(no subject)

[shinytoaster]

I think I'm getting better at grilling steaks, I nearly managed a medium-rare tonight. Leastways it was still slightly red inside when I cut it. And I have a nice glass of Chianti that was half price at Tesco - marked down from eight quid, so it is actually a pretty good wine, and some fried mushrooms and chips to go with it. I also have a Danish Blue (cheese, not porn) and half a Brie left to finish - unhappily I have no crackers. Must remember to pick some of those up tomorrow.

Missed most of the football in favour of watching two complete arses botching this high concept house on Grand Designs. They'd built this house of two halves thinger, half of which was designed to look like an Edwardian potting shed, and the other half - oddly - designed to look like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's exquisite Barcelona pavilion, and then they comprehensively fucked it up by firing the architect and shitting all over his (very striking) design so that the end result looked less like an ethereal floating glass box and more like an airport lounge. It was a very poor show, usually Grand Designs is true property pornography and has self-designed and self-built houses that are enough to make any interior designer or wannabe interior designer ejaculate straight into his pima Calvins. But this was so dreadful that halfway through I had to get out my Frank Lloyd Wright book and ogle some houses built by a man who knows what good design is all about. I think when L and I design our own house, I'd like to try and marry Lloyd Wright to van der Rohe, I reckon the result could be inspirational if we get it right.

Designing your own house appeals to me immensely - a dwelling is an amazingly personal space, a place where you have to sleep and eat and excrete and procreate and so on. It simply doesn't strike me as right to live in some kind of Barrett designed faux-Victorian monstrosity because the designers of all these out-of-town estates with twisty cul-de-sacs and a rakish cupola on every third house, houses with names like The Winchester or The Hamptons (why, while we are about it, have we not yet seen Barrett homes called The Solihull?). How can the desk-jockey who designed those things know what the people who buy the house possibly want? It reflects no individuality or soul, merely a desire to retire to your ochre-bricked, UPVC windowed excresence and maybe wash the Vectra of a weekend afternoon. I want a house that tells people passing who I am, not one that someone tells me who I aspire to be. People shouldn't be afraid to demand what they want. There are these people in Germany - i think the company is called Huff - who design these amazing, bespoke glass and timber villas, and they sell lots in Germany and are even starting to sell a few to monied Brits.

And the enemies of this kind of design piss me off royally. It's mainly the fault of that comprehensive arsehole the Prince of Wales and his cohorts of pathetic ninnies, as depicted in frankly painful accuracy in last month's National Geographic - and note to any foreign readers who think that ridiculous excuse for an article is in any way a reflection of life in Britain you are deeply mistaken - who make it their business to evangelise this ridiculous notion of a rural golden age that is so far beyond mythical it has entirely ceased to be funny. Poundbury, Prince Charle's pet 'project' is not noteworthy in any way, being merely a collection of Barrett style homes. The future lies in developments like Bedzed.

This is why I fully intend to have a glass-fronted pavillion of my very own, to piss off Prince Charles. Different is fun.

Comments

[pengolodh-sc.livejournal.com]

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's exquisite Barcelona pavilion

At the same time as you posted this, I sat reading about the same structure on a mailing list about passenger liners. The pavillion is probably too minimalist for someone like me - it requires a certain discipline to live in it.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Ah bother, I spent all evening trying to get both the house networking *and* the new wifi radio working at the same time, and missed Grand Designs.

re: Frank Lloyd Wright, it's really only his later buildings that I think are both good and striking design. The Usonian and Textile houses all stand as some of the most innovative designs of their period (and sadly are also *still* some of the most innovative designs), whereas his earlier Prairie style is quite mundane by comparison.

Speaking of related things, have you been following Dan Cruikshank's series on Modernism on (I think) BBC4? It's part of a broader season on architecture that has also included a programme on FLW.

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

I think Prairie's interesting, but I do prefer those early designs more for their interiors than their exteriors, although I also admire the solidity of the exterior design. But I'm with you a hundred percent on the Usonian houses.

Missed Dan Cruikshank ... again ... will have to wait for the repeats now.

[ias.livejournal.com]

The Dan Cruickshank is BBC2 on Tuesday at 9pm, followed by a curious house guest type programme on BBC4 at 10pm when a bloke (can't remember his name) spends the weekend living in a family in a modernist house somewhere in Britain. The first week they did the house designed by Richard Seifert, architect of Centrepoint, for his family (his family still live there) and this week it was a house in London designed by Patrick Gwynne who also designed the Homewood in Esher (now an NT property but without a tenant so currently closed).

