Becoming an Architect

Lego, the beach and Iron Maiden

A few weeks ago a friend asked me what you needed to do to become an Architect, which got me thinking, not so much about how, but why did I become an Architect?

As long as I can remember I was always going to be an Architect, from growing up in Paignton on the English Riviera, the place that visitors pass through to get from Torquay to Brixham. Much of the summer of 1976 was spent on the beach, playing in the sea, building not sand castles, but entire cities in the sand. Looking across the bay to the white blocks, Imperial Hotel, Coral Island, Kilmorie and other modern apartment blocks nestled amongst the trees in the limestone spit that accommodates the more affluent areas of Torquay, then trying to replicate them in Lego, never enough white bricks though. At the time that view represented a complete contradiction to the experience of actually going to Torquay, which mainly involved walking around the shopping streets in the rain, being frogmarched into Marks and Spencer for school uniforms with all the signs saying ‘Back to School’ and the inevitability of the end of the summer holidays. Put me off Marks and Spencer for life.

Back on the Beach, Paignton Pier majestically marches out into the sea on steel legs for no other reason than to give visitors the experience of being out over the water. Except to play on the amusements on the way through to the end of the pier, slot machines, bingo and boat trips around the bay. There are in fact two towns named Paignton, one in the summer, and another in the winter. The promenade is a prime example with wooden cabins selling fish and chips, candy floss and toffee apples in the summer; and the bare steel support frames in winter, and trying to walk along the whole length of the beam without falling off in the winter, I seem to remember doing more of the falling off. Surrey cycles thread their way through the sea of people walking along the promenade in summer, with people sitting on deck chairs watching the youngsters playing on the beach; old people sitting in their cars along the promenade eating sandwiches and drinking tea from Thermos flasks in winter watching the seagulls flying over the waves. The highlight of the year is Regatta week where the Anderton and Rowlands fairground would materialise on the ‘Green’, the Red Arrows would appear from over the horizon to give their amazing aerobatic display, and then there is the fireworks where the whole town would converge for one night.

1980, my father began a project to build a boat, a yacht in the back garden, I helped him lay down the keel beam and cross members on the lawn and watched in keen fascination as the frame began to take shape with me helping to carry members from the workshop to the construction site, holding members in place whilst glue was applied, then clamps and finally brass screws driven in with a pump action screwdriver. Come 1984 when the finished yacht made its way out of the garden and to the harbour, the expectation was that I would be excited about finally getting out on the boat, for me it was something of an anticlimax, and sadly for him I was not a natural seaman. I had what Architects sometimes refer to as 'coming down' after completing a project. The excitement was in the making, not the using, I had lost interest.

1982 I had not achieved the academic results to get into the grammar school and with it the expectation of going to university. In careers lessons career my focus always seemed to return to drawing or constructing things, I wanted to be the next Isambard Kingdom Brunel, him of Great Western Railway fame, a vision of an integrated transport system linking London to New York, yes New York, train to Bristol to link up with the first steamship line across the Atlantic, and the great station roofs, bridges, tunnels the construction feats that enabled it to happen.

1986. Still at school I contacted an Architect in Brixham for work experience, two weeks in the office of Malcolm Chapman RIBA, and there was never a chance of me doing anything else. 1987 on leaving school I had been accepted at South Devon College of Arts and Technology on the BTEC Building Studies course, and joined a small firm of Architects in Paignton as a trainee. Over the next five years I qualified as an Architectural Technician and felt like I had made it. In the office the IT department was an Amstrad PCW8256 word processor linked to a dot matrix printer, there were also two instantaneous word processor/printers called typewriters, the office comms was a single grey Bakelite telephone with a dial and a very loud bell ringer, the fax machine was at Prontaprint, reprographics was a dye line printer which you fed ‘negatives’, ink line drawings on tracing paper, to make copies for submissions...and of course  ‘production’ was drawing board and ‘T’ square. The practice did everything...Urban design, masterplanning, construction detailing, site supervision, project management, even cost control.

