thin shoes

Upcoming Exhibition / Man Made Mountains part 01 / in collaboration with Emilie Vialet

2011-08-29T15:07:00.001+01:00

G A M / part 1

2011-04-03T22:43:00.005+01:00

Buildings tell stories. And stories collect in buildings. They keep on collecting as long as the building stands. New stories arrive, sometimes shouting from the façade. And the older stories settle into corners, they never disappear.

This could be said of any building, but it was something I felt very keenly a couple of months ago, when I visited the newly inaugaurated Centro Culturel Gabriela Mistral (GAM) in Santiago de Chile. In Santiago in 2007, we had walked past the hulking mass of the Edificio Diego Portales on the Alameda, a long boulevard that cuts through the length of the city. The vast building, that seemed to stretch across about three blocks, had been partly gutted by fire in 2006. The worst of the charred ruined mess had been cleared, but the empty bulk that remained had the appearance of a cut-away axonometric drawing, whereby part of the façade and walls are removed so one can peer in. The volume of a huge amphitheatre was discernible. The ruined building was at once forlorn and overbearing.

I quickly learned that the Edificio Diego Portales signified a great deal to the Chilien people. Aeriel bombardment during the coup d'etat on September 11 1973 had partially destroyed La Moneda, the original seat of the government, so as they seized power the military Junta moved into the Edificio (which in fact consisted of two buildings - a long horizontal block on the boulevard, and a tower behind). The tower became home to the Minsitry of Defence, and the lower building became the seat of what one Chilien friend referred to as a 'fake congress'. The unelected administration did not govern democratically, but recreated the physical structures of a democratic government - debating chambers and assemblies, an illusion to lull the population. Pinochet gave many of his most famous speeches in the amphitheatre that was now partially visible from the street. But the people weren’t fooled, the two buildings came to represent the military dictatorship and all its ills to many Chiliens.

This 'fake congress' was also the place where the votes were publicly counted when the regime held referendums. In the 1980 referendum (following the UN's public criticism of the dictatorship) Pinochet won an eight year term. But in 1988's historic referendum, 55% of the population voted to end Pinochet's rule, and the slow transfer to democracy began. In 1989 Patricio Aylwin was elected as president, taking office in 1990. The votes were counted in the amphitheatre of the Edificio Diego Portales. The building that represented the brutality of the regime also began to be associated with its slow undoing.

The architecture of the building seemed to me perfectly suited to a military dictatorship. A closed dark shape, cutting through the fabric of the old city and disconnecting neighbourhoods, its vast concrete and steel superstructure expressing pure brute force. But its history has another layer that I was quite surprised to discover. The building was originally built by Salvador Allende's government, completed in 1972, one year before the coup d'etat. It was built at breakneck speed (in 275 days), by an army of volunteers, in order to be completed in time to host the third United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Allende then established the building as the seat of the Ministry of Education, and also the Centro Culturel Gabriela Mistral (the Chilien poet Gabriela Mistral received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945). The social role of the building was fundamental to Allende : 'We want this building to be devoted to... Chilien women and children, and we want this place to be the base of the National Institution of Culture. We don't want culture to be ... elite, but accessible to all, to the agricultural workers, factory workers.' But this egalitarian vision turned out to be fleeting - a little more than a year later Allende's government was ousted by the Junta. The Centro Cultural Metropolitano Gabriela Mistral was renamed Edificio Diego Portales, after the 19^th century businessman and politician. The feminist poet ousted by a conservative statesman.

As the dictatorship was gradually dismantled during the 1990s and democracy established, the role of the building changed. The new government built a new Congress in Valparaiso, and the Edificio Diego Portales was used for conferences and conventions. The Ministry of Defence remained in the tower.

Back in 2007, when I first encountered the building, big questions were being asked about its future. The fire damage was so extensive that major building works were unavoidable. The way was laid for a radical transformation and the blackened remains contained a potent glimmer of what might be. Pinochet had died a few months after the fire. The dictator was dead and the palace he had appropriated for himself was ready to be reclaimed and have its original spirit restored.

The newly elected cente left president, Michele Bachelet, launched a competition asking for propositions to transform the ruins into a national cultural centre, and in December 2007, the architect Cristian Fernandez was announced as the winner. I will talk about his transformation of the building in G A M / part 2.

Second Chance or Utopia in English

2011-03-13T15:06:00.003Z

Here is the link to Sex Mode et Digestion magazine in English.

Second Chance or Utopia

2011-03-10T09:27:00.001Z

Follow this link to visit the site of Sex Mode et Digestion magazine, newly online as of today! I am going to be working with them, writing about architecture. At the moment the site is in French only, but will be bilingual (English and French) soon. The first piece I have written is about our attitudes towards postwar social housing, a big subject, and one that needs a big debate. The text is presented alongside Julie Delaittre's photos of Glasgow housing blocks.

A volcano that really looks like a volcano

2011-02-24T19:44:00.001Z

Volcan Villarica seen from Pucon, Chile, 05.01.2011

Miami Beach Lifeguard Stands

2011-02-14T19:30:00.001Z

Miami Beach, 14.12.10

Buenos Aires Opera

2011-02-14T19:20:00.001Z

Avenida Corrientes, Buenos Aires, 20.12.10

Buenos Aires Balconies

2011-02-14T19:16:00.001Z

Recoleta, Buenos Aires, 23.12.10

Buenos Aires Buses

2011-02-13T20:37:00.002Z

The buses in Buenos Aires are roaring great works of art. Each numbered route has its own graphic identity - made up of a particular typeface, colour combinations and patterns. The number 29 has a great big 29 painted on the front in a sloping stylised font, white on a blue background. Down the sides blue, red, white and yellow stripes are the background for elaborate text detailing the route the bus takes. The big capital letters are filled in with shiny hologram effect stickers. The visual impact of all these elements combined is quite astonishing. And joyful! As if to remind us that buses aren't just metal boxes carting people around the city, they are giant, moving, ever-changing, interactive sculptures, where strangers are brought together, sit close, get chatting, overhear each others conversations.
The number 39 is brown and white, with round white letters. The number 60 is yellow with red and black stripes, The 64 blue with curving red and white stripes. I could go on.
One day we took the number 29 from La Boca to Palermo, crossing the city from south to north. We got on near the beginning of the route, so got good seats, and watched 45 minutes of a day in the life of a Buenos Aires bus. The interior is nearly as good as the exterior. The driver's cab is bedecked with rear view mirrors, leaving not a corner of the bus out of his sight. The mirrors are decorated, their edges bevelled with geometric floral patterns, Romany caravan style. This kitsch homely decoration makes for a great combination with the otherwise fairly utilitarian bus interior.

