for the much less famous recently deceased. Still, I am as guilty as anyone: here’s a photo of Liz and Chopin’s grave

    liz-and-fred-q4.jpg

    So, with still half the day still to kill, we popped back to the apartment only to get the key stuck in the front door. It wouldn’t budge in, out, round or any combination of these. We were locked out and there was no one on the other side to help us out. We waited an hour and a half for a lock smith that never showed up, then found another who said he’d be round in fifteen minutes. Liz, Andy and I were shacked up in a bar next door to the locksmith’s store so I was waiting to follow him up the road to our apartment, thinking he would walk. Only suddenly he put on a helmet and disappeared off towards our flat on a scooter. I chased after him to no avail, but thwarted him at the one way system.

    He couldn’t budge the dammed key and so he brought all his skills to bear on his crowbar with which he forced open the door. Though the door and frame were hardly damaged the whole lock had to be replaced. A nice one hundred and eighty Euro surprise.

    By the time it was all cleared up, it was gone 5pm. Somehow, though I had had a packed day, it was not exactly how I imagined my free to day in Paris to have been filled!

  • Sunday lunch with the neighbours

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    On Sunday I had the chance to go to a “repas du quartier” – (neighbourhood meal). The deal is that it’s a meal somewhere in the locality, sometimes on tables in the streets, where everyone brings some food and shares it with whoever likes the look of it. Sunday’s repas took place in the local cultural centre, called “Confluences.” There our lentil salad and tzatziki were swapped for various pasta salads, some sizable hunks of cheese and some delicious brownies.

    My description makes it sound a little like a battering stall – “I’ll give you a bit of French tart for some of your melons” but it is far from that. You stroll from table to table taking a pick at whatever you fancy. We got chatting to a woman with the most adorable little girl who kept getting chocolate moose on her nose. The mother had brought with her an entire roasted chicken wrapped in foil. It was just like having Sunday lunch with the neighbours.

    The cultural centre used this opportunity to promote their programme for the year which included a season of plays, films, something else that a very passionate man spoke about at some length but which I failed to catch a word of, and photography exhibits. At the moment the centre is displaying a set of photos taken by a group of African photographers who were invited last year to come to the Twentieth and photograph the area.

    One of the sets of photos was taken by a lady who set about approaching twenty different households and cooking them a meal. In each case a photo was taken, some at the table, some in the kitchen, all very warm photos, and almost all featuring the brightly coloured casserole dish that she brought the food in. Later, when clearing up our plates, we spotted that same casserole dish on a table. The photographer had long gone, her visa having expired soon after the final photo was taken, but the dish that she had used as her prop remains along with her pictures.

    This photo display was one stop on a trail of photo exhibits around the 20eme arrondissement called “Nouvelles Africanaines”. We took a map and checked out some of the others. The image below shows a wall of photos donated by residents of a local hotel where the majority of the rooms were filled with families who lived there permanently.

    I am really glad to have found out what’s on at Confluence and I am really looking forward to going back there soon to see a play next week.

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  • You wouldn’t do that at home now would you?

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    I saw this ad last spring but it still makes me laugh!

  • Hello Paris – Ultra-modern out-of-date stations – Blue sky thinking for council houses

    Hooray – I have arrived. Last night, I hauled up the steps the final suitcase into the flat that will be Mary and mine for at least the next year. And unlike my last few visits to Paris, I won’t be getting on a Eurostar back to London at stupid o’clock tomorrow morning, nor the day after (not in fact until the end of October, and that will be an evening train). It feels great to be able to settle in.

    First thing this morning I went out to the university campus because I have been given the opportunity, through a friend of Mary, to teach some conversational English classes. The ideal thing about this part-time work is that it would take place in the building next door to where I will be studying. To get out to the campus, it is a five minute ride on the metro down to Nation and then twenty minutes on the RER out to Noisy-Champs on the outskirts of Paris.