However in the back of my mind was the beginnings of a notion that has constantly been growing, ‘There has to be more to it than this!’ We were working on house extensions, conversions of hotels into residential homes for the elderly, and the occasional one off houses or apartment block. I was more interested in the heyday of W.G. Couldrey, Son and Partners, these were the town’s architects, from 1890 they had built the Victorian town centre, Palace Avenue, Torbay Road, Queen’s Park Mansions, Dellers Cafe, Hyde Dendy’s Picture house where I watched Star Wars the first time round. Later planning the housing estates as the town expanded in the 1950’s. Iron Maiden? in 1987 I got hold of the Somewhere in Time album. The combination of Maiden's lyrics and Derek Rigg’s artwork for the album cover, opened up a whole new world of science fiction, history and stories of ancient civilizations, and is probably the single greatest influence in my making the transition from Architectural Technician to Architect.

Events started to conspire to make it happen in 1991. I joined Paignton Amateur Rowing Club to find a way to get fit and channel my energy, which quickly became a desire to compete, absolutely loving the buzz of being in a race; becoming Captain in 1992 and discovering that I had fanatical devotion the cause that inspired and motivated others resulting in a hugely successful season. Work started to dry up and I started looking at other opportunities, even leaving architecture to get into coaching, then came the inevitable day where I was handed my notice and my boss reminded me that I had been talking about going to University. The rest as they say is history, well almost. I immediately phoned Plymouth School of Architecture, my nearest Architecture school, thinking I could just go and attend the course to qualify as an Architect, I am already qualified as an Architectural Technician, that’s five years, so I have to do another two to top it up to being an Architect right? Err...No it takes three years to get a degree, another two to get a Post Graduate Diploma and then another two in practice, and your qualifications might exempt you from the A level entry requirements to get into University...oh bugger!

Throughout my life I have regularly been criticised for doing everything the hard way, so why should this be any different? I had to go through clearing and quickly learned the difference between having A Levels and not, the top schools at the established universities were not interested, it was only the Polytechnics that were inviting me to open days and interviews but not for 1992 term start but 1993. So 1993 I joined what was Birmingham Poly the year previously, rebranded as University of Central England in Birmingham.

So boys and girls, if you are thinking of becoming an Architect, you really have to want to do it, and if you are still fixed on the idea don't let anything stop you.

The Final Approach -...New York Part 5

I looks like most of you figured out that my last post 'Wedding Cake Convention' was the fourth installment of 'Full on and Flat out in New York', so here comes the fifth and as the title suggests final part...Enjoy!


The museum of modern art forms an oasis in the desert of skyscrapers, the only problem being that I would need a week view all the fantastic artwork along with the exhibition of the works of Alvar Aalto: Dali, Mondrian, Miro...

Mc Donalds? top food in contrast to McD in the UK. The burger tastes like it contains beef, the fries actually contain potato and the regular meal is too much to finish in one hit. The view over Manhattan from the Empire State building at night: too hot for ice now so the observation deck is now open. Reminiscent of Italo Calvino’s invisible cities where the city of Irene when viewed from the plateau in the distance, is a different city from the one you would stand within. From here the places with reputations for being ‘rough’ Bronx, Harlem, Brooklyn, are looking pretty, fed by the constantly moving lines of flux, ignited in the darkness by the car headlights and tail-lights, painting white and red streaks through the cityscape. Whilst planes streak their own lines across the sky, like fireflies as they are flying in and out of JFK and Newark Airports, that’s a serious amount of people arriving and departing the metropolis.

Legendary New York rockers Kiss are immortalised in plastic at F.A.O. Schwartz’s. The Lincoln Centre, home of the New York Symphony Orchestra and its own slightly overweight statue of liberty is strangely deserted during the day, nearby Columbus circus at the East entrance of Central Park forms one impressive entrance to the subway. The Walking City has made its way to Chinatown, at the Storefront, an architectural gallery to be exact, which in itself is a dramatic intervention into the cityscape, with doors and windows that are rotating panels set so that they offer fragmented views of the city. Inside, the walls are covered with a complete fragment of the Archigram exhibition as viewed in Manchester earlier in the year. Here the exhibition is made up of the work of Ron Herron, best known for walking cities, but here the exhibition also concentrates on the work of his practice since Archigram. The work of the other members of the group are exhibited elsewhere in the city, at the Architecture schools at Columbia University and Cooper Union.

