Achy, grumbly, crampy, sore. All jetlagged to buggery. Mon was milliseconds from face-planting into a street-pole. John was having an existential crisis about whether to wear a suit-jacket or not (he didn’t and he looked fine). I spilt my salt and vinegar chips outside Tate modern and nearly cried. The pigeons rejoiced. The clouds rumbled over. This ‘prize’ had gained inverted commas.
Our set of presentations from the #2015DuluxStudyTour Pecha Kucha at the RIBA
Panicked, the day started over a full English breakfast (of course) with complex file juggling in preparation for our Pecha Kucha presentation that night on the concept of ‘Place.’ If the others were anything like me, they’d cobbled their slideshow together in ten minutes, just hours before getting on the bird, thinking that the evening was too distant to ever arrive.
Well, here it was. The rising reality of having to present at the Royal institute of British Architects (RIBA) to the brightest of Brits and Aussie ex-pats was now very real. Too real. Goddammit.
The great thing was, we had a day chock-full of practice visits to distract us.
It’d be fair to say that after Ken Allison’s brilliant walking tour yesterday which culminated in sunset drinks (prompt: does the sun ever set in London or does it just fizzle away into the low smog?) under the ‘bond-dome’ top-floor at the Gherkin, hopes weren’t so high for the day ahead.
We headed off to Central St Martins for a tour with Stanton Williams and Mel Dodd, the head of tertiary programs there. A masterstroke of itinerary planning (clap clap clap to Dan once again), the two parties spoke apart and separately, giving us two very distinct insights into how an architect and a user present their space. We were left pondering if this building was a glorious factory for art or hideous abandoned shopping centre?
It’s fair to say that Zaha Hadid isn’t a favourite among the group and that’s where we were off to next. Our reservations about her practice – stylised image-making over conscious architecture – weren’t allayed. BUT, the basement of her adjunct Zaha Hadid design gallery was a ripper. This space served as a living archive of the offices discourse, all presented cleanly and beautifully.
We then went on a quick skirt around the perimeter of Tate 2 by Herzog de Meuron, which is about one year off completion. This is going to be something so, so special. A canting, twisting form, skinned in muddy double brick freshly minted from Denmark, it heaves and settles. At the moment, it has its pants around its ankles. However, the intention is clearly legible and it doesn’t take much of a mental bounce to see where this is going to land. However, as much as I have immense love for this building, I think I fell harder for our guide, Kwamina from Herzog and de Meuron. DREAMBOAT.
WHAT? FINISHED EARLY?! QUICK REST STOP?! HOORAY! WHAT LUXURY!
What should have been a 15 min cross-town sprint back to the hotel becomes a 45 min crawl thanks to the bloody Queen deciding to entertain a small selection of her subjects. Time back at hotel now cut from 45 to 15 minutes.
Off again. All of us now delirious and piled in taxis. Katelin tells us how she forgot which way around you are supposed to wear heel-socks. The answer, not surprisingly, is the right way round.
We’re now descending down a slow step/ramp into the shiny new Make office. The site visit yesterday to their 5 Broadgate building has propagated much debate. We’re pretty sure which side of the coin we all fall on, but we’re still open to see what the practice presents rather than deferring to the singular message from visiting the one building. They present beautifully. There is genuine passion from the leadership and their business practice is exquisite. We left soundly impressed by the craft put into their personal and spatial presentation. We are however seeing a common theme repeating. Is practice in London responding to the shadow of Foster?
A short walk west and we are swallowed into the gilded gut of RIBA headquarters. Built in 1938, it was envisaged as the metaphorical cupola of the Empire’s achievements. There are embellishments in motif and material throughout referencing the countries of the Commonwealth. Australia, quite obviously, was part of this at the time (and some reason, this arrangement continues in earnest). We get a jarrah room (WA reprazent) and a story board carved into a door featured our indigenous fauna, flora, peoples and industry.
We were all hoping for 15 minutes respite to prepare for Pecha Kucha. No minutes were forthcoming. On with the show. First up were Bonnie, Casey and John addressing the binary and antipodean flip-flop of east-coast Oz to the old country. Casey thought it prudent to bring up the Ashes. He’s a wise man. Their presentation was outstanding and after the bombardment of foreign offices and projects, it was lovely to get a reminder of the wonderful skill of our touring party.
Mon and I then brought it home with a three-minute-forty tour-de-force that left the room with minds and hearts exploded and aghast at our blinding colonial brilliance. That’s how I read it, nonetheless [delirium].
Half the marathon run, half still to go.
Don’t forget to follow #2015DuluxStudyTour for the live updates!
– Nic Brunsdon