Moving Time

In the wake of the Grenfell tower fire in London, there's been a lot of anger, and questions being asked. If you aren't up on it, I'll point out that a lot of people are focusing on the cladding added to the outside walls a few years ago. The Times has revealed that they used cheaper flammable cladding for a total saving of £5000.

The Guardian published a controversial column by journalist Simon Jenkins claiming that residential towers themselves are just too dangerous, and we need to push society away from them.

That really seems to be coming out of nowhere. One thing this incident had made me appreciate is how safe buildings normally are. In looking for precedents for this fire, journalists have gone to a fire in Melbourne in 2014. Not to diminish the tragedy of either event, but given the huge number of of residential towers, the fact that they had to go back two years and the other side of the world shows how seldom big fires do happen. Fires in apartment buildings happen all the time, but the fact that they so rarely consume a whole building is a tribute to how well our building codes work, and why this fire needs to be put under the microscope.

Also, his attempt to lay all of society's ills at the foot of tall buildings seems strange. He contends that they destroy communities and cannot be part of a livable city - which is of course news to people around the world. But the argument is especially odd given the out-of-control housing prices around the world, and at epic levels in the UK. Moving away from apartment blocks would make that problem much worse. Solving phantom societal problems with no concern for the less fortunate is what we would expect from Britain's tabloids, not the Guardian.

Of course, this is all rooted in the British experience with high density housing. Scores of ugly, poorly thought-out blocks were thrown up quickly in the mid-twentieth-century. So Britons associate them with slums, instead of luxury condos or that first apartment you had out of college. Essentially this article is the old American problem: a judgement based on that nation's own experience, oblivious to the fact that it would be disproven with even the slightest knowledge of the outside world.

But the big difficulty going forward will be to change the culture. For years the western world has believed in the idea that regulation is inherently bad and getting rid of it is always the right thing to do. For instance, here's former British PM David Cameron five years ago, saying that he wants to kill the health and safety culture.

I'm seeing the same pattern that we had in Canada after the Lac-Mégantic train accident: the public asks how this could happen in such an advanced country, oblivious to the decades of deregulation that preceded it. At that point, many excitable journalists saw this anger and frustration coalescing into a political issue that would demand greater accountability for public safety. I, on the other hand, felt that you just needed to give the public time to forget, and then they'll go back to their attitude of slow-motion Galtization.

In the British case, I could more easily picture it becoming a shift in political thinking. For one thing, they have an aggressively left-leaning party with all the momentum, and a right-wing party that's in disarray on several fronts. But more than anything, the issue has become a class matter, with poor people feeling like this is a personal struggle. That's in sharp contrast to this side of the Atlantic, where the fury that's getting all the play is coming from the middle class.

A good symbol of the start of the shift is the call by Labour's Jeremy Corbyn to house the fire's homeless in the many empty houses in the area that are owned by absentee landlords. This has lead to one of those political situations where the two sides are so completely opposed that they are each trying to demonize the other simply by quoting their opponents, without even needing to exaggerate or twist their words. That's the point at which there is no doubt that there are different visions, rather than different spins on a general consensus, so it may well be that a lot of Britons have truly shifted their political sensibilities.

Subterranean Home: Sick, Alien

You know what would be a good idea: double basements.  That is, you have a basement that's twice as deep, so you have two floors underground.  I know it sounds crazy, but think of the benefits: you have more room in your house without compromising the space in your yard.  You have free insulation.  The ground moderates the temperature of the interior.  But best of all, it is the embodiment of the suburban dream: you live near your neighbours, yet you can also get far, far away from them.

I know, you don't like the idea of living below ground without windows.  Well, you don't really need windows: it's not like the view really changes in suburbia. Besides, in our modern world, you probably aren't looking up from your screens very often anyway, so who needs to look outside. And here in Canada, you'll only be missing out on the twelve days a year that the temperature is right for opening the windows.

And in addition to you not needing to look outside, people outside don't need to look at your house.  Most suburban houses are either small-and-simple, or big-and-ugly. Putting most of the girth underground saves you from having to come up with one decoration after another.  You have enough exposed house to express your sense of style, but you don't feel the need to add gratuitous arches and columns.

So I went googling the idea, but I found that my radical idea was a little too advanced for our timid development industry, saying that it's "too expensive," "probably illegal," and "you'll die from radon." But there was some precedent of it in Britain. It makes sense there, since space is at a premium, and rules often restrict your ability to add on to existing buildings. So if you want to have a big house, but you also want to live in London, building down might be your only choice.

I think that would be ideal: you're living in the city, but you can still have a quiet getaway deep in the earth. So that's what I'll do if I ever make billions.  That, or I'll build a mansion in the suburbs that will be disguised as a normal house.  There'll be a huge basement that takes up the entire property, but only a normal-sized house sticking up above ground, with no indication of anything unusual. The garage will have an elevator down to my car collection. And I'll make a deal with the developer to build my house before anyone else in the subdivision moves in, so no one will know there's anything unusual about it.

Eighters Gonna Eight

I see Niagara Falls has a campaign on to get named as the eighth wonder of the world. Normally I'm supportive of this nearby landmark. Having grown up with it, I don't find out as awe-inspiring as some. But I do love how it so seamlessly blends natural beauty, dignified spectacle, and the downright cheesy.

However, I can't support this campaign. For illustration, here is the original list of wonders:

Original Seven Wonders

• Great Pyramid of Giza
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon
• Statue of Zeus at Olympia
• Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
• Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
• Colossus of Rhodes
• Lighthouse of Alexandria

There have been many newer attempts to make a list. Probably the biggest was from a Swiss group in 2007. Here's the list they came up with:

New Seven Wonders

• Great Wall of China
• Petra, Jordan
• Christ the Redeemer, Rio
• Machu Picchu
• Chichen Itza, Mexico
• Roman Colosseum
• Taj Mahal

plus the Great Pyramid of Giza was an honorary member as the only remaining member of the original seven.