    The RER is Paris’ answer to London’s CrossRail – or should that be the other way round since the Parisians designed and built theirs over twenty years ago. The RER station at Nation is an impressive feat of geotechnical engineering. Deep below ground-level, the RER’s platforms are in an enormous tunnel, 30m in diameter and several hundred meters long. The station has some amusing pseudo-technical features that someone who has just missed their train might happen to notice. For example, it looks like the train drivers look at computer monitors to see when people have finished boarding the train, but on closer inspection these devices are in fact a mirrors mounted in the shells of a computer screens. Hmmmm. That along with hi-tec looking train indicator board that actually has all the possible destinations permanently displayed, with a light bulb that lights up next to the destination for the next train, and the ultra-modern-ultra-dated vacuum formed plastic benches along the walls, lead me to conclude that the designers could see the future, they just didn’t yet have the technology to implement it. But enough about stations…

    The univeristy campus is called the Cite Descartes. It houses numerous ‘Grandes Ecoles’ as well as the university of Marne La Vallee. The Cite is an architectural playground and I am looking forward to taking a closer look at some of the buildings. After some wondering, I found the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chausses. It is an attractive steel and glass building with an impressive and inviting attrium in the middle. It is in stark contrast to some of the buildings of the University of Marne la Vallee and a reminder of the extra funding that the Grandes Ecoles enjoy over France’s regular universities.

    The interview went well, and depending on my timetable at ENPC I will be teaching a few hours of conversational English a week. Some of the teaching will be for science and maths students and there will be also be classes for students studying urbanism. I think it is all going to be quite interesting and I look forward to starting. It will be a good intro to the world of work in France.

    This afternoon we went to an exhibiton called “Residencity”, a history of the housing that has been built around the edge of Paris. The exhibition itself was in Montreuil, a suburb in the east of the city, in a beautiful building about twenty minutes from the end of the metro. We were in the heart of the banlieu, a catch all term for anything outside the Periferique ringroad and synonymous with the riots of last year, or so the news would have you believe. This bit didn’t look all that different from the urban landscape you would find around Harrow. I get the impression that there are many who would think of this as a no go area. Seemed quite nice to me!

    “Residencity” charts the housing projects that were built to provide accomodation for Paris’ worker population, which swelled at the end of the nineteenth century. Early schemes to clear slums envisaged replacing them with low level blocks of houses among trees remincisent of Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities. These early sketches look surprisingly modern but their age is betrayed by the clothes that the people in them are wearing. Designs for buildings in the 20s are not all the dissimilar to the building that we live in. By the 50s, the developments had taken on the enormous sprawling dimensions typical of some of Paris’ grimmest housing projects. It was all to clear from the posters and protest slogans displayed opposite these designs that slum-dwellers had little choice as to where in these monster developments they were to be housed.

    One cartoon particularly made me laugh. It showed the aspirations for housing of three different classes. For the working class, heaven was a detached house with a garden, purgatory the new edge of town developments, and hell, the slums. For the middle class, heaven was a modern apartment block, purgatory a detached house with a garden, and hell, the new edge of town developments. And finally for the upper classes, heaven was a chateau, purgatory was a modern apartment block and hell was a detached house with a garden. Well, it made me smile (Note to self: they do say that a picture says a thousand words – a photo might have been good here)

    Some archtiects of these developments were more creative than others. Blue sky thinking is evident in the conception of this quite unbelievable housing development – Les Tour Nuages: (click to see image in full)

