The great glass gates of Plantation Lane

Plantation Lane is a small alley that connects Mincing Lane with Rood Lane in the City, London’s financial district.

It was redeveloped in 2004, at the same time as the building next to it, Plantation Place. The building is one of the City’s biggest office buildings, home to the London HQ of Accenture and some other companies.

Alongside several public art installations attempting to nod toward the history of the area (some of which are described enigmatically and prosaically here), the built environment of Plantation Lane includes a curious feature. There are a couple of sets of glass plates mounted on metal frames, standing in the middle of the lane like fins, parallel to the flow of human traffic.

At one end of each set of glass plates, there is a circular pedestal.

On top of the circular pedestal there is a handle.

Last Sunday, when the city was empty, we found this place.

We turned the handles.

The fins opened out. As we turned the handles they made V-shapes that gradually widened. They were glass gates. The V flattened into a glass barrier across the lane.

We had closed the gates. It is impossible to open them from the other side when they are closed.

We continued on our way, satisfied that no zombies would be able to follow us.

Gates: closed

RESURGAM

If there’s one word that embodies the spirit of London it’s this:
RESURGAM: “I will rise again”. Carved into a lunette on the south front of St Paul’s cathedral. There is a clear Christian connotation there – Christ rising again, and all that – but its placement here on the wall of the rebuilt cathedral is especially poignant.

The carving above the word is of a phoenix, reborn from the ashes, just as London was reborn from its ashes of the Great Fire in 1666. The phoenix evokes a primal spirit of defiance, of indomitable, dogged, resourceful, adaptable, pragmatic resilience. This is the city that is loyal to itself, that will always carry on and will always regenerate. It will thrive. It will survive.

Gloria Gaynor has nothing on Christopher Wren.

“Early each day to the steps of Saint Paul’s
The little old bird woman comes.”

Prom 56

Today I sang in a concert at the Royal Albert Hall. As a member of the London Philharmonic Choir, I joined the eponymous Orchestra in Prom 56. We sang for all of 2 minutes at the end of the final piece, but it was great fun being a part of the production.The Proms are a series of concerts run by the BBC, and are a cultural institution in themselves. They are, in my opinion, part of what makes London a great city. Every year, in that gigantic concert hall, there are 75 concerts between mid-July and mid-September. There is at least one every evening, as well as the occasional matinee or late-night prom.

The name ‘prom’ derives from the ‘promenade’ audience: those standing in the arena. There’s capacity for 1000 people there, and if you have use of your legs you can stand closer to the stage than any seated member of the audience. What’s more, the standing tickets are only £5.

So this is what I was up to this evening. The choir’s involvement in today’s programme was actually pretty minimal, so I had nothing to do in the first half but listen to Holst’s the Planets, a gloriously orchestrated and intricately-textured piece that has been pilfered by many a film composer since. The LPO clearly know this difficult but popular piece very well, and they gave a stonkingly good rendition. The few split notes in the brass section didn’t harm the overall effect, which was variously majestic, aggressive, mischievous, caressing, chaotic and mysterious, all with a stunning immediacy.

After the interval the orchestra played Schoenberg’s atonal Five Pieces for Orchestra, a real piece of performance gymnastics, before Scriabin’s 5th Symphony, something of a tone poem, called Prometheus. The most unusual thing about Prometheus is that Scriabin wrote it with detailed instructions for coloured lighting to be changed in time with the music. When performed in this way, as it was this evening, one gets the impression of being inside a 6000-seater iTunes visualisation. The piece itself isn’t one of my favourite, but it did have its moments – and the technicolour build-up to the finish, with its final blinding chord filling the whole hall with white light and overtones, was nothing if not impressive. This is one concert that won’t come across well on the radio.

Testing the technicolour glory of Prometheus during the rehearsal

Backstage at the Albert Hall is a rather fun place. You’re all corralled in the same space as the orchestra, and you have to negotiate the cello cases in the corridor on the way to the dressing room. It’s somehow more friendly than the Barbican’s backstage area, which I find a little clinical with its walls of bare concrete and whitewashed plaster. The Royal Festival Hall is spacious and rational in its layout, but doesn’t have the cramped Victorian barely-fit-for-purpose charm of the RAH (not to mention that the performers’ loos there stink to high heaven). It’s certainly fun being in one of London’s major choruses – just like when I was a waiter for an events company 10 years ago, you get to see a totally different side to lots of famous buildings.

The shifting balance in Britain’s property market

In the past ten years, the ‘private rented sector’ in the UK has ballooned, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the housing market. As the popular narrative runs, rising house prices are driving more people to rent where they might have previously bought their homes. In fact, the causality runs the other way too: landlords investing in property have disproportionate buying power, pushing up prices and squeezing supply for other buyers in an already tight market. In recent years, many landlords have expanded their property portfolios, meaning that the very homes that might have been owner-occupied today are now rented instead. So this is a separate issue from the lack of supply in the market, though partly prompted by it.

