This time last week...

... I was walking round the Louvre... sigh...

"Cities are like volcanoes, they always have to move. If they don't they're dead."

This rather peculiar and somewhat nonsensical comment comes from Allan Murray, one of the architects behind the highly controversial 'Caltongate' scheme proposed for Edinburgh, which would see a major redevelopment of the Old Town leading to the Royal Mile, including demolishing some listed buildings (which also happen to be home to people as well as listed). Strangely enough the company behind this attempt to dump a pile of bland, featureless architecture in a historic World Heritage site has attacked the people opposing this ill-conceived plan as 'thoughtless', while commenting that it is right for democracy to have a say while then dismissing some 2, 000 complaints against them, from private individuals and from important heritage groups. Democracy obviously suits the developers only when it agrees with them, otherwise you are just being 'thoughtless' and emotional (gee, some folks will lose their homes, imagine being emotional over that?!?! Eejits).

The architect who came up with this strange 'argument' in favour of his development (which he obviously has a huge vested interest in) above is also responsible for incredibly dull, featureless modern creations in the city already, which have nothing in common with the city environment or any distinguishing features that would make them stand out from a hundred other developments anywhere else in the modern world, exactly the sort of boring design that makes our cities look so dull and repetitive, and which in a historic city like Edinburgh is worse than dull, it is cultural vandalism. We've had, huge, ill-advised developments dumped on us before and they still blight the city, it is completely right that people are wary of them, especially in an area like the Old Town. That caution doesn't mean the city can't continue to evolve and develop, just that we should be very, very careful how and where we do it and I get the impression the developers are more interested in money than protecting the community in that area and our historical nature. I'm not Prince Charles and have no wish to see only more Neo-Classical architecture, but in World Heritage sites like the Old Town and New Town it is always advisable to err on the side of caution. If a developer wishes to work in that area they should expect that, it shouldn't be a surprise to them.

Oh and Mr Murray, volcanoes don't so much move as erupt and explode. The ground around them may move as a result of their eruptions but the volcanoes themselves not so much (other than the ground moving by floating over the hot liquid rock below, but all ground does that). And I don't think you want to include cities and active volcanoes in the same sentence because that's a scenario which doesn't raise connotations of flourishing life, rather images of destruction, so I'm not sure what point you were making there. Unless it was a Freudian slip acknowledging your oversized development in a sensitive area will be destructive and leave scars on the city for years, just like a volcanic eruption would. Quite why the council approved this in the face of mass rejection by affected citizens and heritage groups I have no idea; if I was a cynic I'd be checking for brown envelopes slipped under doors...

Doors Open Day

Tomorrow (Saturday 29th) is the annual Doors Open Day for Edinburgh, when people can get into buildings and areas of buildings that aren't normally open to the public. It's pretty interesting and also free so accessible to anyone - certainly every place we tried last year proved to be pretty busy with folks making the most of the opportunity. The Cockburn Association has all the details and there is also a Flickr stream for last year's Door's Open, which, I'm rather chuffed to say, also has one of the photos I took on it after the organisers asked if they could use it to help promote the event - hopefully I can get some more pics tomorrow with the new camera this time. I'm looking forward to wandering round with some friends poking into parts of my city that I don't often get to see.

Doors Open

And as another Festival fades away (although the city is still busy with tourists - that ebbs and flows according to season but never actually stops) there are still more things to look forward to, including this year's Doors Open Day on September 29th. That's when many buildings, a lot of which the public normally don't get into (or if they do there are parts they never normally see) allow people in free to explore their city and appreciate its culture, architecture and history - its really a great day, getting to see things in buildings you pass regularly but had never seen within. And I was quite pleased when I was asked if a couple of interior shots I took at last year's Doors Open could be borrowed to be used for illustrating this year's. You can get details from the Doors Open page on the Cockburn Association site here.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe"

Adam Savage of top geek show MythBusters (one of my favourite bits of factual viewing and not just because I look a bit like Adam, especially when I have my hat on) has written a piece in Popular Mechanics in praise of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner as it celebrates its 25th anniversary (link via Boing Boing). I'm totally with Adam on this one - like him I have to re-watch the film every year or so; its one of the most visually ravishing films of all time and easily up there with Lang's Metropolis for stunning images of a future city. The opening scene of LA in 2019, towering buildings with video walls mounted on them, flames shooting into the night from industrial towers and hover cars flying between them all set to Vangelis' music ranks as one of the most stunning visuals in movie history. It still sends shivers down my spine no matter how often I see it, the impact made all the more sudden by being prefaced by a very quiet moment as an explanation of Replicants and Blade Runners is scrolled across the scene before suddenly boom! Future LA.



