Strawberry Fields to the Oasis...

April 1998. Central Park is a strange place. If you don’t have wheels on your feet, you are a second-class citizen; rollerbladers have priority here, along with the cyclists. You take your life in your hands as you cross in front of them, gaining some worried looks from the fast-approaching rollerblader in the process. The marathon man perimeter fence around the reservoir must be to stop joggers from getting their feet wet if they forget to follow the one-way system. The sloping glass wall of a huge conservatory nestled in amongst the trees presents an entirely different front to the Met, with an obelisk out front (Cleopatra’s Needle?). A bit of research reveals that this is one of three obelisks sold by the Viceroy of Egypt in the nineteenth century, so this is probably the oldest structure from the “civilised” world to exist in North America. 

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; that is, except for a guy on rollerblades that takes a tumble at that very point, quickly helped up and who apologises profusely for the interruption, before skating off down the street. Back in the park, ice-skaters are getting their feet wet as the 105 degrees air temperature is proving too much to keep the ice rink from melting.

Walking south, traffic, traffic, traffic and the Friday night stampede to get off Manhattan. The stampede is not actually going anywhere due to the sheer volume of traffic. I am told this happens every Friday as workers who stay on Manhattan during the week look to get home for the weekend. The destination for the walk is a jazz club in lower East Village, songs about heads turning up in garbage cans, tales about life in New York, performed by a band with female singer/guitarists, and a really entertaining evening. 

The Lincoln Centre, home of the New York Symphony Orchestra, is strangely deserted during the day. Nearby, a slightly overweight statue of liberty appears above the rooftops of buildings on the opposite side of Broadway. Heading south along Broadway to Columbus circus at the east entrance of Central Park forms one impressive entrance to the subway, not taking the subway now though it is only a short walk to West Fifty- Third Street and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), “Humanising Modernism”, an exhibition of the works of Alvar Aalto, displayed in models and immaculate pencil drawings. In the main exhibition are the surrealist works of Salvador Dali, paintings much smaller than anticipated, probably due to the large number of oversized reproductions available as posters. The large canvases of Piet Mondrian, grids, primary colours, seemingly so appropriate to the location; the abstract expressionism of Joan Miro that captures so much life and movement; to the absolute raw energy of Jackson Pollock demand serious attention it could easily take a week to view each piece. Outside, in the sculpture garden, it really feels that MoMA forms an oasis in the desert of skyscrapers. 

Barnes and Noble is much more than a bookstore; the books themselves on dark varnished wooden bookcases give a sense of something more akin to the library of the Reform Club as described by Jules Verne in Around the World in 80 Days. All around, armchairs occupied by people reading newspapers add to the illusion; books on coffee tables are available for anybody to pick up and thumb through. A counter serving coffee and cakes actually encourages people to be there, take their time, and actually enjoy the experience of reading, exploring and usually buying a book or three. For some, shopping is a necessary evil and reserved for times when items need to be procured. For others, it is a leisure activity, and in New York, Macys Department store occupies a whole block, bounded by Thirty- Fourth and Thirty-Fifth Streets, Seventh Avenue, and Broadway and could probably occupy a week for the leisure shopper. For the rest of us, it is worth a visit if only to ride on the original wooden escalators, said to be the world’s first, that climb through the ten and a half levels. 

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

Gotham and the Guggenheim

New York, April 1998.

Arriving back into the World Trade Plaza at eighty-nine degrees (Fahrenheit, not tilt) and heading south to walking between the wedding cakes of Wall Street, the spaces narrow and dark, is this really the financial centre of the world? A brief look in the lobby of the Woolworth building, the Cathedral of Commerce (or is it Monty Python’s “Crimson Life Assurance”?), with stone vaulted ceilings in the lobby, resembles the nave of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Battery Park, large lawns, dense tree planting make a welcome contrast from the landscape of extruded blocks, Victorian streetlights, promenade and seafront pavilions evoke memories of the English seaside. Looking above the trees, the decorated crowns of the towers borrowed from medieval Europe give a clear sense of the inspiration for Gotham City as created by Bob Kane for in the Batman Comics. 

