museumnacht 2007

Things I liked:

+ Sonneveld house by night. Like all these modern showhomes, there's an exhibition on inside. Some really nice (mechanism-based) kinetic light-objects. My favourite is this one, where the lines of light move very slowly across the square. By Hans Shork:



+ Satellite Garden was beautiful to look at, next to the vanishing moon:



+ Kunsthal cushions. It was nice finally entering an OMA building, as opposed to staring at 100 jpegs. I narrowly avoided a loud party with the DJ next to a grand piano downstairs and crashed on an enormous bed of orange cushions to watch a really silly Kollywood film. The bloodshed!

+ The pine forest with bench, inside the Boijmans van Beuningen.

Things I didn't like:

+ The film being screened inside the pine forest. Three protagonists repeating dull dialogue in circles. Eating lunch in Angel. Going to a stately home. Beating each other up. Yawn.

+ The dancers-but-not-really-dancers made-up in cyber-geisha gear. Not really dancing, more leaning on visitors, and sighing. Terrifying. I'm not sure if they were supposed to be some sort of live sculpture, or interactive installation, but since primary school I've found these content-driven-by-passive-audience performances beyond awkward. Should I be exploring that reaction? Hmm. On a Saturday night I'd prefer to be looking at this (which I found during my escape):

cubic houses, rotterdam | piet blom, 1984

So far, the centre of Rotterdam feels like Bromley.



Piet Blom's cubic houses were pretty easy to spot. There's a variety of activities on offer within the community walls: american nails, hairdressing, or laser zone but we chose to look around a show-cube instead.



Built in 1984, this specific cube has its own distinctive personality, complete with 20 cacti and a cabinet of LOTR/fantasy figurines.



The space itself is used quite traditionally, with 3 floors and beds/desks/chairs up against the walls, next to the windows. I'd assumed the 'abstract forest' was social housing, but it turns out most of them are privately owned. I'd envisioned an autonomous community with services at ground level, but apparently the commerical space offered has always been open to the general public.

So Dutch Cubic Quasar is on the cards. (Coincidentally, the only other place I've played Quasar is Bromley..)

le corbusier | villa savoye

Poissy station has its own soundtrack, as if someone's left a boombox on the tracks. Possibly John Maus. I imagine it's what would be running through my head if I had the guts for the David Lynch all-nighter at the Champo here in Paris (their logo is Jacques Tati and they give you breakfast after the 7 or so hours.)

In Poissy the town signs are sponsored by McDonalds and the scenery caters for all realms.



"What will the villa savoye sound like?" my shoulder (yawning with equipment) asked. Well, it sounded like toddlers and digital cameras. One man had the right idea and spent his entire stay in an armchair. We lounged, found nice reflections. I checked the taps (again) and Alex wouldn't believe that the kitchen was scaled smaller for women.

Le Corbusier's meeting with Josephine Baker in 1929 apparently "unlocked his sense of Rio." Ok we're still in the mythic/exotic realm, but it's 1931 and hardly rivals Future System's "I was inspired by my boyfriend's back" at Sadler's Wells (most memorable powerpoint faux pas of 2006)



Fly off 1: Josephine Baker is the name of my local swimming pool. It floats on the seine, with windows at water level linking the inside and out.


Fly off 2: Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen was made in one of le Corbusier's housing projects.

Fly off 3.1: You can now buy your own modernist house and also get matching china.



Fly off 3.2: A micro dwelling would make a nice home. The first external white walls I saw were in the Greek countryside, I can see these slotting together there. In fact, the extension process they propose mirrors the traditional Greek method of building. A circle to be drawn, back to le Corbusier's mediterranean adventures? (Did he mention the women though?)

