London and on and on
London is more a process than a plan, a series of events that have precipitated structure, texture and grain. In this sense, London is not so much as a city as a phenomenon, almost like a kind of geology – perhaps a sedimentary bed laid down over years, slowly compressing into solid mass. Amongst the gravel of 19th century housing one could imagine fossil-like forms: the shell-like husk of St Pauls, the spinal string of the Westway, or the coral reef of the Houses of Parliament. The forces that currently bear on London are, however, no longer earthly. They are moved by the invisible tides of global capital that flow like lava below the tarmaced streets. Like plate tectonics, this force shifting the shape of the city: stretching London out wider, and compressing the centre where skyscrapers push upwards like a fresh mountain range. For the first time in a generation, London feels as though it is in a state of flux: straining, swelling and fit to burst. For someone who grew up in the 1970s and 80s this is unsettling. During these decades London’s physical form remained constant. However, at the same time the concept of lifestyle utterly transformed the city. Things like food, music, clothes, became as important as bricks or infrastructure because they altered the possibilities of living. It was a transformation that was almost invisible, that was decorative and ephemeral. In a generation, industrial slums – once scheduled for demolition - became gentrified neighbourhoods. It means that there is a direct line drawn between London urbanists: from John Nash, via Patrick Abercrombie to lifestyle gurus like Terrance Conran and Jamie Oliver. This is an urbanism of consumption –feeding from its surroundings, yet without the ability to contribute anything more than atmosphere and character. Self-cannibalising urbanism can only go so far. While incredibly successful, it has simultaneously atrified metropolitan opportunity through rising property prices and the paraphernalia of lifestyle. It is a gloriously luxuriant full stop to a chapter in London’s urban history. What happens next? Perhaps the organization of the city will reverse its polarity: the sprawling suburbs are already home to the diversity once associated with metropolitan centre. Maybe a new bohemia will flourish in the suburban landscapes yet to assert their own unique identity? In built form, we are beginning to see a vision of the London of twenty years time. Renderings of the city show it denser, higher, and shinier. While views out east show the Olympic masterplan and the hazy concept of the Thames Gateway. London’s eastern stretch has been dramatized in the design for the Olympic park – as though the city has turned into a gloop of grass and concrete, slowly oozing eastwards like a 1950s sci fi monster. It is stretched and stringy like warm chewing gum beneath your shoe. The intention seems to be to visualize urbanism as a graphic swoop – a steroid enhanced Nike swoosh at the scale of a city: a graphic diagram transformed into reality. If you carry on east, you’ll find yourself in the Thames Gateway. Though you probably wouldn’t realize it, as it is a bureaucratic concept rather than a place. It has been earmarked as an area for major development over the next 30 years – the means to solve the crisis of unaffordable housing in the South East. Quite differently to the Olympics, this huge area lacks vision and image – unsurprising, as it has been developed in the turgid text of policy documents rather than the global beauty parade of the IOC. These three scenarios will transform London: from skyline to horizon. In each case they propose alternative approaches to urban design. From the glamorous image of a corporate brochure via a design vision to the bureaucrats shading of a map. The danger in each case is that they become parodies of their own technique, and thus conservative in their scope and limited in their ambition. By relying on these traditional forms of urban thought, they exclude the imaginative leaps that can be made by the unofficial ‘lifestyle’ urbanism. The opportunity is now ripe for London to create new approaches which hybridize scales of regeneration: from DIY to large scale infrastructure. It is perhaps only by engaging these varied urban practices that we can begin to imagine London’s future landscapes succeeding: Socially minded celebrity chefs working with traffic engineers or music promoters with volume house builders. These are the new equations of pleasure that could re-invigorate diagrammatic master planning.
This lightweight urbanism is driven by private money on a mission to create an individual dream. Curiously, these individual dreams add up to a collective vision. It undoubtedly harnesses the most powerful force in urbanism – desire, aspiration, identity, community all bound together. This period has had an ironic effect as the qualities once associated with metropolitan living have vanished: diversity, opportunity. Instead, the centre has becomes a wickerbasket wielding village fantasy full of specialty cheese shops.
