God?

Four thousand six hundred years ago, King Djoser of the Two Lands of Egypt instructed his architect to design and build his burial place. The result was this enormous, powerful monument, standing in the desert about three hours by horseback from Cairo. It is the first great stone building in history, the first to use the step design and the first tomb of anything like this size in Egypt. Riding towards it, there is no real concept of the size until you are quite close, it is vast. The design is an innovation - previously, Pharoahs were buried in 'mastaba' tombs - the word literally means 'bench' - a low, square or oblong structure often not much larger than the size of the body beneath it. Here, several of the mastaba shapes have been stacked one on top of another, forming this imposing monument to the greatness of Djoser the King.

Unusally for the times, the architect is well documented and known by name - Imhotep. He had the envious titles of Chancellor of the King of Egypt, Doctor, First in line after the King of Upper Egypt, Administrator of the Great Palace, Hereditary nobleman, High Priest of Heliopolis, Builder, Chief Carpenter, Chief Sculptor and Maker of Vases in Chief. A very important man indeed, and a true polymath as many architects are (or were, until we started giving away our skills to all and sundry - more later).

As a doctor, he was known for a treatise on medicine that did not make any mention of magic and could be the first true medical book. His bravery in cutting out the mumbo jumbo is astonishing. In many periods in history, he would have been strung up as a heritic, but amazingly, he was revered both during his life and after his death.

Two thousand years after he died, he was deified as the god of medicine and worshipped until well into Ptolemaic times.

Architect as God.

I'll keep trying hard at my little extensions and houses. You never know.

Down the Pan

My fellow blogger, the excellent Mr B*******s to Architecture, has already poked fun at this one, but having looked at the RIBA Crapper of the Future competition myself, I could not resist some further derision. For some reason, the RIBA is fascinated with various methods of enclosing the space to point percy at the porcelain and decided that what we need in the middle of a wretched and miserable recession is a competition for reinventing the wheel - that is, a totally new design for a bog.

Surprise, surprise, the big boys have all come out on top - although I wonder if any of us pond life actually had the time to piss around and enter what must be the competition of the year when we are desperately trying to keep the bank from demolishing our businesses.

If I was going to enter, what would I consider the ultimate in bog experience? What would be toilet heaven? As a female, my perspective is slightly different from you men, so please forgive me if this doesn't appeal to you.

1. Whatever shape it is, whatever silly blob or shard shaped shed it is housed in, it must be clean. To be clean, surfaces must be easily wipeable, therefore shiny. No cutting cash corners by using bare block. It has to be tiles.

2. A comfy seat. To me, it has to be timber, as it tends to be warm when sat on.

3. A damn good flush. None of those wretched things sat right on top of the pan - I like high level cisterns which deliver a good 'whoosh!'

4. No evidence that anyone has ever used it before me. This means a little room to house an attendant, the sort who keeps the place so clean you feel you should take your shoes off before entering, and no I don't mind leaving a few coins for her (not him - I cannot stand male cleaners in that most female of places - a ladies' loo)

5. Warm water and soap, and the kind of hand driers that nearly blow your skin off. Or clean towels - what is the use of those things that puff airy fairy amounts of luke warm air at you, leaving you to either wipe your hands on your trousers, or grab loads of loo roll to dry off properly?

6. Industrial amounts of loo roll in huge rollers that don't run out by the minutes.

7. Cubicles sealed from top to bottom - I don't want to hear next door's efforts, thanks.

8. Lots and lots and lots of cubicles. Whoever designs women's bogs just doesn't understand that two cubicles for an entire cinema audience just won't do it. Why are there never any queues outside mens' loos? Because they don't have to get undressed to pee. Think about it.

Notice I have not mentioned the building once. The best loos are not these sad stand alone things that just ask vandals to give them a good kicking, they are incorporated within another building. As for daft boxes shaped like Hercules, or with coloured flaps on the top - what is the point of that? Just a nice door within a warm public building, supermarket, railway station, cinema - etc with a big sign saying 'TOILET' will do.

As for our glorious president, where's his head at? Up his bum? He certainly ain't listening to us.

Swine Flu

Ha! That got your attention! No, I have not had the relatively mild and hysteria inducing illness that is infecting the entire country and is going to wipe out what is left of the economy. It does make me laugh, though - whatever would happen if a really serious disease arrived here?