Oxymoronic House

2010-11-25T12:19:00.004Z

This is a video I made with my friend and sometime collaborator Julie Delaittre. It was an entry for a competition organised by the ICARCH Gallery, under the title of the House of Oxymorons. The brief was to envision a house that incorporates and pacifies a duality (or several). We were interested in the friction present in the dense landscape of appartments in Paris where we both live. We live isolated private lives, often not knowing the names or even the faces of our immediate neighbours. Yet our physical proximity, and the porous nature of the buildings we live in, mean that we share some of the intimacy and banality of each other's daily life.

South London Gallery 2

2010-11-21T15:59:00.005Z

Tuning

2010-11-15T21:29:00.009Z

This weekend I ended up trailing a web of architecture blogs across the net, some of the well known (like pruned, bldgblog, sit down man, you're a bloody tradegy, archdaily) and lots of new (to me) ones (entschwindet und vergeht, some landscapes, strange harvest). There is a great mix of stuff, from the brilliant to the mediocre. For a moment I got quite overwhelmed in that special internet way - partly by the sheer quantity of what is being produced daily, and partly because a lot of blogs are almost like rolling news channels - daily even hourly links and images of the latest buildings and projects being produced across the world. And they all seem to cross reference one another, and have enough daily traffic to make it worth carrying ads. But the overwhelmed feeling in fact turned out to be a useful way of refocusing my thoughts.

I am not writing a world architecture update blog. I am writing a very personal series of observations and thoughts about places I have visited or know well. I cherish the everyday, the unknown, the un-new, the un-shiny, with a particular interest in architecture from the second half of the 20th century. I love to know about what's new and exciting but I think a building that has been in use for a couple of years is far more interesting than one that opened last week. I want to see how it is used, where it is getting worn, if the occupants have altered things. Sometimes I walk past something fifty times before I work out what it is I want to say about it. I feel as if I might go on to develop a manifesto for 'slow architecture'. Though there probably exists one already somewhere... In the accelerated world of architecture blogging and the incessant barrage of images that accompany it I defend to the end the slow and the small and the unnoticed!

South London Gallery

2010-11-15T21:06:00.019Z

Another post about a place I visited a while ago. It's a tactic I like, visit somewhere and then mull it over for a while. Let the experience sink in, and write about what I still remember a month or two or even a year or two later.

The South London Gallery has occupied a purpose built Victorian building since 1891. The main gallery space is very fine - a tall and long roof lit rectangle, it is a well proportioned and reassuring classic gallery space. This summer 6a architects completed works enabling the gallery to expand and evolve. They refurbished an adjacent and previously derelict Georgian terrace house to contain a cafe, exhibition spaces and an apartment for an artist in residence. And they built two extensions. One directly adjoining the refurbished house and the existing gallery - a tall room that works on both a domestic scale and a gallery space scale. The second extension is beyond a garden or courtyard depending on which way you approach. It is a simple squarish space, roof lit like the main gallery. Wide pivoting wall panels allow the space to open onto the courtyard.

The two extensions are clad in fibre cement panels. And this ubiquitous material has been used really cleverly. It has been cut into panels of about 40x60cm and these have been fixed like big shingles - overlapping one another. There are two colours, a brown and a grey in very similar dark tone, equally but slightly irregularly interspersed. I think this works brilliantly. Partly down to the scale - they are bigger than classic shingles, but smaller than standard fibre cement panels. Cutting this materiel down to a smaller size would be fiddly and fussy, making shingles bigger than these and you might start to dilute the texture that the overlapping generates. The overall effect is of the 'strangely familiar' sort - shingles, but different, fibre cement panels, but used differently... And the subtle play of colour between the grey brown and the brown grey is great. Used alone these sober colours might seem dull, but used together they resonate against one another, creating a rich and warm facade.

I read somewhere that the architects had said the project was entirely made using the kind of basic everyday materiels that one could buy in B&Q. If this is true to the last detail I can't be sure, but it is an unpretentious attitude I like. In the description of the project on their website they mention that the existing main gallery space is 'impressive in scale but invisible from the street' and the sense of surprise one has upon entering it. I think what they have achieved in their extension carries some of the same quality. On first appearances it is a very muted and low key project, but the clever use of volume, light, materiality and detail gradually reveals itself. I hope to go back soon, I'm sure I didn't notice everything the first time round. (More photos will be posted later).

Legs

2010-11-10T13:25:00.007Z

As you walk out of Lyon Part-Dieu station heading into town, you go past the Lyon Municipal Library, designed by Jacques Perrin-Fayolle en 1972. A vast and windowless tower like a giant silo sits on some very shapely concrete legs. The tower is clad in small rectangular ceramic tiles, brown and black alternating like a chequerboard. From afar they look like rows and rows of books.

Lyon

09.10.10

Anger in Ambroise

2010-11-06T17:37:00.007Z

I took this photo in the summer of 2003. It is in the rue St Ambroise in the 11th arrondissement. At the time I lived very nearby and often walked past this apartment building, it fascinated me. One simple form - a folded surface - wall to floor to wall to roof and back to wall - repeated many times across the facade - but each one spaced apart from the next. The form itself contains a series of different spaces. And then a whole series of other spaces are created between them.

It is a deep and occupiable facade. A series of spaces rather than an edge or a surface. It is a facade of nooks and crannies and person sized hidey holes, viewing platforms, sitting spaces, planting places. It is as if each flat has pushed through the facade to create an enclosed and private balcony.

So it is a building I always admired, and photographed frequently. But I never knew who designed it, I once Googled the address to no avail. And then a few weeks ago I went to a talk at the Pavillon d'Arsenal about an architect named Roger Anger. His name meant nothing to me, but he sounded interesting - a Parisian architect who had built a lot of housing in the 50s and 60s, and then was appointed chief architect of Auroville - a utopian new city in the south of India. It was a revelation - here was the apartment building in the rue St Ambroise, and another building I had always found interesting on the rue des Pyrenees - because it looks totally different depending on which direction you approach it from. The talk was given by an Indian architect Anupama Kundoo, who worked with Anger for several years. She said that one of his chief concerns was to find ways to counteract what he called 'the dictatorship of the curtain wall'. He was critical of the vast and smooth surfaces that enveloped a lot of modern architecture - above all because these surfaces don't operate at a human scale. Buildings become vast and solid impenetrable blocks, humans tiny and powerless next to them. He thought buildings should always work with the human scale.

Rooflight

2010-10-28T17:41:00.004+01:00

La Maison du Brésil
Cité Universitaire, Paris 14è
16.09.2010

La Tourette +

2010-10-24T22:36:00.003+01:00

Le Couvent de la Tourette
Eveux, near Lyon
09-10.10.2010

Ursula Goldfinger's Balfron Tower Diary and Notes

2010-10-14T11:49:00.008+01:00

Article published in the Autumn 2010 issue of the 20th Century Society magazine.