What do they all have in common? They're all artificial. Specifically, they are all amazing, awe-inspiring structures, things that make you wonder how they were built, and hopefully not realize that the answer is usually, "slaves."

This seems to be a problem for Canadians in general. While that 2007 list was being compiled, the CBC had their own campaign to get people to nominate their choices for the seven wonders of Canada. Here's their list:

Seven Wonders of Canada

• The Canoe
• The Igloo
• Niagara Falls
• Old Quebec
• Pier 21, Halifax
• Prairie Skies
• The Rockies

So three are natural, two are just general items, and only two actually fit the original pattern of notable structures. And neither of them is really that wondrous, but just historic.

To be clear, I've got nothing against a country defining its identity through nature or common experiences rather than expensive showing-off. Actually it’s quite impressive: Honestly, how many countries could get to our level of prosperity and only feel the need to build one totally phallic megastructure.

But that doesn't mean you can just change the topic when people are discussing something else. If I'm asked to name my proudest athletic achievement, I can't just start talking about getting 100% on a math test, even if I've decided that's more important to me.

So I’d like to see a list of artificial Canadian wonders, even if it turns out to be less impressive than the natural ones. It turns out Toronto Star Architecture & Urban Planning critic Christopher Hume has already made his own such list. It doesn't make direct reference to nature-centred efforts to define us, but does seem conscious of that tendency of ours.

So here’s my list:

• CN Tower
• Trans-continental railroad
• St. Lawrence Seaway
• Confederation Bridge
• L’Anse aux Meadows
• Château Frontenac
• Stanley Park Totem Poles

Just so you know, the same people who came up with the New Seven Wonders also had a list of seven natural wonders:

• Iguazu Falls, Argentina and Brazil
• Jeju Island, South Korea
• Komodo Island, Indonesia
• Puerto Princesa Underground River, Philippines
• Table Mountain, Cape Town
• Halong Bay, Vietnam
• Amazon Rainforest, South America

How the hell did the Great Barrier Reef not make it? Anyway, the only Canadian thing on the short list was the Bay of Fundy.

Russian Modernism

This architect is terrible at Tetris.

Lifestyles Of The Rich And Inconvenienced

Someone is building a condo tower on Miami aimed at the super rich. And when I say super rich, I don't mean someone who can afford a condo in Miami. They are trying to target billionaires. It's called the Porsche Design Tower, because it is being designed by Porsche Design (the cash-in-on-the-name division of Porsche, the car company.)

It's appropriate that the building is associated with a car company: The big draw is that it actually has a car elevator in it, so you can park your car (actually, "cars") in a garage adjoining your condo, with a glass wall so you can enjoy a view of your automotive collection in your condo. And your cars can be terrified by the view from the sky they were never meant to experience.

This brings up something I've thought odd about rich people: their desire for expensive versions of inherently cheap things. The best example is in plane seating. Airlines keep coming up with more luxurious first or business class seats, with mini desks, seats that recline into something approximating a bed, etc.

Emirates first class, which you can see in Google Streetview

If you look at the first class cabin in the context of an airline cabin, it looks luxurious. But in any other context it looks torturous. Imagine walking into the office of your new employer and seeing that all the desks look like that; you'd either leave, or form a union. Or to put it another way, the occupants of these seats will be paying tens of thousands of dollars to spend seven hours in an environment that's less comfortable than a modest basement apartment.

And this condo tower is much the same. It's still prone to all the problems of apartment/condo living. You still might get caught with a neighbour that plays loud music, or someone who smokes on the balcony. And worse, in this tower it will be a smelly cigar, and music played by the actual band.

Stadium Love

As a fan of both sports and architecture, I've always been interested in stadiums. (And as a fan of proper English, I've always been interested in "stadia.") And like many people, I'm no fan of the two most annoying trends in stadiums: ever more extravagant stadiums built with civic money extorted by teams threatening to move, and the often ridiculous sponsor-purchased names.

Both those trends reached new heights recently. The disposable stadiums problem was emphasized when the Atlanta Braves announced a deal to replace their current home, Turner Field. That stadium isn't too old itself: it was built for the Summer Olympics in 1996, then modified for baseball the next year.  It seems the Braves didn't like the location of the old stadium, and the city of Atlanta wouldn't pay for renovations, but one of the suburbs would pay for an unspecified amount of an entirely new stadium.

This gets more bizarre when you see that the Atlanta Falcons are leaving the Georgia Dome (built 1992) for their own new home.  So this most conservative part of America is going to be building two unnecessary partly-taxpayer-funded stadiums at the same time.

How does this happen?  Sports teams are very visible and have an emotional connection with the public, so losing them looks really bad for politicians, and money gets spent on them not the sewage treatment plant no one knows needs replacing. Eventually sports teams are going to push this too far and finally ask for too much.  But it's hard to image it could get sillier than abandoning a stadium barely old enough to drive. 

Both these buildings will have the naming rights sold to the highest bidder, so Atlanta-area taxpayers will have to live with not just paying for a stadium, but paying for Chick-Fil-A Field or the Piggly-Wiggly Dome or something. The idea of sponsors buying naming rights has already produced names that are difficult to talk about with a straight face. But now Rogers is going to make it more difficult, with news that they've bought the naming rights to the new arena in Edmonton. It will be known as Rogers Place. But wait, don't they already own the rights to Vancouver's arena? Yes, but that's Rogers Arena. Which is also not to be confused with Rogers Centre in Toronto (nee SkyDome.) If you have trouble remembering which of Disney World or Disney Land is in California and which is in Florida, them you're never going to get this straight.