Cast your minds back, if you will, to the winter of 1349 and 1350. That is the year the Black Death crept into a population weakened by war and bad harvests. There was no Tamiflu, no paracetemol, no aspirin and no comfort or relief from a truely awful and disgusting illness - where all the lymph nodes in the armpits, neck and groin swelled up grotesquely with huge, black, pus laden buboes. The only relief came in the form of a swift death, between four and seven days after infection. Between a quarter and a third of the entire population of Europe died. Imagine the horror - think of all the people you know and love, then take a third of them away.

Of course you all know that the 14th century was a great period for building, when some of the greatest cathedrals and a huge number of parish churches were either under construction or were being enhanced, extended or generally showered with gifts from rich benefactors. There were huge numbers of skilled tradesmen, stonemasons being the top of the heap, with carpenters, glaziers, painters and metal smiths all busy producing the best of their crafts.

The great cathedral at Wells in Somerset is covered with sculpture,, the skill and care of the masons is breathtaking. Inside, the capitals are decorated with what is known as 'stiff leaf' carving, a stylised form of foliage which has the roots of its tradition in classical architecture, as shown in the photo above. These capitals can be seen all the way down the nave... hold on. As we walk towards the west, following the sequence of building, the capitals become mere buds, malformed and ill favoured. You can probably guess. The skilled masons had the Black Death, there were few of them left to carve capitals and the job was given to the boy. With the economy in such a poor way, it is likely that there was little money to pay for such luxuries anyway.

This is only one tiny visible part of the scything effect on the population of such a dreadful disease. The consequences for the economy, the Church, the law and family life were permanent. And we're worried about swine flu. Puts it in perspective, doesn't it?

Client Appreciation

My client wanted to know how much his refurbishment and new outbuildings would cost. It was a large-ish job for me, about £400,000 worth of loving repairs and alterations to a huge Victorian rectory in a small village in the middle of this rural county. I estimated as best I could, and told him that some things could not be valued as it was impossible to know until work started. This sounds odd to a layman – how can building works not have a fixed price? We know what we want to do, don’t we?

Well, yes, but it isn’t as simple as that.

I am standing in the loft space. The work entails major repairs so that the whole lot doesn’t collapse, leak or blow off, or do anything other than do what a good roof should do and keep the rain off. The roof has already had a good deal of work and a bad partial conversion from Mr Bodgit about 8 years ago, without the benefit of building regulations approval, drawings, or knowing what he was doing.

The foreman has just taken up the floor in a particular area and found that the main trusses are rotten at the feet, and worse, there is no wall plate. Double worse, the wall is a very poor soft brick construction, with an outside skin of posh bricks. This is fairly common in buildings of this age, but in this case, the two skins of brickwork had no ties to speak of holding the external, load bearing and very important bit of wall together. What do I do? says the foreman.

Now, I could do one of two things. I could solve the problem there and then, and the builders get on with the work with no delays, but of course there is a cost involved which will not be quantified immediately. The work is essential and will have to go ahead otherwise the place will collapse. I could tell the foreman to wait, whilst I write a specification for the work and get the contractor to price it. This could take up to a week. Meanwhile, the builders are kicking their heels, unable to get on. Why? Because until the structure is complete, the roof tiles cannot be put on. Until the tiles are on and the building is watertight, the plaster finishes and fittings cannot be done. The delay has to be paid for to cover the contractors ‘loss and expense’ which are costs to keep the site running, insurance, wages, portable loo, etc, etc. It can run into hundreds, if not thousands of pounds a week. So I solve the problem there and then and there are no delays - mitigating the loss, I think insurers call it.

Enter the client, furious that there is an extra cost. He gives me a very nasty time on the phone, telling me I should have told him how much it would be first and accusing me of not doing my job. Would he have halted the work with the roof half off for the sake of the (relatively small) extra cost? Would he have done the project at all had he known the cost at the outset? Is there scope for savings on his fancy bathroom with the silly Japanese leaky bath and the even sillier energy guzzling American fridge?

Whereas bathrooms and kitchens and furniture are ephemeral and will go out of fashion in a few years, structure, the thing it all sticks to, does not. Yes, Mr Client, I am doing my job – not that you appreciate it. I am currently expecting a letter from his lawyer, in response to a complaint made by my client from his lovely, new, dry, structurally sound holiday home.

Into the Abyss

I am furious. Really, really spitting with rage. I have been this way for some time, since those lunatics running the asylum have managed to smash the economy into tiny bits in order to feed the monster that is the financial services 'industry'. My own beloved industry actually produces something useful rather than convoluted balance sheets and dodgy investment vehicles, but the government does not see fit to pump billions of my money and yours into it to stop it falling flat on its face.