La Tourette

2010-10-13T17:53:00.019+01:00

photos top to bottom: church; south facade; dining room; windows being restored; view of the chapel from the roof.

The Couvent de la Tourette, near Lyon, is one of Le Corbusier's great iconic buildings. It was inaugurated in October 1960 - exactly 50 years ago. It was originally planned as a place of study and residence for up to 80 Dominican friars, where they would spend four or five years training before moving on to other priories. Today it is home to ten friars, seven of whom were in residence the weekend we stayed. The spare rooms provide accommodation for visitors. Largely made up of the architecturally curious and those in search of an environment where they can truly disconnect from everyday life. On the Saturday night we stayed there were probably around 20 guests.

We each slept in a cell. 1m83 wide. Each cell has a wash basin, a small wardrobe and shelves, a bed and a desk. And a deep balcony. The floor is black lino and the walls and ceiling are very roughly plastered and painted white. You can sleep, contemplate, read, write. A notice on the door asks you not to eat, drink or converse in the cell.

On Sunday morning at 8, before breakfast, we joined the friars for 'les laudes' - a short service of chanted hymns and psalms. It was magical. The church is a vast and resonant concrete cavern. Perhaps 18m high, around 40m long and 10m wide. The four sheer walls connected by the strata lines where the concrete was poured layer after layer. Bright coloured light filters through horizontal slits - these slope upwards through the massive walls, so that the window itself is not visible, just the painted surface inside the opening that reflects the light. The chanting of the seven friars filled the space completely. We tried to imagine how it must have sounded when there were 70 or 80 of them. It is a space that I found slightly oppressive initially - the concrete is almost overwhelming, the geometry of the space, particularly the north end, is not entirely comfortable - but when the friars sing it all makes sense. The volume, the material and the voices just work together.

The building was undergoing renovation when we were there. Half was finished, a quarter was more or less finished but still under scaffolding, and the remaining quarter - the church - had yet to be begun. Three states visible together. One end crisp white render contrasting with the pale clean exposed concrete. The middle under wraps, new double glazing panes lined up in the corridor. The other end looking slightly grubby, the render and the concrete hard to distinguish from one another.

It would be nice to see the whole once all the work is finished, but it was great to visit in a semi building site state. And just as authentic. The iconic buildings of modernism have become precious artefacts. Listed and revered, studied and interpreted. Great efforts are taken to return these buildings to their imagined original state. Methods to clean and repair the concrete, to restore original paint colours are laboriously researched and tested. Theses are written, papers published. Renovation works may take years. In 2010 la Tourette is no longer just a convent, it is also an important piece of architectural heritage. I found it interesting to witness the processes involved in maintaining this status.

One of the most striking things about the building is its materiality - it is tactile, physical, visceral, quite rough in places. And the forms are wild - the strict repetition of the cells and the corridors is set against the steep slope of the irregular pyramid roof of the small chapel, that seems to float in the courtyard. The vast oblong of the church sits between two chapels that bring light deep into the crypt, one is a sinuous bunker, with great funnels, the other a modest rectangle, with diamond shaped lightwells crashing diagonally into its roof. The glazed facades are articulated by an irregular rhythm of concrete vertical elements, a pattern developed by Le Corbusier's friend, composer and engineer, Iannis Xenakis. (The pair collaborated throughout the project, Le Corbusier was preoccupied with his work in Chandigarh, and left Xenakis in charge on site. Execution drawings we found in a plan chest were signed by Xenakis.) The rich and rough materiality and the experimental irregular forms are so striking because they go against the way Le Corbusiser's architecture was so often presented by tutors when I was studying. For years at school we learnt about his five points of architecture and modular studies, and great emphasis was placed on the whiteness, the cleanness, the pureness, the mechanical, the machine age, the uniformity, the prefabrication. Well all that seems to miss the point after 24 hours spent in La Tourette.

The final thing I want to mention is the acoustic quality of the building, already touched upon in the church. Throughout the building silence rules. One has to keep silent at all times, apart from the communal meals in the dining room. We found ourselves whispering the whole time, even outside. It is a place of study, reflection, meditation. But at the same time it is incredibly noisy. It is a giant resonance box. You hear every footstep, every door being closed, every key turning. What would be a tiny sound in a modern acoustically insulated building, becomes a huge rattling sound in this building.

Le Couvent de la Tourette
Eveux, near Lyon
09-10.10.2010

orange lozenge

2010-09-16T13:55:00.008+01:00

Having passed through the orange lozenge there are two smaller orange lozenges, one on the left and one on the right, containing glazed doors, and a wider lozenge shaped passage continues into a courtyard. (Where another orange lozenge awaits). The building is a 12 storey block of flats, cicra 1970something.

What a fantastic entrance sequence.
Into an open mouth without so much as activating an automatic door. Like in any building at some point one has to tap a code, turn a key, push a door. But here those actions seem secondary. The open orange lozenge defines the entry. Rather than going through a door to get into a space one goes through a space to get to a door.

20 quai de la Marne 75019

11.07.10

Stones of Menace

2010-08-28T19:54:00.007+01:00

Images from the Stones of Menace event here and here:

Box Nests

2010-06-15T15:33:00.011+01:00

A couple of months ago, just days before Spring finally sprang, I saw this lovely piece of bird architecture in Kings Wood in Kent. It is the most engaging of three animal/bird residences in a small enclave in the woods called Super Kingdom, by artists Londonfieldworks. They describe the project as 'a sculptural installation of animal 'show homes'... inspired by reports of anomalous animal behaviour in nature as a response to a shifting environment'. They talk about an interesting web of ideas to do with urban encroachment and displaced ecologies, and the purposeful reintroduction of species (re-wilding) and assisted migration - all considered in the context of Kings Wood, a working woodland managed for timber production, recreation and conservation, and the wider environment of nearby Ashford and its ever multiplying Barratt Homes. Slightly puzzlingly the artists also mention being inspired by despots palaces, this particular structure is called the Mussolini Bird House (adjacent are the Caecescu and Stalin bird houses), an unnecessary connection - there seems to be plenty to think about already.

So there are lots of ideas behind it, but they are not the reason that I stopped and took a photo as I read about them afterwards. Here are my reasons:

1. I like the way the tree looks as if it is wearing a jumper.
2. I like that some of the boxes are really tiny, more insect sized than bird sized.
3. I like the way that lots of rectilinear boxes have been put together to form something extremely un-rectilinear.
4. I like imagining that it is fully occupied, tweeting and rustling.

Shed Nests

2010-06-11T08:52:00.022+01:00

Wobbly planks, loosely attached to one another perch amongst the steel struts and tubes of the Pompidou Centre's façade. Like giant nests for some as yet unevolved breed of enormous bird.

I first noticed them from afar, across the plaza. Strange messy blips interrupting the familiar primary coloured rectilinear facade that isn't a facade. Yet they also had an unsurprising quality, as if they were quite normal.

