Into the melting pot - Lahore 2014

Heading through the dust and haze towards the city, the scene is dominated by traffic or more accurately, so many motorcycles, agricultural carts drawn by donkeys introduce a new dynamic, each flatbed cart drawn by a single donkey quite often laden with fresh fruit and about five children probably aged six to eleven,  others are laden with steel bars quite often driven by single man or more likely a teenager who is constantly talking on the mobile phone.

The road becomes wider and supported on concrete legs and the urban scene is made up of industrial facilities partly obscured by the morning haze as vapour rises from the dense belts trees that line the roadside. Concrete construction is everywhere, a group of young men standing in the middle of the road one working one watching and the other waving his arms around as if to direct the traffic around the part of the road is being worked on. In UK this will involve a whole lane being closed for miles and Bahrain it would result in two. As the flyovers snake their way of what is left of the urban realm another heavy concrete structure with slow moving Bendy-Bus absolutely jammed with people moves along the top of it. Ahead is what appears to be a Railway station, with platforms, signals, and bridges that span the traffic, the bus lane is fenced off from the road, this is the Lahore Metro, a transit system that still under construction, with too few buses to constitute a rapid transit system creating urban devastation is wake.

The whole scene begs the question wouldn’t it be easier to have created a bus lane along the existing road as opposed to constructing such a heavy barrier that divides the city? To be fair is not only the Metro line that divides the city, it is the combination with all the lanes of traffic moving alongside it and the associated concrete flyovers and demolition to accommodate it that is causing the devastation looking something like pictures of the Walsall Road in the 1960s. The irony being that Birmingham has spent the last twenty-five years trying to undo the damage caused by the Manzoni plan, and here in Lahore they’re building it is though it’s a new innovation. The elevated road takes the severe turn to the left and passes over the British attempts to introduce an efficient transport system and connect the peoples world whether they wanted it or not, from this vantage, the railway passes through a wide clearing lined by trees disappearing into the haze of the distance. Passing alongside the railway, it looks relatively modern, with overhead electric catenary but seemingly devoid of trains, with people wandering across the tracks while others bump motorcycles over them, to avoid driving round and fighting through the traffic trying to squeeze through a two lane level crossing, what appeared as a belt of trees from a distance is punctuated by a collection of ramshackle buildings, concrete frame, brick infill, built right up to the edge of the railway.

The roadside is a colourful spectacle of fresh fruit on carts with the donkey patiently waiting while business is conducted behind. All manner of vehicles stop, causing chaos as others swerve to avoid them, so that the drivers, passengers join the informal market beside the road to purchase wares from an array of carts and single-storey shops situated beneath tall trees. Ladies elegantly perched on the back of the motorcycles, dressed in brightly coloured fabrics add to the vibrance of the scene. The central median of the road to wide area of grass this numerous people seated in the shade of trees surrounded by flowerbeds. This is the ultimate tree-lined boulevard only something is missing there’re no grand buildings fronting onto it, the Kot Lakhpat Railway station is understated, identifiable only by sign pointing to a narrow alley between two of the single storey retail units situated beneath the trees.

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The working environment - Lahore 2014

It is always a challenge starting in a new working environment, firstly you don’t know anybody and nobody knows you so there is a very quick learning curve as you get to know who does what on the project and where you fit in to the project. I am no stranger to working in International teams and understanding the mentalities of people from different countries. Except here 90% of the team is made up of local people and I am very much in the minority. In fact there are only three in a team of thirty who are not Pakistani nationals. 

I’m the first to admit and I’m not the best with languages and like most Brits, are spoiled by the fact that many overseas nationals will speak some form of English. This always gets interesting when working in a region where English maybe the second or third language. I have discussed previously in my book Do we need Architects, A journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture, the notion that English is not English when working in the Middle East, here there is another form of English referred to by locals as Asian English where English words are used but not necessarily assembled in any coherent order, particularly in the written form, where entire reports are essentially meaningless to anybody outside of the room, and of course nobody takes too kindly when you start trying to correct their English, and like the mentality displayed on the road everybody knows best. As with every team there are those characters that seem to turn simplest discussion into a full-blown argument except that in this office there are many.

