MONDAY I’m making Advent much more relevant this year by working for a client who’s a ruthless giant internet retailer and who’s paying me to redesign Advent.
Yeah, Advent’s getting a sheeny, omnilayered fractal shakeover. I’m importing trans-global style narratives, incorporating supramorphic cultural push alerts and reworking the Christian calendar while I’m at it.
The First Day of Advent will begin on the Sunday after Black Friday, which follows Thanksgiving or Hannukah, whichever is closest to your credit limit.
From now on Advent will, I propose, be encased in a sparkling muslin sleeve, with windows along the side that open when you’ve collected enough reward points. All pets antlered. All snowflakes identical. Compliments of the season.
TUESDAY Once again I’m on the judging panel for the Creative on Sunday’s Hot Building Material of the Year Award.
The award is showcased in the newspaper’s ‘life and property’ section Equity, so we need a building material that will look good in situ. And by in situ we mean preferably the light-drenched living room of an expanded London terraced house currently rising in value by seven per cent a month.
The Hot Building Material of the Year must be infuriatingly cheap, with a boho insouciance that makes the featured unsmiling couple who’ve installed it the envy of their social circle.
After rejecting ‘a gorgeously ostentatious insulation’ made from panels of flamingo feathers and gold leaf and a ‘safely depleted’ uranium dado rail, we decide on ‘floorboards rescued from a neighbour’s skip’. The new owners do indeed look very pleased with them, and with themselves.
WEDNESDAY It suddenly occurs to me that – bear with me here – if we design in the present with a respect for the past we will create better buildings for the future.
Deep, yeah? It sounds so clever and insightful, I can’t believe nobody’s thought of it before.
THURSDAY Certain people were ‘shocked’ to discover recently that as much land is occupied by golf courses in England as by homes.
Oh boo hoo. Stop doing your clumsy impersonation of The Scream and get a grip, Munchniks. A golf course is a much more efficient use of land than homes, for the following reasons which should be obvious to anyone in the epic space industry.
Firstly, as per the definition of a garden as ‘an outside room’, that’s all a golf course is. One, admittedly massive, room.
Secondly, with that whole ‘one outside room’ thing still in your head, look at the number of people who use a typical golf course as opposed to, say, a typical living room. It’s not like you’ve got quartets of people queueing up to tramp across your living room at five-minute intervals all day is it, Mr and Mrs Munch?
Thirdly, a golf course is a place for quiet contemplation, a place to find inspiration. People going on about how many executive homes you could fit on a golf course should pause for a moment and ask themselves where architects and planners might actually BE when they’re mapping out that new development of luxury residential investment. That’s right. On the GOLF COURSE. OK, maybe in the clubhouse. But you can’t have a clubhouse without a golf course. Or maybe you don’t WANT architects and planners to have somewhere civilised to chat and think, is that what you’re saying?
Fourthly, and clinchingly, golf courses are green. They’ve even got the word ‘green’ in the … map thing. How many black redstarts or frogs or badgers have you got in your so-called ecological houses? None.
I rest my case, and by the way am definitely in the market for any golf course-related public inquiry work.
FRIDAY Boom. I’ve been appointed chief visionary for the Independent Scotland we all hope is just around the corner.
My new Scottish Design Guide will promote a rugged, swirling architecture, full of tartan grids and exquisite details with the word ‘wee’ in front. I want to nurture the ‘soul’ of Scotland, which is why I will be encouraging value growth and engineered well-being. Plus a land bridge to Scandinavia.
SATURDAY Five-a-zeitgeist theoretical football. Regenerational Colonialism 1, Resurgent Caledonialism 2, after penalty spellcheck and the discovery that theoretical football was actually invented in Caledonia.
SUNDAY Media review in the recliner. The Hot Building Material of the Year coverage in the Creative on Sunday looks good, but now the police are worried it might lead to a spate of floorboard burglaries.
December 6, 2013