The Vansittart Residence

 

The Vansittart Residence

On the morning of ____day, xx ____ary, xx17, Mr Vansittart died unexpectedly in a motor vehicle accident.

The following day …

The Vansittart Residence was inspired by the mid-century modern aesthetic of Richard Neutra and the case study houses. That is to say it was extremely rectilinear, with long corridors and floor to ceiling rectangles of clear glass. It called to mind the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe. 

The furniture was an impeccable mix of expensive reproductions of the design classics by Eames and Le Corbusier.

Built on a narrow plot which had once been a market garden it was elongated in the extreme. An interior courtyard had been provided, with swaying bamboo and rounded pebbles that had once lain on a beach somewhere. Now they occasionally caught the sun as it winked over the low surrounding wall formed of gabions.

The heating automatically increased the temperature to eighteen degrees at 06:00. The bath automatically filled itself and then half an hour later automatically drained itself. The coffee was automatically percolated and bread was automatically toasted. The unconsumed coffee and toast were automatically cleared half an hour later. The automatic house busied itself with its business, utterly undeterred by the absence of any resident.

The affairs of the Vansittart Residence continued. The bank account automatically made the necessary payments for utilities, and a programme of routine maintenance. The delivery service continued to leave their deliveries in the designated area, as the residence continued to restock its stock of fresh, chilled, frozen and miscellaneous products fastidiously removing the out of date items.

In point of fact the Vansittart Residence flourished, the share portfolio was doing well, algorithms applied a gentle nudge to the mix to ensure that it retained the best balance of risk to reward. Dividend income was easily sufficient to meet the modest needs of the Vansittart Residence and the underlying capital amount grew comfortably.

Countless times the sun rose and the sun set. In the winter there might be snow, and the utilities bills rose a commensurate amount to reflect the increased usage. Physical mail might be delivered and after the house systems had automatically stacked them neatly in the living room, they were cleared away a designated number of days later.

The whole Vansittart Residence was exactly as Mr Vansittart had left it. It looked the same, it smelt the same. There were still lilies in the vase just as Mr Vansittart liked them. After two days they were replaced with fresh lilies, the slightly withered old lilies were just automatically cleared away.

A magpie settled in the courtyard. It turned a stone or two, and then strutted, chest out, towards the surrounding glass. Perhaps a reflection had caught its eye. It jabbed a beak at the glass and then flew on somewhere else. The light caught the magpies blue flanks as it departed upwards from the strangely empty Vansittart Residence. It rose higher and higher. The Vansittart Residence was surrounded by other houses, an small enclave of expensive executive residences in a variety of styles.

An automated vehicle was making a delivery to another house.

The magpie flew higher. It was possible to see the near empty motorway, only a handful of delivery vehicles could be seen. They all drove at exactly the same speed in exactly the same routes. Occasionally a deer would stray onto the motorway and the automated delivery vehicle would automatically brake leaving a slight darkening where tyres had reluctantly contributed to an avoided impact.

It was a few miles away that Mr Vansittart had died. The automated road cleaning process had efficiently cleared away the broken glass from his shattered headlights, but the crumpled vehicle remained in the road. His desiccated body lay safely restrained by the seat belt, the long deflated air bag hung limp on the steering wheel as if a plastic jelly fish had shed a skin.

The automated delivery vehicles patiently negotiated the broken car as they came to deliver fresh lilies to the Vansittart Residence every second day.

 

The Vital Art an exhibition at the Scottish Arts Club

The Vital Art - exhibition 

Wednesday 6th April to Tuesday 3rd May 2016

@ The Scottish Arts Club, 24 Rutland Square, Edinburgh 

This is a hidden gem of an exhibition that is well worth seeking out. 

To be honest, even if the paintings had been dismal it would have been worth going just to get a look inside one these unspoilt Georgian tenements. 

Rutland Square is a quaint old Georgian Square at the West End, not the grandest, nor the humblest, with some rather impressive brass plates on display. It represents a little pocket from a previous time with its fenced in private garden at the centre, and surrounded by giant modern buildings, constrained to its scale by planning restrictions. 

Ring the door bell, to get buzzed in, and then there is an exhibition on the first floor, a pleasant front to back common room with elderly comfortable furniture. There was a further exhibition space upstairs, but there was a meeting going on, so I did not see that. There was also a corridor downstairs in the basement with further pictures and paintings. 

There was not a dud painting amongst them, nor was there any of that pretentiousness can bedevil such things. There were plenty of buildings and landscapes, all appealing and affordable. This is a real treat of an exhibition.

 

 

 

Home an exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy

Home - exhibition 

Saturday 16th April to Wednesday 25th May 2016

@ Royal Scottish Academy, The Mound, Edinburgh 

I rather suspect that I got into this exhibition under false pretences, although I went in via the front door, and paid for my ticket (£5 including catalogue) the gallery slowly filled up with the Edinburgh great and good, so my moleskin jacket perhaps fooled the young lady on the front desk into thinking that I was an RSA member who had been specially invited to the opening day. Certainly after I went in, someone pointed out to her not to let anyone else in. 

Pretty much the entire RSA gallery upstairs and downstairs was filled with material, predominantly architecture. Whereas degree shows are very heavy on models, and light on actual built buildings, this was heavy on built buildings and relatively light on models. There were a lot of large photos and drawings of rather nice houses. 

