Acers and architects

click photo to enlarge
I've written elsewhere in this blog about the way architects use trees and shrubs around buildings (see here and here). As far as trees go many appear to have a predilection for what I call "lollipop" trees, that is to say those trees that don't grow very tall and which can be easily pruned to produce a clear straight trunk topped with a pile of roughly spherical, elliptical or cone-shaped foliage. The species that lend themselves to this kind of treatment and which, therefore, abound around new buildings (at least in the UK) are: rowan, whitebeam, False acacia, bay laurel, crab apple, flowering cherry, acer, etc.

Recently, as I've travelled around, I've been struck by the number of new buildings that have been planted with acers of one kind or another, but especially those cultivars with leaves that turn a bright orange/yellow in autumn. I know from experience that though acers are hardy if sheltered they can be damaged by late spring frosts and cold winds. Consequently I'm a little puzzled at their apparent popularity in open, windy locations where they are frequently going to receive intermittent tending and are likely to be relatively dry in summer due to the hard surfaces around them. Perhaps landscape architects know something about these trees that I don't.

Today's main photograph shows the Boathouse Business Centre in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, a building that has featured before on this blog (click here, then scroll down). It has three of these trees giving bright splashes of colour that contrast with the white and muted tones of the building and paving. At this time of year it's easy to see the strong contribution that the trees make to the building and its location. Elsewhere in this development the alder - an interesting choice - is the main tree that has been used. The smaller photograph shows the decorative swan and part of the main facade of the former Fogarty Feather Factory in Boston, Lincolnshire, now converted to flats. I've also featured this building before. If you'd like to view the full facade or read of its history see here. In this instance the acer is not planted in connection with the old building but forms part of the landscaping of a car park in front of a fairly new "shed" i.e. a superstore selling computers and associated paraphernalia. I couldn't bring myself to photograph the tree in front of that awful building with its pink paintwork so I positioned myself to include the older facade and that very unlikely looking swan.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Fencing off spiral staircases

click photo to enlarge

I've eulogized the spiral staircase elsewhere in this blog, and I've included photographs of many of the examples, old and new, that I've come across on my travels. I've been especially pleased that architects today often choose steel versions for external entry and exit, and more particularly as fire escapes. However, with the increasing popularity of the latter a problem has arisen: how to keep the unwanted - robbers, vandals and kids - off them. The answer has an ugliness that all but destroys the functional beauty of the spiral staircase.

It usually involves erecting a circle of triple point palisade fencing around it at ground level, with entry through a lockable gate made of the same material. It's a sad indictment of our society that such a vicious thing exists, but it adds insult to injury to use it in this way. I acknowledge that there are circumstances in which it may be necessary, but I'm beginning to think that if one of these rings of steel is the answer then a spiral staircase shouldn't be the solution an architect adopts!

Today's photographs show two spiral staircases on the exterior of the Boathouse Business Centre at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, the subject of yesterday's post and this one in February 2010. Both have the offending circular fence at the base. I managed to exclude it on the main photograph that includes the helical wind turbine, and was quite pleased with the strong, dramatic shape that I captured. However, I deliberately included it in the other image as an illustration of the point I wished to make, but also because, combined with the shapes and colours of the rest of the composition it almost achieved a Russian Constructivist quality. Almost, but not quite!

If, after sampling these, somewhat disfigured spiral staircases, you'd like to see some more interesting examples, you might like to try this one in a Cambridge museum, this one on the back of some Blackpool offices, this one in South Stack Lighthouse, Anglesey, this reflection of one on Blackpool Casino, or this almost-spiral at Somerset House, London.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 27mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Building fashions and external louvres

click photos to enlarge

Building fashions come and go; they have always done so. During my lifetime I've experienced fads and fancies as diverse as concrete with the wood shuttering imprint deemed suitable for external walls, glass and aluminium cladding, external glass lifts, X-braces on skyscrapers, tensioned plastic awning roofs and much else. As the millennium approached it seemed that no superstore or industrial estate offices was complete without an entrance picked out with a partially glazed metalwork structure in blue or red. In recent years an increasing number of new flats, offices and other buildings have been sheathed with slats of hardwood that very quickly pick up stains from rainwater.

