May: "Built up - Heritage and International Style in my City"
"Built up - Heritage and International Style in my City"We may be proud of our historic city centres, of monuments from the past. And yet, we see an ever more identical international style of architecture mushrooming everywhere. We may also chose convenience over heritage when we choose our own urban abode. Where is all this leading and how does it transform our way of life?
Pia Benosa in Manila describes her city as rich in a variety of architectural forms, including "awe-inducing colonial, Catholic architecture" as well as "neoclassical and baroque buildings left by the Americans". However, Pia reckons the city needs a paint job – adding that an ordinary paint job will not be sufficient. She calls for a "major, major" paint job. While the buildings themselves are described in positive terms, Pia claims they are being "messed up with the wrong colours". Apart from orange-coloured façades of old churches, there are "ancestral houses repainted in outrageous colours". Furthermore, "footbridges for pedestrians continue to sport distracting colour schemes that disrupt the skyline". So, the image if a city does not only depend on shape and form, but also on the selection of colours.
Hanoi does not have many high-rise buildings. Local blogger David Frogier de Ponlevoy appreciates this fact about his city: It means that he has a beautiful view from his apartment on the eleventh floor. David is well aware of the contradiction and even calls his attitude "a little hypocritical". He then touches on another interesting aspect about architecture in Vietnam, explaining that sunlight plays a very different role for Vietnamese compared to Europeans. For the local people, he says, sun means heat. "And heat means either to sweat eight months a year, or expensive electricity consumption for air conditioning." Therefore, many of the smaller houses in Hanoi are built like a narrow "tunnel", with the front as the only source of daylight.
Jonathan Brooking shows a series of heritage buildings in Auckland. Experimenting with filters on his camera, he achieved a vintage look and feel that evokes a diffuse image of colonial times. His photo series is to be seen against the backdrop of the recent major earthquake that struck the New Zealand city of Christchurch, destroying not only many people's lives but also a vast number of buildings. Jonathan explains that there are "over four hundred commercial buildings in Auckland which may not survive a moderate earthquake". Following the Christchurch experience, these old buildings in Auckland are now in the spotlight. With his six pictures, Jonathan illustrates the fragility and heritage of Auckland – "Now and for future times", as he puts it.
While there is concern about the fragility of Auckland's heritage buildings, developers in Bangkok are facing a very different challenge: According to Liam Morgan, they are many architectural projects that are "half-finished, abandoned and too expensive to tear down or to continue building". Liam climbed the staircase up to the 30th and even the 50th floor of a huge unfinished tower, to share some breathtaking pictures from the skyscraper's rooftop. Somewhere behind the abandoned construction site, the viewer can make out yet another new development on the horizon. Liam calls these sites "instant ruins". Perhaps he is speaking from an artist's perspective when he describes them as "very interesting spaces in that they have never been, and never will be, used by humans for anything".
Like some other entries this month, CityScapes poet Nga To Thi Van's piece deals with live in a high-rise building. Entitled "Sky Box", her verses describe the view from a window on the 26th floor of a residential building in Saigon. "The world is in my sight", she muses, "river, cloud and sky". Nga appears to be split between the positive fact that there is no traffic noise and no pollution in her Sky Box, and the negative fact that inhabitants are missing out on what she sums up as "garden, butterfly and bird". Perhaps hinting at a growing alienation and estrangement evoked by the architectural reality, she writes that the people she sees from her window are "small and quiet – and I can't see their smiles".
In Sydney, Jennifer Lush takes us on an audio tour to some of the city's most iconic places. She starts off her recording with an interviewee acknowledging the traditional land owners in the area, the Cadigal tribe who "lived here forever". She then captures the sound of Circular Quay and proceeds to Town Hall, which she describes as a meeting place for "everyone from emos to eco protesters". Next up is the Spanish Quarter, which has lost some of its significance – unlike Chinatown, which is still characterised by "Yum Cha restaurants, Chinese supermarkets, travel agents, and an overwhelming smell of barbequed duck". Jennifer then passes Australia Hall, which played a major role in aboriginal civil rights movements, and closes at Sydney's inner-city park areas with their lunchtime office workers "stealing away to enjoy a sandwich and little sunshine".
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Please note that these six examples may serve to give you a rough idea of what is to be found in the CityScapes Blog, but bear in mind that all other entries are just as great, so definitely go and explore the blog as a whole!
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