David Barrie

The claustrophobia of vastness

Why do vacant sites in cities kill the vitality of urban life?

On one level, the answer is obvious. Vacant plots attract detritus. They are pockmarks. They are empty and lifeless - and empty, lifeless things are boring, dull and defy the myth of go-go city life.

But Andrea Tsang from McGill University, Quebec comes up with a better idea. While considering Marc Auge's ideas of non-place, she writes of dead urban space as something slightly terrifying:

The uniformity of non-place is the melting of an infinite diversity and gives way to 'nothing-ness'....The expanse of 'nothing-ness' provides no escape, evoking a sense of agoraphobia.

In other words, rather than just blankness, empty places in cities invoke 'reverse-claustrophia'. They're scary.

When I've been in vast landscapes like the Western Desert of the Sahara, they've been astonishing or engaging but then intimidating, at times almost suffocating. Are dead places in cities capable of evoking similar feelings?

41 million viewers

Ghost Sanatorium, originally uploaded by <fred>.

According to a press release from Fremantle Media, the new season of American Idol debuted with a record 41 million viewers.

The release says:

"American Idol" defied the natural order of things yet again Tuesday, as its season premiere was even bigger than last year's. FOX utterly dominated the night's ratings with a 20.3 rating/30 share in households; the 37.3 million who watched the two-hour premiere was up over last year's 35.5 million. The competition was decimated by the juggernaut that is Idol. Unbelievably at 9 p.m., "Idol" increased to 21.3/32, topping 41 million viewers in its final half-hour. "

This news comes as broadcast media melts in the face of viewers turning to the Internet and convention laments the supposed lack of collective or shared experience in the modern era.

Sure Americal Idol ain't a demonstration in favor of democracy at at the Washington Monument or a mass recital of Shakespeare in Trafalgar Square. But it does suggest that a shared economy of culture remains and that entertainment remains a popular concept, not just something enjoyed one-to-one in a virtual world.

Overweight design journalism

Food and design are philosophically linked. Good food has to be nutritious, taste good and look appetising. Good design has to work well, be visually pleasing and easy to use. No wonder architects are always fascinated by food, cooking and eating out, in the way that novelists, for example, often are not.

This is the drivel opening of an article written by design critic Stephen Bayley of the London Observer newspaper. The piece is ostensibly a review of the interior design of a new restaurant called St Alban. But actually it's a beautiful, Bulgari-standard example of design writing as aspirational, smug, stuck up, lifestyle nonsense.

The architect Will Alsop was recently quoted as it being time that the cultural junta in the U.K. were deposed by a new generation of writers, commentators and cultural curators. Talking about design and the Olympics he said:

I hope we might see some of the old guard of London moving over and allowing room for new Londoners. I'm talking about the Fosters and the Rogers, and the Yentobs and the Serotas. They've done a fantastic job - but it's time for change.

He's right. And Bayley should be first up against the wall.

In an age that designs drones to zap jihadists in Somalia, creates services like NHS Direct, brands like Red and is attempting to design systems and services to stave off climate change, it's gob-smacking that Bayley can serve up to the nation such commodifying, retro, elitist pap, of concern to just several hundred restaurant go-ers and that's geared to fast-tracking future table reservations.

Where are the design writers? Or actually, where is the U.K. equivalent of Paul Goldberger, the great and always surprising architectural writer of the New Yorker.

Happy new year!

FOUND by Allyson, while cleaning underneath the bench seat of her dad's new Volkswagen Vanagon.