Of course, I have been through all this before, and the sheer inevitability of it all is particulary galling. First, there is a government inspired financial disaster, which results in the sources of money drying up. As you all know, building something cost a lot of money, and it is very rare indeed to find anyone, private or corporate, who can just dip into their pockets to fund such a project. The money has to be borrowed, granted or cashed in from selling something else. Last time, it was the high interest rates that stuffed us all. This time it is the fecklessness of the nits in the City, and the limp wristed regulation perpetrated by the lawyers and bean counters running the country. The end result is the same - no money for you and me.

From no money comes no construction. Big projects are mothballed half way through as the finance dries up. Small projects never get out of the ground. Big architectural practices, who have whole teams of architects, technologists and admin staff suddenly find their people have nothing to do. After desperate attempts to breathe life into stalling projects, and cutting fees to the bone, they have no choice but to sack 30, 50 or more.

The small practioner has one project which does not go ahead and has to go to the bank to help with cashflow. Although of course the bank is no longer lending, not to the little people, anyway.

Other consultants also rely on the construction industry, such as engineers, mechanical consultants, bat specialists, landscape architects and those bods who calculate carbon emissions. None of these are getting enquiries either.

The contractors are no longer getting tenders to price. The sub contractors, electricians, plumbers, painters, heating engineers, do not get asked by the contractors for prices for packages of work. Hundreds, thousands of skilled tradesmen are thrown out of their jobs.

Desperate, and knowing only one industry, many buy vans with their redundancy pay and scratch a living doing jobbing work. Architects and technologists set up their own practices, tiny little one man bands, operating from the spare room or a corner of the living room. They make a living from loo extensions and tiny little alterations. The profession fractures into a thousand small peices.

Many skilled tradesmen move into other sectors, their skills lost to an ancient and noble industry on its knees. Come the time things improve, many tradesmen decide not to go back to the long hours and the possibility of yet another crash. Quality suffers as there are no longer enough skilled people to carry out conservation work or high quality new build.

As for those little practices, they tend to stay little, realising that the only way to survive is to stay independent with as few overheads and responsibilities as possible. Just like Alice. We are the ones referred to as 'bottom feeders' by our own RIBA Director of Practice not so long ago. Nice. Charming attitude towards those who pay his salary. Of course, he knows not what he says as he is not at the coal face of the industry as we are, but sits in a nice, protected, well paid cocoon - rather like those bankers who started it all.

Could they be related?

Winter of Discontent

During such a long and dreary winter... in the middle of what looks like the winter of the UK economy, I could hardly raise my little digits to the keyboard to write. However, now the daffs are all out and looking joyful, Alice's spirits are rising along with the sap. This is despite the wretched state of the construction industry which, I fear, still has a long way to fall.

Let us not be downhearted! Among the little joys of archi-life recently, I was delighted to receive a press release from the Architects' Registration Board (ARB), that esteemed body who guards the title 'architect' with all the might and tenacity of a Jack Russell. To explain, an architect can only call themselves 'architect' if they are registered with the ARB. Our function is not protected - any Tom, Dick or Crispin can carry out all the labyrinthine tasks of an architect without any penalty at all, but call themselves an architect and the full fury of the ARB descends upon them.

The ARB also disciplines naughty architects, and can reprimand, fine or even erase a bad boy from the register. Erasure (or striking off, if you want the old fashioned term) will not stop one of these miscreants from practising - just as long as they don't call themselves an architect, and the general public will be none the wiser.

A most interesting press release from ARB dropped into Alice's inbox lately. That esteemed great classicist, Quinlan Terry , has just been hauled up in front of the Professional Conduct Committee for demolishing two Grade 2 listed buildings in Westminster. A rather odd thing to do, I thought, for such a great man and fan of all things old and classically formed. It is a criminal offence to damage or destroy listed buildings, and it is no doubt that Terry was most embarrassed to come away from court with a criminal record and an eye watering fine of £25,000. Breathless, I read on, wondering if the classical world was about to be deprived of the wonderous Quinlan for good, as architects convicted of a crime relating to the very heart of our profession do not tend to curry much favour with the ARB . Alice need not have worried. The Committee made the brave and most correct decision to implement the full might of their law and gave him a reprimand. As they rightly said, whilst making him stand in the naughty corner for five minutes, he is an architect of some standing, and the world would be a poorer place if he had to call himself an 'architectural designer'.

I wonder what would have happened if it had been Alice instead?

Answers on a postage stamp, please.