Battery Park City to the south, or is it Southend-on-sea, Brighton or Bournemouth with its pier and sea front pavilions. Walking between the wedding cakes of wall street, the spaces narrow and dark, is this really the financial centre of the world? On the return, travelling beneath the Hudson river and into New Jersey. Manhattan in the rain quite fitting that the city that has been home for the past nine days, signified by Empire State and the Twin Towers fade in the mist as they fade into memory.

NYC 1998

Wedding Cake Convention...New York Part 4

At Chelsea square in daylight to sample the major pancakes to provide rocket fuel that will keep you going the whole day. Situated on the corner of ninth and twentyfirst with the daily stampede of school buses, garbage trucks, yellow cabs and police cars, it is so easy to sit and watch the world go by rather quickly whilst drinking and endless cup of coffee (coifee). That’s something the Americans have got right!
The temperature rises and it’s a cab ride southwards through the perpetual traffic flows towards the distant grey twin towers standing in the haze, alongside the waterfront of the west side, dereliction, dust, potholes, traffic snarl-ups. The road surface improves, garbage bags disappear, and we are entering the financial district. From the observation deck of the World Trade Centre, Manhattan stretches out to the north as far as the eye can see, and it is a landscape of buildings. Wall street below, looks like a wedding cake convention with ornate decorations atop office blocks as different corporations have showed off their financial prowess at different times.

Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ springs to mind with ‘the air heavy with the drone of passing helicopters’, below following their own highway far above the bustle on the ground, where yellow cabs like an army of ants service the city. Air conditioning systems and huge ventilation fans labour away to keep the inhabitants cool. Water tanks sitting ever ready to serve whoever needs it next. All around, buildings, buildings, a tall pinnacle here, a plume of smoke there, a spectacular suspension bridge holding one vital part of the metropolis to another. To the south the largest of them all the Verrazano Narrows  Bridge majestically spans the mouth of New York Harbour. From this vantage Liberty is a mere distant figure on a tiny island in the middle of a vast stretch of water.

From the World Trade Centre plaza, at 89 degrees (Farenheit not tilt), it is a walk back uptown joining the constant stampede of natives through the melee past the Woolworth building, the Cathedral of Commerce, or is it Monty Python’s ‘Crimson Life Assurance?’ Opposite, another one of those not square squares, a great place for demonstrations! Immigrant workers at this time, and not a ‘Ghostbuster’ in site. Dragged northwards by the rush moving along Fifth Avenue to the Soho Guggenhiem Museum, not to be confused with Frank Lloyd Wright’s version, is hosting an exhibition of Chinese art. The compactness of Soho spreads out to give way to parking lots, adverts are painted directly onto the walls of buildings, to cover the entire wall, such streetscape! Another cab ride, cruising through the traffic with Will Smith playing on the radio…this is most definitely New York! The ‘real’ Guggenhiem museum, the one by Frank Lloyd Wright that is in the architecture books, remarkably reminiscent of Lubetkin’s animal enclosures at Dudley Zoo, and on the surface not in much better condition. The concrete has fared better internally and the spiral ramp does look impressive, more chinese art but the building itself just maybe not living up to its legend.

Central Park is a strange place, if you don’t have wheels on your feet you are a second class citizen, roller-bladers have priority here, along with the cyclists. You take you life in your hands as you cross in front of them. The marathon man perimeter fence around the lake must be to stop joggers getting their feet wet if they forget to follow the one-way system. Ice skaters however were getting their feet wet as the 105 degrees air temperature was proving too much to keep the ice rink from melting. Strawberry Fields is extremely busy, ‘Imagine’ the John Lennon memorial, apparently has had fresh flowers placed on it every day since the singer’s death. By contrast the scene of the crime outside the Dakota Building stands anonymously among the apartment blocks.