The exhibition was around the theme of home,which allows a pretty wide remit. To be frank most of these are not really homely homes, more the sort of designer / Grand Designs, sort of aspirational second home that we might all aspire to. The photos of actual rooms from social housing struck a discordant note reminding me of the sort of house that I actually do live in. 

The exhibition took a wide brief, and handled this with optimism and panache. Particular standouts for me were the room including a model of the room, including the model of the room, and the clear acrylic model of a home with a central spine of services. 

In addition to the architectural material, there were artworks on display, including four by John Byrne, the self portrait was competitively priced at £22k, and a short corridor of paintings of unbuilt buildings. 

Normally I try and snap a few photos, but it was forbidden to take photos, so I have included some photos from the rather good catalogue. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Branch Lines an exhibition at Linlithgow Burgh Halls

Elaine Allison - Branch Lines - exhibition 

Friday 5th February to Sunday 17th April 2016

@ Linlithgow Burgh Halls Gallery 

This is a diverse collection in two adjacent galleries. There is a mix of decorative materials, I liked the various tree themed prints, and assemblages of found objects. There were also small sculptures, for example a branch peppered with tiny figures. Much of the work is for sale, though I am not too sure what you would do with it. There is a theme of personal history, and remembrance. At times the exhibition was reminiscent of a memorial to the war dead, but generally the tone is lighter and the decorative elements shine through. 

The Burgh Hall also feature a small cafe, tourist information and some nice affordable jewellery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Utopian Cities - Future Dreams

Utopian Cities - Future Dreams 

Wednesday 30th March 17:30 to 19:00

@ Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Summerhall, Edinburgh 

part of Scotland’s Festival of Architecture 2016

Just to demonstrate that I am partaking of the full range of what the most excellent Festival of Architecture has to offer, some quick notes on one of their lectures. 

The lecture is one of many, but was scheduled at a time and place that was easy enough for me to get to. It was in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre at Summerhall, which used to be the Royal Dick, the Edinburgh University Veterinary Medicine Department. The vets have all now moved to a new campus on the south of the city, and the venue has been lightly refurbished as a general arts venue. Most cities probably could not support such a range and number of venues, but Edinburgh is a festival city, and there seems no limit to the steady growth of arts culture and general festival-ness. 

I think the event was one of many concurrent Science Festival Events, the reception staff were pleasant and happily accepted the printed version of my online ticket. We went into the lecture theatre, semi circles of steeply raked oak seats, peering down on the lecturers. The event was packed, but the venue probably held less than fifty people. 

Utopia is a big topic, and there were two schools of thought. The first two speakers, Dr Diane Morgan and Dr Matthew Beaumont took a literary approach, stretching from Thomas More’s Utopia to the recent film London has Fallen. The Beaumont lecture was similar to one that is available online, check out the LSE Future Cities series. While, for me, there is some interest in the literary notion of utopia, looking back on stuff that people have already said will only ever take you so far. 

There was a brisk and spirited piece by Richard Murphy, which presumably reflects his recent book Last Futures. In fact from what I have read of Last Futures it was written in the style of a textbook, while his lecture was far more engaging. He seemed to find something insightful and new to say about the overly familiar sixties and seventies. 

For me the standout was the architect Kate MacIntosh, who adopted a distinctly humanist approach. This went beyond the usual tropes of good cities have bicycle lanes, to express genuine concern that our housing system is failing the people, and that real architecture should start from engagement with the people who will live in the houses. So that it is not just the narrow elite who can afford their own Grand Designs, but everyone that should be meaningfully involved the creation of the places where they will live. 

I do not suppose that any architect or designer actually sets out to design something that is bad. But there should be a humility that the designer is at the service of the end user. All architects probably ought to pop round five years later for a cup of tea with their residents, just to learn what they got right and what they did not. 

I don’t imagine that any one person can design utopia, it is not a destination, more a direction of travel, an exhortation to do your best. Much talk of utopia wrongly assumes that if you can just design it smart enough, then it will force the people to be happy and healthy. An architectural determinism, like the linguistics notion of the Sapir Worf hypothesis, whereby the structure of the language then determines the mindset of the speakers. Even the most grandiose of architects surely would not believe that they can design a city that forces an unwilling population to be healthy, happy, egalitarian and just.

But any true utopia won’t be built on a greenfield site. It will be built keeping the best of what is already there, involving those that live there already, enticing in those that do not. There are a lot of things that can go wrong, the architect’s perpetual bugbear of poor maintenance is one. But no architect can conceive or crystallise a perpetual utopia. It is a living breathing notion, responding to a myriad of changing circumstances. 

The moment that resonated the most for me was a photo of Kate, standing in front of her Dawson's Heights, with some residents, and her proud remark that by all accounts it was a pretty good place to live. Surely that is the best that any architect can aim for. 

 

 

 

 

Tiny Homes Village - Edinburgh

Tiny Homes Village

Saturday 26th March to Sunday 10th April 2016 (open daily 10.00 to 20.00)

@ The Mound, Edinburgh (next to the big galleries)

part of Scotland’s Festival of Architecture 2016

This is another element of the ongoing Festival of Architecture, which includes a bewildering variety of events, exhibitions, lectures and other assorted happenings. 

In essence this seems to be a ‘village’ of small homes on the Mound in Edinburgh. There are probably about a dozen, ranging from a yurt, to more boutique examples. Small houses are very much on trend these days, though how much of this is designer trendiness and how much is actually useful is open to debate. 

Regardless it is nice to have some great examples in Edinburgh for people to inspect. 

I’ve only managed to take a few quick photos, so I might update this when I get a chance to have a proper look.