    Cloud tower

  • Getting ready for the off – Number Two

    France Rushes By

    26th August 2006 I am on my way down to the south of France for the bank holiday weekend. This is the first time that I have managed to get down to Agen for a long weekend without flying. The difference is being able to stay the night in Paris on the way down. Having stayed the night somewhat fleetingly at the apartment – leaving before I arrived sort of thing – I had the chance to enact Phase 2 of the Move to Paris (the first being the random collection of posters, blankets and books last March described in a previous entry). In the end, I didn’t have the strength of character to take only my computer, underwear and a sharp pencil. Yes, in addition I packed a more predictable assortment of clothes and engineering notes. These were packed into my now-famous US Army surplus army bag. A bag of such enormous dimensions that if for some awful reason Mary and I get turfed out of our apartment, we could easily invert the thing and turn it into a three bedroom teepee on the Place de la Republique. While this bag presents tremendous advantages in terms of the sheer volume of stuff it can take, it is also impossible to lift when full. Presumably the US Army uses Hercules aircraft to move theirs. In March I had to rely on my own Herculean strength to carry that thing up the four flights of steps – sans ascenceur – to the flat, and compacted my spine in the process. This time I was more cautious and only half filled it. I had to leave out my pencil sharpener, which means my sharp pencil won’t stay sharp for long… And now I am zooming south on the train. They’re a sophisitcated bunch on the TGV (train de Grand Valise – train of big suitcase as I like to call it). Apart from the half of the occupants of the carriage who were asleep, the rest fell into one of three catagories: those who were reading a white folio french novel, those engaged in that French game – i’ve only seen it in France – where they have to fill in a completely empty grid with words, and the rest who were almost certainly students because they were copying out almost word for word notes from lectures, carefully underlining words in lots of different colours. No one was heard talking too loudly on their mobiles, and no one was drinking Stella. Bliss.

    Chic TGV

    As I left Paris, I could see the tower who’s engineer is the namesake of this blog, somewhere in the mist. Later on, as the train approaches Bordeaux St-Jean station it slows to a crawl in order to cross the enormous truss bridge across the swollen brown waters of the Gironde. It was only recently that I discovered that this bridge was where Gustav Eiffel first made his name as an engineer in charge of this building site. Arriving at Bordeaux St-Jean, I was presented an exciting array of alternative destinations: the Basin de Arcachon for some Atlantic waves, Nice for the Med and Irun which is only one vowel away from one of my dream train destinations… Only last night I heard the story of two similarly train-minded friends who were enroute to Istanbul by rail. Initially flumuxed at not being able to find their train at the station in Budpapest, they found their single Turkey-bound sleeper carriage hooked up to a train to Bucharest. Their tickets matched the carriage number and so with a certain degree of trepidation they boarded the carriage which was empty apart from a conductor with whom they shared no common language. The next day, their carriage wsa unhooked from the rest of the train and left standing alone – tracks stretching out in either direction in the searing midday heat, Istanbul somewhere in the distance. They waited several hours with no information as to where they were, or when they were going to be leaving. It struck me as quite romantic. Now you don’t get that on a plane.

     Stunning Steel Arch Roof at Bordeaux St Jean

  • Corrections and Clarifications

    My thanks go to Henry Bardsley, lead structural engineer on the Pont Simone de Beauvoir, for putting me right on some of the points I made in my article on this bridge earlier on in the week. Since it is not the purpose of this blog to disinform, I will bring these corrections to the fore.

    For starters, while the central vesica of the bridge was indeed built on the banks of the Rhine, it was constructed on the west bank and not in Germany but in France. Secondly, the Seine is not tidal in Paris and as such there was no need to wait for low tide in order to fit the barges carrying this central section of the bridge under the low arches of the Pont des Invalides. That is not to say that passing under the arches didn’t present the engineers with any problems. Indeed, Henry writes that ballast was used to not only to balance the barges but also to change their height in the water so that they could carry their cargo high over the seas and low under Paris’s other bridges. The Pont des Invalides was successfully passed but not without a grazing the river bed!

    Once again, my thanks to Henry for setting the picture straight!

  • It is nearly always a lovely day in Architecture world

    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.

  • Blog blues

    Thanks to all of you (well one of you) for your requests for photos. I have now been trying to get photos to work on my last entry but to no avail. I will attempt tomorrow at work. A new banner is on its way as well. You lucky things. Until then I am afraid you are just going to have to make do with all my little words.

  • Getting ready for the off – Number One

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    This weekend is my last in London. I am away next weekend for the bank holiday, and the weekend after that it’s the big off. It has all come round much faster than I expected. Obviously, the biggest thing I need to sort out is packing. Sitting here in my bedroom – no, stuffroom would be a better name for it as there is only one bed in here but lots of stuff – I keep merrily imagining that it all might pack itself, Mary Poppins in the nursery style. It’s not, is it? Right. Well then, what to take?

