Blade Runner - Colombo 2004

The protective clothing worn by the motorcyclist usually comprises protective boots in flip flops format, protective jacket in short sleeve shirt format, and helmet well in helmet format, for the rider at least. Moving through the traffic, following the biker, Colombo life takes on a vibrancy that is infectious. The biker pulls off to the left to talk to his friends standing by the side of the street, the street is completely occupied by motorbike shops, you can buy a bike or any amount of spares to keep your bike going, whilst others are fixing and tinkering to do just that. Continuing among the flow of more bikes and tuk tuks, some turn off to the left into an environment that is simply alive with humanity, the buildings are invisible, the road surface is alive with tuk tuks, motorbikes, people walking and cycling, all in slow motion, some making a very defined flow through the space, others stopping to talk to others in the dark spaces just off the street, where it looks like you can buy absolutely anything from fresh fruit to light bulbs. In the street itself, people sit on chairs outside their shops, others seem to be selling from tricycle rickshaws and hand carts. Nobody can move at any more than a slow walking pace through this heart of the city, this is Main Street this is where it seems all of the life of Colombo is concentrated into one space, its heartbeat defined by the exchange and interplay of locals, goods and conversation.

Above, a crazy framework of steel fixed to the face of the buildings supports all manner of illuminated signs, although not illuminated as it is mid-morning, but making a brightly coloured collage against the intense blue sky, it seems that each sign stretching vertically up the face of the building is competing for position, stretching either further out over the street, or reaching higher up the building face. Many of the signs are in Sinhalese, others in English, with some familiar names that have disappeared from the British high street, Lipton, Singer... In between the building signs, streetlights compete for position, although with all the illuminated signs, I am not sure they are really necessary. Windows peer out from the cluttered facades, every now and then a pediment or a moulding is visible giving a hint of another city beneath that was built long before the advent of neon.  The tops of the parapets are adorned with signs as are the fascias above the dark spaces of the shops on the street, at night this must be awash with neon and fluorescent light. An air conditioning unit fixed on steel brackets sits precariously above the shopfront fascia, humming away pushing hot air out into the already hot and humid environment, to keep somebody cool whilst working in their office buried under the collage.

The Bradbury, or is it? In fact there are colonial buildings everywhere slotted in amongst the living fabric of buying, selling and tuk tuks. A deep red block with subtle changes in ornament, from one 'Bradbury' to the next defines one as a church, another as a mosque, whilst at the end of the row the bo tree (also known as weeping fig) grows through a clay tiled roof, and the pristine white render walls surround a garden and a pristine white Dagoba defining the Buddhist temple. The old Colombo port, the source of much of Sri Lanka’s wealth, through trading gems and tea could easily be Liverpool in the height of summer, with its grand warehouse and port offices buildings, similarly many in a state of decline as the transport of goods has moved away from shipping in small vessels to massive container ships or air freight. It is easy to imagine the rain pouring through the roof at night during the monsoon season completing the illusion that J.F. Sebastian lives in a block to himself.

Clouds of steam issue from a group of low rise buildings along with the smell of soap and wet fabrics, hundreds of shirts hang on lines in the yard outside, while sheets are laid out on the ground drying in the heat of the day at Colombo’s outdoor laundry, tended by numerous diligent workers. There is not a single area of street where people don’t walk, and in some cases that is also the railway, they simply step aside when the train comes, the commuter train, like the buses in my previous post ‘Poetry in Slow Motion’ is invariably overcrowded, with people standing in the open doors hanging on to the handrails as the train picks its way through the city. Embedded in the dense urban fabric a dazzling array of carved figures reflecting the intense sunlight, on the towers of the Hindu temple, add to the already intense colour of street life in this cultural melting pot of a city. The colours are tangible not only in the visual but in the smells, aromas of fresh fruit combine with spices in the ongoing preparation of and rice and curry that makes up the daily diet of much of the population.

On Architectural Education

A note on the journey.

