SINGAPORE & LONDON

 

Boat Key, Singapore. This is an AI reimagining of a low quality photo that I took in 1997 during a whistle-stop tour of Singapore and KL. That photo was digitally captured rather crudely in 2003 before I left for Dubai.

The trip was intended to give me inspiration for the only office tower I ever designed, what became Century Towers. I have worked on taller projects since then, but not as lead designer.

I know these types of buildings as Shophouses now, a distinctive tradition all up the coast from Singapore to Malaysia. I think the watercolour treatment conveys the picturesque quality of the buildings at the time.

Completely cleaned up and "restored" now, which is good of course for the inhabitants, but inevitably some of the romance is lost.

 

On Thursday I took the train into London for the first time since I moved back to UK. It was an eventful day, mostly positive but with a twist at the end.

I had a ticket through to Euston changing at Waterloo. This involves leaving the mainline station and walking across the road to the Underground. Naturally I was keeping a lookout for interesting buildings.

This church is Greek Revival. A reaction to the excesses of Victorian Gothic. Simple clean lines and sparse, stylised decoration. Everything is shallow relief and underplayed. St. John's Waterloo built in the early 1820s and designed by Francis Octavius Bedford.

 

 

 

I spotted this building from just outside Waterloo Station. Now a dormitory for an American Catholic University's London branch.

Designed by Sir Charles Nicholson in 1905 in a somewhat eclectic style. The distinctive glazed tiles were also a feature of the interior: Doulton picture tiles depicting Nursery Rhymes.

Were we worse off when this kind of Hospital provision was dependent on charitable contributions? In some ways yes. But you can't really separate this out from the macro changes to society. Opinions will differ. Much has improved. Some good things have been lost.

Certainly it's good to have buildings like this to remind us of our complex past and the determined efforts of some to provide for the less fortunate.

North Gower Street. I used to live in the double fronted house, top left. I was in a tiny little box room, right below the front door. It's just up the road from UCL main quad which was how you got in to the Architecture department (School of Environmental Studies)

It has since moved down the road and reverted to being The Bartlett. As I write this I'm sitting in St Pancras Church, a splendid Greek Revival edifice, completel with Caryatids. Those were heady days. Coming of age story.

I'm here for a reunion. Not sure how many I will know but the memories are already flooding back.

 

 

 

ZIMBABWE FIRST AND LAST

 

Some snapshots from 1981, August /September when I first arrived as a volunteer building teacher. Cultural symbols absorbed during my first couple of weeks acclimatisation when I was put up in a rented house in a rented house in a formerly white suburb of what was then still called Salisbury. Zimbabwe TV logo with drums beating in the background. Oil drums and the flag.

The skyline at Rusununguko secondary school on Blue Waters Farm, 2000 hectares of prime agricultural land bought with Dutch aid money for an Education With Production experiment. There's a radio mast on the hill, barely visible. The graffiti is by Kundai, a precocious young niece of the teacher who would become my wife.

Sister Janice was tied up with ZIMFEP, the organisation behind six new schools dotted around the country, pursuing this educational experiment. I was brought up fundamentalist protestant and by 1981 was basically Atheist, but was recruited by a Catholic organisation, CIIR, which later changed its name to Progressio 👀 and then fizzled out. I found this out while trying to make contact with the organisation to share experience.

The mixture of youths and teenagers clearing ground for a building became students of mine. They had been in the Bush in Mozambique during the war and one year into independence were trying to catch up on missed education. Great guys, but I was swamped by numbers.

 

This was one of the last projects I designed before I moved from Zimbabwe to Dubai. It's not very far from the first house we bought in Harare. I was looking on Google Earth for an image of that house and strayed across to look for the living units that were under construction when I left.

 

To my surprise the Nursery school was also there, just based on these concept sketches. It's a home for Aids Orphans. No idea how it has developed over the past 23 years.

This was put together very rapidly using Autocad and Photoshop (or similar) I was quite proud of it at the time, but put it out of my mind because it never went beyond early concept design.

 

The project was brought to us by Gardini and Sons a building company with strong connections to Clinton and Evans, who had done the work on Victoria Falls Hotel that I had been involved a few years earlier. They were always willing to work from basic drawings plus discussions on Site.

That's an excellent way to build if you have mutual trust.

 

 

 

 

OF TREES AND RAILINGS

 

More brick piers and railings on my street. The railings are modern replacements, not entirely out of tune with the period.

I don't know why I didn't spot this terracotta capping detail before, designed for a pier that is two and a half bricks square and therefore clearly recognisable as Flemish Bond. Mostly in a smooth red brick to match the terracotta. Looks like a pressed brick to me.

There is one pier that has contrasting detail in yellow brick. The walling between piers is mostly high enough to not need a railing with a saddle-back brick coping (half round) but there are lower examples with stone blocks intended as bases for railings.

This is a road with large, mostly detached, Victorian houses, all different in some way.

 

 

More stone copings with evidence of poured lead fixings for railings. I heard recently that these railings may never have made it into the smelters for the military effort.

Could be a rumour spread by bitter pacifist conservationists 👀🤔🤣 This example is just around the corner from my place. Unusual to see a very wide flat coping. Seems to have weathered OK. Must be well over a century old. (150?)

 

 

These are Black Walnuts, collected from War Memorial Park. Haven't tried to crack any open yet. Should be close to harvest time. The black is between the green and the shell. Turns your fingers yellow if you don't use gloves. Can be used to make ink.

I think there is only one tree in the park. Most of these had fallen to the ground. It's a separate species to English Walnut. Don't know much about the wood. It's not a very old tree, compared to many around the edge of the main field. I'm guessing that a gap opened up and someone in the parks department decided it would be an interesting species to plant.

 

 

Another North American tree in my local park. It's on a branch of the Magnolia family. Commonly known as the Tulip Tree because of the shape of the flowers. There are a few of these of different ages.

Now as we progress into autumn, the range of colours is truly splendid. Lots of yellow, still some green and a sprinkling of orange-brown. I believe the wood is quite good. This is one of the more mature specimens.