    Earlier this year I had had the opportunity to take some stufff out to Paris four months ahead of my move. Given that I was still going to be living and studying in London for four more months I tried to pack things that I definitely needed for my year abroad but didn’t need in the short run. What went was a motley assortment of blankets, posters, thick jumpers and books that are halfway down my reading list for the year. When I went over in the summer I came very close to taking my skis with me, for one it would mean less stuff to take out in September. It would also have appealed to my sense of humour to be travelling with a pair of skis during the July heat wave.

    A very major concern is what to do with all my notes. The thought of going through them all in the middle of the summer holidays does not make me somersault with joy. In fact, the later I leave it, the closer I am to reaching the conclusion that all I need is my computer, a sharp pencil and clean underwear.

    The other part of leaving is saying the goodbyes. Unlike my friend Chloe who is going to be in the Middle East for a year, I am only going to be across the water. There are places on the Metropolitain Line that are further from central London than Paris. And given the number of times that I have been to and fro this year already it really doesn’t feel that far. I don’t raelly need to say goodbye do I? But I know it doesn’t work like that. So yesterday the two of us had a leaving party. It was a really good afternoon and evening in a pub, but the ironic thing is that I am planning to see everyone that I saw yesterday again before I leave, thus adding to, not diminishing, the irreality of the fact that very soon I am leaving. Also, if I am going to see everyone again, how am I going to find the time to pack?

    I say again, all need is a computer, clean underwear and a sharp pencil…

  • Wilkinson Ire – Successful Expedition

    It is with great pride that I report that Expedition Engineering won Thursday’s cricket match against Wilkinson Eire architects.  In a game between two teams each with a fair spread of novices and more skilled players, the tension was maintained right until the last ball of the final over.  Expedition won by two runs.

    I have to confess that despite my great improvement at the nets, my bowling was a little dismal.  When I batted I was in with Chris Wise, and we finished the batting with the pair of us not out.  Although I didn’t quite score any runs by hitting the ball, there was a no ball called when I was at the wicket – maybe my ugly mug put the bowler off and made him send the ball wide, giving us the two points that we wouldn’t have won without, I am sure!

    Though my placement with Expedition is short (too short with ever clearer hindsight – funny how with age your eye sight diminishes but your hindsight becomes sharper), there is a chance that there will be another match before I leave for France.  Next time i hope to actually score a run.  That would be a real improvement!

    It is great to be playing sport.  I forfitted that day’s gym session because I knew I would be getting some excercise at the game.  Though quite what the net benefit was, considering the beers and chips on the company tab afterwards, I am not so certain.

  • Pont Simone de Beauvoir

    My thanks go to Mary for finding this article in the Sunday Independent on Paris’ newest bridge, Le Pont Simone de Beauvoir:  http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3340477

    I am fond of this bridge – not a word I would ever use for a person but entirely appropriate for a graceful structure such as this.  Last February I lead a group of 80 students on a three day tour of Paris’ engineering sites.  This is no news to most readers of this blog as I suspect that most of you were on the trip.  For the benefit of those that weren’t, the weekend was packed with an ambitious itinerary of Paris’ engineering and architectural attractions.  For me, the highlight was this bridge.

     Reading this article, I am sad, although not unsurprised, to see that the structural engineers on this project – Paris based RFR (www.rfr.fr) – are not once mentioned.  I struggle to think of a construction project where architects have been involved and not engineers.  Even the models at the end of year show at the Architect’s Association (www.aaschool.ac.uk)  this year had to be checked over by a structural engineer to make sure they were safe. 

    When it comes to bridge design, I believe there is an important part to be played by architects but that the design should be lead by the engineering.  When it comes to buildings, the engineering – the stuff what makes it stand up and not fall over when the wind blows – can be hidden away, like in the Ritz (London’s first steel-framed building) or on display for all to see like at the Pompidou centre.  With bridges however, there is no hiding the engineering.  The structural design is the language of the bridge from which all other things follow.  It’s very hard to hide it.

