Got the Blues for You

15-09-2009

There are architectural features that appear all the time, and no one evers complains that they are hackneyed and over-used - things like doors, or ceilings. Wherever you go; what's that rectangular feature in the wall over there? Oh, that'll be a door, then. And this thing above my head? That's the ceiling - very horizontal, don't you think? And see the dynamic juxtaposition in its relationship with the verticality of the door. How do they do that? I've never heard that conversation in any building I've ever visited.

But do we have to extend this bland acceptance of architectural gim-crackery to lines of blue light washing up / down / across every other plane of facade? And am I cross about the fact that it's there, or is it just that its BLUE - again?

(And what's got him started this time?)

Last night we drove into Dorchester to see the new Dorian Gray movie - of which much less will be written in years to come. And there, just up the way from The Junction pub, stands the new Health Centre and trendy metropolitan shops/eateries. A fine piece of design from the CZWG stable and a building that I've admired for some months, as it is opposite the entrance to 'Dorchester's World-Famous Open Air Market' . No - neither did I.

I love modern architecture in its many varied and abstract forms. For one thing, because its the right thing to do - but also because I have to travel through Poundbury to get into Dorchester and that piece of psychosis gets more surreal with every new building that goes up. But I don't see where it says that washes of blue light are obligatory for a new building - unless you look under chapter heading 'The New Urban Hegemony' in the handbook 'Homogeneity in Architectural Lighting '.

Guys - this is Dorchester. We have tree-lined avenues and a demented town-crier. We don't need your bog-standard, off-the-mind-shelf, lighting details. Give us something that speaks to our environment, rather than something that just shouts it's own big-booted urban-outsider status.