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

Where's Homewood in Esher? I grew up round there and in my head it's all mock-Tudor mansions.

Ask a librarian...

[ias.livejournal.com]

The Homewood's NT page

Streetmap with big arrow

[tefkas.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, I want a house that makes me disappear - hence my love of anonymous terraces, where you vanish through obscurity...

...that said, yes, design and build is the way to go to get exactly what you want... It's just that, for the type of house I want (tiny), it's not exactly a cost effective solution!

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

Disappearing into a terrace has its appeal as well. I love terraces - lived in some beautiful ones in Brighton. Would you ever consider gutting the interior of an old two-up two-down and giving it a modernist design inside whilst preserving the Victorian shell? That also appeals to me given the cost of finding a suitable site - bespoke houses demand exciting sites - and the sheer cost of designing a property from the ground up is rather prohibitive.

[tefkas.livejournal.com]

I miss Brighton a lot (I'm a Sussex boy, really), and yeah, it has some fantastic terraced houses down there...

...I'm not sure about the 'old-outside, modern-inside' thing, though: it can be taken a bit far, and I don't want a science lab for a kitchen! :D

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

Had no idea you were a Brighton lad. Cool. (How did you ever come to Hull, then?)

I lived for a year in Hanover on the southern (sort of) side of Lewes Road, and half the houses there were run-down wrecks (like mine) that had enormous potential, and others were all gentrified and had woodblock floors and halogen spots and everything - probably science lab kitchens too, come to think of it.

[tefkas.livejournal.com]

I never lived in Brighton :-( I spent a lot of time there, though, because I had my violin lessons, piano lessons, chamber group and orchestra stuff there. Which meant I spent most Saturdays and Sundays in Brighton as a teenager. Which was cool :-)

The 'rents live in Haywards Heath, and that was a large part of the reason why I went to York Uni - to get as far out of their range as possible. I just never went back, and slowly drifted, job to job, eastward to end up in Hull.

When I'm back darn sarf, I do check the property prices and jobs, and each time, it gets less and less feasible to do, as far as I can see. Ah well, Hull is a fine, fine city. Honest ;-)

[moia.livejournal.com]

Interesting link you gave there, the bedzed. I like their way of thinking, they've got some good ideas. The 'reduce need for travel' sounds very Courbisier to me :) Time will tell if they've got it right though. In a way the reduce travel idea is also reducing the buy price because there's no need for a garage if you don't have a car :) (as far as I gather from a quick look)

I loved the Barcelona pavilion! Such a lovely place. And I would just love to once see FLW's stuff IRL. I've seen so many photos of his work and whatnot, he's in every bloody book on modern architecture :) and he deserves it.

I cannot comment on British architecture although your opinions were interesting to read, since I've never been there (I've just been to London). But I do agree with you 100% that being involved in the design of your own house means you've got a very special place to call home that is specifically yours and I am all for it. There is of course the 'small' matter of money involved ;) as it usually increases expenses and prolongs the design process. The end result is really worth it in my opinion, though not all people can afford that, myself included. You need to be careful who you trust and make sure that the architect isn't trying to create something that's never been done before for the sole purpose of making something that's never been done before instead of creating something you want&need&will actually be able to live in and enjoy.

p.s. Brie=yummy :)

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

I'm in two minds about Corbuiser. I think his designs are interesting on paper but in practice they always seem to wind up looking rather Brutalist and sad. I'm not a fan of Brutalism, the Barbican and National Theatre in London excepted, of course. But Bedzed is all very eco and cool and sustainable and other trendy buzzwords, and keeps getting features written on it in the right sort of leftist newspapers.

If there's one FLW house I'm going to have to make it to, it would be Fallingwater. It's heart-stoppingly beautiful.

[moia.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely not Corbusier in all of it, just the fact that they're trying to fit work and all-you-need-for-you-life in one area reminded me strongly of his Unite d Habitation. The aspect of - a city within a city of sorts - here's a link to the Habitation: http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Unite_d_Habitation.html It's a huge building, I know it doesn't look like much, but the appartements inside are quite interesting and the view from the roof is cool. It has a sort of 'street' inside I don't remember on which level where you could go for fitness, shops, everything you need. It's not quite working out as it was planned though.
I know visually and ecologically it is quite worlds apart from the bedzed :)
Corbusier used concrete a lot as it was the new thing then and I guess that is a rather depressing material as we now know. I'd say that what I've seen of his is definitely miles better when seen in person than on pictures :) Especially Villa Savoye which I never liked much on photos.