Things accumulate. Dust, old newspapers, leaves, people, pigeons. All trying to find a quiet corner. The city could be understood as a giant machine containing a thousand different mechanisms to counteract the incessant accumulation of stuff. Street sweepers, bin men, window cleaners, little anti-pigeon spikes on statues and ledges, signs warning of fines for bill posters, little metal studs on horizontal surfaces to dissuade homeless people from settling down, buses and metro trains to keep everyone moving.

These wooden structures are commissioned artworks, so they are not going to be cleared away until their official art work installation period is up. We know that they have been carefully planned and constructed. But how nice to play the game and imagine that they really are strange nests or cocoons for a mysterious urban creature, or sheds hastily constructed by claustrophobic Parisians living in tiny flats.

Tadashi Kawamata

'Huts' au Centre Pompidou

10 avril - 23 août 2010

Garden

2010-06-06T09:02:00.004+01:00

rue Poulet, 75018
05.06.2010

House

2010-06-02T22:28:00.006+01:00

Rue Clavel 75019
30.05.2010

Blue + Yellow

2010-06-02T22:20:00.007+01:00

Bassin de la Villette, 75019

30.05.2010

Stones of Menace

2010-06-01T22:49:00.006+01:00

On Saturday June 26 (2-6pm) I will be participating in a one day art event about Brutalist architecture. I will be reading a short text about the modernist sculptural structure the Apollo Pavilion by Victor Pasmore, and showing a series of images I took last year of the dilapidated concrete play spaces at the foot of Balfron Tower.

Blurb from the website below:

The architecture of New Brutalism has some severe critics, one of the most famous being the Prince of Wales whose speeches and writings on architecture have excoriated Brutalism, calling many of the structures "piles of concrete". In contrast, John Ruskin faulted Palladianism in his book The Stones Of Venice (1850) for the “screamingly harmonious” quality of its designs.

Such debates about architectural aesthetics usually go hand in hand with convictions about architectures’ ideological foundation and social function. Whilst the austere architecture of New Brutalism is often vilified as producing social neglect rather than securing the vibrant community life envisioned by its architects, contemporary art is almost required to ‘stir things up’ through expressing discontent and exercising criticism.

This show will explore polemical perspectives on architecture and art and open up a debate on the role of culture as a source of conflict and criticism. The exhibition will display art work that reflects on the relationship between art and architecture and its social and physical context or on issues around creative expressions of violence and social discontent.

The event will take place in the main space of St Pauls Bow Common, a New Brutalist church from the late 1950's and showcase work by architects, artists and members of the local community.

St Paul's Bow Common, Burdett Road, E3

Transformation.

2010-05-30T22:48:00.007+01:00

This is the Tour Bois-le-Pretre in the 17th arrondissement, Paris. It was built in 1959, given a new facade + insulation in the 1980s, and is currently being renovated by French architects Frederic Druot, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal. You can see the top left of the facade the windows and panels have been replaced by full height glazing (with a temporary garde-corps). Once all the facade has been replaced prefabricated winter-gardens with balconies will be installed for every flat. Everyone is staying put during the works. 93% of the residents support the project (the architects were disappointed it wasn't 100% but there's always a few dissenters). The figure is interesting though, having read countless times in the great Robin Hood Garden debate that the majority of residents (80% usually) wanted the building demolished. I guess it depends upon what they are offered.

Demolition.

2010-05-30T10:47:00.024+01:00

They should dynamite that building. It's so ugly.

So said the woman standing near me at the lookout at the top of the Parc de Belleville. She was referring to the building on the left of this photo. A block of social housing. Built in the 1960s or 70s. Full of family homes, where children have grown up, where parents have become grandparents, where people have argued, laughed, cried, loved. Homes full of old photos, favourite toys, carefully chosen curtains and wallpaper.

But you can't see all that from the outside. From the outside you see a tall grey block. With a repetitive facade. You know it is social housing. You subconsciously think of the social problems that are often connected to social housing. And in this particular case, the rectangular grey blocks interrupt the picturesque Parisian panorama. A five storey high pale sandy grey panorama. The Eiffel Tower and the dome of the Pantheon (and the tour Montparnasse) silhouettes in the distance.

Would the view be more beautiful without the buildings on the left?
Who decides what is ugly and what is beautiful?
Can ugliness alone ever be reason enough to demolish something?

There are programs in place to demolish similar buildings in cities all across Europe. Thirty four demolitions are already planned in Glasgow alone over the next decade. The reasons are complex. But it is a phenomenon that stems from the fact that 60s and 70s social housing blocks are deemed ugly. They have been stigmatised. Turned into an image that signifies crime, fear and social breakdown.

But we have to learn to look at them differently. To look at them from the inside out. Last week I interviewed the architect Frederic Druot. He has collaborated with Lacaton+Vassal on the study PLUS, establishing a method by which such buildings can be renovated. They currently have a project on site, the renovation of the Tour Bois-le-Pretre in Paris. They photographed the interior of every flat. When they present the project to people, and show some of these images, people are shocked - it suddenly hits home that these deeply personal interior spaces are what has been threatened with demolition - rather than an abstract and distant concrete block.

I have a lot more to say about this subject. Treat this as an introduction. It is one of the big subjects of the moment. Post-war social housing has come to an age where it is demanding attention. Repair, renovate, transform. Restore, preserve, conserve. Demolish.

Demolition is the easy option. Easy for the planners, the developers, the money men, the decision makers. Not so easy for the displaced residents. Demolition doesn't require us to engage with these buildings, to re-imagine them, to use what works well and transform the rest.

Gorilla Station

2010-05-20T22:12:00.007+01:00

El Gran Chufle
An abandoned railway
A new moon
An occupied house
The Lords of Altamont

15.05.2010
1 avenue Corentin Cariou, 75019

the Future

2010-03-28T21:20:00.015+01:00

There is a street not far from here (a bit up the hill, towards Télégraphe) called rue de l'Avenir - street of the Future (or perhaps Future Street). It sounds so promising, so full of anticipation and optimism.

It slopes up from the rue Pixérécourt, flanked on either side by turn of the century apartment blocks. One yellow and red stripy brick. One pale Paris stone.

Then abruptly, after barely more than twenty metres, the buildings are cut and the street crashes against a taciturn facade of white render and square windows. Like a curtain drawn across a stage. The name suddenly seems wistful. Future street is a dead end street, and not much longer than a bus.

Looking on Google maps later on, it is clear. The future arrived in the shape of new apartment blocks. Efficient square blocks, with neat apartments tightly arranged around a central core, not a square metre wasted. They work to their own square and fair logic, and do not yield to the existing irregular pattern of streets and buildings.

city portrait 02

2010-03-28T20:52:00.002+01:00

city portrait 01

2010-03-27T16:58:00.005Z

Bitumen Lamb

2010-03-23T20:48:00.013Z

Bitumen Lamb (or slightly more elegantly - Le Gigot Bitume) is a French building site tradition, a kind of cousin to the topping out ceremony, where a tree is often hoisted up onto the highest point of a newly completed structure.