Adam argues that despite massive advances in effects and digital manipulation which can now create almost anything a director imagines the film's effects remain astonishing: "I worked on Star Wars Episodes I and II, on the Matrix films, on AI and Terminator 3; yet 25 years later there are ways in which Blade Runner surpasses anything that's been done since." He's right, it still looks amazing, which is a tribute to the legendary Doug Trumbull and his effects colleagues but also to Ridley Scott too, a director who has a real flair for visuals. The film, like another now-classic, Citizen Kane, wasn't a commercial success when first released, but (again like Citizen Kane) has gone on to gather a cult audience, critical plaudits and inspire generations of later artists.

For visualising a future cityscape it has to be up there with Lang's Metropolis; both also owe much to photographs and film of New York in the early 20th century (imaginary cities and the real meeting, but then all 'real' cities are also partially imaginary, made up as much of our memories and dreams as they are what our eyes take in). The themes (very Philip K Dick, appropriately) of alienation, individuality, identity and what it is to be human and what is real and what is dream add to the lush imagery. No wonder it is still one of my personal top ten movies of all time.



Some great visualisations or descriptions of imaginary urban spaces: Blade Runner, Metropolis, Carlos Ezquerra's concepts for Mega City one in the original Judge Dredd back in '77, Otomo's Akira, Bill Gibson's Sprawl (see Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris (see City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: an Afterword), Alex Proyas Dark City, Kafka's work, Borges, Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan... I'm sure you can all suggest other good examples from books, movies and comics or any other artforms. A final bit of movie-comics trivia, Ridley cites the legendary comics artist Moebius' Long Tomorrow graphic novel from the mid 70s as a key reference for Blade Runner's visual look. The graphic novel was written by a young Dan O'Bannon, who would later write Alien, which Ridley would direct (one of his first big successes); Dan would later adapt another Philip K Dick tale, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale for the film Total Recall. I'm sure I could add more here, but it's time for Heroes :-)

Walking through time: Holyrood Palace



The Palace of Holyrood with Arthur's Seat in the background, viewed from Calton Hill in Edinburgh, by James Valentine, thought to date to around 1878.



The Palace of Holyrood, the ruined Abbey and Arthur's Seat from Calton Hill taken by me, spring 2007.

I found this online recently as I was sorting out some of my photographs to upload to my Fotolog and Flickr sites. Despite the history Edinburgh isn't changeless, but obviously it has more than its share of places which do remain almost the same than most cities and sometimes you find photographs of buildings and streets which are almost the same today.

Imagine both pictures as portals to two different spots in history; imagine you could use them as the travelling points between those periods, to walk from the picture from now to emerge from then, to find yourself standing on Victorian-era Calton Hill, caressed by the wind, local worthies enjoying a peramabulation past you, lots of smoke rising from buildings in those days, a mix of tall masted ships and new fangled steamships visible down on the Forth an at the Leith docks, and perhaps Hill and Adamson, the great pioneers of early photography setting up one of their experiments with this new camera device, using the 'pencil of nature'. How lovely would it be if you could do that? I suppose I will have to make do with living and working around the sites, which is, in its own way, walking through time every single day.

The Graffiti Project

What do a bunch of famous Brazilian street artists have in common with a historic Scottish castle? Well, they are painting graffiti all over it - at the invitation of the laird. Turns out Kelburn Castle, 35 miles west of Glasgow, was covered with a dodgy rendering a few decades back which is proving detrimental to the ancient stonework underneath it, so it will be coming off in the future. Meantime it provides an amazing temporary canvas for the Sao Paulo Crew to work their colourful designs on. Not often you see a historic castle being redecorated like this - its been on the Scottish news a lot in the last week or two and really made me smile. The month long project has an official site here with lots of pictures and some very cool time lapse videos of them working (when the Scottish weather doesn't interrupt them).

Springside

The massive former Scottish and Newcastle Brewery site a few minutes up the road from me, right next to the cinema Mel and I regularly go to, is being demolished at last - it has been empty for some time (brewing was once big business in Edinburgh, probably why it is such a real ale city, but now it is mostly gone - thankfully the much better Caledonian Brewery is still going strong. This area was popular for brewing because of the pure water from local wells, the so-called 'charmed circle' of wells). There have been plans to redevelop it for years and finally they seem to be making progress - the site is so big it goes across both sides of the main road; now one half is totally gone - where the buildings and cooling towers and tall walls were there is just fields of rubble. Quite odd to walk past this spot which was so built up before and now I can see clear across it to the area beyond. Not the first time it has been redeveloped in the last century though, as the old tenement where Sir Sean Connery was born was next to it, but was demolished long ago. In fact, he used to deliver milk around there as a young lad - these days when he comes back to the area it is to walk the red carpet at Film Festival launches; talk about change.

