Cancelled

I’m ambivalent about graffiti and flyposting. I don’t have a problem with it, but I can appreciate some property owners do. So how does a city council deal with illegal fly posting of commercial events? They can tear them down, and then tear down the replacements, and then tear down the ones that replace them. Or they can slap one of these red stickers over them.

Smarter than your average city council…

Snapshot: West Nile Street, Glasgow

Photograph from a recent Flickr set entitled A rooftop flâneur in Glasgow, August 2008.

Snapshots: repairing the windows

A noisy afternoon in the studio. The sound of hacking and chiselling of concrete and plaster filled the room during a meeting earlier today, with a kind of physical weight and loudness that suggested something more than the usual source of noise around here (architecture students hacking something apart for a model).

Two workmen had come to fix a broken window on the south facade of the building. A crack had appeared in the single pain of the opening window a couple of months ago, causing some concern. A maintenance log was filed, and finally time and resources had been found to remove the broken window and replace it.

This being on the seventeenth floor, it was understandable it had taken some time to fix.

Not a job I plan to be applying for with my new found qualifications.

There is a rose in (Dutch) Haarlem

I was back in Haarlem last weekend. Haarlem is the attractive small city about fifteen easy minutes on train west of Amsterdam that I first visited many years ago, and subsequently revisited last year as part of my dissertation research.

During that trip I interviewed the well known and very well regarded cartoonist and illustrator Joost Swarte. He came to speak in Sheffield a few months later, and reminded me of the biannual comics festival he has been instrumental in organising in the city. It being the weekend after my final exams, how could I refuse? With Eurostar now twenty minutes faster to Brussels, and a door-to-door train ticket purchased for eighty English quid, I was on my way, taking advantage of the ludicrously flexible train ticket that allowed for a night in Brussels en route. The festival was brilliant; as well as browsing dozens of stands belonging to comics retailers from across the Netherlands and Belgium, I attended a few events and even hobnobbed with some of my favourite artists.

But I suspect the real draw for me was the city itself.

I don’t believe I’ve found a more attractive town in northern Europe. The dense central core of Haarlem is just perfect in my eyes. It’s almost a miniature Amsterdam, only there are no drunken British stag weekends and no spaced out American backpackers overdoing it in the coffeeshops.

Herman Hertzberger guided me through my undergraduate architectural education, with his incisive and beautifully compiled design manuals (one and two) for students of architecture. Meandering through the streets of Haarlem, I politely develop the theory that while Hertzberger was a talented designer, much of his commonsense design tips were derived from a close observation of the Dutch cityscape. Every home in the centre of Haarlem seems to have some interaction with the street; every doorway and porch extends beyond the wooden doorframe and takes possession of the threshold between street and home. Despite the proximity of the public street to private homes, layers of ownership and threshold are almost inherently nurtured and manifested with benches, potted plants and privately owned street furniture. This is a dreamy place to get lost in on a summer’s afternoon. Every open doorway or chair that has been lifted out onto the pavement brings a friendly “Hallo” from a Haarlemer catching the sun or enjoying a glass of wine.

I have to be careful about romanticising places I visit on my travels - it’s something I seem to do a lot. I remember returning from my first international holiday as a child (we went to Legoland near Billund in Denmark) thinking that Denmark must be the greatest country in the world. Domestic disagreements with utility firms / politicians / public transport (delete as approrpiate, although I’m not deleting any) usually lead me to see everything through rose tinted spectacles when I’m on holiday. However I’m fairly confident when I say that Haarlem and maybe even Nord-Holland in general is an area I’d consider living in one day. I don’t speak the language but I perfected French by pushing myself into the deep end of a francophone swimming pool, so why not Dutch?

During the festival I noticed a flyer announcing the 2010 dates of the next Stripdagen. Having enjoyed so much the way in which the Grote Markt (above) filled with comics sellers and fans, I look forward to returning in a couple of years’ time to rediscover this colourful and friendly Dutch city.

Snapshot: train kisses the buffers in Dordrecht

Seen through the window of my train from Brussels to The Hague yesterday morning - a local train operated by Arriva (Nederlands Spoorwegen has begun to privatise parts of its network) failed to stop in time at one of Dordrecht station’s bay platforms, mounting the buffers and concrete platform. Nine passengers, the driver and conductor were all uninjured.