Proper wuthering

Lovely piece from Martin Wainwright in the the walks supplement with today's Guardian, in which he rhapsodises about the wuthering beauty of Ogden Water and Ovenden Moor, wind farm and all, just north of Halifax (described, rather curiously, as a 'market town' - while there is a great indoor market, I'd say it's still a classic mill town).

There's also directions for the walk, which I've been round a few times myself.

JG Ballard 1930-2009

JG Ballard, probably the greatest British novelist of the 20th century, died yesterday after a long battle with prostate cancer. He's been a huge influence on and inspiration for my own non-commercial work (writing and photography), and in recent years I've been an irregular contributor to the Ballardian website. The site editor, Simon Sellars, asked me to write something as part of the tribute to the man and his work. I sent the following.

I first read JG Ballard when I was 12 or so, after picking up 'Crash' (with that lurid orange Chris Foss cover) at a village hall jumble sale. I occasionally wonder to what degree this might have affected my development.

Over the next decade or so, I picked up a few other titles, but none hit me with quite the same force. I just wasn't struck by that intensity, that outrageous lucidity, which radiated from that battered paperback. But I gradually started to appreciate the subtler qualities of the writing, the humour, and the semi-detached perception. Gradually, his books started to just make sense to me. By the time I was living in a tiny flat in the dullest part of south London, barely writing a first novel and trying to find that elusive first job in journalism, I was a devotee.

So sometime round autumn 1996, I was thinking Ballardian thoughts as I trundled through the South Croydon wastelands towards an interview at some obscure trade journal. At the interview, the editor noted that, according to my desperately padded CV, I was working on a novel. 'Oh yeah,' he said. 'JG Ballard used to work here.' I got the job.

That's basically my Ballardian claim to fame - I used to do JG Ballard's old job at 'Chemistry & Industry'. Well, more or less - he was deputy editor, a role that didn't exist in my time, while I was production assistant and reporter. The magazine was still at the same premises on Belgrave Square, surrounded by the same pubs and curved balconies of concrete hotels, and my desk was certainly old enough to pre-date the 1950s. I felt a certain kinship.

The one time I met the man himself was in February 1998 at the ICA, where he was talking about movies with David Leland. Afterwards, Ballard stayed on stage to chat with anyone who wanted to jump up and say hello, even as the ICA staff tried to clear the room for the next event. I said I was doing his old job and showed him my business card. He briefly reminisced about his own time there, and seemed genuinely pleased and interested to hear how things were going, some four decades after.

My plan to follow in his footsteps by rapidly finishing an acclaimed novel or two, then quitting work to write in creative seclusion, never quite worked out. But he remained an inspiration, in work and life. That long-unfinished first novel definitely bears his influence (along with Norman Mailer, another recent loss), though possibly not in ways detectable to anyone else. As an intensely visual writer, he's also a constant presence when I'm out taking photographs. Whether in stories or pictures, that influence comes from his unique way of seeing - that forensic examination of the landscapes of the late 20th century, the disasters and psychopathologies, the art and the technology. That medically-trained analysis of the nature of the catastrophe, and the acceptance of it all.

Ballard's also proved a near-infallible guide to a parallel world of literature (though, personally, I still can't be bothered with Self or Amis Jr). Any book I might find while scavenging secondhand shops which carries an adulatory blurb from the man gets added to the pile. Equally, I've found various writers (from Nathanael West to John Gray) by other routes and been greatly impressed by them, only later finding that they're also favourites of Ballard's. And of course you could build a library out of the many other writers, artists, musicians and film-makers who've acknowledged their deep debts to the man.

Unlike many of the other folk adding their tributes here, I'm not a literary critic or academic (nor, to be honest, would I wish to be). I'm a fan, though I wish there was another word for that. And through my developing fascination with the man's work, I've been privileged to meet, drink, and make friends with a whole bunch of fantastically creative and intelligent people, of all ages and professions, from as near as Sheffield to as far as Australia, who've all been equally enthused in their own idiosyncratic ways.

Apart from the infinitely explorable mass of his writing, I think maybe that's the legacy of JG Ballard - the dispersed generations of people who might call themselves, in whatever sense, Ballardians. The readers for whom his writing and his vision just made sense. The saddest realisation is that there'll be no more.