No, but fly off 4: a short read on modern architecture and feminism via Charlotte Perriand a close collaborator of le Corbusier. It (scarcely) mentions the sexual division of labour before and after Simone de Beauvoir's the Second Sex. But hints at a negative bias that made me stop and trackback. Which brings me to:

fly off 5: The Simone de Beauvoir bridge opened last summer. It can be found next to the Josephine Baker piscine (!) Ace to cycle across, there is a formal comparison to be made between the two, what with those undulating planks. It also joins two of my favourite places - the Cinematheque Francaise (Frank Gehry) and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France:



One last circle: I tried recording the bridge one day as I heard gossip about wobbles which hints at some major resonance, but I think that was just a Foster spies/UK press collaboration, and any which way the traffic nearing the peripherique is overwhelming.

Endnote: Here we see the BNF and Josephine Baker piscine in an ad for the cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine extension.

inside-out house, 1974

"We built a little house during the summer of 1974 just like the one Solon Gudmundsson had intended to build in 1938: an inside-out house whose interior was its exterior. Located in an uninhabited part of Iceland, out in a place where no other object made by man can be seen. The existence of this house is that "that which is outside" has shrunk, and reduced to dimensions of a closed space formed by the walls and roof of the house. Everything else has become "that which is inside." This house shelters the whole world, except itself."

Hreinn Fridfinnssons, House Project 1974, Reykjavik.
From L'europe Des Createurs, Utopies 1989, Paris Grand Palais

le corbusier | villa la roche

We took a day trip out West to visit the le Corbusier foundation. The architecture students had matching portfolio wallets. There were many of them. We goofed around and enjoyed the comfortable armchairs. Background information from Crossings: Journey Through Le Corbusier's Villa La Roche by Hazem S. Osman.

Worth reading, Hazem takes the right approach:

One note of warning from the start: the thesis is not intended so much as a "critical" analysis of Le Corbusier's ideology as the telling of a story about Vilia La Roche and Le Corbusier's early years. Instead of tearing apart the "dominant" gaze of modemism, I wish rather to point to the metaphorical vision founded on multivalent origin, happy to lose myself in the rich complexities of Le Corbusier's world. I will be more concemed with the possibilities of invention resulting from the confiontation with other cultures.


More to come, soon. On Zidane, firefighters, and la Commune. Keeping it Parisien. And mainly offline, no home connection.

PS. Do you Londoners know how good you have got it? I am going to CRY the next time I'm in Plastic People. The soundsystems here aren't worth mentioning. Songs are barely audible. Damn these quiet post-22h parisiens.

Apolonija Sustersic | Community Research Office

At the Architectural Association summer show there was yet another infuriating project concerning the redevelopment of Hackney. I skimmed through it (piles of professionally bound paper) and there were some pretty pictures, but I didn’t see any documentation of dialogue with the community concerned. Not even a questionnaire hand-out. Here’s a spread:




This prompted Jerome to lend me a book: Community Research Office. In 2003 Apolonija Sustersic temporarily converted the IBID gallery on Cambridge Heath road (Hackney) into a CRO with the intention of running a bunch of projects in the space, exploring the different aspects and consequences of gentrification in East London.



In the introduction she says: the gallery white cube gives way to an office space for this work-in-progress. Ultra aware of the role art spaces play in the gentrification process, this isn’t a theoretical exercise. They called it a base for collecting information about the neighbourhood. Sure they start off by quoting Paul Treanor but then the interviews begin: the owner of dairy on Columbia road, Gilda O’Neill on the changes in Roman rd’s Kelly’s Pie and Eel Shop (vegetarian pies? That doesn’t seem right to me.)

Sustersic talks about the problematic nature of housing contemporary art, and how non-contextual spaces offers a poor communication system with the general public. And in relation to gentrification, she makes a point: the young gallery running in a cheap space in the cheapest part of town is not there to revive or communicate with its neighbourhood, but is trying very hard to invite the rich art elite from the other part of town. Vyner street comes to mind.

She mentions the New York-based Center for an Urban Future and their neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood assessment for the potential of arts and culture in stimulating economic growth. Widemar Spruyt talks about urban designers. I like the idea of these people - they are inbetween urban planners and architects. Spruyt - who works for Tower Hamlets Urban Planning Dept - reckons that urban planners are more concerned with social inclusion, and architects with aesthetics and details. He mentions urban design as a growing discipline, working with urban initiatives and re-urbanism, and the urban renaissance as coined by Richard Rogers. The rest of the interviews in the book include Francesca's cafe in Broadway market, the story of York Hall, Bellevue road in Wandsworth. The latter is another story in itself, and Tom Slater (urban geographer) uses it as a case study to underline and group together the various forms of gentrification. In short, this publication is ace.