One might argue that it is trying to find an alternative to horizontal sprawl, to give strong formal character to the eastward horizontal vector of London. One might also argue that is abstract stretch is gambling everything on its formal characteristics in a city that has traditionally resisted such gestures (one might argue that only the M25 has succeeded in completing large scale plan)
Posted by anothersam at August 4, 2006 11:36 PM.
Contents:
More Scenes In Cartoon Deserta
Generic Powerpoint Template: Delivering Bad News
The Best New Building In London
Book Review: The Infrastructural City
The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition
Now Showing: John Baldessari Sings Sol LeWitt
Obscure Design Typologies: Life Guard Chairs
Osama bin Laden Cigarette Lighter: Novelty Products as Congealed Culture
Absurd Car Crashes: A Eulogy for J.G. Ballard
Now Showing: Dan Grahams 'Rock My Religion'
This Concrete 'O': On Serotonin, the M25, and the Motorik Picturesque
Church of the Literal Narrative
Philadelphias Floating Architecture
Now Viewing: Married To The Eiffel Tower
Le Corbusiers Image Hoard: Poeme Electronique
Giant American Signs: Original Learning from Las Vegas Footage
Giant Soviet Signs Cut Into Forests
Bricks Melted Into Icicles: Napalm Decorative
C-Labs 'Unfriendly Skies' & 'Bootleg' Volume
2 The Lighthouse: Self Storage & Architectural Hallucinations
Ceci N'Est Pas Une Pipe: Infrastructure as Architectural Subconcious.
Viva Sectional Cinematography!
Now Showing: The Installation of an Irreversible Axis on a Dynamic Timeline
Sim Seasons Greetings! The Rise of Neo-Winter
Geography in Bad, Festive Drag.
Simulations of Industry: High Tech Architecture and Thatcherism
From The Factory to the Allotment: Tony Wilson, Urbanist
Koolhaas HouseLife / Gan Eden: The Revenge of Architectural Media
Ruburb-ric: The Ecologies of the Farnsworth House
Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham Redux
Acts of Un-Building: Timelapse Demolitions
Yard Filth: Next Years Hot Look
Stonehenge: A Black Hole At The Heart Of British Architecture
The Popemobile: Mechanised Robes & Motorised Architecture
The Secret Language of Surface
Information Fields: Agriculture as Media
My Bloody Valentine: Sound as Substance
A Cubist Copse: Gehrys Serpentine Pavilion
Spouting Off: Some Thoughts On The Fountainhead
Form Follows Dysfunction: Bad Construction & The Morality of Detail
Vintage Tradeshow Surrealism: International Grune Woche
Moving Houses: Buildings In Motion
Desktop Study: The Strange World of Sports Studio Design
Married to the Eiffel Tower: More Objectum Sexuals
60 Years of The Crazy Horse Memorial
Married to the Berlin Wall: "The Best and Sexiest Wall Ever Existed!"
Inflatable Icebergs: Sublimated Guilt Has Never Been So Fun
The Cinderella Effect: Phantom Architectures of Illumination
Two Deaths and a Retirement: The Strange Shape of British Architecture
If London Were Like New York: Antique Schizo-Manhattanism
If London Were Like Venice: Antique Geo-Poetic Speculations and Hydro-Fantasy
41 Hours in an Elevator: The Movie
NASA: Mapping the Moon with Sport
Lemon Squeezy: Design Tendencies after the Juicy Salif
The Nihilistic Beauty of Weapons Arranged in Patterns
Dogs: Britains Greatest Design Obsession
Detroit Sucks: The Motor Shows Last Gasp
Authentic Replicas: Football and the Franchising of Place
Folk Football: Landscape, Space and Abstraction
A Wishing Well with a Fat Up Pipe
The Camoufluers and the Day-Glo Battleship
Pseudoccino: Instant Coffee Foam
Blown Up: More Inflatable Military Stuff
On Christmas Trees, Folk Forests and Staples Office Supplies
Hampton Courts Shrouded Sculptures
Named Fabric: 20 Sponsored Pieces of Architecture at the New Museum
Form Follows Felony: The Secret Home of the Un-Dead Canoeist.