The dark cuboid block on the right of the building in today's main photograph of the Boathouse Business Centre is faced in just that kind of wood, and exhibits just that kind of problem. However, it's not the modern use of timber that I've been thinking about recently; rather, it's the proliferation of aluminium aerofoil fin louvres. If any one detail marks out a building as being constructed in the past dozen or so years its these high-tech slats fitted to manage solar gain. They are mounted on the outside of the wood-faced block above. You can see them on the building in the smaller photograph - the Red Lion Quarter in Spalding. There are further examples on my photograph of Hayes Wharf Tower, Lincoln, and even this car park in King's Lynn has a facade that mimics them. Are these louvres the only way that architects can deal with solar gain? Of course not, but they are fashionable, and clients surely like to feel that a building they commission is of its time. And it seems that, at the moment that means these aluminium fins.

Incidentally, when I was looking at the Red Lion Quarter building it occurred to me that, in coming up with the elevation that I've photographed, the architect looks like he's been influenced by 1930s cinema design. The small flight of steps leading to the glass doors, the slight overhang with columns, the bordered horizontal window band above, all say to me English "moderne", a variant of Art Deco beloved of pre-war cinema architects.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Showing, interpreting and explaining

click photo to enlarge
One of the things that every photograph says to a viewer is, "Look at this" because photography is a way of showing and interpreting the world. Many of the earliest photographs emphasised the medium's ability to bring accurate images from across the world into the eye and mind of people who had never ventured abroad. In November 1839, less than three months after Daguerre's invention became available, the painter Horace Vernet was using it to record scenes in the city of Alexandria in Egypt - a remarkable example of the quick implementation of new technology. The images Vernet made enabled European audiences to see what had previously been depicted only in words, engravings and paintings.

But, when the novelty of the photograph had worn off people began to see that cameras could do more than simply show the world; they could interpret it in something like the way that painters did. It was this important step that made some see photography as a medium capable of producing art. Today the field of photography is still divided up in this way, with amateurs and professionals producing images that either show or interpret.

Today's photograph is one that I took at the Boathouse Business Centre, a new and striking looking building at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire. It is a partner to the image I posted a couple of weeks ago. But, where that photograph was essentially "show", this one has an element of "interpret". How? Well, firstly I deliberately tilted the camera for the shot, and in such a way that the central column of the spiral staircase (and the vertical wind turbine) form a diagonal across the square frame. In doing that I could use the treads of the stairs as a curving diagonal across the square in the opposite direction, making a balanced, dynamic composition. And, in emphasizing the pattern of the segments of the underside of the stair treads I'm inviting the viewer to not only look at a possibly overlooked part of the building, I'm also saying look at it the way I saw it. My image, therefore, is as much about form and composition as it is about the subject.

Describing my photograph in this way makes it sound a rather fine and grand image: it's not. But that's always a danger when you describe the how and why of a photograph or painting. I think my shot's O.K., but no more than that. The act of putting into words the how and why of image making is something that photographers (and painters for that matter) are reluctant to do. Perhaps they think it robs their work of some of its magic and mystery, and makes it too accessible! Whatever the reason, it shouldn't be only critics and academics doing this sort of thing, and I try to offer a little explanation every now and then.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The "Boathouse", Wisbech

click photo to enlarge
The Cambridgeshire settlement of Wisbech still retains much of its character as a Georgian market town. Many of its historic buildings have escaped the attentions of the improvers and developers, and it has a very high number of listed buildings - about 270 - for such a comparatively small place. However, this relative bounty in terms of eighteenth century architecture seems only partly the result of conscious conservation: the decline of the town from its glory years, with the attendant lack of development, is also an important factor.

However, Fenland District Council and the people of this part of Cambridgeshire are clearly taking steps to revitalise the area, and I came across one such example on my recent visit. The "Boathouse" Business Centre is a landmark office and services building next to the River Nene, the latest development in an area that already includes a marina, and promises more commercial space and riverside flats. The idea of "landmark" buildings as the focus of development seems widespread in Britain today, with museums (Manchester, Bradford), galleries (Salford, Liverpool, Gateshead), aquaria (Hull), and many other iconic, often cultural, structures being pressed into service. It seems to work: the failures - such as Manchester's Urbis (many say it didn't fail) which is to become the National Museum of Football - seem to be few.

This modest example in Wisbech has a shape that seems a little too obvious for its location: the pointed ends that echo a bow and stern, the white paint, the "bridge" balcony and the mast-like vertical wind turbine and street light all seem to proclaim too loudly, "I'm next to a marina - geddit!" That criticism notwithstanding, it is a good addition to the area, an interesting subject for a visiting photographer, and I hope it succeeds in bringing jobs and life back to this part of the town's riverside.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13mm (26mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On