The red telephone box

     Poor old telephone boxes. Dirty, covered with stickers on the outside and prostitutes' calling cards on the inside. Who even knows if they still work. Now we've all got mobiles and you wonder who actually uses the public telephones. Men making anonymous calls to those ladies of pleasure, presumably, and perhaps tourists who'd have to pay an arm and a leg to use their own phone on the UK networks. Who else though? Those heritage phone boxes in the photo look the part, but inside is a mess: empty beer cans, unidentifiable stuff festering on the floor, and X-rated postcards, not a healthy environment.
     It wasn't always that way. Long ago, I used to slip out of the house in the morning to call friends before school. We didn't have a phone in our house so you had to walk up to the phone box, further up the village high street, and you'd have to sneak out to avoid having to explain why it was important to talk to someone who would be at the same school an hour later. In those days the telephone was a black metal box with a perspex finger dial, and it took those big pre-decimal pennies in the slot (press button A to talk when the person answered, or press button B to get your money back). Then there was the sneaky way, where you'd lift the handset and tap out the number, ten taps close together for zero and so on, with a longer pause in between numbers. That would get you through for nothing, for no reason that we could ever work out, but sometimes they would notice at the exchange, and a stern lady would come on the line and tell you to stop mucking about. Quite scary, since the exchange was right next door to this particular phone box, and if they thought to look outside they would quite likely know who you were. Don't bother trying it though, it doesn't work on the modern digital telecom system.
     Not so long ago the red telephone box was still the only way to get in touch with people if you weren't at home or work, and people didn't necessarily have a line at home either. The phone boxes were well used. The red paint was kept new and the glass got repaired if a pane was broken. The directory was just left on a shelf, the special directory shelf, and mainly it stayed there - why would anyone nick it when you could get one free from the post office? The phone boxes even had their own special smell, a mixture of damp concrete, cigarette smoke, musty paper and ozone. Just before mobile phones became common, everyone carried a phonecard, but it's difficult to remember what that was about: something to do with vandalism probably. I remember the first time I met someone who had a mobile. It had a hefty handset, like a normal handset but as thick as a brick, attached by a heavy-duty cable to a lead-acid battery, like a car battery but smaller. It was barely portable, but the owner, a building contractor, carried it up to the bare room in a derelict building that was his site office, and impressed the hell out of the rest of us.
     It's not just the hardware though. The mobile phone brought in a whole different attitude to privacy and the way we communicate. At work, people used to make the sort of calls you wouldn't dream of having in public now: to your mother, the bank manager, asking after lost property or making plans for Friday night. Everyone else in the office would listen quite openly and make comments afterwards, sometimes even while you were still on the line. Nobody wore headphones, so that and other verbal exchanges around the office were what kept everyone amused. Even at home calls weren't necessarily private, and funnily enough, most of the time they didn't need to be. They do now though.

Lunchtime concert at St Pancras Parish Church

Piano and flute, yet again: a favourite combination for church recitals. One of the nice things about these concerts is being able to sit up front if you want to, seeing what's going on as well as hearing the music. The musicians sitting rigidly still or swaying to keep time, the contrast between delicate, complex fretting movements of the fingers, and the pianist hammering vigourously on the keys in the loud parts, then a hand poised in readiness for what comes next while the other hand plays alone - partly mechanics, partly deliberate dramatisation of the music, perhaps also the performers' unconscious expression of their involvement in playing it. Russian pianist Pavel Timofejevsky and Japanese flautist Kiyoka Ohara played chamber music pieces with the flute dominating, or perhaps I should say providing the leading expressive voice against the piano backdrop. A mixed programme: CPE Bach (son of JS) was forgettable but the rest was better. Schubert's "Arpeggione" sonata, Saint-Saens' Romance for Flute and Piano, and two of Roland Revell's delicate Trois Pensées - which seem to be completely unavailable as a recording, only as sheet music.