Prunes

Although it was a lovely June day, there was no-one sitting in the garden. There was a lovely old beech tree for shade, a seat around the trunk, a sunny stretch of lawn, a patio and veranda in front of the large Edwardian house. But no-one was out there enjoying it. Odd, I thought – old people in homes often like to get outside for a while, in the sun.

I parked on the shingled drive and knocked on the door. I was there to carry out a survey with a view to putting a large extension on the back, for more bedrooms. The house itself was an old rectory, and had already been extended piecemeal with rather ugly flat roofed boxes, which were in poor repair and difficult to heat. The idea was to demolish all these and build anew.

The hall was painted in lurid pink, very badly done, over wood chip paper designed to hide the poor plaster underneath. The hall carpet was violently patterned in red and gold, and there were little tables with rubbishy trinkets on everywhere. The whole effect was tatty, tacky and made me want to put on my sunglasses. I was simultaneously hit by the smell. When you think of how much people pay to be looked after in these places, you would think the least that would happen is that they would be kept clean. Oh, no – that seemed far too much to ask. The fusty, mouldy, dead smell of unwashed flesh and incontinence enveloped me, accentuated by the high temperature from central heating backed up with an electric fan heater. Notes of burning dust and an underlying smell of dry rot and boiled cabbage completed the aroma.

I started in the bedrooms, most of which were empty as the residents were downstairs. One woman had refused to leave, and was being persuaded by the carer – ‘Come downstairs! Come downstairs!’ The old woman’s eyes were cloudy, she was nearly blind and obviously very deaf. On her bedside table was a framed photo of what must have been herself and her husband, taken fifty years or even longer ago – two proud, smart and smiling people in spotless military uniform.

The rooms were odd shapes, made from partitioning off larger rooms, in what must once have been a very grand house. The partitions were rickety and it was possible to hear what was going on several rooms away. The furnishings were old and tatty and the paintwork dreadful – all violent purples and violets and screaming greens. The en suites were horrible little hovels of broken tiles, dirty, spider-lurking corners and stained avocado sanitary ware. Above all, that pervading smell.

The ‘living’ room was as usual in these places; many upright chairs with tiny little women in them, crumpled under blankets, bundled up in many cardigans and with the ‘cotton wool’ hair style which seems to be the only thing hairdressers are capable of when doing ‘seniors’. There was only one man I could see, his gaunt face and light blue eyes brightened into a smile when he saw me. He spoke, but it was incomprehensible. I think he was from Newcastle.

The dining area had no windows, and the glaring colours were made worse by the ghastly fluorescent lighting. I was offered tea, and a plate of broken biscuits accompanied it. I was just about to pick one, when a flabby man with a sink plunger in his hand grabbed some and rushed off, saying ‘This job makes you hungry!’ I picked an undisturbed biscuit from the very edge of the plate. My caution was well advised – I found out he had been unblocking the loo with that sink plunger only moments before.

A nurse hurried up to me. She had on pancake make up. She asked if I was going into all the rooms? When I said I was, she pursed her lips and said ‘Well, Mr George is in his room with his cat and may not want to be disturbed – I’ll have to accompany you anyway’. Although I had already told them it was fine, and I expected to be escorted for security reasons (in case one of the residents accused me of taking their handbag) she seemed doubtful. Eventually, she gave in, I had the feeling she just couldn't be bothered, in the same way that no-one could be bothered to help the residents outside to enjoy the sunshine.

Mr George’s room had once been the sun room. It had glass on three sides, and was the kind of room suitable for occasional sitting or eating on a warm day, whilst admiring the garden. Unfortunately for the residents, the tight fisted, parsimonious and uncaring owners had decided it was yet another room from which they could squeeze silly money every week. The windows were running with water from condensation and it was cold. There was black mould in the corners of the ceiling and a big stain from the leaking flat roof. Mr George struggled towards me on two sticks, shouting ‘Hello there!’ and smiling, all gums. His tatty clothes bulged over rolls of fat. In the corner there was a litter tray, full of cat droppings. It had not been emptied for several days and the smell added another dimension to the general overall pong. On the narrow bed a cat crouched, his paws tucked underneath and his plume of a tail wrapped against his flank, all neat like cats are. He was all bright ginger and white; a huge set of white whiskers set forwards at this stranger in his room and his huge yellow eyes were wide. ‘He’s my friend!’ shouted Mr George.

In this dreadful place, the bright, healthy and beautiful creature shone like the sun.

*Part of the 'Five a Day' series inspired by Which End Bites