Idea 2006 | Seattle Public Library

This conference should be (insert word for something really good, that isn't one of the 3 I always use.)

People taking part include Bruce Sterling, Linda Stone, Fernanda Viegas who worked on that History Flow project which got compared to Ben Fry's SNPs project, and Dan Hill who also hearts Tim O'Toole (tube stations as churches, yes)

Topics for discussion are listed on the conference blog. Dan's at the top there talking about the reinvention of broadcast media in reaction to web 2.0. He mentions the BBC hosting music festivals in second life... Um. This is where I'd scan in the cover of Wednesday's Liberation, with its hand-drawn image of youths filming themselves, being broadcast on youtube. On the front of the newspaper. But the scanner's broken.

All taking place here too:


Why am I in Paris again? Ah yes, I have a maison flottante to visit:


Not sure why I made that visual comparison there, but any which way Cneai will be showing some interesting things inside it I hear.

le Corbusier: architecte de bonheur 1957

So, I went to the pavillon de l'arsenal (again) (which by the way was recommended by Alessandra Cianchetta of AWP architects when she talked in London this summer otherwise I'd never have known) And they were showing this film tonight, with a debate afterwards concerning the portrait of the architect. I think in the UK it would have had a catchier title, something like, I don't know, architect:superstar?. It was a tiny room so I did what I always do: seek out the oldest man. The one with white hair and glasses and shirt tucked in and hairy ears. And then sit behind him. They always have the best conversation, these men.

And so, the film was predictably awesome: begins with Corb (can I call him that now?) painting in his studio. The floor is full of brushes leaking out of paint pots. It's messy. There's nothing golden about this situation, aside from the vacuous blonde/ 50s siren's hair. She's the one asking him questions throughout. Every time her face fills the screen is pure comedy and the entire room giggles. Maybe that's a bit cruel? Anyway so he takes her to a blackboard where he chalks out the essentials of living. We see a crudely drawn sun setting over the earth. It's important, light. And lots of tech drawings. And then to Marseille: sitting on the roof, sketching, children run towards le Corbusier with glee, for he is l'architecte de bonheur.

All this without a morcel of irony, wow! And unfortunately the organisers in the comfy chairs up front wanted to talk about mis-en-scene, and how cinema is vital for transmitting ideas of utopia, and the soundtrack, etc etc. They were starting to talk about le Corbusier's ideas and practice in relation to all this when the old guy in front of me got itchy and stood up to interrupt like all old men should and said: those drawings? I drew them! those models of the unite d'habitation? I made them! Those paintings he was painting? We painted together! If anyone here would like to ask me questions regarding le Corbusier, feel free to ask me. And then he sat down again.

At which point I really wished my french was a little better and the rest of the room weren't such cowards / snobs. There was an authoritative silence. The organisers followed this by saying: well, this talk is more about cinema than le Corbusier himself and then referred to his army of helpers and then spoke of his opportunism, at which point I tuned out and listened to the old man in front, who was busy reeling out the anecdotes concerning Corb's politics. It went something like Left! They were all left, everyone surrounding him. You know what he said to me? He said, heh, you're a communist. Just like me! And then he began mumbling, which is fine by me but kind of hard to arch your neck to. I wanted to stay longer and maybe hover around this old man next to the apperitif table, but unfortunately my companion had fallen asleep. And so ends this tale of getting it right: stalking OAPs at architecture talks. Should start a guide book.

pavillon de l'arsenal, videotheque, xenakis again.