Hard Rock café, gold discs and guitars on the wall, a Chinese chicken salad that  must have had half of central park on a bowl and the inevitable bill splitting ceremony made all the more entertaining by trying to pay using travellers’ cheques. Walking south, traffic, traffic, traffic, and the Friday night stampede to get off of Manhattan. A jazz club in lower East Village, songs about heads turning up in garbage cans, in tales about life in New York. Female guitarists and a really entertaining evening.

Boat Trip: New York Part 3

The grid marches relentlessly west, and finishes and a sweeping flight of steps opens up to a large plaza below dirty piles of snow still cling to shadows in corners where the sunlight has not managed penetrate, a large gun with a knot tied in the barrel and the other piece of modern New York to be associated with a european architect, Le Corbusier, the huge rectangular block sitting above its sculptural podium housing the headquarters of the United Nations.

Manhattan island is almost completely surrounded by water, bounded by The Hudson River on the West side and by the East River on the er…Part of the tour includes a boat trip around the island. From the water a jagged landscape of the extruded grid punctuated by the few larger buildings meets the water very clumsily. Over a hundred piers stretch out into the river to welcome nautical visitors each with their own piece of history, one receives the cruise liner QE2 from time to time, another received survivors from the Titanic in 1912. Many are derelict, some are leisure centres, golf driving ranges, tennis courts, swimming pools… the aircraft carrier USS intrepid serves as a floating museum with its collection of former war planes. The U.S. presidential helicopter lands on one whenever he visits the city. The bright orange Staten Island Ferry makes its trip towards manhattan island, transporting a mind bogglingly large number of commuters every day. Into New York Harbour. Ellis Island, Governors Island, and the smallest, Liberty Island, with probably the most famous landmark, the Statue of Liberty seemingly small compared with its place as a national icon, but that is a visit for another time. Suspension bridges Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg span majestically span the East river, linking Manhattan to the mainland as though they are preventing it from floating away. Across the river power plants that supply Manhattan with energy stand along the shore of Brooklyn like sentinels protecting the city from power loss.

Breakfast at Bendix as recommended in the ‘Rough Guide’ , service with a frown and the motto ‘Get Fat’. With eggs, scrambled, up , down, waving, doing cartwheels, pulling faces…
New York’s first skyscraper the Fuller, ‘Flatiron’ building stands on the corner of Madison Square Park at the southern end of the diagonal section of Broadway, a prime example of the extruded plan. Madison Square Park as the name suggests is a park which is er…rectangular, where dog owners take their dogs to play in a fenced off dogs only zone marked by the whiff of urine. Dogs getting upset when they have to leave whist their friends are still playing. The rest of the park contains threadbare grass surrounded by fences (grass in rare in New York) with a few trees, with large red squirrels. On the lower east side there are a few such parks. Quiet streets, gritty, faded peeling paintwork, small shops, the Dodi and Diana Deli? shops selling records, tattooists, external fire escapes everywhere, otherwise reminiscent of Carnaby street in London.

Washington Square Park has a triumphal arch, much like the ‘Arc de triomphe’ in Paris, or ‘Marble Arch’ in London, neo-neo-Georgian facades and a film crew manufacturing more reality, watched by a large group of people, mainly students, trying to catch a glimpse of the actors…Val Kilmer in this case. Close by among the red brick façades huge numbers of students mill around on the street frontage to New York University (NYU). A stop for lunch next door at Tsunami’s Sushi Bar, (curious name), with a very square meal. Wandering around beneath the facades and a stop at a basement bar ‘Jules Place’ a French bar, with free refills on glasses of red wine, and a true French feel with an American accent.