In such a built up area near the city centre there obviously isn't a lot of opportunity to remake areas, so I'm keen to see them do something nice with such an enormous brownfield site. We're promised a mix of business spots, leisure and new homes with much-needed open spaces - this part of town lacks some decent open areas because it is so heavily built up. It all ties in with the revamp of the nearby canal, which now has lots of barges on it (some for holidays, some folks living on them year round), new flats overlooking it and waterside restaurants and cafes and a redone towpath for walking and cycling on which Mel and I make use of a lot (beats walking by the busy main road and you can feed the ducks as well as grab some nice photos). Of course, it may end up being a mess as these things can be sometimes, but hopefully they make a good job of it since it is going to be a big part of my local environment (and probably boost the already inflated housing prices) - they've put up a website for this new area, which they are going to call Springside and a short video, which also takes in some of the history of the Fountainbridge area.

I wonder if it will actually look like this when done. Always interesting to see something in transition; few years back a major brewery, then empty buildings, now rubble and in a couple of years people will have their homes there - in fact, a lot of people; this isn't just a couple of old buildings, its a big site and will change the nature of the area a lot. Right now it is just an idea of a place; I think I will enjoy it being translated into a real place - if any part of a city can be said to be truly real, since some of it is always in our impressions of it and our imagination and our memories.

More Bristol

Some more pics I snapped going back and forth from my hotel to the Comics Expo in Bristol.




Old brewery building converted into some rather attractive looking apartments



Nice church tower down a street near the pub where I had a couple of well-earned and gorgeous-tasting pints of the local Butcombe Brewery Gold (so disappointed I can't get it up here, but the brewery only sell it within a 50 mile radius).



I passed this beautiful, big church on the way in from the airport; the bells were peeling quite wonderfully as I passed.



This drunkenly leaning tower is quite striking; a friend at the convention told me it was an old church gutted by bombing by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War.



I loved the plaster relief of an elephant on this building near the market.



The Redcliffe Wharf down by the river; as with a lot of riverside cities there is a mix of older, decrepit buildings and freshly restored old buildings like this given a new lease of life as the once busy, commercial area is reborn from a workspace into a living and leisure space with new apartments and pleasure craft, restaurants and bars.





Another nicely restored old building





Its not all old buildings decaying or being restored, there was this unusual modern tower stuck in the middle of a building site.



No, it isn't the emblem of the male stripper's society, its the T&GWU, Transport and General Worker's Union.

Big, shiny bauble



I got lost trying to get from the comics expo to my hotel; well, I say lost, actually I navigated my way perfectly well to where it was supposed to be according to Google Maps, except it wasn't there. Neither was the lane it was supposed to be on. Check my little printed out map - so organised, navigating my way in a city I've never been to before quite well, shame the hotel wasn't there! Check street names, yup I have come to the right spot on the map. But no hotel and no lane for the hotel... After several circuits of the block it should be on I spot a branch of Stamfords, the travel book specialists and try in there - a look in their A-Z maps shows the street isn't even on the print maps. Sinking feeling. The helpful bookseller recognises the name of the hotel though and points me over the river to an area being redeveloped (hence why not on the map yet, I suppose), so an extra few minutes later and finally I find my hotel and can check in. It turned out to be right behind this retro-futuristic silver sphere by the riverside.



Now I knew where the darned place was in relation to the convention I walked a different route back this time (luckily I have a knack for working out my way round places, so I thought I'd get at least a tiny bit more of the city as I went back and forth). Just past here on the riverside there were lots of bars and restaurants; after a showery day the evening became clear, warm and sunny, quite perfect for a walk back (and it was nice to see Edinburgh doesn't have the monopoly on badly dressed hen parties on Saturdays!).



After not having much time for a proper meal during the day it was time for some decent nosh and oh my, what's this, a gorgeous cool ale from the local Butcombe Brewery (Butcombe Gold, I think I just found my perfect summer ale, must see if the local Wetherspoon here has it).



Just what I need, a reflecting surface which makes me look shorter and fatter...



I liked these colourful old tenements overlooking the river - the Bristol version of Balamory :-)?



Just across the river from the hotel was Brunel's great S.S. Great Britain, although sadly seeing the masts of this revolutionary huge steamship was as close as I got to her.

Behold the mysteries of the Great Pyramid revealed!

French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin (I wonder if he is related to the famous 19th century magician Robert Houdin, who later inspired the stage name for Harry Houdini?) claims to have solved the mystery of how the Great Pyramid of Cheops was built - he has a 3-D simulation available online (although you may need a plug-in to make it work and it takes ages to load), which will walk you through the theory or also allow you to 'free navigate' the 3-D reconstruction. There's even a little Second Life-style animated person (presumably a virtual Monsieur Houdin) who walks on to narrate the theory part. Fascinating stuff.