wendy house

The wedding practice-party mingle in the sunshine outside St James and St William of York church. I skirt the party and slip into the substantial entrance porch of Pugin‘s psuedo Norman church. A handsome young man in the porch is talking on his mobile phone:

I’d just like you to take the “a” off the end of my name. At the moment it looks like two girls are getting married – Nicola and Alexa. My  name is Alex not Alexa. Please just put it right

I imagine the wedding with the grooms name miss-spelt as a girls name. If they are having the rehearsal, the wedding is probably fairly soon, I am impressed at how well the groom maintains a semblance of calm as he delivers his plea

The telephone pole’s spider silk lightly clings to the nearby houses

I wonder how long this will last when a substantial swathe of people find it easier to get connected and  manage thier bills using a “Pay as you go” mobile phone – no connection charge, no deposit if you have no credit history….

This autumn the dragons that live in the caverns beneath the cloud making machines are taking a long, deep, extra Indian summer snooze before they start hailing winter by breathing steam, clouds, into the cold air

Let’s hear it for the sleeping dragons below the cloud making machines, whisper “Hip Hip…..Hoorah…..”  and let the sleeping dragons lie

Ratcliffe-on-Soar dragons breathing tubes for making clouds

Willington hinting at a few light clouds before dusk

Didcot towers basking in the noon-day sunshine.

This August Bristol hosted a “see no evil” ‘block’ party, in a street dominated by 1970′s blocky, brutalist style architecture, Nelson Street:

“Some of the world’s leading street artists, some of the biggest pieces of permanent street art, some of the best music and one big block party August 20 2011!”

Artists included:

• Tats Cru (NY)
• El Mac (LA)
• Niels Shoe (Amsterdam)
• Mr Wany (Bristini)
• Inkie (Bristol)
• Aryz (Barcelona)
• Zeus (UK)
• Nick Walker (UK)

The artwork transformed places you might quickly walk through on your way somewhere else to places you go to linger. The varied pictures and styles change moods, raise questions, touch the soul. Bros 1957 and I lingered there, talking, smiling, photographing for several hours

The sound of christian church bells calling people to prayer cheerfully echos around the Wendy House garden on a Sunday morning. In April London Road, Wokingham Road, Cumberland Road, adjoining streets and park come alive with orange clad Sikh’s singing and sharing goodwill in the streets for Nagar Kirtan

Until recently there were only a couple of Mosques in Reading town. Converted buildings rather than purpose built. Can you imagine approximately 10,000 local Muslims using a couple of tiny converted buildings?

Reading town’s first purpose built Abu Bakr Masjid Islamic centre is part of the solution, and nearly complete. It adds wonderful colour, spirituality and architectural interest to the already diverse and vibrant Oxford Road

It’s on the outstanding Number 17 bus route. Alas, it’s not big enough for 10,000 muslims

Another beautifully architected Mosque is now planned for East Reading, also on the awesome Number 17 bus route

Reading town feels multi-cultrual and as-if people care about more than just the acquisitiveness of capitalism

In its short lifetime of 169 years, 33 London street has hosted diverse cultural activities – institute, theatre, church then pub

Local authoress Ms Mary Russell Mitford laid the foundation stone of the “New Hall” in 1842. Contemporary writing refers to the New Hall as either the “Literary, Scientific and Mechanics Institute” or the “Theatre Royal”.  The Institute appears to be part of a social movement that started in Wales to ensure adults of all classes, probably men, had the opportunity to learn about the arts and sciences. It provided a place they could go that had useful stuff like a library and events, for example plays

At the building’s opening in 1843 Charles Dickens read from his work. Some sources say he read from “Great Expectations” and others “Pickwick papers”

The building is later refered to as “The primitive methodist chapel” I wasn’t able to find clear, confirmed dates for this, or a reason why the Institute moved out of the building

Now it’s a public house and hotel named after the Dickens’ book  “Great Expectations”. The ground floor of the pub still has a library room

In the cult BBC drama ‘Dr. Who’ the Dr travels in a time machine called the TARDIS (type 40) that uses a ‘chameleon circuit to change its outer visible form to fit with the local surroundings.

Unfortunately the chameleon circuit broke when the TARDIS was disguised as a 1950′s London blue Police box. They are essentially a mini police station for use by Police people, and members of the public can use them to (phone) call the police. Police boxes were first used in Albany NY (1877) soon after the telephone was invented! The first boxes in Britain were placed in Glasgow (1891).