A rather rapid walk back uptown and joining the constant flow of migrating locals heading along the non-diagonal part of Broadway in what amounts to a daily stampede. Opposite, City Hall Park, one of those not square squares, a great place for demonstrations in front of the city hall, immigrant workers at this time and not a “Ghostbuster” in sight. Dragged northwards by the rush moving along to the Soho Guggenheim Museum, not to be confused with Frank Lloyd Wright’s version, the Soho Guggenheim Museum 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! Broadway starts on the diagonal and crosses a green park at Union Square and emerges unexpectedly alongside the Flatiron building, that when approached from the South is unrecognisable. 

Crossing the corner of Madison Square Park and onto Fifth Avenue, the names Gap, DKNY, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Levis, Banana Republic, seen as concessions in Rackham’s, Birmingham’s department store, are proudly displayed here each with their own large store. Yes, and there is Tiffany’s, seems to be a jewellery store, and I cannot see anywhere to go for breakfast though. Looking up Fifth, above the sea of heads, there are blocks as far as at the eye can see, the zone above the storefronts dominated by US flags that seem to hang from an inclined flagpole on every building.

A fire truck with sirens whooping and zapping, along with the low rumble of air horns, tries to push through the traffic where car drivers seem to have ignored the fact that they are in the fire lane (zap! zap!), keeping to the left side of Fifth, where the shadows cast by the blocks offer some relief from the heat. Up ahead, the Empire State Building emerges above the blocks and the traffic light that is holding everybody up and the perpetual surge of traffic crossing in what seems to be a yellow stream of the ubiquitous taxis.

There is a clearing in the tall blocks, the entrance plaza to the New York Public Library, steps leading up to a white stone plane of arches, columns, pediments, guarded by two lions set against the backdrop of the skyscrapers. Limousines pull up onto the driveway to the Plaza Hotel amongst crowds of onlookers hoping to catch a glimpse of somebody important. The hotel façade, representative of a kind of oversized European classical fairytale castle, looks out over the trees and lake and paths and railings of the natural splendour of Central Park.

Continuing the walk up Fifth Avenue, with the park to the left, passing the stone arches, columns, and pediments of the Metropolitan Museum of Art or more simply known as the Met as it emerges out of a clearing in the trees. The “real” Guggenheim museum, the one designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that appears in the architecture books, reveals itself, the white concrete sculpture, dramatic from a distance, 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 is impressive, more Chinese art, but the building itself just maybe not living up to its legend. A group of break-dancers arrive and start their routine on the sidewalk, ghetto-blaster, spinning on heads, that kind of thing, to be moved on by the police after a few minutes.

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

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Feeding Consumption

Building fast food joints, restaurants, bars, building places for people to socialise is not a bad thing, but it is worth considering how all that food gets there. We are in an era of globalised food production, no more do we have to wait for fruits and vegetables to be in season, it is shipped in refrigerated containers from anywhere in the world where particular produce grows. The problem being that as consumers we are accustomed to being able to order whatever we fancy at the restaurant with no conception of the processes involved to be able to have that particular food on the menu, as though there are neat rows of trees, crops growing somewhere in the world without having an impact on the existing ecosystem when in reality to meet growing demand, deforestation is happening on a global scale, online magazine Livescience cites that since 1600 we have cut down one half of the world’s forests.

Historically this would have been about ship building or house building but now it is about food production, and with the global population expected to peak at eleven billion, this situation is only going to get worse. From clear cutting in the amazon to slash and burn practices in Sumatra, local people are destroying the rainforest to make a living, unaware of the global consequences, or if they are aware, they feel that they have no choice because they need to make a living.

Clear cutting is when large swaths of land are cut down all at once. A forestry expert quoted by the Natural Resources Defense Council describes clear cutting as "an ecological trauma that has no precedent in nature except for a major volcanic eruption." Burning can be done quickly, in vast swaths of land, or more slowly with the slash-and-burn technique. Slash and burn agriculture entails cutting down a patch of trees, burning them and growing crops on the land. The ash from the burned trees provides some nourishment for the plants and the land is weed-free from the burning. When the soil becomes less nourishing and weeds begin to reappear over years of use, the farmers move on to a new patch of land and begin the process again.

Not only is deforestation a means of growing cash crops for a short period of time, it is also used to raising livestock so that we can buy our burgers in McDonald’s which presents a double whammy for the environment, not only are we reducing the planet’s ability to produce oxygen we are increasing water consumption, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, along with filling the soil with pesticides and chemical fertilisers that leech into the ground water.