Pics: (Top) Set of photos by Donovan Wylie for an unpublished magazine profile of JG Ballard, on show at the 'Autopsia del nou Mil.leni' exhibition at CCCB, Barcelona, October 2008.
(Above) JG Ballard's childhood home at 31a Amherst Avenue in Shanghai's old international settlement, now the SH508 restaurant, October 2008.

And back

I'm back from the visit to San Diego, more or less refreshed after another temporally disorienting brace of flights (left the hotel 4am Sunday, home at 8am Monday). A very worthwhile and enjoyable trip, though, meeting everyone from the Mayor to a bunch of dudes making environmentally-friendly surfboards (possibly the most Californian business imaginable). I'll be doing a full write-up for Cleantech Magazine. There's more pics from the trip on my Flickr stream.

In the meanwhile, Cleantech's latest Infocus publication features another article by myself on venture capital investment in smart grid companies, an area that was high on the agenda in San Diego where the local utility is gearing up to install some 1.4 million smart meters in homes. Also due out is the latest annual review from Private Equity International with my review of the European mid-market; and, next week, another technology focus section for Crain's Manchester Business, looking at smart tech investment in a downturn and also featuring an unexpected bit of Hollywood glamour.

White out

Bit snowy round our way today.

Bish bash HBOS

A worrying time for my home town of Halifax, with a significant number of local jobs sure to disappear in the wake of Lloyds' white knight takeover of HBOS. Exact numbers have yet to be announced, but I'd guess at least a thousand in the town - maybe more.

Lloyds has said that preserving jobs in Scotland will be a priority - job losses there were also small when the Halifax acquired the Bank of Scotland back in 2001, with most of the limited cutting then done at lower levels, and Edinburgh also had the honour of hosting the head office at the BoS's historic HQ on the Mound. So saving jobs there seems fair enough - the Guardian reports that the group has 6,459 employees in Edinburgh, a fairly significant chunk of well-paid employment in a city of 450,000.

But what's worrying is that nothing's been said about jobs in the Halifax' eponymous home. HBOS also employs around 6,500 in and around Halifax - and this is a town of just 90,000, with far fewer other major industries than the Scottish capital.

There are obvious political motives for favouring Scotland, which will put Labour into even more disfavour locally. Fair enough, most will say.

But the potential economic impact on the town and the surrounding area is likely to be terrible. The presence of the bank here - its head office until the BoS takeover and, after, the base of the expanded retail operations - has been the main factor in protecting the town from the worst of the industrial decline and saved it from being quite as bad as, say, Burnley. Any major reduction of HBOS employment would, alongside the general downturn, easily make it as bad as, say, Barnsley when the mines were closed. Not a happy prospect.

It might not be that bad, of course. There's inevitably going to be swingeing cuts at the common operations of the two merged groups, but it's a question of deciding how that's going to be split between Lloyds and HBOS. I'm less familiar with Lloyds' operations, but I'd guess the bulk of their operations are in London. It might then be an attractive option for them to cut jobs in that more expensive employment market, and keep them in the more cost-effective West Riding.

But even if that happens, I'd guess that in Halifax they'll be cutting from the top; and in London, from the bottom. Fewer well-paid, professional jobs here in finance, IT, management and so forth, but we'll likely still get the minimum-wage call centre and data input end. Not a great deal.

More generally, it's been fun to see the scrabbling for scapegoats to blame for the deeply shite state of the banking markets, and the faux outrage over the antics of the short-sellers and speculators who we are shocked (shocked!) to find are inclined towards amoral profit-seeking based on some rather unrealistic financial models. At least, I hope it's faux - surely no one who's been keeping the vaguest of eyes on the financial markets and the economic orthodoxy can honestly be remotely surprised?

As per the title of this blog (borrowed from Galbraith, of course), it looks like reality has caught up with its would-be escapees.

Terminal inactivity

Doesn't time fly? To prove I've not been totally inactive over the past month or so (government work - I'll say no more), here's a sort of photographic essay, exploring the terrain west of London through a thick filter of HG Wells and JG Ballard:

What we saw of the destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton.