With debates on social media and in particular BD 6th December 2013, regarding possible reforms to the RIBA education structure and potential abolition of part I, II and III as the qualification route, I find myself in a position of due to circumstances, having qualified through two routes, the BIAT route and the RIBA route and being able to offer insight into the similarities and the differences between the two, this is my story.

Note: BIAT has been through numerous name changes throughout its life. With the change of job title from Technician to Technologist, and subsequently the ‘British’ was replaced with ‘Chartered’ and as a result the current title is Chartered Institute of Architectural technologists (CIAT)

The journey started in 1987 I had been accepted on the full time BTEC Building Studies course at South Devon College of Arts and Technology, electing to pursue what I felt was a practical application of my skills as opposed to going on and doing A levels in the sixth form at the Grammar school. My chosen career goal at that point was to become an Architectural Technician as opposed to an Architect, the exact reasoning I am not sure now, but if memory serves it was linked to the perception that A levels and University seemed like a very long time before I could start work.

On leaving school, opportunities conspired to make it happen and I joined a small firm of Architects in my home town, Paignton as a trainee Architectural Technician, transferring to the part time mode of the BTEC Building Studies course.

The course was actually two courses: Ordinary National certificate (ONC) for the first two years, then Higher National Certificate (HNC) for the second two years, where you could choose between the Architectural stream or the construction stream, many of my colleagues worked for contractor, or local authority; planning, building control, highways, environmental health. I think I was one of four that were working in Architectural Practice. The courses were structured in units, and if I remember correctly this was a relatively new concept at the time. The units included: land surveying, building surveying, construction technology, Architectural design (taught by an Architect), contract administration, environmental science, structures, services, practice management, measurement, specification: Some of the assignments were quite in depth, including a full construction process from demolition and temporary shoring of adjacent structures, to structural systems, cladding, interior finishes. Another assignment involved supervising a JCT 80 construction contract, filling out the relevant certificates and correspondence to manage a live project scenario.

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, the print bureau down the road, 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. Production involved trimming the prints, and colour washing, not a magic marker in site. I used to love drawing and remember being called into the office of the head of building control at the Local Authority, and being told that the drawings I had submitted were the best he has seen in 20 years in the job.

The practice handled everything in the design and construction process...Urban design, masterplanning, construction detailing, site supervision, project management, even cost control. Over the next four years I qualified as an Architectural Technician and attained associate membership of the then British Institute of Architectural Technicians (ABIAT) and felt like I had made it. In reality one year later I was one year of practical experience away from achieving full membership (MBIAT) and a licence to practice. At that point in time I was running my own jobs, and managing my own work flow within the practice. The recession of 1992 meant that there came the 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! 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.

Needless to say I arrived at RIBA education under a bit of a misapprehension, I was a qualified Architectural Technician and already knew what I was doing, right?  I was accustomed to scoring 85% in assignments, thinking I was invincible, this should be easy. I remember showing examples of my work that I had done in practice to my fellow students, they were impressed, but I was told by our tutor ‘great drawings, but that is building, not Architecture’. He also told us at the very beginning of the course that Architecture is about people, not buildings...it did come as bit of a shock to me at the time.

The journey was one of discovery, learning and in some cases unlearning as the course became immersed in ‘Poetics of Space’ (Bachelard). and ‘Blade Runner’ (Ridley Scott/Philip K Dick). Based around studio projects with a strong emphasis on psychology; expression and representation of ideas using multiple media, art, verbal, film; all studio units were centered around presentation and discussion of ideas in a crit environment and sure enough had very little to do with building. The first year of the course provided a broad foundation to the study of architecture and landscape architecture in the context of the urban condition. Many projects were based on aspects of the 1960’s modern urban core that makes up Birmingham city centre, along with the industrial voids in the city and surrounding areas. Units were aimed at reading and interpreting the non-designed and designed environment.

The technical units such as Structures, Construction and Architectural Science were for me a repeat of the ONC, although ironically I struggled with Architectural Science, I think the subtle difference was the subject changed from Environmental Science on the HNC to Architectural Science on the BA, and with it a change of emphasis from the scientific angle to the human angle, the calculations were the same, but how the results were interpreted that was missing from before.