Most educated people know that trees absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen through photosynthesis, we all need clean air to breathe but it is as though everyone thinks that what they are doing will not matter because there are still trees elsewhere. As we are at the moment, climate scientists are saying that the surviving forests cannot absorb the carbon dioxide that we are pumping into the atmosphere.

It is not only the world’s forests, but the oceans that play a major role in oxygen production, through microscopic organisms, such as plankton, the problem is that we are filling up the oceans with so much plastic waste that plankton is dying off, affecting marine life and impacting on the food chain that contributes to the seafoods and fish that people seem to enjoy in restaurants in every new development. Couple this with overfishing in many areas, illegal fishing in others where controls are trying to be implemented locally, our global food store is running down, and what is left we are harming.

The combination of deforestation, industrial farming, environmental pollution, is leading to the destruction of the ecosystem so that we can eat convenience foods. Add to this illegal poaching of wild animals, either for their ivory, bushmeat or simply hunting for sport, whether we like it or not we are all contributing to a global catastrophe though our choices of where and what we eat.


Work in progress on Is Architecture Enough? The Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture Continues...the follow up to Do We Need ARCHITECTS? A Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture, available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble published by Xlibris.

Buy More Stuff!

With the emphasis on ‘Buy More Stuff!’ Commercial development feeds Consumption, generates waste, and causes traffic congestion and increases greenhouse gas emissions. Malls are usually populated with stores selling stuff that we do not need. For some shopping is a leisure activity, retail therapy, to the rest of us it is a necessary evil. We only go shopping when we need something, and endure the mall experience only when there is no alternative.

Historically malls and hypermarkets bring together all the products and produce under one roof and are situated out of town and away from public infrastructure with the effect of killing off trade in the town centre, effectively rendering them ghost towns with high streets populated with abandoned retail units and charity shops. All the while perpetuating the need to drive where previously everything was local and within easy reach. The result being increased traffic congestion on the roads, increased greenhouse gas emissions and the global problem of climate change linked to pollution.

Historically centres of production have shifted from established industrial towns and cities to where the labour is cheapest, meaning that industrial exploitation is undertaken on a global scale, it is cheaper to ship in our everyday products from south east Asia than it is to manufacture it locally, and the waste? That is somebody else’s problem. What do we care if there are toxic lakes in China because they have no way of dealing with the waste products from our electronic gadgets?

All of this also means that energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions take place in somebody else’s country, but the earth does not discriminate, the emissions go into the atmosphere and are distributed globally in acid rain, floods and extreme climatic events.

The greatest consequence of globalised retail is the packaging, we buy products that have been transported from half way around the world, meaning that is packed in plastic because at the moment it is that cheapest way of producing it, to prevent it being damaged in transit, when we make a purchase it is usually presented to us in a plastic bag that invariably has only one use then it is discarded along with the packaging, when we throw something away, there is not really an away, it has to go somewhere.

In some nations, the waste is recycled, or incinerated to recover energy through the combustion process, although there are greenhouse gases that have to be managed. In most cases it is sent to land fill site or simply dumped where it is though that nobody will see it, at the side of the road, on a patch or undeveloped land wherever they see fit, meaning that when it rains it gets washed into the streams, rivers and ends up in the sea, to create great garbage patches in the oceans, that kill off marine life, pollute our beaches the problem being that it gets broken down into small fragments, but does not biodegrade, so it is very difficult to clean up, gets consumed by marine life, and finds its way into the food chain.

All of this from being asked to plan a new shopping mall? Well, yes, each time we follow the same brief to meet perceived demand, we are adding to the same problem but what is the answer?

Work in progress on Is Architecture Enough? The Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture Continues...the follow up to  Do We Need ARCHITECTS? A Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture, available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble published by Xlibris.

Somebody Else's Problem

There a saying that there is nothing new under the sun, and this is a phrase that I have borrowed from comedy writer Douglas Adams, although best known for the ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, this comes from the third book in the trilogy of five, ‘Life the Universe and Everything:

“The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what's more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain.” Douglas Adams

The term Somebody Else’s Problem it is a one has stayed with me since the 1980s and sums up my take on the prevalent view in society, from individuals, organisations to governments. Our impact on the environment is always somebody else’s problem, we all contribute to it by eating food, drinking water, producing waste, consuming energy. 