Pace Egg play

On Friday (Good Friday, that is), we took ourselves up to Heptonstall for the first of the day's performances of the Pace Egg Play. The play's been traced back to the 1500s or so, but the obvious pagan roots suggest rather older roots. The current version has just been running since 1979 but, as this BBC story from last year relates, it's as close to the old play as possible given the effects of time and memory.

It's a rollicking performance, anyway. Many of the towns and villages on both sides of the Pennines have their own version, performed at Easter or new year, but Heptonstall's is reckoned to be one of the best in the 'combat' mode of the play.

More pics of the action over on my Flickr page.

(Apologies for the lack of recent action on this blog, by the way - I've been tied up recently on a contract with the Environment Agency, but the (un)usual service should be resumed soonish.)

Of all the trees most lovely

Photo taken in Brussels, December 2007. Yuletide felicitations to all!

Station to station

Last week, en route to Belgium, we changed trains at the new-look St Pancras. The £800m regeneration of George Gilbert Scott's gothic brick fantasia - and, arguably even more impressive, William Henry Barlow's mammoth train shed, once the largest enclosed space in the world - as Britain's main Eurostar terminal means that Yorkshire travellers need waste next to no time in London on their journeys to the Continent.

It's an impressive conversion, banishing all memories of the former grime that encrusted the shed. It's not without its niggles, though - like any transport hub, there's bugger all places to sit apart from a cafe or (admittedly rather pleasant) champagne bar. And Paul Day's giant cuddling-yuppies statue is, to be honest, bloody horrible, a Saddam-like piece of monumental kitsch by way of Bridget Jones. I think I caught the best angle of it in the pic above.

I've put a couple more pics up over on my Flickr page.

Flickr of danger

Having joined the digital age with the new Canon, I've also signed up with the Flickr photo-sharing site thingummy. There's a permanent link over the right there. I've just put up a few pics from a weekend visit to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, including the above. Quite a nice response from the camera in pretty low-light conditions.

In other news, here's my brother at one extreme of the automotive safety and efficiency debate.

D day

As a reward to myself for finishing the Master's (or, at least, handing in the final draft of the dissertation, of which more soon), I bought a new camera. One of the recently launched Canon EOS 40D digital SLRs, to be exact - pretty much the digital equivalent of the EOS 30 film camera I've been using for the past few years. So on Friday, a glorious Autumn day, we took a trip up to Harewood House, where I put the camera through its paces. 200-odd shots later, I felt I was getting the hang of it.

While the basic controls are much the same as the trusty 30, there seems a hell of a lot more wee buttons on the back to play with (or, more often, to try not to press by accident). The 1.6x increase in effective focal length (because of the sensor being smaller than a frame of 35mm film) takes some getting used to, with my standard 50mm lens now a minor telephoto - great for portraits, but less useful for other subjects. The 19-35mm wide angle, on the other hand, now covers that mid-range, but loses the far wide angle that I like. Still, that's no surprise - while I'd have liked one of Canon's full-frame models, I couldn't really justify the extra cost. Physically, it's a lovely body - heavier and more solid that the film equivalent, and much more comfortable in my big hands than the cheaper 400D. My one complaint is the absence of eye control autofocus, one of my favourite features on the 30 - the different AF grid is easy enough to adapt to, but I do miss the eye control.

Anyway, here's a few of the first results (substantially reduced in size from the output images, of course).

Bretton or bust

Another bright September day at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Manshead bunker

Another moor-top oddity - the WWII bunker on the northern descent of Great Manshead, above Ripponden, close to a crook in the Calderdale Way. According to John Manning's 25 Walks in the South Pennines:
A handful of men stationed here lit up the hillside during German bombing raids, in the hope that the pilots would mistake the lights for nearby Halifax and drop their deadly cargoes harmlessly onto the moor; a nerve-racking posting.
It's easy enough to get in, and apparently popular - past the square blast wall, the low central passage leads to two rooms, each with a few years' worth of bottles and cans trodden into the mud. It's a relief to get out again.

Not a number

Last weekend, during a break in partly-sunny Snowdonia, we spent an afternoon at Portmeirion. This, of course, was the main location for the wife's favourite TV series, The Prisoner.

Here's some photos we took, in between shaking our fists at the oppressive sky and declaring our existential liberties.

