friday before bank holiday weekend. three days away from work and on my way to southwest coastal counties of england ... cornwall.

going to see eden project and laze by the beach and read books and eat fish&chips. weather's not going to hold its sunny side up but i'm good with snuggling under sheets with book too.

for today, i rush work. boss in mexico for site visit. so its a good time in the office ... actual work without someone hounding me constantly. shioks. but had long lunch in chinatown. now having a bottled 'oatmeal stout' in the office. quite tasty - like a cross between lager and guiness. shioks.

went to the barbican for the first time yesterday.

partly for work, partly to see a performance in the evening.

its a oddly quaint, quietly heroic place and i want to live there more than ever. in the barbican, there is a theatre, a symphonic hall, an art gallery, a man-made lake, restaurants, 8 storey apartments and 20+ storey towers. there are many levels of public walkways leading to the various entrance lobbies and its a mini-city built in sometimes heroic, sometimes overly whimsical brutalist manners. there are walkways on top, below, in between ... quite a mini-city really. and in answer to the question posed to me by mark prizeman and david greene way back in 2001 - yes, i do like the spatial quality of the barbican and yes my design is a bit like the barbican but rather than to create a self-sufficient piece of the city, i am designing spaces that connect to, enhance and are integral to the city and its functioning/life.

the performance i was party to was THE BLACK RIDER.
Direction, set and lighting by
Robert Wilson
Music and Lyrics by
Tom Waits
Text by
William Burroughs
Costumes by
Frida Parmeggiani
Original musical arrangements by
Greg Cohen and Tom Waits
Dramaturgy by
Wolfgang Wiens

it was fantastic. i have watched but a few musicals and a few plays in my time but always found even the best somewhat wanting. they were a bit of a fantasy that fell short of something that would make me wonder; or a play that is so serious that it forgets pace or other aspects that make a performance absorbing except for its appeals to sharing its concerns with the audience, etc. but the BLACK RIDER was fantastic.
The Black Rider tells an updated version of a 19th century story of a clerk who makes a Faustian contract with the Devil, accepting magic bullets to win the hand of his beloved in a shooting contest. Wilson's vivid images paid homage to German expressionism, Waits performed a shotgun marriage between Tin Pan Alley and burlesque horror music, while Burroughs' politically acute librettos gave unique insight into the mind of a character whose actions lead to tragic consequences.

i found the stage design wonderfully layered(literally and metaphorically), music was exciting and playful, flamboyant yet necessary; the movements and actions well written and full of (possible) connections. it was a wonderful evening for me even if i felt that it was probably not a vintage performance by the american cast. such an experience. i recommend it to some of you.

alright. back to work.

such a beautiful day out in london.
its mid-may and long overdue for tee-shirt weather!

mind, there have been warm weekends at the expected arrival of spring in early april but after one or two weekends of teasing, the cold came right back in! the weather finally seems to be warming up to the idea of spring ... or summer but without the benefit of artificial cover and climate control like humans, many of the plants in the square and plants specially prepared for spring and the ensuing summer weather bear the brunt of the fickle london clime. they have been fooled - they blossom and expose themselves, fully trusting that the sunshine and intermittent showers will provide them with what they need to be themselves for at least 5months, as their dna tell them it should. they let themselves be vulnerable and they were cheated. most of them are a withered brown and mope around with no hope of coming back to life. so sad ...

we of course just took our jackets back out of the closet and put them on. we wondered about how much sunshine we were being cheated of this year but we are now almost immune to weather changes except for the catastrophic.

but still, i have to say - now that sunshine is here, i have no mood to work!

football and fried beehoon with chicken curry picnic at regent's park next weekend! hope the weather holds up till then!

long time no blog. a case of no time to think since i started work actually.

but had time to go party (!!!) though.

torrance's welcome back party was the excuse for the long awaited trip to NEIGHBOURHOOD in nottinghill w12. it has been an even longer wait for me to go experience ben watts of EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL as dj. he is cool - no superstar dj nonsense, just good old house, tribal house to get bodies moving. his sunday afternoon sets at ARTS CLUB travelled by word of mouth and became legend. then he left. and i only get to know about it as hear-say. loser.

luckily, he upped and opened one small club and then N'HOOD as the almost spanking new 600-persons club under a highway. it was so cool.

old bloke like me started recounting all the 'club culture' proclamations from the WIRE, dj and other assorted lifestyle, youth culture, anticulture mags i have browsed through, and wondered if there was indeed something to all that they were saying.

the club was almost all concrete surfaces - some rough edges and some rather intricate crafting (like that hole in the wall with truncated cylindrical surfaces - any pics, torr?). other than that, it was all lights of all sorts of colours. the lights from projectors listed the drinks menu behind the bar, the lights lit up dancing spaces and kept other spaces in the dark, the images from projectors interacted with the texture of the finishes on the wall to create graffiti that could be changed as often as one liked or was inspired to. and the music - can't help but move beats with unfamiliar pieces that somehow seem to let you in easy. it was accessible and it was good. no superstar dj nonsense.

people - more than fair share of beautiful people and for the first time - more chicks than blokes. have to say that the blokes there were very disappointing sort though. very ordinary looking and all seem more lecherous than out-to-have-a-good-time. felt that was weird cos that's not usually the case in london so far, although i'm certainly not saying that girls are not actually half the fun of being in a club....

weird recounting a club night in so many words ... so inappropriate.

heard from nc about the 13 people hired by dp from his year. and mingyin going to alsop (and not kayngeetanarchitects). wonder how everyone's first few weeks of work has been ...

for me, its weird being at the threshold of so many worlds. just done with rather hardcore academic/architectural optimistic environment of the aa and still half a foot in it; just started work at a small london practice and working on a 180room luxury hotel in knightsbridge that is both exciting but inherently gritty cos it has to lead to construction; reading fountainhead and immersed in the ultra convictions of the characters but also the world painted by ms. rand.

i dont know what to think really. so i just live by the day for now.

one remark about fountainhead tho. it has reminded me of my old thoughts more than inspire new ones. in that way, its rather dry for me but its a journey nonetheless. at least ms rand has very strong opinions on what the world as she saw it (then, or just for the book - i haven't read her other works) was and should be. the bit about not being able to tolerate incompetence so totally and letting that become a dividing line between black and white; allowing that to be the great true strength of the protagonist, is the one that stuck with me. i suddenly remembered that i too was once like that - a very long time ago. think i stepped down from that pedestal and all that anger when i caught sight of, and was caught short by, my own limits.

but already comparing roark and wynand, it would seem like there are more ways to deal with that knowledge ...

i'll finish the book. then i'll see if i have more to say.