The planning team numbering two, have to become experts in urban economics, transport, waste water, hydrology, and infrastructure as none of the team seem to be able to give a straight answer on anything. All of this means that as a team leader there is no time to stand over members of the team to make sure that they are doing their part, which opens up the possibility of things go wrong, In fact, in this environment it’s not a 50% chance of something going wrong it is more like 100% chance, except that you don’t know this at that time. What are invariably happens is after repeated attempts to delegate a piece of work to members of the team you still end up having to do it yourself.

This is a very noisy office with conversations and discussions happening at full volume simultaneously in three and possibly four languages depending on which group is having a discussion. Urdu, Punjabi with elements of Arabic thrown in along with the local version of English or in many cases English words merged with the local language, meaning that you get to overhear conversations that sound something like this: 

‘GG yum yum yum urban planning, yum yum yum tikka, yum yum G’ 

Which sounds like they are talking about food all the time. Of course they could be talking about food, as it seems to dominate every conversation, particularly when people insist on referring to different zones or individual elements of the project or indeed their workload as portions that makes the project sound as though it is chicken. Based on the fact that every meal seems to involve varying combinations of chicken and oil it comes as no surprise. 

Of course at the same time could also criticising the work of the planning team or committing the planning team to more work that they are not aware of, or it could be something else entirely, probably related to politics. All the while making it very difficult to concentrate and as a result much of the design work takes place in the guesthouse throughout evenings and weekends. 

Lessons being learned in the office are not surprisingly, mostly concerned with communication, nobody tells you when they have finished a task, neither do they tell you that they have not been able to complete the task and just sit at their workstation chatting with friends, or chatting on facebook on their phone, waiting for you to tell them what to do next. It is not until asking for at least the fourth time that you learn what has or has not been done. Everything that would be expected to be easy in a modern working office seems to be a major problem even something as simple as sending a document to the printer...

Spiral City - Birmingham 1993

Driving the Birmingham Inner Ring Road, known as the Queensway, for the first time is a terrifying experience, always in the wrong lane, not sure which exit to take and the signs always give the direction ‘All Other Routes’, which is not the most helpful. Landmarks of the city become obscured as the road dips into cuttings lined by red and blue panels to emerge once again into the four lanes of traffic, cars crossing paths, the process repeats until the landmarks and exits correspond.

The city designed for the car driver, has its own landmarks, although not exactly as glamorous as the Monaco Grand Prix. Travelling along the Aston Expressway from Spaghetti Junction high above the red brick terraces of Witton and Perry Barr. To right cranes lift members into place on the expanding steel structure that will be the new stand to Villa Park, the home of Aston Villa Football Club.

The road dips down to be enclosed by concrete walls, the traffic increases to five lanes in each direction, as the urban motorway merges with slip roads that merge to form a continuous strip of vehicles joining and leaving the main flow. In a cutting trees adorn the top of the concrete walls, and up ahead a Victorian steam pump of the type developed by Thomas Newcomen stands in the middle of Dartmouth Circus, the intersection with the middle ring road simply known as the Middleway. The outer ring road is not really a ring road, it is that collection of roads that form the number 11 bus route that is probably known to every student that has ever studied in Birmingham.

Emerging from the underpass, the route rises to pass the brick blocks of Aston University and the fire station, curving gently passing by the fire station at roof level. Dipping down again alongside Pugin’s brick built St Chad’s Cathedral, passing beneath the J.F. Kennedy Mural, the black arches of Snow Hill Station and climbing the hill with the post modern brick and patent glazing facades of the financial district on the left side, and something that resembles a war zone on the right, a product of urban blight as a result of the ring road, ruined industrial buildings stand in a landscape of rough vacant lot where buildings have been cleared but nothing has arrived to take its place. A thin concrete footbridge passes overhead, diving into the patent glazed pane of an office block. A brief glimpse catches the distorted reflection of the BT Tower, Birmingham’s tallest landmark, a communications tower.

Close to the top of the hill the road plunges down into the Queensway Tunnel, not a tunnel in the traditional sense, a concrete lined cutting with a concrete lid that passes beneath Paradise Circus and the Central Library. The tunnel is a continual curve to left that bursts out into the daylight alongside the red cage, a car park that is clad in a framework of red steel box sections and meshes, with planters, like large window boxes, with vines and climbers slowly concealing the car park between a blanket of green.