Walking back up through East Village, past one of the parks we visited earlier, now has old men playing chess, dominoes or draughts (checkers) sat at tables, and an outdoor barber shop…A cyber café ‘Alt coffee’, apparently rare in New York. This is first an foremost a cafe, or even a lounge, people were sitting in armchairs or on sofas, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, reading newspapers, talking to each other face to face in a laid back and comfortable atmosphere; no anoraks here! To go and surf the net you go to the counter, order a coffee, book a machine, the machines here are about six in number very grubby, the beige box is more like a black box with coffee stains, there are two of these in the front room and four in the back, in the back room dead computers pile up in the corner. You sit down in your armchair andaccess anywhere in the world. On emerging from cyber space the sun goes down on East Village, the actors from the day cast change to the night cast, tramps in the park where earlier dog owners were watching their dogs play. Heated arguments break out on street corners, large dogs growl and snarl. The familiar request for ‘spare change’ issues from the shadows that were the shop doorways earlier on. Time to experience a first cab ride back to the hostel, astounding how easy it is to flag down a yellow.

Americans are obsessed with conspiracy theories. Diana and Dodi, not the deli owners, were killed by MI5 in orders of the CIA, who control the United Nations, and of course we faked the moon landings, this was all before we placed our orders at the Chelsea Square Restaurant, being served by a convincing Danny DeVito lookalike, complete with Italian American accent.

Whistle Stop Manhattan - 1998

New York in daylight is a completely different place to the one in the dark, the sky is no longer alight. The traffic flows seem less urgent. The paintwork is faded, the signs look out of date, maybe graphic design has not reached America or maybe it’s just not important here. Piles of rubbish ‘garbage’ are collected by independent men driving huge ‘prehistoric garbage trucks’ of the type that would not look out of place at a British fairground or vintage traction rally. There are no limited companies here they are all incorporated so the Sanitation Department operators’ names have the suffix ‘inc’.

The subway is ancient and confusing, the entrances into the netherword are inconspicuous flights of steps going downward from the street corners. There are no automatic ticket machines here, tokens are sold by a conductor sitting in a little kiosk. The lines are only marked by letters as are the trains, the trains, stainless steel cars without the graffiti usually associated with New York, run through the large, featureless spaces, some stopping at all stations, some at very few, confusing to the visitor but seemingly simple to the native. Eventually making it back up to the surface to meet Dominic and Dick our native guides from Ibstock (our Sponsors) for a whistle stop guided tour of Mid-town.

Mid-Town is the business district dominated by Empire State and Chrysler. Empire State seeminly on wheels as it disappears then reappears as you turn the corner. The street is the domain of Jewish businessmen and jewellery shop owners in a perpetual rush in sharp contrast with night time. The tour takes in lots of revolving doors, lots of marble at Grand Central Station  a huge concourse with crowds of people, deli stands, news stands but seemingly no relationship to tracks. A revolving door set in a wall of glass and corten steel, deposits you into the lobby of The Ford Foundation with spectacular indoor garden. All around Blocks crash into the ground without really knowing how to meet it, a kind of ‘pumped up architecture’ buildings inflated by the amount of money available at the time of construction. Neo-Gothic Cathedrals (St Patricks), nestle between blocky skyscrapers as through dropped in from a giant model kit in the sky. At one place an exception to this, a plaza the opens up from the street edge to form the base for the Seagram building best know in the Architecture book as the seminal work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Walking westwards from St Patricks and the Seagram plaza, any impression of the grid being regular and flat is quickly dispelled by the topography, it seems that the grid is completely at odds with rise and fall of ground. The sight of steel structure on the facade of a building up ahead announces another crossing of the ever present flow of traffic, standing at the street edge waiting for the sign to change from ‘DON’T WALK’ to ‘WALK’ a quick look round, the neon is extinguished but the shape is of the place unmistakable, welcome to Times Square in daylight! Lunch at a Deli, you cannot just go and buy a sandwich, turkey, bolloni, pastrami, salami, pepperoni, pickles is piled up between two halves of a loaf expertly held together by a wooden skewer in an combination that needs far more than a ladder to climb...may be here some time.