Consider these two options: letting a property to tenants, and living in it yourself. On the face of it, there are pros and cons to both. Landlords have the benefit that they can offset the interest payments on special ‘buy-to-let’ mortgages against income tax, as they are classified as a business expense. On the other hand, they have to pay tax on any gain in the capital value of the property when they come to sell it. Owner-occupiers, on the other hand, don’t pay capital gains tax on a primary residence but must pay income tax and mortgage interest payments as normal. So far, so balanced.

Except that it’s not really balanced at the moment. The power that each these factors exerts over the others is distorted by current conditions, as chronic under-supply has sent prices spiralling. The maximum amount that a bank will lend for a residential mortgage is around four times annual income, but in the current market, this falls well short of what you’d need to buy a house. (The government’s Help to Buy scheme helps those who can afford the mortgage but don’t have cash for a deposit.) Faced with this impossibility, most would-be first-time-buyers are forced to join the ranks of the renters.

The buy-to-let mortgage market is very different. If you’ve got some cash (for most people that’s a big ‘if’) it can be easy to secure a much bigger mortgage than if you were going to live there yourself, simply because a bank isn’t looking at your personal income when calculating how much it will lend. It’s looking at the possible rental income from that property. This means landlords are more powerful buyers than prospective owner-occupiers. It also creates upward pressure on rents – which restricts’ renters’ ability to save for a deposit, assuming they haven’t totally given up on one day owning their own house.

The ‘buy-to-let’ boom, accessible only to those with cash for a deposit, has priced many out of home ownership. It has also resulted in a concentration of wealth in the hands of landlords. This is not because all landlords are profiteers – but simply by owning the asset and expecting a certain return, a landlord gains a part of their income from a tenant, after mortgage payments, management and maintenance costs are deducted, that must by definition be pure profit. This is an amount that an owner-occupier in the same property would be keeping for themselves.

To put it bluntly: a shift away from owner-occupation equates to a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

The runaway cycle could be damped by greater taxation of landlord income, or restrictions on buy-to-let loans, but it’s difficult to do this without attracting accusations of double taxation or undue market manipulation. A rise in Bank of England interest rates will certainly begin to cool the buy-to-let frenzy but there’s no indication that this will happen any time soon.

For now, though, the options for first-time buyers are fairly bleak: either move out to distant suburbs, far from friends, buzzing city centres and work opportunities, or move out of town altogether. The latter is increasingly attractive to many: twenty- and thirtysomethings are moving to Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff and elsewhere, lured by low costs and superior quality of life. But they had better act soon: the landlords are coming too.

My favourite building on Piccadilly

The flagship store of Watersones on Piccadilly is housed in a majestic piece of art deco architecture. It was built in 1936 for S. Simpson, a clothing brand, and has some unique and beautiful things about it.

Simpson’s of Piccadilly, aka Waterstone’s (Credit: me)

Like much of the rest of Piccadilly, Simpson’s is faced in Portland Stone (though more than half of the facade is actually glass). The choice of exterior facing material was very likely forced on the architects, either by convention or coercion. Inside, though, they could run riot with art deco detailing.

The predominant material, used for floors and wall panels, is Travertine, a wonderfully tactile and fluid stone used a lot in Rome (ancient and modern) and in art deco buildings.

On the front of the building there’s another rather funky detail – the windows have a pronounced concave curve. This was done so that the casual passer-by doesn’t have their view of the window display interrupted by any reflections. If you visit the building in the day time and compare it with its neighbours,  you can see the difference that the curve makes.

Sort-of-visible: curved glass frontage (bottom right of shot)

Today the building is full of books, and each splendidly-proportioned storey makes the customer feel like they’re walking through a sumptuous and venerated palace, whether they’re after an erudite treatise or some erotic fiction.

Everything from the carefully-crafted bronze on the stairwell to the Gill Sans typography on the lift just screams 1930s, with a fastidious attention to detail satisfies even the most OCD observer. The same cannot always be said of Waterstones’ corporate interjections into the building’s visual language – the glossy store directory looks out of place next to the large lantern announcing the arrival of the NEXT LIFT. In contrast with rival bookseller Foyle’s, one gets the feeling here that the present occupant of the building is a relatively short-term tenant.

And who could forget – of all the many reasons to like the building, the most important – that there is a bar on the top floor. Perfection.

 

Worth a thousand words

…but I’ll only take a few of them. 

The National Gallery now allows people to take photographs of its exhibits, the last of the big London art galleries to do so. The Telegraph ran some thoroughly disapproving coverage of this change in policy, and I posted this on my Facebook feed along with a comment disapproving of the Telegraph’s disapproval (and agreeing with the gallery). The post created quite a debate amongst some of my friends: I sat back, harvesting the best bits and using them as inspiration for this post.

So photography bans, then, and the lifting thereof.