The Bell Tower, seen in many episodes.

Here I stand where Halifax's own Eric Portman stood, to deliver his election address as Number Two in the Free For All episode.

And here's where Number Six delivered his address: "You will all die like rotten cabbages!"

The Old Peoples Home (in real life, the hotel) and the Stone Boat.

Thanks go to Catherine Nemeth Frumerman for her On the Trail of the Prisoner booklet.

Deep in wonder

At The Deep, Hull.

What we made with our hands and our hearts

A mural of unknown origin, adorning a disused railway tunnel ventilation shaft on Dead Edge, above Dunford Bridge, to the south of Holmfirth.

Because iLiKETRAiNS have a new single out today.

The pleasure of books

It's World Book Day, apparently. Enjoy yourself!

I'm just finishing Michael Moorcock's 'Jerusalem Commands', the third book in the gloriously rambling Colonel Pyat series. Given it's also St David's Day I should maybe read something Welsh (Niall Griffiths, probably).

Summer Wine

This is Leventhorpe, England's most northerly vineyard (for now), located on the top side of Leeds. Obviously it wasn't looking its best when I visited it on a blustery January morning, but the rather better established vineyards of Baden-Württemberg weren't looking exactly verdant when I visited before christmas either.
Leventhorpe is the work of this man, former industrial chemist and teacher George Bowden. His story's told here, in a piece in the Telegraph last year, and here at Sugarvine.com. He's a tremendously enthusiastic and knowledgeable chap, happy to talk at length about the subtleties of viniculture in a challenging climate.
It's hardly one of the great chateaus, with just six acres of vines and production based in a breezeblock shed at the bottom of the field. But they are producing very good stuff indeed. Leventhorpe wines have won a string of awards and competitions (not just against other English wines), and plaudits from folk like Oz Clarke and Rick Stein. Bowden's also managed to win official Yorkshire Regional Wine appellation status for his excellent Seyval Blanc.
After an extensive round of tasting alongside the grape press and tanks of developing vintage, we took home half a dozen assorted bottles, including one of their well-regarded sparkling (though not their rather idiosyncratic and very limited quantity red Triomphe). They're on the rack waiting for sunnier weather to make the most of their full, crisp flavours.

Thanks to Richard Jones for organising the visit.

Yule blog

A slightly menacing Santa snapped at Stuttgart Weihnachtsmarkt this last weekend.
I also liked this juxtaposition outside the Kunstmuseum.


And, for the traditionalists, some scenes from the Esslingen market:


Fröhliche Weihnachten to all!

Arts Tower

The Arts Tower at the University of Sheffield, a modernist landmark inspired by Mies van der Rohe's Seagram building in New York.
Photo taken mainly because I was trying out a new lens - Canon 50mm f1.4 - which is proving to be a rather nice bit of kit.

Wainhouse Tower in trouble

Apologies if I seem fixated on Yorkshire towers, but our most local landmark seems to be in dire straits.

The Halifax Courier reports:
HALIFAX'S historic Wainhouse Tower – shut to the public a year ago – will stay closed indefinitely.
Calderdale Council says safety problems at the 130-year-old landmark are worsening.
And current funding means renovations will not be considered until April at the earliest.
A regular inspection of the tower revealed problems with ornate masonry at its top.

The paper's leader rightly notes:
It is a lovely piece of history and a unique piece of architecture worth keeping. The question is should our council tax be spent on its renovation?
Surely it is a cause worthy of English Heritage or the National Trust who could maintain this unique piece of social history for future generations. Its story, so tied up with the area's industrial past, is worth telling in a display or small museum at the bottom and with some careful thought it could become not only a well-known landmark but a tourist attraction in its own right.

A brief background on the Wainhouse Tower, from my Strange Attractor essay on unusual aspects of local history -
This dark stone folly, rising some 75 metres above an overgrown cemetery, was erected by John Edward Wainhouse in the 1870s. It was meant to serve as a chimney for the dyeworks he'd inherited on Washer Lane, some 100 metres further down the valley slope. The dyeworks were sold off before construction was complete, and Wainhouse had the octagonal structure topped by an ornate observatory, reached by 369 steps winding around the chimney flue. Some reckon this was his intention all along – to build himself a platform where he could overlook the estate of a local rival. Some versions of the story say Wainhouse wanted to spy on his rival's wife. Some give his monument the name of the Tower of Spite.