In France there is none of this messing around, it is straight to the important business of lunch. I arrived on site (a secondary school refurb/extension in the western suburbs of Paris) just as the champagne aperitif was being served. We were shortly taken outside, to see our lunch being prepared. The charcoaly smell of fresh bitumen was overpowering. I have always quite liked the smell of roadworks, but never really in a way that gets my appetite going. Anyway, lunch was apparently in the bottom of the boiling and steaming bitumen mixer. To much cheering our chefs lifted a wire basket out, placed it on the ground and dowsed the five or six black parcels in it with cold water. Then it gets a bit like pass the parcel. The black bitumen rock is tapped on the ground like a boiled egg to break it open. Underneath are layers of brown paper, and once these are peeled back, layers of silver foil, and finally, a delicious joint of lamb, roasted with tomatoes and onion. Slightly disappointingly, I couldn't detect any background notes of bitumen in the meat.

Jardin Austère

2010-03-15T21:26:00.010Z

Last Sunday was a day of crystal clear skies and a bitingly cold wind. Looking out of the window on the train out to Versailles everything looked bleached under the brilliant sunshine, as on a hot summer day.

It was a perfect day to see the gardens. Their naturally austere and rectilinear nature is exaggerated to an extreme state of at this time of year. It is a garden, made of things that we think of as 'nature' - trees, grass, other plants, water. Yet it doesn't really feel like a garden, more like some strange abstract world of planes and lines. A giant minimalist sculpture.

The fountains are off, their pools empty, their sculptures petrified.

The statues are wrapped up in fabric and tied with string, as if Christo had been by.

The unwavering hedges are sparse and brittle - made of twigs and dried curled up brown leaves.

The trees are bare. The plane trees make tree shaped drawings against the sky with their silver barks. The other trees remain neatly cut into long oblongs. Grey and brown, and some, if seen from the right angle, a deep red.

Le Jardin de Versailles
Sunday March 7th 2010

EuroPlaques

2010-03-15T21:16:00.004Z

Versailles
07.03.10

argh!

2010-03-14T21:29:00.006Z

Plaster casts of gargoyles.
Cité de l'architecture
Paris 75016

space with undesignated use

2010-02-21T21:00:00.006Z

Here is a curious space. On the roof of a shopping centre in the predominantly Chinese and south Asian neighbourhood of Olympiades (13th arondissement) a space of about 5 by 10 metres is delineated by a low wall. So low I'm not sure it qualifies as a wall. It has a clear entrance, carefully positioned to bring one in to the space diagonally.

Perhaps it is a space that was supposed to become another Vietnamese restaurant, or a shop selling brightly coloured plastic kitchenware, flourescent pink fake lotus flowers, and those ornamental cats with a waving arm.

At the moment it is a space for doing whatever you want (within the realms of what is acceptable to do in any public space).

above and below

2010-02-21T15:02:00.008Z

Quartier des Olympiades, 75013.
20.02.2010

street poem

2010-02-17T22:50:00.012Z

passage de la boule blanche white ball passage cour du bel air bel air courtyard passage du chantier building site passage cour du nom de jesus jesus' name courtyard cour de l'etoile d'or golden star courtyard cour des trois freres three brothers courtyard cour de la maison brulee burnt house courtyard cour de l'ours bear courtyard passage de la bonne graine good grain passage cour du saint esprit spirit saint courtyard passage de la main d'or golden hand passage

passages and courtyards along the rue du faubourg st antoine, 75011/12 M bastille / ledru rollin

The Fishmonger House

2010-02-07T17:33:00.010Z

This house is just around the corner from the 1980's house, in the rue de la Mare. It struck me as a sort of distant cousin - another curious part mosaic facade expressing a collision of ideas.

Even in its original state as a fishmongers there is something a little odd, the mosaic fish are ordinary goldfish, rather than appetising salmon, trout or sea bass. Domestic goldfish. As if the facade was already prepared to become a house.

The transition from fishmongers to house looks like a disjointed process. First it stopped being a fishmongers and the shopfront was blocked up. Then it became a house, and instead of using the wide original opening, a standard window, like the windows above, was just punched through the new wall. A window sitting uncomfortably in a window.

rue de la Mare, 75020
07.02.2010

Passage du Plateau

2010-02-06T17:24:00.012Z

This is the passage du Plateau.

It is 105m long and a little over 1m wide. The narrowest measurement I took was 103cm (at the rue du Plateau end), and the widest 123cm (quite near the middle).

There are fourteen doors and gates to houses and flats along it. Six on one side and eight on the other.

If you pass someone you have to slow down, or slightly turn your shoulders, or not mind brushing up against them. Or all three at once.

Passage du Plateau, 75019
06.02.2010

London Peripherique

2010-02-06T17:04:00.004Z

Can a road define a city?

Paris is notoriously squeezed within the confines of its peripherique. Thirty four kilometres of six to ten lane motorway. Thirty six years old. Hidden in a tunnel in the wealthy west. Its red and white stripes of traffic exposed for all to enjoy in the poorer east. Twin towers, shiny towers, towers with names, the Eiffel tower seen from all sides, all sizes. Approximately 2 million people live within the peripherique. Beyond it lie the banlieues - the suburbs. Are they not Paris too? No. They are the banlieues. They are separate.

London is also circled by a motorway, but it is way out beyond the edge of the suburbs, a tarmac ring running through the 'green belt', the zone of golf courses, farmland, stately homes, go-karting tracks, glittering shopping centres, Victorian asylums, woodland, industrial estates, and airports (see London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, Granta 2002, for a detailed exploration, on foot, of the M25 environs). The green of the green belt merges into suburb, densifies to grey, it is all London. London is a collection, an association, a series of towns and in between places.

2010

2010-01-17T18:12:00.004Z

the 1980's house

2010-01-17T17:05:00.010Z

This house is about halfway along the rue des Envierges in the twentieth arrondissement. I walk along this street quite often, it leads to the lookout at the top of the parc de Belleville, via a great boulangerie. A favourite Sunday afternoon walk. This house always caught my eye. The 1980's house. It is an awkward collision of normal terraced house with willful colourful geometry. Ordinary tiled roof, chimney, drain pipe, front door and garage door : bright yellow diagonal stripes crashing into a nearly normal window, separating bathroom tile facade from crazy mosaic tile facade. It is not beautiful, but it is curious, and it has gradually endeared me.

rue des Envierges, 75020
17.01.2010

(or as sophie said, the aladdin sane house!)

scene from a dream

2009-10-24T17:36:00.008+01:00

A small group of people are gathered at the facade of the south gallery of the Pompidou Centre. There is a lot of giggling, a few gasps, a shriek of laughter. Everyone is trying to see through the gap between the black curtains.