The Pavillon de l'Arsenal is a gorgeous building. It's next to the Seine and has a statue recalling Rimbaud near its entrance, and a glass roof. On the ground floor is a story of Paris told through the changing public areas over hundreds of years. Descriptions of urbanity through models, drawings, diagrams, old footage and chronological statistics (daily feature of Parisian life)



Upstairs is an exhibition of architects' exhibitions. Neatly summised in English and French, my favourite of the floating windows (imagine it is a desktop please) was Bruce Mau's pragmatic utopia generation: Too Perfect | Seven new Denmarks. Working in collaboration with Danish architects/designers, they tried reimagining the triple bottom line of economic, social, and ecological sustainability.

His letter "Dear Denmark" is ace. More countries should get open letters. Or maybe colour-coded diagrams. UK could get a myspace page.

Anyway, a few more steps and I was confronted by sticky red booths.


Videotheque! I am loving this word. Not only do they have short slapsticky films on the tramway of 1922 (don't ask) but also big-hitting long-players (Godard et al) and, Xenakis.

Xenakis talking about the U.P.I.C. on French TV to be exact:


Up close:


This page describes the U.P.I.C system pretty well.

We had a voice over telling us he is a "classical greek man" (ha) and then the man himself talking about the genetics of sound, the demise of tradition, the necessity to invent nature, and lastly, how we must go further than nature. (Take note this film was only a few minutes long)

Apparently there is a Windows version of UPIC. Don't know what version Haswell + Hecker used for their project, but here's a section of the tale from Frieze:

Rather than concentrate on simple forms of mark-making and the sounds they produce, they experimented with different types of visual material – tracing onto the UPIC tablet images ranging from news photographs of disasters and atrocities, through depictions of the natural world to microscopic images of molecular structures (such as that which makes up 'the blackest ever black', a coating for telescopes that is purportedly the least reflective material on Earth). Despite the limitations of the system (it won't, for example, allow a full circle to be drawn – a sound that occurs over time can't, after all, travel back on itself), their research was in the spirit of stochastic exploration Xenakis advocated. Haswell and Hecker took the material they recorded at CCMIX and developed it for a diffusion system. No mere PA or surround sound set-up, a diffusion system is a multiple set of speakers that distribute sound through space, and allow for a high degree of real-time control over volume levels, equalization and, most importantly, spatial placement by the operator or performer at the mixing desk.

I want to visit the CCMIX quite badly.

Summer's wasting.

My brain is melting and words are escaping me daily, it's the summer holiday!

So, things that have been preoccupying me:

+ ice caps. Two films last week all about them: An Inconvenient Truth and Pierre Huyghe's A Journey That Wasn't at the Tate Modern.

The former is terrifying (I'm not sure if it was the air conditioning but Al Gore's persuasive to smug ratio is convincing) and the latter, beautiful! They found an island in Antarctica that didn't exist before. (Which is where I'd point to Deleuze on desert islands but it's August.) Oh, and then they went to Central Park where they got an orchestra to perform the island's topology. Wow.


Le Corbusier puppet

+ Huyghe's musical puppet show is beyond great too. It's about Le Corbusier's arts building at Harvard. It features Xenakis on the soundtrack, and has Corb tap dancing. Not at the same time, although that's a great idea and now I'm inspired to dig mine out.

+ Huyghe's revolving oversized Alice in Wonderland doors (there's a scalextrics track attached to the ceiling) is really ace too. Did I mention he collaborates with M/M for his halogen signage? This show's on til September 17th.

+ Avoiding my imminent departure to Paris via museums. They're telling me I need 20 passport photos. 20!

+ volcanoes: really want to visit Mount Etna. Can't remember how it came about, maybe I'm recalling Jem Cohen's film about it or something. Went to one in Second Life whose name I forget, but that doesn't count really. And I kept hitting my head against shoddily rendered rock. Anyway, back to Etna: sounds like Xenakis, apparently.

Alessandra Cianchetta, AWP at the Architecture Foundation

From London Architecture Diary (which is pretty good to have in your bookmarks if you're a wannabe architecture student like me)

Summer Nights 2006: The Europeans

AWP, founded in 2003 by five architects and one philosopher, is a Paris-based interdisciplinary studio for architecture, landscape and design. Current projects include the urban redevelopment of Wazemmes (City of Lille). The practice is part of the pan-European collective a-Graft, runners up in The Architecture Foundation's new building competition.

