Q is for Quarters

A curious mathematical feature of the modern city is that most have more than four quarters.

It is an affliction which is symptomatic of the mania for ‘regeneration’ or, in other words, an attempt to re-inflate property values in a run-down part of the city.  At best it is an affectation and an attempt to acquire some hand me down cachet associated with the term ‘quarter’.

The great grand-daddy of them is the Latin Quarter which, in the minds of most visitors to Paris, has little to do with La Boheme and everything to do with what really happened;

    1km to the west in St Germain

    2km to the south west at Montparnasse or

    5km north at Montmartre

This is usually informed by a generally conflated social, cultural and historical view of Paris wherein Picasso and the impressionists tackle philosophical issues in bars between bouts of fornication with can-can dancers. Whilst wearing black polo neck sweaters and listening to jazz.  It is thereby associated with CREATIVITY and the cutting edge of whatever it is that needs cutting in the view of the urban marketeers who attach the term ‘quarter’ to a duly designated group of buildings.  

You will know when you are in one because a) there will have been brown signs telling you which way you went there and b) there will be bunting, banners and bouquets proclaiming the presence of the given ‘quarter’. The degree of decrepitude of the former will be an indication of how long the area has been so designated. The level of business- or lack of it- in the obligatory café bar will give some initial indication of how successful the re-branding of the area has been.

God forbid that I should advocate any bureaucratic measure but there should perhaps be some internationally recognised guidelines that state clearly the proportion of fashionistas that must occupy an area for it to continue to be called ‘The Fashion Quarter’, people actually creating things in a ‘Creativity Quarter’ or actually making and selling things in a ‘Business Quarter’. In a decent sized city all of the people responsible for dreaming up such wheezes could of course all be herded together in one small area which could quite legitimately be labelled the Bullshit Quarter.

H is for HIGHWAYMEN

Outside the process of British democracy and all the accepted laws of God and man there exists a breed called highway engineers. Whilst directly descended from those who preyed upon travellers in olden days these have learned that sitting in offices and interfering with traffic is more comfortable and profitable than charging around on horses. The origins of the term ‘daylight robbery’ have similarly been refined in that now everyone else is kept in the dark.

Regardless of financial and other constraint- including healthcare and educational priorities- budgets for ever more unfathomable alterations to existing roads are undiluted. This is again a refinement on attempting to build new roads which attract attention through opposition on environmental grounds. Elaborate alterations to existing junctions, perpetual widening, narrowing and re-alignment of existing roads is much more satisfying way of expending the endless budget. Those with decorative tendencies among their number will concentrate on the constant interposition of new traffic lights. Those more philosophically inclined to challenge the theories of Darwinism will interfere with the process of natural selection by erecting grey galvanised barriers at every opportunity. The talents of both will be combined by ornamenting every thoroughfare with all manner of signs.

Each year in late March there is an annual celebration of Completely Pointless Roadworks which serves the practical purpose of using up any unspent budgets of other departments less competent at spending public money. School roof repairs are instantly converted into traffic calming measures in suburban streets causing children to arrive late at their leaky assembly halls through April. The frenetic activity of Spring is in marked contrast to the lazy days of Summer when holes are slowly moved from one end of a road to the other. It is this seasonal cycle which marks the town from the country, the drains blocked by falling leaves and localised flooding of Autumn, the absence of gritters and sudden appearance of cavernous potholes in Winter.

The Highwaymen are now as established a feature of the town and city as they once were on the coaching roads in days of yore. Instead of crying “stand and deliver” they now deliver standstills. The Bow Street Runner is dead – long live the Sleeping Policemen.

T is for TASTE

Taste arrived in Britain around 1615. Some rich people went to Italy and brought it back on their shoes. Although it arrived ahead of the Great Plague it has never reached pandemic proportions nor proved fatal in all but extreme cases. The more prevalent strain, which we call ‘bad taste’, is something that the majority have long developed a tolerance for and largely ignore. Its symptoms are barely discernible among the other more obvious afflictions which affect the larger part of the population.

Several decades may pass with no widespread outbreaks of what may be termed ‘good taste’. Older aristocratic families tended to be susceptible due to progressive inbreeding and regular exposure to fine art and architecture. In the present day the usual symptoms are a profound sense of melancholy which may, if untreated, lead to an acute aversion to travelling anywhere outside a conservation area. This used to be treated by a weekend in Blackpool but the recommended course now is to lock the patient in a room with a television.

The symptoms of good taste tend to be confined to a minority and include an exclusive, snobbish sense of recognition of certain fixed aesthetic values*. It is not especially contagious and is transmitted with some difficulty. A characteristic of those affected by it is their persistence in trying to commodify and sell it despite the long established principle that money cannot buy good taste. Almost invariably these fools will be parted from their money. In architecture there have been cases of people who have bought buildings at their market value which were commissioned by those with good taste. They have then found themselves caught in possession of other values.  This is not uncommon and may be explained briefly as follows.

As with individuals the effects of good taste on the architecture produced is insidious. Such is its nature that a building so affected may not immediately be recognised as displaying any unusual characteristics. It may be difficult to accept that the symptoms can be so invisible to the naked eye but this has long been the case. This has also been the case with fashion more generally as may be illustrated by the man who remarked to Beau Brummell that “it has been wemarked that I am the most well dwessed man in town”. Brummell’s response was, “If you were well dwessed it would not be wemarked upon”.

This is not to suggest that good taste is necessarily bland or unremarkable but is something that may be frequently overlooked in the visual clamour of the uncouth that invariably surround and envelop it. It is for this reason that it may be more visibly evident and ‘wemarked upon’ when encountered in a lower density rural setting but we are, here, principally concerned with the urban. In the town or city we may pass a building or pass through a place often before, by some trick of the light or circumstance, we note that it is unusual in being good.

It has curiosity value and is often rewarding to find and identify examples of good taste when walking in our towns and cities. Some places have owned to having an abundance of it, albeit very retrospectively, and have made a virtue of it. These are worth visiting but may be of more interest to the casual or less committed urbanologist. At their extreme they may present the dichotomy of architectural good taste being seriously compromised by the complete absence of that commodity in souvenir shops and the hordes of curiosity 'seekers' visiting them. The purist will say that one does not properly 'seek out' good taste on a charabanc. That is tourism, not urbanology.

*Note. These symptoms were first diagnosed by John Summerson in his book Georgian London in 1945

A is for ARCHITIST

Here's to the people who paint portraits of places not faces, the architect as artist, and great urban spaces. There are artists as archivists of fleeting moments in the city, the serial paintings of Pissaro and Monet, the ethereal river cities of Turner and Whistler, capturing and recording the passing of time. The architects and artists who imagine beautiful buildings which were not and will never be built. From the capriccios of Canaletto and Gandy to the megalomaniac visions of Corbusier and Sant Elia and the dystopian cities they begat. There is the genius of Inigo Jones and real understanding.

"It is not simply the ability to draw which is significant, but the state of mind, the sense of control of which that ability is the outward sign. It represents, indeed, a revolution in architectural vision..." (Summerson 1953)

Drawing is about looking, painting is about seeing, understanding is the essence of that which one achieves through information intentionally acquired or experience one has oneself lived through.
The Turgot plan of Paris is something that transcends mere cartography. It is the essence of a place that once was. The photographs of Marville and Atget are not merely pictures of places but  ghosts ,  the shades of places that once were.