Site visits gave an introduction to Birmingham, from the founding of the Lunar Society to the first air-rights building over the canal, the vast grass bank that was to become Brindley Place, the subways, the sunken plazas a product of Manzoni’s Inner Ring Road, dubbed the ‘Concrete Collar’. Sandwell Valley and the formation of a nature reserve in a former open cast colliery. Projects were based around The Bull Ring and Rotunda, Birmingham’s Modern City Centre. Visits to London, took in not the sights, but The Bartlett, Sir John Soanes Museum, Grimshaw’s then soon to be completed Waterloo International, The concrete structures on The South Bank. A discussion took place on Waterloo bridge about the eastern skyline: the ‘City’ after the IRA bomb, Rogers’ Lloyds building, Canary Wharf tower on the Horizon. A later visit took in the Swiss Cottage, Saatchi gallery and the Oil Room, A visit to Bath took in the Roman Ruins, Georgian houses and the planning of the Renaissance city, in a nutshell, exposure to the examples of the complete history of Architecture in single academic year.

The second year was more technically biased and was easy for me as I was drawing a lot on my previous experience, in essence more repetition of ONC. A study visit to Paris gave a lot of design inspiration, taking in La Villette, Pompidou, Arab Institute as well as soaking up the atmosphere of the city in about 4 days. What I felt was a repeat of the ONC units were augmented by Architectural History, Urban History, Urban Design and the requirement to write research papers. The third year was based on the application of the science, construction, structures and technology to a design problem that was founded in the theory derived from detailed analysis of site, environment, brief and context. What was learned in becoming an Architectural Technician formed only small part of the requirement, maybe as low as 10%. Following the completion of the degree, the usual route comprises a ‘year out’ in practice which for most of my colleagues would be their first exposure to working in a real world environment, and the perception from the Practices is that this is essentially a work experience placement, and not a real job. I did take a position but not as a Part I but as an Architectural Technician, in essence picking up where I had left off before going to university, and I remember teaching my colleague who had gone through the traditional A levels/degree route some of the practical aspects, such as surveying that are not covered on the BA.

The return to University for the Part II was intended to be a lot freer in terms of design and theory. I had established with the head of school that my technical knowledge was sound, but my designs were lacking in theory. In terms of education, the environment is a lot more investigative than the degree. In terms of the technology, not surprisingly many aspects covered on the HNC, but somehow in less depth and as with the Part I, the emphasis is about application rather than knowing the data. On balance the Part II may have overlapped with the HNC by about 5%. The previous experience as a technician becomes something of a double edged sword following Part II, be treated as a Part II student with very little experience, or risk getting typecast as a Technician and not progress beyond that function.

Much of the meat of the HNC not surprisingly is not covered until Part III because it is associated with running a practice however, at Part III is much more in depth. For me the journey did not end with Part III, it continued as a Masters’ Degree continuing some of the investigation into design theory that for me had not concluded at Part II.

On balance the process of qualifying as a Technician through the BIAT route, taught me how buildings go together, and a lot about the design process but not about design. The lesson learned though subsequently qualifying through the RIBA route is that the design process is essentially the same, buildings go together in the same way. The huge difference is the RIBA route prompts a deeper understanding of the impact of design on the built environment, its relationship to context and people who will have to live with it.

Poetry in slow motion - Colombo 2002

In my last post, Lost in Manama, I made reference to the second Manama resembling much of what I have experienced in Colombo, Sri Lanka, therefore this post starts where my association with Colombo began, in the winter of 2002. This was my first visit to a developing country and the comparison from a European perspective was unavoidable and my first impression was one of complete culture shock. Not in so much the people, but the daily patterns that give Colombo its life. Colombo is defined by traffic, from people walking on the road, elephants, bicycles, all manner of vehicles that operate on the basis that as long as the wheels rotate, it is on the road. Road rules as understood from driving in the UK? Forget it!