    I am sure that your comments will help me clarify my stance on this matter so I shall leave it there for the moment.  There is more to say however on this bridge.  Firstly, its structure should really referred to as a lenticular truss.  Thinking of it as an arch bridge supported by a suspension bridge is helpful.  Anyone who had just read that article might think that the bridge’s width was purely architectural.  It should be noted however that such a long-spanned bridge is susceptable to fluttering in the wind.  The bridge’s width helps to stabilise it from these wind induced oscillations. 

     Secondly, the bridge was not technically built in Paris, but rather on the banks of the Rhine in Germany.  The enormous central span of the bridge was constructed at a German steel fabricator, and then loaded onto two enormous barges, floated up the Rhine, along the North Sea Coast down to Le Havre, under the Pont du Normandie (my favourite bridge http://www.carte-postale.com/honfleur/pontdenormandie.htm) and up the Seine to Paris where low tide had to be waited for to get the enormous section under Paris’ low arch bridges.  The whole journey can be seen on the website of the guy who lead the strucutal desgin on the project, Henry Bardsley (http://www.henry-bardsley.com/).

    Though it has been open for a few months now, I have yet to make a crossing.  I am sure that when I do, readers of this blog will be the first to know.

  • Engineers vs Architects – it’s just not cricket

    I am forever bored of engineer vs architect debates.  They are just not cricket.  That is unless they are about cricket.  Tomorrow I will make my cricketing debut with Expedition Engineering (www.expedition-engineering.com), the company with which I am in the middle of a four week placement.  We will be playing against a team from Wilkinson Eyre architects (who were the architects on the Gateshead Millenium Bridge www.wilkinsoneyre.com). 

    This will be Expedition’s third match of the season.  Last night the team went down to the cricket nets at Paddington Rec.  The great thing about cricket nets are that they funnel the ball towards the wicket.  Given my bowling looks more akin to a throw one might use when lobbing a grenade (a technique I picked up during my extensive army training) – that is, up and over and not long and straight – I was grateful to the nets for guiding my ball towards the wicket.  As the session wore on however, I found I no-longer needed the nets, and the ball found its way close to the wicket of its own accord.  I say close becuase I never actually hit the wicket.  The batsman always gets in the way.

     Then it was time to bat.  A cricket ball is undeniably hard.  A ball deflected from my bat hit the roof frame and landed hard on my head – the noise was not unlike a walnut being cracked open.   I use a defensive stroke.  That is, if the ball is coming anywhere near me I intend to wallop it to minimise the chances of it hitting me.  If I can however, I just prefer to jump out of the way.  The problem is that this in turn leaves my wickets wide open.  I intend therefore to use a combination of the two techinques tomorrow.  I will jump out of the way while vaguely leave the bat infront of the wicket in the hope that it might protect my bales, so to speak.

     I have to say that my technique is not in line with the rest of the team.  It is a fifteen over match and we are gunning for a score of 100.  (Since I currently have no readers on this blog, I am confident that I am not giving away our tactics to the Architects!)  Work will be on the back-burner today.  Strategies needed to be plotted, and maybe even plotted out using AutoCad.

    Stay tuned to find the latest.  Unfortunately, this blog won’t allow me to provide readers with a constantly updating score board for your computers.  Sorry about that.

  • Why blog?

    This first entry is not a treatise on why one should blog.  I am not even certain why I should blog.  But I am certain that I like other people’s blogs, so much so that I want to have a go myself.

    So what might the casual reader expect to find in this blog?  Well, wary of promising too much and not delivering – a common syptom of initial overenthusiasm – lets just keep it simple…

    I want to achieve two things with this blog.

    • Those who know me know that I am on the unhealthy side of enthusiastic about civil engineering – buildings, bridges, towers, tunnels, cities – the lot.  I want to use this blog to share that enthusiasm with anyone  who is interested.
    • I am about to spend a year studying in France.  I hope this blog will help people I know stay in touch with me and with what I am doing.  I also hope that it will encourage those who are intereested in studying abroad to apply.

    So there you have it.  My first entry.  Predicatable I am sure.  I hope that the rest is less predicatable and more enjoyable.

    Ciao for now