Hardcastle light

An autumnal day at Hardcastle Crags in the Calder valley.

Blogging Sinclair

My interview with Iain Sinclair (as trailered below) went up last week on Ballardian.com. It's had a pretty positive response from readers and the wider blogpond - Ballardian site editor Simon Sellars reckons it's the site's most popular post in its 18 months of publishing.

It's been an interesting experience for me for two reasons. First, this kind of literary interview is a world away from my usual work, the bread-and-butter writing on business, tech and corporate finance issues. Which isn't to say that there isn't as much enjoyment or stimulation to (occasionally) be had from those areas - or even to say that they're entirely unrelated, particularly with regards to the urban regeneration/redevelopment beat and some of Sinclair's concerns - but it's good to know I can still hack a different furrow. I like having a range of subjects, and this just might potentially lead to other things in the same arena. At least, that's my justification for doing this job gratis, other than getting the chance to sit and talk for an hour with one of my favourite writers, about another of my favourite writers.

Second, this is the first major piece I've written for first publication on the web since blogs became an integral feature of the net - such things were not around back when I was knocking out features for Venturedome.com. It's great to see something being published almost as soon as it's written (well, within a week or so anyway, given that I had to get the photos developed and Simon had to find time to lay it all out) rather than the month or more of most magazine schedules, and to get immediate feedback from readers. I'm particularly proud of the chap who said he'd spent his entire morning reading the interview and checking out the links rather than working. And it's been interesting to see the piece being picked up by other blogs - some of my favourite reads, like BLDGBLOG, Strange Attractor and Mountain7, as well as a few I'm not familiar with but found via Technorati or Google. It's good to see different people zeroing in on different aspects of the interview - whether Ballard was ever SF, the end of psychogeography, or Sinclair's proposed 'Beijing Orbital' project - and very good to see people vowing to read either more Ballard or more Sinclair.

So am I now a convert to the claims that blogs, or the net in its wider forms, can and should wipe out traditional print journalism? No - at least, not until such media can be as easily accessed, stored, and read on the train or in the bath. And I might be conservative in this regard, but as the writer, seeing your words on screen just isn't the same as seeing them on paper.

To wrap up, it seems a shame to waste this unused shot from the Barbican -

Heads of regeneration

I stumbled across this huge semi-submerged head of Alfred Hitchcock while flaneuring around London last week. It's at the centre of the redeveloped Gainsborough Studios, just on the Hackney side of the canal off New North Road, where the great sadist made many of his early pictures.

When I lived in London, I lived for a while in a flat just the other side of Shoreditch Park. The old studios were, then, derelict - an empty but imposing complex of 1920s brick sheds, still steeped in character. I thought I had some decent pics of them from back then, but this is the best I can find -

It was a bit of a shock to see what they'd become. I knew the site was up for redevelopment, but assumed that they'd be keeping some vestige of the old brick studios. But it's another bit of history and atmosphere that's been lost - big sculptural head aside, the flats themselves could be anywhere, by a canal in Leeds or Manchester, or maybe Oslo or Barcelona (except they probably wouldn't cost quite as much anywhere else).

Still, such nostaligia is probably anathema to the spirit of the excellent Future Cities exhibition at the Barbican, at which I arrived after a few detours via Bunhill Fields and St Mary Ax. This takes in everything from Debord's first psychogeographique maps of Paris, through Archigram and Koolhaas, to Will Alsop's vision of Barnsley as a Tuscan hill village. (And speaking of Yorkshire reinventions, Urban Splash's previously discussed proposals for regenerating Sheffield's infamous Park Hill flats have finally been approved by the council.)

I then met with the brilliant writer Iain Sinclair for an interview, primarily about the influence of JG Ballard on his own work, but also taking in such concerns about architecture and place, the subject of his upcoming London: City of Disappearances. The full interview will be appearing shortly at Ballardian.com, but as a taster, here's Sinclair's thoughts on regenerations such as the Gainsborough's:
"The whole of the canal has undergone this Ballardian process, whereby all the warehouses have been turned into loft living for City folk. It is actually a city, it's a water city even though the canal is decaying into a drought-like condition, undergoing hideous transformations and being choked with weed, but along it is somewhere that is nowhere."