Here the rules are completely different. Mirrors, not used, in fact nobody even looks over their shoulder when joining traffic. It seems that the unwritten rule is that everybody gives way without exception. That is until you get to a junction, crossroads or a roundabout, then nobody gives way, so it becomes a matter of forcing your way into or across the traffic. The local taxi, a three wheeler known as a trishaw or more popularly a 'tuk tuk', the name derived from the two stroke engine sound. These seem to be protected by an invisible force field, and their drivers know no fear, they drive across oncoming traffic, they will fit into the smallest of gaps and will overtake in the face of oncoming traffic, avoiding collision by no more than a whisker. Indicators are rarely used, truck drivers will use them to say that it is not safe to overtake, sometimes accompanied by a hand gesture that means 'get back'. In other cases indicators may be used because it is the only light that works on the vehicle.

It seems that the entirety of the road surface is occupied, and people seem to possess a sixth sense of what is happening around them. Let’s start with the pedestrians: there are no pavements or side-walks, depending on where you are from, so walking takes place on the road, barefoot in many cases. Never hurried, never trying to avoid vehicles, just serenely walking along whilst the chaos of moving vehicles takes place around them. There are then pedestrians will all manner of hand carts, carrying anything from fresh fruit to cooking pots. I did mention elephants; it is not uncommon to see an elephant or two on the road, with one man sitting on the shoulders and a few more walking alongside. A cart drawn by a bullock, loaded with produce plods along at its own pace.

Cyclists are a whole other class of road user, riding a bicycle that would most likely be seen in a museum in the UK, single gear, rod brakes, usually with a lamp iron on the front and a rack on the back. A family will travel on a single bicycle, man riding, wife seated side saddle on the cross bar, child on rear rack, and the smallest child seated on the handlebar resting their feet on the lamp iron. Moving at little more than walking pace it is a testament to the laws of physics that they able to maintain balance at all, more often couples ride on the same bicycle, male and female and sometimes just male, but the passenger always rides side saddle on the crossbar. There are many combinations of cycle, bicycle with large wooden board fixed to the handlebar with copious amounts of lottery tickets stapled to the board. Tricycle rickshaws, tricycle carts fully loaded with what appears to be far too much stuff to be propelled by pedal power, there are hand cycles, a kind of wheelchair with a crank fixed to the armrest, and a chain drive to the wheel. Different cycles, moving at different speeds passing pedestrians and animals, are being constantly passed by all the other vehicles. Motorcycles, no big bikes here, due to a national restriction on engine size set at 250cc. The same family scenario as the bicycle family occurs on the motorbike too, and curiously it seems to be only the man that wears a crash helmet. Here the format differs slightly, as the wife will usually ride pillion, eldest child on the fuel tank, and smallest on the handlebar resting their feet on the front light.

Tuk tuks are everywhere, speeding past the myriad of pedestrians and cyclists, and in most cases driving in amongst them in a constant game of dodging the pedestrian to one side and faster moving vehicles to the other. The air is heavy with dust and exhaust fumes punctuated by the ever present Beep! Beep! of car horns, which usually means ‘move over’. Buses: invariably a yellow single decker, with a list to port. The door is on the left side i.e. ‘port’ the bus is fully loaded, overcrowded would be an understatement, it goes without saying that the seats are fully occupied, sometimes with passengers seated on the laps of others. Then there is standing room, in fact the gangway is so tightly packed it is a wonder that anyone is able to get on or off the bus. The door is open, with people wedged in the doorway, and one or two hanging off the wing mirror, which explains the list to port. All the buses seem to have been modified so that there is no silencer, and clouds of black smoke are pumped out into faces of those not riding on the bus, judging by the facial expressions, nobody seems to mind, they just carry on moving, minding their own business.