There is a woman on a stage, talking to an attentive audience. The room is packed out, people are sitting closely and standing all around the sides and at the back. A pair of black high heeled shoes lie on the stage beside the woman. She is entirely naked.

Centre Pompidou 23.10.2009
Andrea Fraser Official Welcome

punk choreography in retro futuristic city

2009-10-18T15:16:00.011+01:00

Last night we took the lilac coloured metro line (number 8) all the way to the final station, Creteil-Prefecture (those e's are missing accents but I am writing with an english keyboard). It is eight stops beyond the official limit of Paris, the peripherique. I will save the topic of the peripherique for a later post, all I want to highlight here is that we were in the 'banlieues' - the suburbs, not in Paris. From the metro station we followed signs to the Maison des Arts. Across a car park and into a shopping centre. Along the internal streets, shops closing, the last shoppers heading to the car park. Out through door 26. Onto a raised pedestrian walkway, past a Chinese restaurant. It is dark, and very cold for mid October. This central part of Creteil appears to have been entirely built in the 1960's and 70's. It is a dense ensemble of apartment blocks and civic buildings, knitted together by high level walkways and plazas. The Maison des Arts is on the place Salvador Allende (good name, Chilean connection), whose wavy black, white and red striped paving brings to mind Bridget Riley's paintings. It is beautiful. A shimmering graphic pattern, across which dark figures are making their way to the arts house, to see the new dance piece by the Michael Clark Company.

six dancers wear dark blue, two wear white :::::: they are moving from right to left across the stage, walking, slowly, legs stretched out, kicking out in front :::::: the blue figures disappear and the white pair remain :::::: the blue figures reappear on the right and continue across the stage again :::::: a shaft of white light moves slowly across the stage from right to left

White Light / White Heat by the Velvet Underground :::::: loud, louder than you could ever have it at home, so loud so that you listen to it differently :::::: the stage is bare, a black floor and a white backdrop :::::: on the left of the stage a dancer wearing brilliant shiny silver leggings appears, she runs a jerky strutting run, she runs a tight circle and disappears :::::: then the same on the right hand side of the stage :::::: then more dancers in the same metallic leggings, running, strutting, the stage is full :::::: white light reflects off their legs, white light dances across the stage

later on / the white screen has turned orange, the orange light reflects off the black floor :::::: dancers in bright orange :::::: Aladdin Sane by David Bowie ::::::: a vigorous dance, energy accumulates :::::: until one male dancer is left on the stage, suddenly the music changes :::::: The Jean Genie :::::: and the orange screen snaps to turquoise :::::: the lone orange figure against the glowing turquoise is an image that is seared into my consciousness

These are tiny extracts from the two dance pieces we saw. The first was Swamp from 1986, and the second was come, been and gone, Michael Clark's newest piece. This latest piece is a hommage to the 'holy trinity' of rock music - Lou Reed, David Bowie and Iggy Pop. Hommage isn't quite the right word, it takes the music as a starting point and develops something new and quite exhilarating. Previously unknown or unheard layers, melodies, sounds are extracted from these familiar songs, they are explored and excavated, their insides and hidden corners revealed. Partly because we are listening to the recording super loud on a very high quality theatre PA, partly because the dancers pick out sounds and melodies and dance them.

MICHAEL CLARK COMPANY / SWAMP / come, been and gone

17.10.2009 CRETEIL Maison des Arts

On tour for the next year or so. Go see...

http://www.michaelclarkcompany.com/

we must cultivate our garden

2009-10-15T19:52:00.007+01:00

photo: Liz Nall / Bella Edgley

Nathan Coley: 'we must cultivate our garden'

This is one of three artworks by Scottish artist Nathan Coley, installed for the night of 3/4 October as part of La Nuit Blanche in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, Paris. The other two read 'there will be no miracles here' and 'gathering of strangers'. Last year in the Folkestone Triennale I came across a similar piece saying 'heaven is a place where nothing ever happens'.
I like the deadpan quality of the phrases. And I love love love the photo that Liz and Bella took.

white night : full moon : the surrealists favourite park in paris

2009-10-13T22:28:00.005+01:00

above: Noel Dolla 'chauds les marrons'
below: Rune Gunneriussen 'don't leave the lights on'

la nuit blanche
03 october 2009
parc des buttes chaumont
75019 Paris

the wall

2009-10-13T21:23:00.009+01:00

behind the wall are bright lights
disco lights
behind the wall is music
shouting
behind the wall is an ice rink
a swimming pool
behind the wall are people gliding sliding wobbling laughing
in goggles and swimming costumes

in front of the wall the street is bathed in flat streetlamp light that manages to be both orange and grey at the same time

in front of the wall are several people, looking closely at the wall
maybe at the world behind the wall, but also at the wall itself

it is a very thick wall, sturdy and strong

it is also light and delicate, a kind of fuzz of a wall

(La Piscine-Patinoire Pailleron, 30 rue Edouard Pailleron, 75019 / Marc Mimram Architecte / 03 october 2009 / la nuit blanche)

splendid regards

2009-09-25T20:55:00.011+01:00

Journées de Patrimoine/Open House/Dias del Patrimonio/European Heritage Days

Last weekend 19 20 September. Indian summer sunshine. European Curiousity Days, European Nosy Days. An international pouring over of pdf print out guides; picking out of buildings; working out of routes; sprucing up of courtyards and hallways; queueing and squeezing; peering and listening.

We wanted to keep it simple and stay in the neighbourhood. A staircase leads from our street rue de l'Ermitage down to the rue des Cascades and at the bottom when you turn right there is a small stone building with a pitched roof made of the same pale sandstone. Four years previously this building was open and we had a memorable visit. Inside is a small channel of water, gently stepping down under one's feet. A tunnel big enough to crawl along disppears up the hillside. It is lined with candles, their light reflected by small stream. It is a magical world beneath the hill we live on. Always there underneath our route to the boulangerie, to the metro, to the supermarket or the bus stop. We are high up up here, approaching the summit of the hill of Menilmontant (the highest hill in Paris) and the geology - layers of chalk and clay, has created two 'nappes' of water - natural underground reservoirs. Since the 12th century this water has been captured and channelled, initially for drinking, to supply a nearby hospital, and then to supply the fountains of Paris. This building is one of several. Known as 'regards', they are simply places where the water could be inspected. Today there is still a small trickle, as the geology remains the same and the water still comes naturally from the ground. But most of the channels and aqueducts have been assimilated into the sewer system. The buildings are classed as historic monuments and are cared for by a loving association - 'Les Sources du Nord'.

