Re-Make Re-Model
The stucco façade of a 12 million GBP house in Kensington, London is to be rebuilt - with the cracks and chips of the original. The redevelopment by Swedish property magnate Gerard Versteegh planned to preserve the façade in the classic gut-and-fill manner. He was then granted permission to knock it down on condition that he build an exact replica. "The house will look exactly as it did when it was built," said Mr Versteegh, "and you end up with a better property in terms of building quality" A spokesman for the council said: "Recreating a façade that is an exact copy of the previous one will not affect this conservation area". Behind this new-old elevation Mr Versteegh will install the usual programme of a millionaire's mansion - a basement with cinema, swimming pool, games room, laundry, wine cellar and aquarium plus two staff bedrooms. On the first floor, Mr. Versteegh and his wife Camilla will each have a dressing room and bathroom, as will the guest room. On the second floor, there will be three children's bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms. The attic will feature a large playroom and the house will also have a library, study and several reception rooms. A grand spiral staircase will run up through the building. At the end of the 70ft garden will be a garage with room for several cars and a gym underneath. The notion that it might improve the quality of the building is also interesting. What if all that stucco was carved out a single block of marble? Or mahogany? Or perhaps cast in bronze? Or glass? Or ice? With some imagination, the act of remaking the façade could become a means of dialogue between the physical form of the façade, the passing of time, changes in value or use and so on. This kind of remaking is reminiscent of Gus van Sants verbatim-remake of Physco from Hitchcock's shooting script, replicating the camera moves, lighting and so on with colour film and different actors. In this re-make the act of re-making becomes visible. For example, Hitchcock's significant original shot of Anthony Perkins Adams apple wobbling becomes entirely redundant as Vince Vaughn, reprising the role, had a far less pronounced throat-based-secondary sexual characteristic. Architectural remakes introduce the same kind of puzzling redundancy: Tudor mansions in Beverly Hills have roofs and windows for English winters. That idea that the re-make might capture a particular stage in a buildings decay is also intriguing, The building might not revert to its 'original' just-built state - as is usual in cleaning or refurbishment. For example, the newly cleaned, gleaming white St Paul's looks as close as is possible to the day its construction was completed in 1708. An alternative to its current cleanliness could be an era-specific re-dirting - perhaps to match its famous Blitz image amongst the smoke of burning London. I'm reminded of a project where our contractor was more used to building stage sets and theme parks than buildings. Looking through the drawings, he asked us 'how old would you like this wood to be?' - a question which confounded us at the time, more used to queries over how to fix one thing to another.
The idea of rebuilding something imperfect is both beautiful and perverse. Even thinking about someone carefully crafting a crack, or sculpting a chip sends shivers down my spine. Perhaps they will paint on some staining, or faux-rust some railings, or crack and then badly repair a roof slate completely intentionally.
Posted by anothersam at July 26, 2007 5:32 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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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Football Pitch: Best of British
The First Cut is the Cheapest - Blenheim Palace: pop architecture that goes for the jugular
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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.
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Everything Counts - The Sound of Geography Collapsing.
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