Fractured City

The NatWest Tower (as was), reflected in the now-iconic Gherkin at St Mary Ax.
This post is mainly by way of a test - been having problems uploading photos onto Blogger using the Safari browser, so thought I'd give Firefox a try. Seems to be working so far...

Sky and basket

Two photos from a recent visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Above, James Turrell's Skyspace in the old deer shelter.
Below, Dr Ro gets trapped inside Winter/Hörbelt's Basket #7.

Singapore sky

Singapore, September 2005.
A fairly random pic from the archive, but one that I like. I'm scanning and enlarging a few such (via a Canon Pixma MP760) for the ever-changing gallery along the hallway at home. I'll put some up here as and when.

The car crash came into its own

Despite appearances, these aren't, strictly speaking, new additions to the Ballardian photo file. The presence of high rise apartment blocks, the skeletal outline of a half-constructed institutional building, the bleak urban highway - these are just coincidence. This is, however, the scene of a crash, though hardly one to excite Dr Vaughan.

At the end of March, immediately after passing over the Brook Hill roundabout by the University of Sheffield, a truck belonging to the venerable H Askey Transport firm (aka Arundel Motors), drifted without singalling from one lane of the Netherthorpe Road dual carriageway to the other, neatly removing the front corner of my Saab. There were fortunately no injuries - and, contrary to the expectations of casual readers of Ballard, no sexual frissons to speak of.
The other party are contesting my claim for repair costs, hence these photos, taking several weeks after the event, for the benefit of the solicitors. The aerial photography available at Google Maps is also proving valuable in countering the other party's claim that lane priorities around the roundabout are other than what they actually are.

The building visible at extreme left of this picture, as it happens, is the new Sheffield Bioincubator, a new "purpose built facility providing the ideal environment for entrepreneurial bioscience to flourish into successful business". It's built in the grounds of the old Jessops Women's Hospital, where I was born. Mr Ballard, I suspect, could hardly have selected a more fitting location for this minorly fateful intersection of trajectories.

Architectural conjecture

I've contributed a few questions to a forthcoming interview for Ballardian.com with Geoff Manaugh of the excellent BLDG BLOG site.

BLDG BLOG describes itself as concerned with architectural conjecture, urban speculation and landscape futures - often beautifully illustrated ruminations on (post)modernist, derelict and speculative architecture, its social and psychological implications, and the ineffable beauty thereof. A mission statement of sorts:
We have more to learn from the fiction of J.G. Ballard and the international warehousing strategies of Bechtel than we do from Le Corbusier. The good city form of tomorrow is a refugee camp built by Brown & Root; the world’s largest architectural client is the U.S. Department of Defense. More people now live in overseas military camps than in houses designed by Mies van der Rohe – yet we study Mies van der Rohe.

The interview will be concentrating, mostly, on exploring Manaugh's admirable fixation on Ballard, and the psychopathological implications of architecture as explored in his prophetic novel High Rise. Does the angle between two walls have a happy ending? Find out when the full interview appears on Ballardian.com shortly.

Haunts of the Halifax Slasher

Just added to the main features section of the site is a long piece on some of the strangest incidents in the history my home town of Halifax, Yorkshire.

This essay was originally published in Strange Attractor Journal last year, and is presented here with some minor changes (I would still thoroughly recommend buying the original journal, as it's a gem, packed with the odd and inspirational).

The piece, Haunts of the Halifax Slasher, is something of a departure from my usual published work. It's inspired by some of my favourite writers such as Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, and Guy Debord's ideas of psychogeography and dérive - attempts to rediscover and redefine an urban environment through free-floating considerations of the specifics of local history and landscape. Following the examples of Sinclair and Moore in London and Northampton, I've concentrated on Halifax's long and colourful history of violence, hysteria, fear and loathing, as manifest on a walk around and into the town centre.