By the time I was old enough to visit London (1970s) the London police boxes had long since been removed.

This green police box is alive today, in Sheffield!

Seeing this Box kept me happy for weeks, I hope the photograph does something pleasing for you too …

At 11am on a January morning. Covent Garden wakes late and stays up late. I like the quiet charm before the

shoppers arrive

tourists arrive

theatre, opera and ballet attendees arrive

Covent Garden sparkles in the evening with laughter and smiles, people warmly dressed and chattering, clicking heels and long dresses, Dinner Jackets and cigars. Full of people it is a different place, just as beautiful

In the infamous Dioscese of Bath and Wells Ilchester, the 13th Century church of St Mary Major has a 50 ft high octagonal tower. The first octagonal church tower that I’d ever seen

According to the church guidebook Jane Austen’s aunt was imprisoned in the local Gaol for shoplifting

Shocking

The views from this Kensignton Palace building must have been severely hampered by the modern Hotel building behind. At first I was horrified that town planners had let this happen, surely people vociferously complained when they saw the plans?

Then the sheer perversity of the juxtaposition began to work a subversive magic on my taste. The smaller building looked so much more cute because of its unassuming presence in the shadow of a large and ugly Hotel.

I first heard of the Park Hill estate during my undergraduate environmental psychology classes in 1986.  The architect’s, Ivor Smith and Jack Lynn’s, vision for a high rise estate to replace sprawling slums in the northern English city of Sheffield with “Streets in the Sky”. Streets in the sky would recreate the strengths of the communities which had flourished in the back to back slums and provide improved living conditions at a bargain price. Taking people out of small, damp, Victorian terraces where  kids played in the streets and giving them streets in the sky with views over the city, inside toilets, covered walkways, balcony’s where children could play and neighbours could chat, with room for attractive open park land around the high rise buildings.  Smith and Lynn’s designs were heavily influenced by Le Corbuiser’s Breton Brut as evident in his Marseilles Unité d’Habitation. Breton Brut became known in Britain as ‘Brutalism’,  simple functional form. They wanted to build in a sense of neighbourliness into these functional spaces.

These changes were intended to improve the standard of living for people now living in a slum area locally know as ‘Little Chicago’ in the gangster era.  The Park Hill estate was completed in 1961 with 995 flats that could house over two thousand people overlooking Sheffield city centre. Front doors opened to a 12 ft wide balcony, a street, that runs right across the estate over bridges between buildings.  Milk floats could trundle from door to door along streets named the same asthose in the original slums they replaced.  People that were neighbours in the slums were rehoused next to each other. 

Worthy, admirable intentions

When built,  the social ideal didn’t happen

The estate soon became known as Sheffield’s San Quentin. The failure of the original design vision has been blamed on many things including

• easy access routes for muggers
• poor sound insulation
• the streets being open to the inclement Sheffield weather
• the building’s ugliness
• the poverty of the occupants

In 1998 Park Hill became the largest grade 2  listed building in europe.

This centruy English Heritage, Urban Splash and Sheffield city council have been renovating Park Hill.

It’s difficult to tell from the publicity what is being changed to make the project work  as a successful place to live this time. A recent BBC TV programme about the renovation focussed on English heritage’s aesthetic and structural requirements for preservation not mentioning any changes to the space aimed at improving the occupants expereince of living there. The programme made the vision appear less social that the original. So what will have changed since it first opened?  It looks like the renovation will be

• It’s prettier with bright rainbow colours
• occupants will not all be council tenants, some will be home owners and some shared ownership. They will be a different socio-economic mix
• the streets will not be open to the Sheffield weather
• living there comes with the kudos of living in a classic listed building

Turin was littered with clever and humerous architecture, sculpture, art.  It was a pleasure to wander the streets and ride the trams. There was a bravery, passion , wit and optimism about the city that appealed to me.

The via Roma runs from the Porto Nuova train station (1861) through three gorgous city piazza’s (Castello, San Carlo, Carlo Felice) to the Palazzo Reale.  The roads facade is a classic Italian art Deco (1933) style that houses designer, expensive stores (and footlocker).  We noticed some ‘city angels’ wandering along the street.  Commmunity policing?  Free accociating with art deco, with 1933, brings thoughts of Hitlers rise to power, the German ‘brownshirts‘.  Though technically speaking the city angels are wearing red shirts. 

Suprised that my mind so easily sees echo’s of fascisim in places it has been…

With the quick approach of my HOLIDAY to CAIRO I skipped out  in search of some Holiday reading. Normally I pop into the tiny yet beautiful Reading Oxfam.   The friendly staff and customers chat, the book choice is excellent,  always something to inspire and entice.

One of my friends has recently moved to Cairo and made a specific request for a copy of the Lonely Planet guide to Egypt.   Alas, the local Oxfam cold not deliver

A short walk to the Waterstones chain, a small Victorian style shop front.   Inside the store is like the TARDIS   it goes backwards and upwards,   from house to house with glass roofs between.   The store is architecturally beautifully designed and maintains unusual features such as  the mezannine floor pictured below

Once I stopped looking at the architecture and started looking at book shelves   I was lost with no idea of where  the ‘Travel’  section might be.   Looking at the labeling on the shelves only tells you what is here,   not where something that is elsewhere might be.   Unperturbed I wandered over to the foot of the stairs (both of them)  expecting to find a list of the sections on each floor.   Nothing.

The  front door did not offer a guide to the store store layout with the sections identified.     The cash and information desk by the door was being stormed by an outsized  orderly  queue of people.   Glancing  back into  the huge store I felt a little overwhelmed and wandered in looking at shelf labels and the people nearby,   which are the staff who might help me?   Before full panic could set-in, eye contact with a lady….

Lady: Can I help you?

Wendy:   Do you have a map of the store layout?

Lady: What section would you like?

Wendy:   Is there a display showing where the sections are?

Lady:   No,   I’m working on that,  what section would you like?

Wendy: Travel

Lady: upstairs ahead through the arch,   on the right hand wall arranged in alphabetical order by country

Wendy: Thank you,  love the display thing you’re working on

During 1980, like any self-respecting UK punk, I would indulge myself in freeform meandering  around deserted warehouses.  

In those days who didn’t?    

The right  warehouses were quite good places to hide from the strange people that send messages describing our past in ways I don’t remember.   Gradually, deserted warehouses became harder to find as rampant film crews,   homeless people, musicians and punks  sought their particular ambience.      

OMD sang Messages

Emergency exit from a Northern English office building.  

Using the helter skelter  is an anytime activity, not reserved for emergencies.  

I didn’t check if there was a helipad on the roof for emergency entrances.

The title of this architectural style certainly captures my experience of its implementation.  

Why would architects want to impose brutalism on their users?   I’ve not quite grapsed the subtlety here.   Maybe there isn’t any subtlety.   Any public building that requires it’s users undertake a training course in order to understand it is a public building that has failed on at least one experience level.

The Royal National Theatre on London’s south bank is a Grade II listed building,   a brutalist building.  I do not appreciate Brutalist buildings.   It reminds me of Portsmouth’s now defunct Tricorn Centre.

Not ‘Our father’ in a christian sense,   in a continuously circulating open entry elevator sense  like a vertical escalator!   I coudn’t find any explanation of why this name was applied to this type of elevator,   maybe because it felt so scary that you were advised to say some Paternosters before attempting to jump onto it.   Of its origins  the elevator museum say:

Englishman Hart developed idea of a continuous human bucket elevator called “The Paternoster.” 1884 — J & E Hall installed the first Cyclic lift (Paternoster) in England.

Things are developed and possibly patented at different times in different countries,   with different names and different design details,   the US patent for a Paternoster style elevator  was granted in 1934.

In the early 1980′s Aston University’s main science building had a working Paternoster inside  to the left of where  where the external ‘sky lift’  was added in the late 1980′s.   I vaguely remember that it ran between the 2nd and 7th (top) floors.

It was good fun jumping on and off the ever-moving Paternoster,  especially during the then annual Charter (May )Ball in the early hours of the morning wearing a ball gown and under the influence of cheerful freinds and alcohol.   Many people would not use it because it just didn’t look safe.

The Natural History Museum,  originally opened in 1881 and now open 7 days a week,   free to everyone.     It’s got Mammoth skeletons, literally, Mammoth!   Designed by a young manchester architect, Alfred Waterhouse, the building itself is a work of art.     Arches have spines and unique varied animals climbing them.  

There are no rules posted about the use of cameras which meant I got a tiny-bit snap-happy.

Flat Eric went to the Factory Outlet shops in Gun Wharf. He particularly enjoyed the ‘Animal’ shop.     He was a little disappointed that the Millenium Tower is still not open to visitors…

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