Trucks: Leyland trucks, familiar in the UK during the 1970s are still going strong, some original, some manufactured in India form the backbone of freight movement, restricted to 35kmh, they chug around fully loaded with anything from fresh produce, timber to motorbikes, usually with the loading and unloading crew sitting on top of whatever is being transported in the open back. The back of the truck is usually built of timber, and painted in bright colours and adorned in patterns derived from flowers. Agricultural vehicles invariably join in with the fun, tractors towing trailers, even something resembling a rotavator towing a trailer a la 'The Good Life' is not a rarity here. Cars: this is a mish-mash of old and new, old from Europe, new from Asia. Mark I Ford Escort is still going strong, along with Morris Minor, Austin Cambridge, and VW Beetle from the 1960’s, it seems that they do not rust here, so have long outlasted their European counterparts, some have been manufactured in India at a later date of course, so would not be as old as their long dead cousins. Toyota Hiace vans and minibuses are almost as numerous as tuk tuks, invariably painted white to reflect the heat and form the backbone of family transport for the more wealthy. Some roads have no markings so the position of the middle of the road varies depending on the volume of traffic moving along that ‘side’ and where there are road markings two lanes will easily become more than five.

In Colombo the perception of time is based on the understanding that there is a an hour window for any specified meeting, for example if you say you are going to meet at 10am, you could meet that person any time from 10:00 to 11:00, because if the clock says it is 10.59 it is still 10am. Based on the traffic it makes sense because there is never any guarantee that you can arrive when you intend to, and can easily be held up for an hour. The main road into Colombo is lined with all manner of buildings, offices, shops, hotels which are not hotels in the sense that there are rooms where you stay overnight, but are more akin to a cafe or a bar. A crowd of people occupy a corner where two roads intersect, all intently gazing into the shop, it is a TV shop, and a cricket match is playing.

Cricket is everywhere, from a group of kids playing a match on any spare patch of ground they can find, to the billboards on seemingly every street adorned with the familiar faces of Sri Lanka’s cricketers advertising anything from soft drinks to financial services. Beyond the shops that line the side of the road is green, fruit trees: mango, papaya, banana, coconut, king coconut. Between the trees are paddy fields, cattle graze on the verge of the road because everything else is cultivated. There is intensity to life that takes place on or alongside the road that I doubt I will find anywhere else, it feels like the city is in constant movement, a state of chaos in slow motion, where everything is happening at once but without conflict making Colombo a vibrant and colourful city where everything happens on the road.

Lost in Manama - 2014

When I first came to Bahrain I was told that it is impossible to get lost, it is such a small place, as long as you keep the sea to your left you will not go far wrong. Once on the ground, or more specifically on the road, most of this notion actually holds true, that is until you are trying to find anywhere specific in the urban melee that is Manama.

There are in fact at least 3 Manamas: one that is defined by historic forts and palaces and synonymous with Portugese or British rule thoughout the past centuries, in today’s Manama many of these are the associated with government and are identified by sentry guards with machine guns, standing outside closed gates set into the solid perimeter walls. The Second Manama is one that was largely built following independence from British rule in 1971, built in much the same manner as the reconstruction of post war Europe and is largely populated by Indian nationals and others from the Indian sub-continent and resembles much of what I have experienced in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The third Manama is one that is under construction following significant ‘reclamation’ from the sea, and is defined by highways and intersections, shopping malls and isolated developments, and is home to a combination of western and Arab expatriate populations, many living in the constant wave of new apartment blocks that are appearing. On a day to day basis it is the third Manama that I most interact with, driving from one development of reclaimed land at Awmaj Islands to another at Seef District along the ever changing network of highways.

A bit about the transformation: a study of historic maps reveals not only numerous ‘Manama’s but numerous ’Bahrain’s as the Northern Coastline appears to have been redrawn on a regular basis throughout the past century. From the formation of a port to build on the wealth from the Pearl trade, at the site now known as Bab al Bahrain, a car park now occupies what was the port. In subsequent years a pier stretched further and further northwards from Bab al Bahrain as the wealth was generated not from pearls, but oil, and the coastline gradually marched North to support a booming industry. A series of dramatic leaps Northward occur on the maps of the 1970s and 1980s in an ongoing ‘reclamation’ project. With the use of Google Earth, it is possible to see the scale and speed of development that has taken place.