Full on and Flat out in New York Part 1

Full on and Flat out in New York

Today's blog is one from the archives. Birmingham School of Architecture runs a study visit to New York very year for the fifth year students, in 1998 it was the time for my year group. The piece was originally written for an exhibition/reception that our year group held for our sponsors Ibstock, where ‘Flights’ the bar that was frequented during our stay was recreated in the studio. Some may even remember this..enjoy!

On the approach from JFK, international airport dominated by the TWA terminal by Saarinen, a magnificent play of organic forms in concrete, however seems much smaller in the aggregate than in the architecture books. Cruising through Queens, the manufactured memories of New York, Empire State, World Trade Centre, Chrysler and Brooklyn Bridge become visible for the first time, igniting the skyline. The term the  ‘city that never sleeps’ feels appropriate with the electrified, seemingly endless, backdrop dominating the view. The classic view featured in so many movies and TV shows the backdrop to so much ‘culture', it becomes difficult to tell the difference between fact and fiction at this point.
The constant flows of traffic, reminiscent of Aston expressway and Spaghetti Junction at rush hour, passing through highway intersections large and complex enough to make ‘Spaghetti’ seem like a bootlace by comparison, filtering towards one of the many tunnels to pass beneath the Hudson River. Entering Manhattan : once through the tunnel the real New York reveals itself, a very gritty downtrodden town, used, very well used,  it is the former Dutch colony, New Amsterdam,  the fabled grid is non-existent, traffic is everywhere very slow moving, the daily migration of millions who inhabit Manhattan only between the hours of 8am and 8pm, that is so often talked about is here for real.
Chelsea International Hostel, situated downtown on the grid at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Twentieth street, Victorian looking brick buildings with Georgian styled sliding sash windows, home for the next nine days. It is like Sesame Street, or is it with its ‘Starsky and Hutch’ with its tenth precinct police station. Steel fire escapes adorn the facades of the surrounding buildings, would this be allowed in England? Bags of rubbish (garbage) inhabit the pavements (sidewalks) whilst well built men walk along holding hands with small dogs on leads. It sounds like ‘the clangers’ or a space invader convention with all the whooping and zapping of police car sirens.
The roads are very uneven, completely different from the impression that the grid gives. Steam escapes through manholes into the night air as it is expelled from the world below. The clatter of subway trains issue from beneath metal gratings in the sidewalk. The New York yellow cab is ever present although not the classic Cadillac as seen in the movies. The Empire state building marks its presence on the skyline bathed in artificial light, blue for Greek day, ready to disappear from view as it is approached from its resident block, it is amazing how it is possible to walk past the entrance without actually noticing it as it is squeezed in between jewellers’ shops.
It is so cold that sheets of ice are falling down from the spire onto the viewing platform so the night-time view over Manhattan has to wait for a while. Ice-skaters in the Rockerfeller Plaza listen to music in headphones seemingly in a world of their own within a winter wonderland surrounded by Christmas trees with fairy lights despite it being April.
The volume of traffic increases as it comes from three directions in the midst of building sized advertisements to converge where Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street at Times Square.
Walking back downtown the Grid that has become synonymous with New York dissolves into the former New Amsterdam, the air rich with the smell of garlic in the Italian restaurant dominated area, ‘Little Italy?’ A Philippino jazz singer with a British passport called Annie, the singer not the passport, sings softly whilst the pasta based feast is served, along with Budweiser, yep this is America, if you want beer it has to be Bud!  Walking back up-town a brief conversation with a spare change person…’dimes, quarters, cents, anything to help someone have a bed for the night’ …a lot more positive than the English ‘spare change sir’ but the problem is still the same.
A stop for a drink on the way up, a skeleton stands guard in the revolving door to the ‘City Gallery of the Macabre’ whilst Doctor Shroud (looks like Mr Munster) welcomes visitors to his gallery, likes to talk about the Royal family to the unsuspecting Englishman, and introduces us to his own collection of macabre art, a bit like Madame Tussauds’ ‘Chamber of Horrors’ in London, although a conversation with one of the waitresses reveals that Doctor Shroud is an actor and this gallery is part of a chain, so the experience is not quite so unique as it seems...