This year we wanted to see the 'Regard de la Lanterne', the grandest of all the regards, at the Place des Fetes on the top of the hill. We had to queue for a while, during which time we were entertained and educated by a very entertaining and informative Monsieur. The Regard de la Lanterne is where three channels of water from the nappe feed into a small basin which in turn feeds the aqueduct of Belleville - the principal channel in the system. Again, the function of this building was nothing more than to allow for inspection of the waters and channels. As our guide drily emphasised, if such a system was built today, then nothing more than a 50mm pipe would carry the water, with a small box for inspection, all hidden away. But this system was built in another era when things were done differently. There was more grandeur and more ceremony. There was a desire to celebrate technology. People wore big hats and cloaks and the buildings they built had to accomodate them properly.
So intead of a pipe and a box, there is a cylindrical stone building with a dome. Inside one steps onto a double staircase that curves around the pool of water under the lantern of the dome. It is splendid and beautiful.

new feet, fresh eyes and curious ears

2009-09-21T22:01:00.004+01:00

After far too many months languishing in the cupboard the thin shoes have been put back on. This time a rather more chic pair than those that walked me round Chile. These shoes are in Paris.

Four years in London and now I'm back in Paris. It is quite strange to return. To mix the familiar and the foreign. A new job, the same flat. A different morning bike ride, the same boulangerie in the evening. New flats and new families in the courtyard out the back, built around the same tree that has a beautiful name that we have both forgotten. The same market stall holders (the lady with a soft spot for Memo, the man with a long beard who sells fresh herbs), a new community garden full of flowers and tomato plants.

Proper posting will start soon.. (once the camera charger has been located amongst the flotsam and jetsam of moving house).

The Moon (Three)

2008-02-26T17:43:00.002Z

Close to San Pedro de Atacama is a valley called la Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). It is an utterly barren and dramatic formation of rocks and sand dunes, that glow red at sunset, against a backdrop of snow sprinkled volcanoes. It is spectacular, but was the least moonlike of all the places I visited in the desert. Everyone who goes to San Pedro visits the valley at sunset. The supposed moon is dotted with white minibuses and camera laden tourists from every corner of the world. You walk up the giant dune to the best look out point for the sunset, one of a great stream of others, and then jostle to find a ledge upon which to perch to watch the promised show, which you must then try to photograph as an empty desolate and dramatic scene, tiny you in a vast and alien landscape.

The Moon (Two)

2008-02-25T22:22:00.001Z

Three weeks ago I was in the far north of Chile. Five days in and around Iquique, a coastal city (industrial port and beach resort) about 1800km north of Santiago, and then five days in San Pedro de Atacama, a small oasis town on the altiplano of the Atacama desert at 2400m above sea level.
The landscape of the north is out of this world, and is thus frequently likened to that of the moon. Flying over it or driving through it, however you witness it it is hard to accept how vast it is. It is like trying to imagine infinity. And in this vastness there is nearly no life.
There is mechanical fuel powered life, the huge trucks and the air-conditioned coaches that plough up and down the Panamericana (the north south road that runs the length of Chile, but more on that later), but they are always on their way somewhere else.
There are occasional signs of other industrial lifeforms, railway tracks and roads connecting mines in the mountains to the coastal ports; electricity pylons.
There is a fair bit of road side detritus, archaeological evidence of recent human presence - coke cans, fanta bottles and plastic bags that will be beautifully preserved in the gasping dryness of the desert.
There are geoglyphs. More traditional archaeological traces of human culture. El Gigante de Atacama is over a 100m tall, a strange rectilinear creature with a four pronged head, he simultaneously manages to appear very ancient and extremely futuristic. Near San Pedro there were llamas barely bigger than hands carved into the rocks, probably marking livestock transport routes.
There are occasional abandoned villages, abandoned after an earthquake, or as a local mining activity ceases to function. There are many reasons to abandon settlements in this environment.
There are occasional microclimates such as the Pampa del Tamarugal, where scrublike hardy vegetation manages to survive on mysterious waters drawn from deep deep underground.
There are very occasional oases. With bougainvillea, lemon trees and fig trees.
It is not really a sandy desert, there are very few smooth and seductive sand dunes. It is a rocky, stony and dusty desert. It is mostly a greyish brown colour, though when the sun is low in the sky it becomes orange, red and pink.
It is a wonderful and terrifying cinema.

The Sun

2008-02-25T22:04:00.001Z

Like the moon, the sun in the southern hemisphere moves from right to left across the sky rather than left to right. Of course it still rises in the east and sets in the west. It is a strange phenomenon to get used to because the shade moves in the opposite direction too. On about our third or fourth day in Chile we spent the afternoon at a house with a swimming pool. It was very hot and I settled down on a sun lounger shaded by large parasol. The shade didn't last long though and soon the sun was beating down on my ankles, my knees, my left arm. I felt utterly confused for a second, why was the sun was moving backwards?! Once settled again on the sun lounger, on the other edge of the shady patch, assuring an hour or two more out of the fierce glare of the Chilean sun, I started thinking about the interesting relationship between the sun and the earth... and drifted off to sleep...

The Moon (One)

2008-02-23T00:37:00.001Z

The moon in the southern hemisphere is not quite the same as the moon in the northern hemisphere.
I noticed two main differences. First, there is no man in the moon in the southern hemisphere, and second, in the south the moon appears to moves from right to left across the sky, east to west via the north (rather than east to west via the south).
It would appear that in the south one sees the other side of the moon - the back of the man in the moon's head, or under his chin, rather than his face.
After a lot of pondering and a little bit of internet research that just drew me into the complexity of the whole issue (the tilt of the earth's rotation axis / elliptical orbit path / the sun's gravity / and more..) I am still not exactly sure of the orbit path of the moon around the earth and its relationship to the southern and northern hemispheres, but I did discover that the moon waxes and wanes and opposite directions - in the north the new crescent moon is seen on its right edge, in the south the new moon starts on the left.
This is not the place for a technical discussion of the moon's orbital behaviour, more a place to note these relatively small but interesting and particular changes in the stuff that surrounds us. If you look at the same thing from another angle you see something else.

Now that I'm back I imagine I might blog a little more..