Passing beneath a footbridge with a spiral ramp, past grey office blocks to follow signs to the City Centre, exit the motorway and take the left onto Smallbrook Queensway where the Concrete Collar has been broken, block paving lines the surface of the street, trees are planted in iron gratings. Shop fronts appear at the base of the concrete blocks, on the right side the concrete block is continuous, crossing the road on enormous concrete legs, the façade a sculptural ribbon that follows the curve of the road. The façade below the ribbon reads like a high water mark, and now the tide has gone out exposing the shop fronts and a street.

The traffic light turns green and the road climbs to pass beneath the heavy white bridge of the Bull Ring Centre, past the North point in the median to enter St Martins Circus, the Rotunda on the left above a concrete wall, on the right the Fuji Film building behind the trees that are visible over the top of the concrete wall. Passing alongside the Bull Ring Centre between the concrete walls, a glimpse of the black spire of St Martins, a peculiar pub situated block on concrete legs above what appears to be a void bearing the name ‘The Ship Ashore’. Traffic is dominated the blue and silver of buses as they grow more concentrated along the array of stops that bring people into the city centre.

Passing along Moor Street Queensway, the brick and cast iron ruin of the abandoned former Great Western Railway station, that stands alongside the steel and polycarbonate sheet addition that was made when the railway was reconnected with Snow Hill in 1987 in a reversal of the Beeching plan of the 1960s. The road dips beneath the elevated traffic island of Masshouse Circus, a forest of concrete columns and wire netting fences preventing people from walking out of the car park and into the traffic. Rising once again on James Watt Queensway alongside the brick clad blocks of the halls of residence at Aston University, to the Fire station beneath the elevated Aston Expressway.

The full story is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble published by Xlibris — Do We Need ARCHITECTS? A Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture

Birmingham with Sunshine - Dubai 2013

On driving in Dubai for the first time, there is an inescapable feeling that this is Birmingham. Those developments masterminded by Herbert Manzoni, not so much the ‘Concrete Collar’ but the spine roads that run through reconstructed areas of city, like the Walsall Road for example, a road that is dominated by flyovers, underpasses and traffic islands. Here in Dubai it is as though the Walsall Road has been super sized ten to fourteen lanes wide as opposed to six to ten.

Heading out on to the Palm Jumeira, which looks so elegant when flying into Dubai, from the point of view of the driver, could just as easily be St Elia’s La Cita Nova, Le Corbusier’s La Voisin Plan, or Nechells in Birmingham, identical apartment blocks march alongside both sides of a wide road, completely divorced from each other. Of course the sunshine and Palm Trees planted along the central median, mean that this cannot possibly be Birmingham, but the planning strategies are similar. The main difference is that the wide road is almost deserted, in the centre, above the trees is a monorail, although there do not appear to be any trains running along it. 

This not Birmingham, this is the Palm Jumeira, an artificial island formed in the iconic shape of a palm tree when viewed from the air and a symbol of Dubai’s desire to build bigger, better and more exclusive than anywhere else. This being one of three ‘Palms’ built in the sea off the coast of Dubai, the others being a complete palm at Jebel Ali and a third, emerging out of the sea at Deira, close to the Airport, to date this is the only one that has been built on.

The marching blocks cease, the wide road becomes narrower, and glimpses of sea become visible between the smaller apartment blocks and signs point to the fronds that make up the iconic shape as viewed from the air. Up ahead another iconic shape that is the Atlantis resort, a hotel seemingly transplanted from the Bahamas, with a huge Arabic arch spanning between the two triangular wings of hotel. The road dips down into the curving ’Queensway’ tunnel and re-emerges on the Crescent, an inhabited breakwater that protects the private beaches of the fronds. The crescent is another world entirely, lush planting place the hotels in a tropical setting. Groups of tourists, arrive by the coach load to have their photographs taken in front of the Atlantis hotel, behind the photographer, the sea wall and the Persian Gulf. 

The full story is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble published by Xlibris — Do We Need ARCHITECTS?