Quote London

"But London has cause to feel particularly proud of the thrusting generation of moderates whom the capital shaped in various well-endowed institutions and at soirees held in their honour at the highest level of metropolitan society, before sending them off into the Middle East to work their magic. Think of Saif Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad and his wife – perhaps Vanity Fair, which last insisted London was swinging in 1997, could return to do a sarcastic "Class of" feature on the capital's most eye-catching governance alumni.

It took root under Thatcher but it was Blairism that presided over the capital's transition into full-blown creep haven – inevitable, given Tony's pathological admiration for the super-rich. The result is that it is now standard to note that there are two Londons: the one where all but a few thousand of the city's millions live, and the one where, when yet another Mayfair restaurant opens selling £70 steaks, the black Range Rovered clientele cannot get a table for weeks on end.

From the outside, the one increasingly eclipses the other. And thus, if I might make a pitch for inclusion in Pseuds' Corner, London is contracting as an idea. Where previously outsiders could get a sense of the richness of the city's culture, it is now increasingly difficult to get a sense of much else than London's richness – while for insiders, the sense of exclusion from that richness becomes more pronounced. The greatest city in the world does not care to accommodate its key workers within a one-hour, overpriced commute of their jobs, but plays enduringly attentive host to some of the most grotesque horrors of the age."

- Marina Hyde in the Guardian

Design Museum Heads West

The Design Museum is in the news because of its annual Design Awards (Designs of the Year 2012 exhibition now on at the Museum) and because the museum itself is on the move across London from Shad Thames to the old Commonwealth Institute in Holland Park - its best frenemy the V&A will be a near neighbour in South Kensington (target date 2014).

While part of me is thrilled that someone is giving this mad 50s folly a new lease of life (Grade II listed, no less, and apparently regarded as second only to the incomparable Royal Festival Hall in post-war British Modernist importance), the bigger part of me is sad the Design Museum will be leaving Shad Thames, which it has graced since the 1980s. I imagine it will be replaced with more expensive flats with river views, impoverishing the cultural life and diversity of this stretch of the Thames immeasurably.

Also worrying is what they intend doing to the old Commonwealth Institute building (Sir Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall and Partners, 1960-2) , an architect’s flight of fancy if ever there was one, a triumph of form over function or even reason:

“Regarded by English Heritage as the second most important modern building in London, after the Royal Festival Hall, the building has a low brickwork plinth clad in blue-grey glazing. Above this swoops the most striking feature of the building, the complex hyperbolic paraboloid copper roof, made with 25 tonnes of copper donated by the Northern Rhodesia Chamber of Mines. The shape of the roof reflects the architects' desire to create a "tent in the park" . . . The interior of the building consists of a dramatic open space, covered in a tent-like concrete shell, with tiered exhibition spaces linked by walkways. “

Those links include swooping stairs down to a floating mezzanine level beneath the immense expanse of that magnificent roof. This grand flourish is extravagantly wasteful of space, which no doubt the Design Museum covets. The proposed remodeled interior designs I have seen sweep away the stairs, walkways, floating mezzanine, etc, and close up that central block of empty space. The original complex and delightful spatial interplay is completely annihilated in favour of a grim heavy concrete platform with a rather mingy oculus allowing a partial view of the roof. My criticisms are purely aesthetic here - no doubt in practical ways the redesign will make the space function far more efficiently as a gallery, as well as generating more usable floor space. It’s just sad that something so intrinsic to the building will apparently vanish in the process. John Pawson has a lot riding on this - a very modish architect, most of his projects so far have been either commercial or private commissions by the super rich; this will be his first major public project. His brand of highly aesthetic minimalism seems a refinement of 60’s Brutalism - the movement which reacted forcefully against the effete and almost rococo modernism represented by the Commonwealth Institute. We shall see whether the styles can harmoniously cohabit.

Happy Valentine's Day

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Building The Big Society

Building The Big Society
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CallmeDave and Boris helping out in the window of Trinity Hospice Shop, Clapham High Street

Sex with a Stranger

Stefan Golaszewski’s new play Sex with a Stranger running at the Trafalgar Studios this February is cut from unpromising cloth: a plot so slight it is barely there - a mundane tale of squalid infidelity - and a cast of three (as in “there are three in this marriage”). Out of these elements he manages to weave a totally engrossing and thrilling evening of theatre, hugely aided by stunning performances from Russell Tovey, Jaime Winstone and, making her West End debut, Naomi Sheldon.

The theatre is tiny, with the audience on the same level as the actors - they are literally close enough to touch; the audience exits treading over Ruth’s (Naomi Sheldon’s) shoes and mobile phone. This intimacy allows a naturalistic and detailed mode of acting: every tiny flicker of an expression registers; the actors are almost in close-up - yet Golaszewski undercuts this by presenting the story in broken fragments of scenes, jump-cutting backwards and forwards in the story, making the audience piece it all together.

The technique is cinematic but perversely, as Golaszewski pushes it to extremes even television wouldn’t pursue, it becomes highly theatrical. The anti-chronological development scrambles the emotional flow for the actors as they have to present widely varying emotions and interactions within split second changes. This clearly also presents challenges for the technical team, which they rise to with aplomb (as do the actors - there are lots of clothing changes: Mr Tovey is memorably down to his pants in one scene. I think “theatrical viagra” is the term I’m searching for).

As the play progresses we begin to understand this is about a relationship in crisis but in denial - what is unsaid becomes more important than what is said. The play delivers some magnificent pregnant pauses - Ruth’s silent entrance with an iron and ironing board is a stunner (as is the ending of the play). Golaszewski’s trademark off-kilter humour shines throughout.

Dream Home

The Boycott Pavilions at Stowe - named after the vanished hamlet of Boycott (hopefully it wasn't disappeared to make the Pavilions, but one has to assume this is likely) and designed and constructed by James Gibbs in 1728-9 - flank the Oxford drive to the house. The original stone pyramidal roofs were altered in 1758 by Giovanni Battista Borra to the lead domes visible today. The Eastern Pavilion was converted into a three-storey house in the 1950s. How wonderful!

Stowe was praised in Alexander Pope's poem Epistle to Lord Burlington:

"...Still follow Sense, of ev'ry Art the Soul,
Parts answ'ring parts shall slide into a whole,
Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start ev'n from Difficulty, strike from Chance;
Nature shall join you, Time shall make it grow
A Work to wonder at--perhaps a STOWE.''

And we have a winner!

Every year around this time the big stores compete for the best seasonal ad in the run-up to Christmas - M&S pioneered the genre a few years ago but this year they seem to have gone off track a bit with their Xfactor tribute. Most big stores' ads are annoyingly hard sell efforts draped vestigially in Christmas tinsel but John Lewis has scored a real triumph with its 2011 contender - soo sweet it makes me want to cry!