2008-02-23T00:06:00.000Z

Several thousand miles, 1027 digital photos, 4 35mm 36 exposure films, 77 days, countless buses, seven aeroplanes, four trains, three full moons, two bottles of suncream and one earthquake later...
And I am back in the land of winter... Our flight involved a stopover in Milan, and arriving there early yesterday morning it seemed like an exciting and unfamiliar new world of crispy misty air and busy people with important things to do wearing shiny leather boots and smart warm jackets. Winter in Europe seems far more interesting and exotic than I had ever previously noticed.
I guess I am trying to say its not so bad to be back! Though I could have happily spent many many more months in Chile and feel that I have just seen a fraction of it.. But I think we will go back..
In the meantime, I have many blogworths of stories and notes bubbling around in my head and hope to post them up over the next week or so before they all start to fade and blur...
Winter in Europe seems like a place more suited to writing words indoors on a computer than summer in Chile. The notebook and the pen worked better over there, easier to use under a tree or in a hammock or on a bus.
More soon!

the Andes to the Pacific

2008-01-18T21:32:00.001Z

part ONE : the mountains : about 10km from the border with argentina : about 2000m above sea level : termas del flaco : tinguiririca valley : almost too hot to bear suplhuric smelly and magic all healing water : mud : the valley where the plane with the uruguayan rugby team crashed in the 70's inspiring the film 'alive' : tiny intensely coloured flowers : dust : a wildly swinging and swaying bridge over an icy very fast flowing river : waterfalls and boulders : dinosaur footprints in the rock : a mine : statues of the virgen mary in impossibly desolate locations : impeccably well dressed huasos (chilean cowboys) : scratchy prickly plants : rainbow coloured rocks : stars and satellites : flocks of noisy yellow and blue parrots : condors that remained invisble

part TWO : the central valley : santa cruz : a small town amidst a sea of vineyards fruit trees vegetable fields : bustling and wealthy but also rural and simple : single storey abode buildings : the classic central plaza full of palm trees and monkey puzzles : a museum with a glittering display of mapuche jewelry and just about everything else you could imagine : breakfast of almond cake and a juicy juicy peach sitting in the plaza : the usual lunch of avocado tomato and cheese sandwich in the incredibly friendly panificadora : horses and carts clip clopping down the main street : a constant parade of flat wide brimmed 'huaso' hats

part THREE : the ocean : pichilemu : a seaside surfing town : a chilean newquay : a wide curving bay of dark grey sand : a rocky headland : white frothy waves and a steely grey sea : thick sea fog rolling in off the ocean : outer space monster seaweed : sad llamas with hats being paraded up and down the beach for people to have their photo taken with : empanada capital : a vague air of faded grandeur : a hilltop promenade of palm trees and topiary that has seen better days : an old abandoned casino covered in scaffolding and being done up : arcades : gokarts : a rickety funfair : a delicious dinner of grilled fish and tomato and onion salad with a huge glass of freshly whizzzed papaya juice served by an extremely kind and very old woman with a wicked sense of humour and a glint in her eye

La Isla Helvecia

2008-01-04T00:22:00.001Z

The island is surrounded by a beach - mostly made of dark grey volcanic rock pebbles, though the far eastern point is brilliant white sand and perfect for swimming. There are pink crab shells everywhere. On the sheltered northern shore some of the grey rocks have been colonised by extremely yellow lichen. It takes about 20 minutes to walk the complete circle around the island.
On the northern face, visible as you approach in the little wooden Chalupa boat (passing dolphins and sea lions) from Calbuco, is a large house, clad in flaking white painted weatherboards, with pale blue window frames. The house was once quite grand, built by Swiss immigrants probably at the turn of the century. In the hall is an imposing oil painting of a smartly dressed gentleman. Today the house is falling apart. The hot water and electricity have long ceased, though there is running cold water from a rainwater collecter, a gas hob and lots of candles. There are several missing windows, woodworm everywhere, and healthy happy families of spiders. A wiry Chilian with a red beard and blue eyes (as Celtic looking as they come) came over with us, he is the son of the woman who bought the house in the 50's, and now lets it out to occasional visitors. The house has everything required to frighten the life out of you, and would be the perfect place to shoot a horror film, but somehow we felt quite safe and sound there - maybe it was comfort in numbers, we were six, and had a lot of red wine and whisky to get through. More than anything, the house had an air of containing a thousand stories, but they were fading, each broken window and rotten beam was a story disappeared.
The interior of the island consists of grassy meadows (kept tidy by the residents - 2 llamas, 3 sheep and 3 donkeys - almost straight from Noah's ark), a dense thicket of vegetation, and a grand old forest of Chilian Oaks and native Arrayan trees. The Oaks have grey trunks and the Arrayans orange. There is an open air stage at the far end of the forest.
To the east is an unbroken line of snowy peaks, stretching far into the south and the Patagonian wilderness. At sunset they glow pink, and a little later reflect the moonlight. The view to the south and west is across the water to higgledy-piggledy Calbuco, small neighbouring islands and Chiloé.
We explored, we swam, we feasted, we slept.

2008-01-04T00:12:00.000Z

One month ago - the last and most dramatic part of a very long plane journey... 30minutes till landing!

Volcan Llaima

2008-01-02T19:23:00.002Z

The road trip in the south.
First night near Temuco, in the foothills of the Volcano Llaima. The first real active volcano I have seen, it was beautiful - a perfect conical shape, its upper part covered in snow, and best of all, emitting the occasional puff of smoke! The next day we walked closer to it, through temperate rainforest, coming to a brilliant vantage point across a plateau of intensely green bamboo. We admired it more, and were also a little wary, the puffs of smoke were a warning not to get too close...
Later on that day I read that it was one of the three most active volcanoes in the world.
Yesterday evening at about 6 o'clock Llaima erupted, and continues to do so.

Nuevo ano sin luz

2008-01-02T18:39:00.000Z

The blog is not quite as active as I anticipated... must be having too much fun!
And computers, let alone computers with internet access, were pretty much non-existant (creatures from another world) when we were down in the south.
After New Year at the beach I am having a few days of doing nothing in Santiago, nursing my swollen mosquito bitten left eye.
New Year itself was fantastic - we were with friends in a rented house a couple of hours north of Santiago on the coast, barbeque on the terrace, countdown to midnight, feliz ano nuevo feliz ano nuevo wooopwoop and then bang! - powercut! Perfect for watching fireworks... The power remained off until the next day, in all the village. It was great, we had all we needed to eat and drink, the stars and the moon were out in force, and the huge pacific waves kept on rolling in on the beach. A pretty nice way to start the year.

2007-11-25T18:54:00.000Z

llamas guanacos pisco volcanoes active volcanoes thermal springs geysers penguins salt lakes abandoned towns monkey puzzle trees the pacific the andes folklore mapuches mate valparaiso valdivia glaciers deserts vineyards manhar the panamericana the carretera austral patagonia atacama

This is the first post of this blog. These are the things that I'm thinking about. Next week (next Tuesday, the 4th of December) I'm flying to Chile and staying there for about 10 weeks.

Thin shoes - the reason for the name is given by Ivor Cutler, late great poet and singer.

Thin shoes tell
us
more about
the
world
we live
in than
thick ones.

'Shoes' from A Flat Man, Trgram Press 1977.

This blog will hopefully continue long after the Chilean adventure - telling tales about the world we live in, the ordinary and the extraordinary. Chile is a good place to start. Next post sometime after landing. Until then.