On this occasion I got a seat in the front row and took a photograph during one of the breaks for applause. It's the only time I've taken a camera - it's rather bad manners, as well as detracting from intent listening, which is really the only way to appreciate classical music - but just for once I wanted to capture the two performers, the Yamaha grand piano, the amazing spiral stair up to the pulpit and an equally amazing driftwood figure of Christ on the cross, in the background. Here it is.

Occupy LSX - Time to move on?

The Occupy camp at St Paul's is thinning out. After more than 100 days of occupation, there are still as many tents as can physically fit on the site, but the buzz has quietened down. The imaginative posters that used to adorn the stone arcade opposite the cathedral have all been taken down, leaving a few tape marks but nothing worse. Occupy LSX was extraordinarily successful in raising the stakes in the people v the banking system debate, and equally lucky in finding themselves in perhaps the one spot where they would not be summarily turfed out. Now though, the camp is not really in the news any more, and you have to ask - is it time to move on? Wouldn't it be more impressive to announce a moving out date, do a massive clean-up and hand Paternoster Square back to the cathedral, create some positive publicity instead of hanging on until a legal eviction gets under way, almost inevitably with a degree of violence. The protesters will argue that they need to be together in order to have a collective voice, but is that really necessary, when it's possible to meet up for events, and keep in touch via the internet in between times? Well that's what I'd suggest if I was part of the protest camp, but then I'm not.

Architecture at the BBC

Broadcasting House, the iconic Art Deco building at the top end of Regent Street, has undergone a transformation over the past few years. Where there was once a collection of down-at-heel nondescript buildings housing the overflow from Broadcasting House, there is now an architect-designed group of buildings arranged around a public plaza (still not quite finished) and the BBC has just moved it to the big new extension at the back of the site.

All well and good: the BBC needed modernising and it's good to see them keeping their main centre of operations right in the centre of London. There is a the problem though. Broadcasting House sits right next to the delicate and unusual church of All Souls, designed by John Nash and completed in 1824. Those nondescript buildings provided a bland backdrop to the church, and the calm solidity of the BBC building, with its curved front and small windows, somehow complemented rather than competed with the curved portico. Its dramatic spire was echoed by the dummy radio arial on top of the BBC but, since it was the home of British broadcasting, that was entirely appropriate in itself and not just a silly architectural echo. The new Egton Wing, on the other hand, shouts for attention. It has a perfectly sensible floor plan but the outside plays every trick it can think of to tell you, this is modern architecture with attitude, not just some anonymous office building. The curves are perfectly appropriate, but there is too much going on, apparently at random. The surfaces seem to be paper thin, even the stone parts, and variously peeling away or held at a distance off the facade by stainless steel arms, a sort of deconstructivist layered effect that is exactly the opposite of the original Portland stone BBC building. The glass facade around the courtyard is just a hovering layer with bits missing, enclosing nothing and apparently without any purpose. It's completely wrong for this site. From the side view, standing outside the Langham Hotel or passing in a bus, it's no so bad - if you stand in the right place you can get a view of the Telecom Tower too - but the view up Regent Street (pictured) is simply a mess.

So what would be an appropriate way to design a new building in that setting? Would you want to make something calm and solid - a neutral and dignified backdrop, built to last - or would you try to outdo both landmarks by creating something more in-your-face that you hope will itself become 'iconic'? The first course is safe, but the other approach is difficult, so hard to get right that it's not easy to see how it could have been done successfully in this instance. None the less that's what the BBC and their architects have attempted with the Egton Wing. On a site with not just one but two minor architectural masterpieces, what it doesn't need is some architect trying to compete.

As far back as 2000 the BBC saw the need to expand and modernise, and held an an architectural competition, which is the way major projects are often awarded: you get to see a design before choosing your architect. The competition was won by Richard MacCormac and his architectural practice MacCormac Jamieson Prichard who did the plans for the whole site. Broadcasting House itself was completely refurbished and the new Egton Wing opened in back in 2006. MJP have stated "the partnership looked at complementing the iconic status of Broadcasting House with an emblematic work of architecture which would sit elegantly and appropriately at the heart of historic Regent Street". Judge for yourself how well they have succeeded.

