8 SYKES ON EIGHT...
Vanity Architecture
Architect Christopher Sykes indulges in Chinese whispers, thinks colour not monochrome and praises more CABE initiatives
The strange incomplete hotel in central China (photographed by Christopher Sykes from the market below while drinking a beer. Time taken to drink beer 2 minutes; time taken initially to haggle over price of beer 5 minutes).
YES, I KNOW THAT OTHER PEOPLES’ HOLIDAY SNAPS CAN BE A BORE BUT I BEG YOUR INDULGENCE TO MAKE AN EXCEPTION FOR THIS ONE.
his is somewhere in central China at a place called Fengdu, famous for yet another Buddhist temple complex and known as the city of ghosts. This is a hotel which is successfully incomplete and, I think, abandoned. Doesn’t look much like Buddha and maybe it’s not meant to but it’s a novel idea – don’t use the best side of your hotel for anything boring like great views from the hilltop, in this case overlooking the river Yangtse. Instead, replicate someone - your leader, your sponsor, yourself. This has to be the ultimate in vanity architecture.
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Vanity architecture certainly doesn’t label Foster’s great Beijing Airport though it probably does Tian An Men Square with its vast Mao mausoleum and gigantic photo. One interesting statistic connects the two. The Airport measures 1 million square metres while 1 million Chinese can stand together in the Square – or half that number if they are ‘Big Noses’ which, I discovered, is how we Westerners are sized.
From grey to green....
CABE tells us that yet another crisis looms but, being CABE, they are going to do something about it. It appears that we need more people with the right skills to manage the landscape of our towns and cities.
Many green elements are already in place but, like roads, their value lies in being networked – ie a well-maintained and well- connected system of parks, gardens, waterways, allotments and tree-lined streets. Green infrastructures are a powerful weapon in the fight for stronger communities, healthier lives and a sustainable future. This is laudable stuff and all the more so because earlier this month CABE launched Grey to Green - a public debate to shift funding and skills from grey to green infrastructure.
Speakers included leading landscape designer Dan Pearson. Among his recent projects is London Maggie's Centre which has just won the 2009 Stirling Prize. This two storey pavilion was conceived as a home-like sanctuary to help patients with cancer. The architects have sheltered the centre from its harsh NHS hospital surroundings with a thick and cheerful orange masonry wall which
dramatically serves as a backdrop for carefully planted tree groves and gardens. As the RIBA commented, ‘The positive spirit of the place is signalled with a roof canopy that oversails its many intimate internal gardens and courtyards.’
……to colour
And that brings us neatly on to another subject - colour - since colour is one of the dominant features of this project.
Colour, the experts will tell us, is one of the most neglected aspects of the 20th century modernist approach to architectural design. The love of natural materials, unadorned concrete, minimalism and all those sort of things have created rather monochromatic landscapes and boring they have often been – as boring as black clothing since it’s been the new colour for so long, especially among the younger population. So it is very stimulating when something like Maggie’s Centre (architects Rogers Stirk Harbour) reminds us what artificial colour can do for us. Perhaps runner-up Kentish Town Health Centre (AHMM) should also be praised for its hint of colour in its small windows which blasts you inside with fine and dramatic slabs of plain colour murals to brighten the whiteness of the interior.
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