For example in 2002, the King Faisal Highway that is my drive to work every day was in the sea, coral reefs are visible beneath the surface of the water, my place of work Seef District, although, the land is reclaimed is largely undeveloped, there are certainly none of the regular destinations:  City Centre Mall, Seef Mall or Bahrain Mall, and the area north of Sanabis resembles one large sandpit. Using the ‘Time Slider’ it is possible to view is the dramatic development. 2004 The coral reefs are beginning to be filled in, built over, destroyed and ironically the first artificial island to appear on the North Coast of Bahrain in 2005 is named Reef Island. The map also shows the formation of a group of islands to the North of Muharraq, an area now familiar to me, Amwaj Islands, ‘Amwaj’ derived from the Arabic for Shell. The towers that have become iconic and synonymous with Bahrain’s position on the world stage began to emerge from the sea in 2006, with the ongoing dredging, filling in, and formation of Bahrain Bay which became visible in 2007. By 2010 buildings began appearing on Bahrain bay the now vacant Arcapita building, the three towers known as the ‘twisted sisters’ emerged out of the new ground, only to cease twisting and stand as a monument to the financial crisis. In 2011, the Pearl Roundabout, disappeared as if to erase memories of events that occurred in the Arab spring. The corniche begins to emerge, landscaped parks appear between the highway and the new a sea front, by 2012 the parks are obliterated by the widening of the highway, two new hotel towers appear on the map that define the new skyline and Bahrain’s confidence as an international destination in the future, the Four Seasons on its little island as the centre piece of Bahrain Bay, and the Wyndham Grand. 

With activity concentrated along the King Faisal Highway, there is little need to enter the older city. Highways cut through the city result in a number of awkward intersections, and a drive off one of the intersections of on one of the rare occasions where there is a need to drive in the second Manama, life gets more interesting and it is less a matter of getting lost, and more a case of getting frustrated by the road network that prevents you from getting to where you need to. A classic case of car dependent culture being superimposed on the historic fabric of narrow streets and small scale blocks: what was once an urban fabric derived from being able to walk between blocks, through a network of narrow alleys to afford some protection from the heat in the shadows cast by adjacent buildings. The urban plane is dominated by  10-12 storey concrete framed blocks that meet the ground very awkwardly, usually defined by a forest of columns supporting the apartments over what invariably becomes a chaotic jumble of parked cars. The shaded alleys have all but disappeared in some areas to be replaced by parked cars. Others, replaced by an unintelligible one way system, roads are barely wide enough to drive down, past all the parked cars, sidewalks are practically non-existent and local shops open directly onto the road. As a visitor, there are very few places to park your car if you were adventurous enough to try to walk in amongst the slow moving traffic, the result: driving around in circles in a constant stream of slow moving traffic. Navigation ends up being dependent on the micro scale, based on local knowledge of shops in a specific area as any of the urban landmarks are obscured by the monotonous realm of apartment blocks and parked cars.  It becomes almost impossible to see where you are going as the search for landmarks is superseded by the avoidance of parked cars, moving cars and pedestrians all while having somebody driving six inches off your back bumper, with a tendency to beep the horn at every opportunity, and then some more just in case.

At Seef, a district that has been built on the top of coral reefs, the same problem is being replicated as the sporadic development is following the same priorities. The development regulations are such that you have to provide car parking on your development site, meaning that recent developments will comprise a parking podium of usually 4 to 5 storeys, built right up to the property line, with offices or apartments in a narrower block, respecting the setbacks imposed by the regulations, sitting on top. The result being chaos at ground level dominated by parked cars, precious little space to walk and even less landscape. A few blocks are hotels which do have manicured lawns at the front along with its myriad of flagpoles, signage totems and decorative planting, marooned in a sea of dust, asphalt and parked cars.

Where development is yet to happen, large areas of sand are largely covered by parked cars, that will surely add to the problem when these areas become developed. Conversely the transformation is following a strategic vision aimed at creating an international city by the year 2030, this includes a high speed rail link to a route that is currently in development from Kuwait to Muscat, and includes a link to Qatar. A metro system, an integrated network of buses, trams and monorail, will surely provide an interesting dynamic to the selection of apartment locations. It will be interesting to see how these development occur and how much of the vision survives into realization.  On reflection it is not so much a case of being lost in Manama, but it may be Manama being lost within and constantly having to adjust to its own transformation.