Tie-Ins and Rants

 I fell asleep earlier this evening, and woke to find that my computer had crashed. Rebooted only to have it crash again, and again. It's never been stable, and takes 3-5 minutes to boot, so I'd been awake for ten minutes before the thing started properly. This is how it must have been with early motorcars.


 Once I'd dealt with that misadventure of technology, I did a bit of blog-checking, and found some interesting observations over at rousette, here and here. One of them is about space, and as an explorer of sensibility and spatialities, it was a treat to think about.


 The other one is about the relative absence of pretence in Brum. (Even the self-selected nickname conveys modesty and is honest about itself. None of that dismal St. Ockwell stuff they have in London.) But there are islands of pretence here too, and this got me going.


 I am thinking in particular of city centre building projects and the pretentious sensibility that goes with them. There's a lot of it about (1,2,3,4,5). Brum's political and business elites are busy ignoring the honest and modest character of the place in favour of making it look and function like any 'world-class' business destination. Like Frankfurt, for instance. Or San Jose. This notion comes to mind repeatedly as I wander around downtown, but mainly in the triangle formed by Five Ways, Paradise Circus and Holloway Head.


 I can go in any number of directions with this, so it's tricky to avoid divergence in the narrative. This could be a very long post. Or even a series of posts. (Uh-oh.) But here goes. Let's start with this article in the property Telegraph. I found it under a Google search while looking for a qualitative descriptor for these kinds of development. I eventually settled on 'fluff' as suitably pointed, but not before coming across terms like 'residential chic'.


 The Telegraph article is a puff piece on the role of fashion designers in architecture. It reminded me of my first reaction to the promotional bumpf on hoardings around building sites: developers are hiring fashion and interior design types (i.e. Philippe Starck, John Rocha) instead of architects and landscape designers.


 Why? Because architects and landscape architects are notoriously enamoured of theoretical and policy structures. They see things in terms of a big picture, and they want to adhere to some kind of programmatic agenda. This makes them difficult to work with. What developers want are people who are flexible, flexible enough to adapt to the developer's interests. Sometimes this is about design principles, but it is also about money. Here's what the Telegraph article says on the matter:

What are fashion designers for? If you thought the answer was simply for creating ridiculous clothing, you're wrong. Increasingly, it seems that fashion designers are being used by property developers as a means to add instant style to their latest housing schemes. ... Developers have realised that high-profile fashion designers, with their celebrity status, offer attractive co-branding opportunities at a relatively low cost.

 This point is underscored by Rocha himself:

"You have to start thinking in a new way. Once, when I said I loved a certain limestone, they told me I'd save a quarter of a million pounds by using something else."

 What does this tell you? That his employers recognise his taste and are willing to stump up the money for a good-looking stone? Or not? Furthermore, wouldn't it be better to hire someone who is more conversant with stone in the first instance? An architect or landscape architect, for example?

 



 The article confirms my first impression. Hiring fashion designers is about conforming to the developer's agenda, in design terms, in costings, and in branding. It also means that pretty soon, Birmingham will have a pretentious lifestyle zone that separates the modest periphery from the city centre.


 

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