Architectural Magazines: Paranoid Beliefs, Public Autotheraphy - More on Clip/Stamp/Fold
James Bond Lives Next Door: Suburban Imagery as Industry
The Ghost of Christmas Futurism
Chapters for an Imaginary Book About Architecture
Shrouded Plinth - Urban Striptease
In the Night Garden - Surreal Landscape of Nostalgia
Kim Jong II, The Great Architect
Place Faking: Instant Heritage for the Thames Gateway
The Marc Bolan Memorial Crash Barrier.
Enjoy The Silence: Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones
Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham
In Search of Britains Vehicular History
Scary Suburbanism: Why Horror is at Home in the Suburbs
I Like Your Manifesto, Lets Put it to the Test-o
How to Become a Famous Architect
Northampton - Sci-fi Pop Planning Promotion
Advertising Central Milton Keynes
The Velvet Underground at the Glass House
Duplikate: Kate Moss on the Production Line of Individuality
Hollow Inside: Starbucks Foam and the Rise of Ambiguous Materials
Revisions to the Architecture of Hell
Crufts: Dogs, Design and Aesthetic Genetics
Eos Airlines: Executive Bubbles over the Atlantic
Google Earths Vertiginous Mapping
Church of the Ascension and Descension
Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles
Reading Lines: Skateboarding and Public Space
Chris Cornish: Prototyping History
The Most Visited Location in the UK
Anything to Feel Weightless Again: The Cargo Lifter and the Tropical Island Resort
'Its beauty will know no season'
2000 Years of Non Stop Nostalgia. Or How Half Timbering Made Me Whole Again.
Backpeddling into the Future: The Historical-Futurism of British Architecture
Miss Selfridges' Feeling for Fake Snow. The Oxford St. Lights and Why We Need Artificial Winter
New Tory Logo: A Hazy Shade of Politics
Jeff Koons, Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Serpentine
Celebrity Scents: The Bittersweet Smell of Success
Imperfect Pitch - Football, Space and Landscape
Product Placement: Making the Impossible Possible
Suburban Growth: Matthew Moores Field of Dreams
Perfect Sound Forever: The Secret Function of High End Stereos
A Little Light Product Placement
Some Advice To A Young Designer
Useless Proclamations for a Beautiful City
Topsy Turvy VSBA: Inverted Heros of an Upside Down Avant Guard
Everything Flows: ideological cartography
How Geostationary Was My Valley?
The Psychotic Utopia of the Suburbs and the Suburbanisation of War.
In a Lonely Place - Under Construction
Mach 3 Nitro Gel - Design that's foaming at the mouth.
Marchitecture. Architectural things to do in London this March
What happens when you cross a pen with a car?
Football Pitch: Best of British
The First Cut is the Cheapest - Blenheim Palace: pop architecture that goes for the jugular
Holiday Snap II : Giant Glowing French Balls
Holiday Snap: Canadian War Memorial, Vimy, France
Anatomy of an Architectural News Story
Its All About the Big Benjamins
Poundbury, unexpectedly, in the rain
The Exploding Concrete Inevitable. Lou Reed and the Casa da Musica
Untitled (Plastic Sack and Timber)
Berlin 1945 - The Obscene Picturesque
Interview: Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane
An Incredible Smell of Roasting Coffee
Langlands & Bell - The House of Osama Bin Laden
Architectural Criticism gets Sharp
Venturi, Scott Brown and my love that dare not speak its name.
Douglas Coupland: Design and Fiction
Christopher Dresser at the V&A
Fugitives and Refugees' - Chuck Palahniuk
Just What is it That Makes Yesterdays Homes So Different, So Appealing?
Everything Counts - The Sound of Geography Collapsing.
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