Chaired by Ed Dorrell, the Architects' Journal

19:00 £3 Building Design Partnership, 18 Brewhouse Yard, EC1 (Barbican / Farringdon)

serpentine pavilion 24 hr marathon

We caught the first six hours sitting on the lawn, surrounded by chatty Germans. The pavilion is so pretty at night, look:



Staring at a big screen with Rem and Hans and whoever, and lots of concentrated folk was actually a lot better than being inside. Apparently the cameras got in the way. Pricey too. We enjoyed the inventive cameramen - after 9 it went all glitch:



Anyway, more importantly, what did people say? Everyone mentioned the Middle East in some shape or form. Mostly, vague allusions to pointlessness and Rem saying the world's up in flames.

Brian Eno was talking about making digital music with more than fingers, and slowness in relation to his 77 million paintings (lots of wow and opens September 28th at the Barbican)

Charles Jencks talked about apocalypse fatigue. Waved about images of the Herzog and De Meuron Tate building (which later led to a Hadid/Koolhaas quickfire on the stylistic connotations of inverted pyramids, in passing, just like this). He's better in print though, prone as he seems to rambling speeches on symbols.

Kenneth Adam, set-maker of James Bond films, and Dr Strangelove, talked about making small worlds. Rem told him he has a specific talent for building "places of evil". He has a recurring circular theme that's worth checking.

Lots of tension between Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas we thought (guess they worked together for a while). She didn't make too many coherent points, seemed loath to connect her work/thoughts to a wider context. Did mention an interesting project they had to do at the AA once though: creating abstract lines through the map of London and walking down them in groups, to see how places connect. Of course, this exercise isn't necessary if you actually know the city you're supposed to be building in, but that's another story.

We heart Tim O'Toole. He's in charge of the London Underground and knows his stuff. After a couple of artists flapping their hands about talking about identity and what not, here's someone who namechecked Brunel. Where is the Brunel of our generation, he asked. Good question. The Brunel Engine House in Rotherhithe is really worth it by the way. They have mini versions of Isambard's bridges and stories to tell about the Thames Tunnel when it was a Victorian spectacle with Chinese performers (it's now part of the East London Line).

Ken Loach reckons no one supports him here in the UK. Which makes me wonder: are Parisian kids going to venerate British films like it's the other way round here?

Jude Kelly spouted a lot of nonsense. Really quotable stuff too, for someone in charge of the arts, culture and education for the Olympics (did she mention Hackney though?) Gems like: there's a big gap between what you say you'll do and what you'll ever do and we are a nation of mongrels, immigrant after immigrant after immigrant. Not so controversial in retrospect, but I don't think she should be riffing so publicly. Not like I think it's going to work out, but you want her to have some conviction!

Tim Newburn was a practical straight talker, of the kind that made Rem and Hans shh. Professor of criminology and and social policy at LSE, he was the first interviewee to address the audience. He talked about control and CCTV and yeah it's everywhere but he's written so many books on the topic he has new and unboring things to say about new versions of pluralist social policy transfer.

And at the end of every interview, Hans asked "what is your, dream, for London?" The answers were so bland, I forget.

Tomas Saraceno at the Barbican

I went to hear Rem Koolhaas talk about the future of London's skyline on Friday night. He was busy in Kuwait so Norman Foster took his place.

Anyway, before all the drama I sat in the curve for a while. The curve's that 80 metre curvy bit in the Barbican which I'd never noticed before, and this thing is the first specially commissioned bit of work for the space. It's a moving panorama of Salar de Uyuni - a very big salt lake in Bolivia. Saraceno used a ring of 32 cameras to make it. The clouds move steadily, and it's quite beautiful.



Saraceno's other projects are pretty impressive too. He's making habitable cells: cities in the sky that change form and join together like clouds via aerogel, under the guise of Air-Port-City. He also calls tensegrity his hero, and has made the world's biggest solar energy geodesic balloon. Lots of wow:



He's talking at the Barbican July 3rd at 6.30 too.