In my view, rules expressly banning an activity should be avoided where possible, if the activity in question doesn’t harm people or property.

So why might an art gallery want to stop people taking photos? Here are the best reasons I can think of:

1. It damages the art somehow (eg. flash photography)
2. It would erode earnings from the gift shop, as people would be able to create their own copies of works rather than buying reproductions.
3. Photography is used by the average casual tourist photographer as a way of not engaging with the art. Many – dare I say most – people using cameras in art galleries are doing so to record or collect their experiences, Pokémon-style, rather than to actually experience them in real life. (I accept that there are many ways that photography of art can itself be a way of engaging – however, I don’t think a lot of visitors who photograph exhibits are thinking like that. If you disagree with me, go and see the Mona Lisa.) Therefore, a ban on photography encourages would-be photographers to be more present in the moment.
4. Photographers distract the non-photographers: they get in the way, and the noise and brightness of the screen detracts from an atmosphere of liberal contemplation and/or curiosity. People should be allowed to engage with the works without interference from others.

Like I said, I’m personally against coercion (banning photography) as I think it’s an inelegant solution. The desire to take photographs is still there, but it’s being suppressed by the museum staff. Instead of this, what kind of relevant nudges could a gallery give its visitors to help them engage there and then, and be in the moment? Isn’t this really a challenge of curation and design, to be solved through lateral thinking and better communication with today’s audiences?

As one person commented, the paintings in the National Gallery belong to the nation – so if the nation wants to just go into the gallery to take pictures, should the gallery let it? (Let’s leave aside for a second the fact that a huge proportion of the Nat Gall’s visitors are from outside the UK.)

The gallery has a basic responsibility to make itself and its contents relevant in the modern world – for the sake of self-preservation if nothing else – so this is an important debate. I hope it leads to more outreach and authentic human engagement with art, rather than mediocrity, numbness, conservatism and a general retreat into comfort zones.

Curse of the Cumberbitch

Oh for fuck’s sake.

Benedict Cumberbatch will play the title role in Hamlet for a 2 month stint at the Barbican next year, and it’s already sold out.

I’m all for bringing quality theatre to a wider audience, but really, are all those legions of squealing girls going to care about the actual play, or are they just going to ogle him all evening as he sweats and spits all over the front row?

Yes, I’m generalising, but not without cause. Last year I went to see Tom Hiddleston play Coriolanus in the all-too-intimate setting of the Donmar Warehouse. I got a full blast of it. Except that “Hiddlestonbitch” isn’t a thing: the Cucumber’s following is altogether more dogged and swooning.

These are people who would probably cry and leave if Cumberbatch’s (probably equally good) understudy were to step in for an evening, instead of bloody putting up with it and watching what will no doubt be an excellent production. I feel sorry for all the other actors who will have to walk in his shadow every night. I can see some embittered Claudius, driven to bloody apostasy by the crowd’s selective adulation, plunging a dagger into Hamlet’s back before the interval. Cue hasty Julius Caesar mashup.

Grumble grumble.

At least this online booking system seems to be coping well with the traffic (cough Olympics! cough) but really – they should keep a reserve of tickets for people who can pass a quiz about high culture or something. You’ve got to have a few people in there who know The Rules, who are willing to enforce them through stern looks and tutting.

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/aug/11/benedict-cumberbatch-fans-sherlock-star-hamlet-barbican-tickets

Constrained by character

I live in London. I was born in London. I’m lucky enough to have visited lots of major cities around the world, and London is still my favourite. The city’s vitality, its sense of history and its diversity – not just in the people but in the architecture and ideas that emerge here – are legendary.

I was tickled to see a recent video feature from the Economist explaining why London is such an expensive place to build new offices. Reasons include:

• Existing infrastructure – London is teeming with tunnels and tubes, which makes nearby work more complicated.
• The ancient street plan means you can’t always build in neat right-angles. This makes construction and furnishing more pricey
• Archaeology – the City, the tiny square mile at the heart of London, was founded on a Roman settlement. For most of the last 2000 years nobody really cared enough to dig up the artefacts but there’s now a rule that any building work that would disturb the archaeology must conduct excavations, supervised by the Museum of London.
• Aesthetic restrictions. Particular parts of London have restrictions on what you can and can’t build, from the Listing system to Conservation Areas. There are also sightline restrictions that “protect strategic views”.

Of these, the aesthetic restrictions are possibly the hardest to defend on the basis of efficiency and dynamism – and therefore, in my view, the most important and worthy of consideration. They act as ‘brand guidelines’ for the city, a set of commandments for how to let the city be dynamic, while remaining in character. The fact that London is an increasingly popular place to be might suggest that, to some extent, this approach works. The history embedded into the built environment doesn’t just provide interest and curiosity. It acts as a reminder that we are shaped by where we have come from, and that we are all part of a human tapestry that is – dare I say it – bigger and more important than our bank accounts.

Here’s the video: