Oh, Good! Something To Watch

Something worthwhile on the telly? Sounds much too far fetched. But today's Guardian promises a new television series by Jonathan Meades is soon to be broadcast on the Post War architecture style known as Brutalism .

I ought to say (nay! Announce!) that for me, Mr Meades can do no wrong.

The Guardian article (link) lists ten examples of Brutalism that Jonathan Meades singles out as noteworthy. One to make the list that I knew well, is the late and by me lamented, Trinity Square Multi-storey car park, demolished to make way for a bland retro-chic re-development, part massive student housing (well, there will soon be no room to sit down at uni) over a mega-market run by one of the country's most rapacious retailers and serial land bank hoarders.

I can't wait to tune into the great man's thoughts.

'Giving substance to mere wind' – Orwell

Yesterday … It may have been Friday … I had the misguided idea to follow a link to the Newcastle City Council's website and read one of their "strategy statements" outlining plans for the next wave of alterations to this once marvellous city to be imposed on what is, by any standard, a quiescent populace; as if punched and bullied into a corner waiting for the bell to ring.

I glazed over as I read one 'plug and go' generic sentence following another, the deadening prose of choice of the MBA clones that write this muck for large salaries. The impressive part – impressive to beginners I suppose – is the way substance is conjured out of mere wind. Nothing is said that could not be unsaid or denied, altered, changed, transformed or 'negotiated' out of recognition.

Today I came across this piece by The Observer newspaper's architecture critic Rowan Moore commenting on a development proposal written along somewhat similar lines. Mr Moore's powers of derision are masterful. Read it for yourself by following this link.

Just in case the link lapses or there just isn't enough time in your life to lose studying the linguistic skills of charlatans, I hope Mr Moore (and his paper) will excuse a juicy quote on this blog.

"Westminster and the Edwardian group (*), however, expressed their excitement by dropping the lacquered turds of regenerative PR-speak. It would create 400 jobs, they said, ignoring the fact it would be possible to create jobs on this site and still keep the best of the old structures. They spoke of "the spiritual home of British entertainment and cinema", whose spirit they will sap. The development would be "iconic", "a focal point", and would bring "renewed vibrancy". As the great writer Ian Martin recently pointed out "vibrancy" is weasel talk for social cleansing. A pub, you might think, could be vibrant, but that hasn't saved the Hand &am Racquet."


'… lacquered turds of regenerative PR-speak'. Nice one, Rowan.

(* Developers, not a conservation society devoted to Edwardian art and life. AD.)

Now… One more time without feeling

By my reckoning (forty years) the current 're-imagining' of the great Newcastle Central Station by John Dobson, one of this country's finest architects, is number three or even four in the series.

Newcastle Central Station 1848 by John Dobson (1787-1865)

Just before Christmas 2013 I took a stroll around the area and saw the television programme style breathless 'makeover' up close, dodging traffic to negotiate temporary pedestrian crossings. I began by taking a closer look at the new Rye Hill Sixth Form College, just a few hundred yards to the west, and worked backwards to the Central Station. The new Sixth Form College building joins one or two others at Rye Hill Campus for having a serious claim to the epithet 'architecture', a rare distinction for new buildings in this city.

Central Station - Rye Hill 29.11.13

But why does Dobson's masterpiece need this treatment? Possibly because of the increasing demands of the motor car? Unlike some other unfortunate sites of architectural heritage, the 20th and 21st century insistence for private vehicle access could always be met here since the lenghty facade and street running past were always of a generous proportion.

No, this is Newcastle City Council's suburbanite curtain twitcher instincts in full flight. Tarting up is their métier. Proof? The title pinned to this exercise in smarming gunk over a sublime sweep of Georgian stone work, is 'Gateway', a title that might have been, probably was, dreamed up by a team of business suited ingenues during Happy Hour at a gastro pub.

Note: All my recent photographic albums are off site links. Please open in a new tab or window as you wish.

Postscript 18th January 2014

An image of Newcastle Central Station after the works have been completed and buses and people have largely been banished; either that, or the artist was up bright and early one Sunday morning.

The inspiration is pure 'shopping mall'; The very thing that has characterised a city – the experience commented upon by every writer since St Paul – the energy, habitable chaos, diverse and often contradictory spaces, the sheer accumulation that any place that has seen continuous large scale occupation over centuries acquires like a patina, is absent here. This is not a city scape but a retail park fashioned by over-promoted estate agents. Kierkegaard wrote once–

'A passionate, tumultuous age will overthrow everything, pull everything down; but a revolutionary age that is at the same time reflective and passionless leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance.'

Gutted

Core Strategy? There's a 'strategy'? This has just arrived (it's an image, apparently) –

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Belated season

Ouseburn November 2013

I had it in mind to post these images (slideshow above) of a walk undertaken in late autumn as a second part of the one posted in November 2013 'scoping' neighbouring Shieldfield. Here it is.

One thing photographs cannot convey are sounds and textures. There are some things I feel that will, thankfully perhaps, remain unique to real experience.

Walk in your own special places and remember: They can be bought and sold.