The sustainability seems to be the new 'groove' at least in western Europe and Australia (from what I hear :) Slovenia is a tad bit behind on that - not in theory, but in practice) and that's great and all. It's a wonderful concept and I wish we would all live like that and take better care of our environment. It just seems to me to be one of those 'new concept' things that are 'in', but in reality need to be tested and then you'll see if they really work the way they were designed.

Fallingwater is rightly famous, I totally want to see it and stand above that waterfall some day :) Only, I am a bit sad that the most interesting houses end up not being lived in because they're too interesting and only open for visitors. Seems a bit of a pity that they're not used for what they'd been created in the first place.

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would be possible for anybody to live in Fallingwater at the minute. I understand they were doing some serious structural renovations on it to stop it crumbling away - also it has a serious damp problem - being stuck on top of a waterfall will do that...

I had a book when I was a kid called 'How Were They Built?' and one of the buildings in the modern section, once you'd got past all the medieval cathedrals and the Eiffel Tower and everything, was L'Unite D'Habitation and I remember thinking it looked pretty cool back then. I will take a look at that website when I get home from work.

Sustainability is all well and good but it's so hard to attain. Of course it would be great if we could all offset all our carbon emissions and minimise our so-called footprint. But equally that kind of living isn't conducive to living in beautiful cities (like Llubljana, for argument's sake), so I wouldn't feel too bad for Slovenia.

[moia.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I was thinking along the lines of, ok, here are the most lovely houses I've ever read about and they seem to be turned into exhibitions while they'd be such nice places to live in were it not for all the people wanting to see them.

I didn't even know about L'Unite before we studied it at uni :) L'Unite D'Habitation is quite cool in the fact that it's standing on pillars and you can walk underneath this big building. Also, I really liked standing on the roof, it felt sort of like floating. But the man didn't connect his architecture with the outside world much and that is the main thing that bothers me about his work: the fact that nature for him is something to be admired from afar. I love the glass pavillion thingies like the one you plan on having in your post :) Because it enables you to be there, among the nature in bad weather and yet not be cold, get wet from the rain etc.

Well thank you for calling Ljubljana beautiful :) even if you were just being nice and all.
There is a lot being said about sustainability, but I feel around here it's really more about theory. I loved a lecture I was on by Glenn Murcutt (Australian architect, great guy) and what he does is he doesn't try to create beautiful architecture, but he tries to do something that is as functional and sustainable as possible (really working best to suit the site, collecting water from roofs etc.) and in the end, his buildings really work, whether you think they're beautiful is a secondary issue.

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

I saw Ljubljana on a travel show once in the late nineties when people were starting to reconsider Slovenia and Croatia as holiday destinations again. It looked really pretty.

[moia.livejournal.com]

I love my hometown - but I am quite biased as I've lived here all my life :) Here's a lovely aerial photo I just found online today. There are some other nice ones if you click around the site :)

[ias.livejournal.com]

Your food sounds very, very yummy and has me salviating. Unfortunately it is all (bar the mushrooms and chips) distinctly pregnancy-unfriendly.

House: Gibbins and myself dream of designing our own place. Depensing on the site, it could end up something like the house we had in Bath, with huge windows and a very good division of public and increasingly more private spaces (before we left, Nick mapped it all out so we would ahve a template for future reference), or of the land were flat and the plot wide, then something like a house some of out group stayed in in Lincolnshire. It was a bungalow but not al all twee. It took up two sides of a quad (the other sides being walled and open fields). The house was built right up to the boundary with the road and like a Roman house had no windows overlooking the throughfare. Instead the wall looking onto the courtyard was entirely made of glass. One wing was given over to open plan social space and then the other wing as bedrooms. I'm not describing it very well, but it was a wonderful house.

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

... it was a wonderful house.

It really sounds it :)

L and I plan on designing one for ourselves, probably on a brownfield site, though.

And I congratulated Mister Gibbins but possibly missed your post about the Garklet, which was silly of me as you're doing the legwork, so, yay for impending Garklet and I hope all goes well. You want I should stop posting about cheese for a few months?

[ias.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

And please keep posting about cheese - I shall live vicariously through the pleasures of others for the next 6 months.

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

I'll make a note to buy more cheeses, then.

[benjj.livejournal.com]

designing your own house does have incredible appeal - I always liked to muck around with that when I was little (and have a GCSE on the basis of it. though these days I guess I should say on the basis of mucking around, not on the design.) It all started with a book called House by Mouse - nothing to do with computers, far too old for that. All designed for what was needed and all very very different.

Anyway, am waffling and should just go to bed