Buenos Aires Opera

Avenida Corrientes, Buenos Aires, 20.12.10

orange lozenge

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

House

Rue Clavel 75019
30.05.2010

the Future

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.

street poem

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

Passage du Plateau

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

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.