As the title suggests, the focus of the walk is the strange events of November 1938, when the town lived for in fear of the phantom attacker known as the Slasher (for an introduction to the case, see here). This spins off into other strange and terrible tales, from medieval legends of murderous monks, through the harsh law of the Halifax Gibbet, sundry riots and murders, to more recent incidents asssociated with far-right political activity.

The common thread through much of it is the ease with which rumour and irrationality, fuelled by ignorance, prejudice and social or economic uncertainty, can erupt into psychopathology. None of which is exactly unique to Halifax, but the town's distinct landscape and concentration of strange history makes for an interesting journey.

Hotel architecture

Over at Ballardian.com, I've put up a few photos from my recent sojourn at the Heathrow Hilton. It's one of JG Ballard's favourite sites, as he often mentions in interviews:
"It is my favourite building in London, and keeps alive the spirit of the 20th century’s greatest architect, Le Corbusier. Beautifully proportioned, it resembles a cross between a brain surgery hospital and a space station. I am always supremely happy in its vast atrium, and I wait for the day when the whole of London resembles this future classic."

The cocktail bar serves a mean mohito too.

The world of JG Ballard

Simon Sellars of Sleepy Brain Magazine has launched a new blog on The world of JG Ballard, featuring news about and new writings from the man himself, as well as news and oddments relating to his preoccupations - suburban dystopia, psychopathology, technology, architecture, media, the future. Simon's asked me to contribute, which I will.

I've also contributed some photos to the upcoming book of interviews with Ballard, to be published soon by Re/search Publications of San Francisco. I submitted a couple of dozen shots by request, so don't know exactly what's being used, but this one may well be among them. More on that once I get my copies.

Chasing air

To the Paris Air Show last week, where all eyes were on Airbus' mammoth offering, the A380. (Click here for more pics of this and other eyecatching tech from the show.)

Inside the exhibition halls, almost everyone was boasting of their connection with, or trying to catch the eye of, Airbus and its trans-Atlantic rival Boeing. And not just the equipment suppliers, pushing everything from complete engine and landing gear assemblies to improved rivets and sheet titanium. The regional development agencies were out in force.

Yorkshire Forward had a large stand in Hall 4, alongside the Japanese delegation. The RDA had made a deliberate decision to position itself away from the main UK presence over in Hall 2. There, the reps from Wales, the North West, the Midlands, the South West, and most points in between were crammed together, trying to get a slice of global aerospace pie. In between, you'd find the stalls set out for everywhere from Ile de France to New Mexico. Everyone, it seems, has or wants an aerospace cluster.

The industry ticks all the regional development boxes: it employs everyone from engineering PhDs to trolley-pushers, and pays them well; it can draw on and support traditional manufacturing industries that otherwise face decline; there are plentiful opportunities for academic collaboration; most of the signs are for continued growth in the sector; and, not least, it's real gee-whizz stuff.

But with every region chasing the two big players, and their first tier of OEM suppliers, it's obvious that most are going to be disappointed. Yorkshire has a good toehold with the 'AMRC with Boeing' on the border of Sheffield and Rotherham - an enginnering research centre spun off from the University of Sheffield, to which the US giant has lent its name as a centre of excellence (I'll have to admit some vested interest here, as t'other half works there - but for more info, see this feature from 2003).

The AMRC is intended to form the keystone for a wider cluster development, the Advanced Manufacturing Park - but building on this first success has proved difficult. The AMP, a joint venture between Yorkshire Forward and landowners UK Coal, has so far only attracted a handful of other research centres, not any of the promised private sector investment. For a development that's supposed to be bringing 7,000 hi-tech jobs to South Yorkshire, this is obviously a problem.

The park has not been short of interest - there's been plenty of inquiries from businesses wanting to move on, mostly from elsewhere in Yorkshire, but these have been judged to be not of the necessary technical calibre. In terms of Yorkshire Forward's long-term cluster development, that may well be the right strategy. But practically, it's risky - UK Coal will sooner or later want to realise the value of its land, whether or not it fits with the RDA's aims. That'll be a particular worry if Alchemy Partners succeed in their takeover approaches and set about maxing the group's bottom line.

Yorkshire's marketing efforts at the Air Show also featured a gourmet cruise along the Seine. A very pleasant time was had by all, but filling the AMP - and landing a slice of the aerospace pie - certainly won't be plain sailing.