Meanwhile the oceans are filling up with plastic, fish stocks are dwindling, ground water is contaminated and the atmosphere is filling up with greenhouse gases, but we all continue living following the continue business as usual scenario. The problem? Is the commonly held perception that it is always somebody else’s responsibility to tackle the global situation that we are all contributing to, it is always ‘Somebody Else’s Problem.

Society is addicted to fossil fuels and the consumer lifestyle. Nobody wants to give up their car and let’s face it, in a city like Beirut as with many cities that do not have the adequate infrastructure, even if we give up our car how would we get to work when there is no alternative? Then there is the air conditioning, the electronic gadgets, the convenience foods and products with all the disposable packaging, not an easy habit to break, the consumer lifestyle is making us sick, and with the perception that human impact on the environment is somebody else’s problem.

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

Do We Need Architects? by Alun Dolton

Where do we go from here?

Over the past few years with the developed world in financial crisis, projects stopped indefinitely and Architects being put out of work or continuing to work forever diminishing fees it feels as though the profession is doomed to extinction. In conversations with friends and colleagues the subject of the purpose of Architecture inevitably comes up, or more to the point where do I see it going in the future. The truth is none of us know how the future is going to pan out and it is becoming increasingly evident that it is unlikely that things will be the way they were before 2008.

For me it is about how we as Architects adapt to become ‘valued’ by society in the future. Cities continue to change and new places and experiences continue to create new stories. Those experiences of the built environment and in some cases the natural environment through student’s eyes then later dealing with some of the issues and viewing through professional’s eyes begin to set up a context for viewing the world and that context is Architecture! The journey has revealed just how much of an influence some of the players have had on the environment that many take for granted.

In this context everything built and man made in terms of environment is Architecture. It has been built by humanity for the use, enjoyment and in many cases non-enjoyment and eventually abandonment by humanity. Not that everything was designed and its construction supervised by Architects, much of what we live with is built outside the control of Architects, but each element of the built environment sets up the context that Architects have to comprehend, integrate with and transform into new places to for people to live, work, play.

As a profession we were not responsible for the for the factories built during the industrial revolution for example, or the pollution caused to the air, rivers and soil or the countless products that are discarded to litter the environment, but we are the only construction professionals with the knowledge, understanding and above all imagination and vision to deal with the legacy in a positive way. In developing countries, where industry has not created wastelands it is possible to share experiences from the lessons of those nations and cities that are dealing with the legacy. In areas of extreme climate such as desert regions, we have the knowledge gained from experiments that enable us to be able to design entire cities that are in tune with their environment without resorting to the business as usual scenario and burning more oil and gas.

In any context we are capable of steering hugely complex projects through the minefield of bureaucracy and address the social, cultural, economic and environmental issues to make a project a success. Architecture as a process is an immensely collaborative one, gone are the days when we could concentrate on one masterpiece and follow it through from initial sketch to final built product. Projects are far too complex to be driven by one person today it is a team of specialist consultants whose specialist knowledge contributes to the overall vision under the leadership of the project leader. The reality is that in many cases the project leader is not an Architect but could be from any construction related field and assumes the role of Project Manager. That itself is not necessarily a bad thing where the management of stakeholders and balancing conflicting requirements is a full time occupation. In many cases though, projects are led by cost consultants, Architects can be relegated to positions where they have less influence.

That is until considering the world view and the changing emphasis of economy and the perception of the notion of cost, it is no longer enough to consider a project solely in terms of financial cost, often referred to as the capital cost to build a project. There a growing understanding of whole life cost, that involves considering energy consumption as a real driver, there is the environmental cost of extracting the raw materials, there is disposal of waste material and what happens at the end of a building’s life that needs careful consideration. There is a growing understanding of the social cost of building cities and neighbourhoods where nobody wants to live. There is a growing understanding of the need for sustainable infrastructure, so that we do not all need to get into our car to go to the shops. Where we do not have to use power generated from coal, oil, gas or nuclear power stations. Where waste is not sent to landfill to add to the growing environmental problem of pollution. 

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