After that phase, some serious value engineering (architect speak for cost cutting) so incensed MacCormac that he stepped down, to be replaced by all-purpose mega architects Sheppard Robson - who in fact followed the MacCormac's design for the exterior, making the necessary budget cuts on the inside. Now, the BBC has moved into its enormous new extension at the back of the site. Unlike the front, it's a big and bland, expensive-looking building: just about right really.

Briefly, London's twin constructivist towers

On the left, the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower as constructed on the 2012 Olympics site. On the right, the Tatlin Tower, as re-created in the courtyard of the Royal Academy. Two steel structures, large scale structures built at roughly the same time, both painted bright red: so do they really have anything in common?

They are not the same size but look more closely, and you can see more design principles in common - expressive curved shapes kept rigid by triangulated steelwork. Both were made with the aid of sophisticated computer modelling, although you can see how the Tatlin Tower could have been made with a bit of trial and error rather than computers. The Orbit could not have been built without 3D modelling. The exact length and angle of each length of steel tube was worked out on a computer model, so that when the site assembly team put it together, the last few pieces fitted together exactly to close the loop at the top.

As abstract expression, though, the Tatlin stands out. It's a scale model of the tower designed in 1920 by Russian architect and engineer Vladimir Tatlin, but never built. The model was made for an exhibition on Russian Constructivism, so it's not a permanent structure, but it does allow you to experience something of the optimism of the early Communist state, before it became a repressive regime. The Orbit was designed by sculptor Anish Kapoor, who has done some exceptionally successful public sculptures, for example the Cloud Gate in Chicago, or the stretched funnel he installed in Tate Modern, but this isn't convincing on the same level. Answers on an e-postcard if you can tell me what it expresses.

Notes (21 April 2012)
The Tatlin Tower has now been taken down, and there don't seem to be any plans to erect it elsewhere. It was designed by architect Jeremy Dixon who interpreted the original drawings and photographs of the small model made by Tatlin.
The Orbit is 115 metres high and when the Olympics open it will have a lift and viewing platform overlooking east London.
See also, earlier posts about the Tatlin Tower and about an early visit to the the Olympics Site.

A place in the country

"In some countries, the large cities absorb the wealth and fashion of the nation; they are the only fixed abodes of elegant and intelligent society, and the country is inhabited almost entirely by boorish peasantry. In England, on the contrary, the metropolis is a mere gathering-place, or general rendezvous, of the polite classes, where they devote a small portion of the year to a hurry of gayety and dissipation, and, having indulged this kind of carnival, return again to the apparently more congenial habits of rural life. The various orders of society are therefore diffused over the whole surface of the kingdom, and the more retired neighborhoods afford specimens of the different ranks.

The English, in fact, are strongly gifted with the rural feeling. They possess a quick sensibility to the beauties of nature, and a keen relish for the pleasures and employments of the country. This passion seems inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of cities, born and brought up among brick walls and bustling streets, enter with facility into rural habits, and evince a tact for rural occupation. The merchant has his snug retreat in the vicinity of the metropolis, where he often displays as much pride and zeal in the cultivation of his flower- garden, and the maturing of his fruits, as he does in the conduct of his business, and the success of a commercial enterprise. Even those less fortunate individuals, who are doomed to pass their lives in the midst of din and traffic, contrive to have something that shall remind them of the green aspect of nature. In the most dark and dingy quarters of the city, the drawing-room window resembles frequently a bank of flowers; every spot capable of vegetation has its grass-plot and flower-bed; and every square its mimic park, laid out with picturesque taste, and gleaming with refreshing verdure."

A lot of us are fresh back from calmer places at this time of year. Doomed to pass their lives in the midst of din and traffic: that seems about right, sometimes.

Quotation from 'The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent' by Washington Irving, published 1819 and long out of copyright.