MONDAY Great excitement in the world of epic space. It’s Battle of the Styles Week, which happens every five years like a General Election but people get to elect an architectural theory instead of a political conspiracy.
This time it’s personal. There are only two contenders. The ridiculous, nebulous theory of ‘metarchitecture’ is championed by dandy meta-dachshund Bauhau and his insufferable companion, the theatrical agent Victoria Spong. I’m backing ‘Looks Nice Theory’, devised with my dear friend Darcy Farquear’say the architecture critic and his muse, the border collie Bess of Hardwick.
It’s an architecturally theoretical dog-eat-dog world. And Bess is going to have Bauhau for a light, wholly inadequate English breakfast.
TUESDAY In the morning, freestyle a design for an inflatable bridge over the Seine for the mayor of Paris.
In the afternoon, devise some oxygenated rhetoric for the mayor of London.
WEDNESDAY Submit my independent report for the government’s Home Solutions Discount Unit on how to create hundreds of thousands of affordable new flats and houses. I’ve kept it simple, in accordance with my modest fee. As usual there are five key recommendations:
• Houseprinters Charter. This would allow investors to buy really good synthetic house printers, then let them out for a steady lifetime income.
• Red Tape Cull. A select number of authorised consortia will be licensed to kill – humanely and in accordance with the Human Rights Act – any local authority officer identified as a ‘carrier’ of red tape.
• Cheers for Heroes. A housing boom is being persistently talked down at the poorer, more chaotic end of journalism. This has to stop. All media entities must now take a much more upbeat line or stand accused of hypocrisy. Please use hashtag #smilesbuildhomes.
• Wheels Within Wheels. For too long, wheelchair users were ignored, especially during that Labour government before the last one. Now is the time to make wheelchair users even more visible by creating Wheels Within Wheels – hubs of excellence at the heart of areas of commercial opportunity, liberated from the constraints of sentimentality and wheelchair access requirements, whatever, tidy this up later.
• Lightbulb Momentum. If Britain is to prosper it will be as a creative powerhouse. We need to pool our ideas. That’s why the government is inviting ideas – any ideas at all, from anyone at all – about how profitable housing might be built without the private sector having to bear a disproportionate burden. We look forward to lots of ideas!
Then just put ‘Yours sincerely, The Government’ at the end or something’?
THURSDAY Day off for tax purposes.
FRIDAY Here we go then. Battle of the Styles on Newsnight. A lot at stake here, and Darcy and Bess have cleverly turned it into a caninefocused class war.
First there’s a filmed piece by a sixth former in a moustache walking through Cumbernauld, explaining with archive film and classic pop music how architectural theory has been shit for decades. Back in the studio, against a collage of contemporary buildings taken from interesting angles, the BBC’s Emily Maitlis separates the combatants.
On her left Bauhau and Spong, in what look like matching camouflage pyjamas, are already barking away. ‘Metarchitecture means looking at the whole sandwich, not just the filling!’ ‘Arch arch arch! Rough rough rough!’
The new, very northern, Darcy remains impassive in his modest tweed suit, refusing to make eye contact with Bauhau. When it’s their go he casually consults Bess, who’s looking all calm and no-nonsense in her Cumbrian fleece and spectacles.
‘Aye, Bess reckons this fancy theory, this so-called metarchitecture, is just a middle-class conspiracy. You could get everyone who actually understands bloody so-called metarchitecture sat comfortably in a small community-owned pub garden with a complimentary bottle of wine between ’em. She says it’s high time architects started doing buildings that JUST LOOK NICE …’
Spong tries to interrupt but Darcy’s unconquerable. ‘We like old buildings, right, cos they’re the best thing about t’past. We like new ’uns too cos they’re best thing about t’future. They just want to LOOK NICE.’
He whistles. Bess does a crouching growl at Bauhau, who evacuates his bowels. Emily moves on to the crisis in Greece.
SATURDAY Result’s still too close to call. Even Twitter is torn between ‘thickos’ and ‘poshos’.
SUNDAY Oh NO. The Creative on Sunday has ruled that the prevailing architectural theory for the next five years will be Redactivism, devised by social commentator Emma Shoe – and Pussy Riot, her fucking CAT!
November 1, 2012