Cry Foul

Spot the difference.

in Fulham and Hammersmith there is a, at youngest, middle-aged, middle class caucus devoted to scrutinising planning applications. We usually get rolled over by the developers. On Talgarth Road the original planning application retained the mature trees on site. Subsequently they were felled. On the Fulham Reach development the original planning application agreed to retain a mature willow tree. Subsequently it was to be felled and would have been without local intervention. Incidentally this “dangerous” tree is flourishing after many storms in recent years and the wind is strongest along the river.

At Craven Cottage, home to Fulham Football Club, a pier has sprouted out into the river; eighty metres out into the river. It is preposterous. A good idea to have a dock for ferries on the riverside but not jutting out eighty metres. The pictures above are computer generated images – computers look through rose coloured spectacles. Here is the reality.

Planners are cunning. Always a good plan to ask for something unobtainable and make the locals think they have won a great victory when the pier “only” juts out forty metres or a few floors are lopped off a high-rise monstrosity.

The Serpentine pavilion this year is by Theaster Gates. Here is his architectural philosophy.

Theaster Gates lives and works in Chicago. Gates creates work that focuses on space theory and land development, sculpture and performance. Drawing on his interest and training in urban planning and preservation, Gates redeems spaces that have been left behind. Known for his recirculation of art-world capital, Gates creates work that focuses on the possibility of the “life within things.” Gates smartly upturns art values, land values, and human values. In all aspects of his work, he contends with the notion of Black space as a formal exercise – one defined by collective desire, artistic agency, and the tactics of a pragmatist. (theastergates.com)

What a load of pretentious twaddle or maybe I just don’t understand his vocabulary. Anyway, his Serpentine pavilion is called Black Chapel and may look like this.