sets

My heart leaps up

2010-07-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

Wordsworth in 1798 writes in his preface to 'lyrical ballads' that:

'Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. Poetry to be written in the language of the "common man," and the subjects of the poems should also be accessible to all individuals regardless of class or position.'

Here's a video lifted from Youtube:

And here is William Wordsworth's 'My Heart Leaps Up' from his 'Poems, in two volumes' from 1807:

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Parallel World Cups

2010-07-05T01:37:00.000-07:00

View Refait here

"Refait" is the title of a film about the last 15 minutes of the World cup match between France and Germany, in Seville, Spain 1982. The short film is shot by Pied La Biche in Villeurbanne in France, and he reconstructed players, positions, gestures, intensity, drama, etc. The film shifts the traditional game into the urban environment. Each sequence takes place in one or several locations. The city becomes a laboratory for experiments; context, storyboard, shifts, repetition.

The soundtrack is made up of the original commentaries mixed with interviews of the audience recorded during the shooting.

The idea is simple but the effect of the film is quite amazing. The aspects that I find interesting in the film are the many locations used in one scene or sequence. Spatially it becomes very effective in the way that a game, originally played in a very defined square, is unfolded into the whole city. You see it sometimes in the film where a player is preparing to kick the ball and runs towards it in an open parking lot, when the scene suddenly changes location to a bridge over a motorway where the player stops abruptly. In the original game the player stopped because he kicked the ball towards the goal.

Other aspects are the gestures and mimics. You don't have any idea of what the players are talking with each other about in the original game, because the game was filmed from a certain distance. In “Refait” the players must have focused on reconstructing the gestures and the mimics of the original players instead of what they said to each other. That aspect is also an interesting technique which could be used more as another acting technique: The separation of sounds and visuals, text and gestures.

Finally the way “Refait is constructed by portraying exactly the same positions of the players, but with two different motivations and focuses, is spot on.
In that way the repetition aspect becomes an important device. The new players are emptied of meaning and reasons and only choreography the movements of the players by means of the techniques of the camera, and in that way a new game is created.

sets: the ruby playlist

2010-06-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

• Ruby (don't take your love to town) by Kenny Rogers 1969

• Ruby Tuesday by the Rolling Stones 1966

• Ruby by the Silver Apples 1968

• Ruby Baby by Dion & the Belmonts 1963

Reclaimed stories: Norman Evans II

2010-06-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

I recently uncovered six pages of diary entries from Norman Evans, which I have transribed in their entirety, and is now posting here:

MY DIARY AS FAR AS DURBAN ON BOARD "OMRAH"

-----------------oOo-----------------

1917. April 28th.

We left Prestion Station at 1-50 a.m. with our pockets full of cake and biscuits, which we had pinched from the Buffet in Prestion Station. Not knowing where we were going we pulled our puttees, spurs, and boots off. and all went to sleep. The jerk of the train woke me, and I found we were in Crewe, off to sleep again, and found we were in Hereford Station, 5 a.m. We all awoke, Freeman, Jones Randles,H.Roberts, and Pollard, talked and smoked until we arrived at Bristol, then started to have some food. At Taunton we had tea brought to us. Tea and buns also in Exeter, arrived Plymouth 11 o'clock, were taken straight to the docks at Devonport, 11-30 a.m. There we sat on our kit bags, writing letters and eating bread and Bully. After our meal we were marched off on board and told off to our different messes, I being at No.1 Dock, and No.11 mess, 18 men on our table. We were taken from the dock into the harbour by a tug at six o'clock. We were anchored in Plymouth Sound for a week waiting for different liners to arrive to take the troops. The way we passed our time was in talking,writng letters, playing cards, and sleeping.It was very warms there, and we could sleep on deck in the daytime, it was so warm. The only thing to liven us being destoyers, seaplanes etc, coming and going, also mine sweepers, etc. etc.

May 4th.

At last we are all ready, 10 Transports, 4 Destoyers, and 1 Aux. Cruiser. We are all feeling anxious. the vessel we ought to have gone on was torpedoed coming to Devonport to fetch us. The Omrah was stopped in the Downs by naval craft, and told to stop where she was. The sailors witnessed a scrap between our detroyers and the German boats, which were attempting to raid Ramsgate. The Transport which went before us was sunk (Transylvania, about 500 being drowned), and a vessel leaving Devonport was sunk after putting to sea. As the journey had to be faced we made the best of it, and at 7 p.m. we all put to sea in two lines, but as night approached we split up into two parties to avoid to great a risk. Although nice and warm in Devonport, it now began to get rough and cold. I forgot to mention, that in harbour we were all given a hammock, and two blankets each, and we slept slung up, but now the Commander orders every man to sleep at his boat station with his lifebelt either on or as a pillow, and to be up 3 a.m. and stand at his raft or boat ready for emergency. Our boat station was on the highest deck, and we were told of to rafts, 16 to each raft, from the boat deck to the sea was about as high, if not higher than our bedroom window, so it was not pleasent to jump from that height into a cold rough sea if we were torpedoed, but it was either that or go down with the ship, so we slept on top deck for two or three nights. It was very cold and wet, and up at 3 a.m. with your lifebelt on expecting every minute to be blown up, while the destroyers raced about, and my word, they can travel, and turn in their own length. In the daytime we wore our belts all the time.

May 5th. Weather getting colder.

" 6th. Weather very misty. Submarines sigthed - alarm sounded, but we got away safe.

" 7th. Weather warmer - joined balance of Transports. A shoal of porpoises following the ship; a shark seen, a lot of wreckage floating past. The Destroyers wishing us "Good luck", and a safe journey, left us and went back home.

May 8th. We were all ordered to go about barefooted or use slippers We also had a "Health Inspection".

" 9th. Fine day but a very rough sea, I was put on Submarine Guard for 24 hours.

" 10th. Very rough, many sick. All port holes closed.

" 11th. Washing day. Nice and hot - rough sea.

" 12th. Lifebelts given up. Sunburnt feet, very hot. "Omrah" firing her gun for practise.

" 13th. Sunburnt feet. Service at 10-45 a.m. was not able to go on account of being inoculated at 11 a.m.

" 14th. Sunburnt feet, nice and warm. Some getting into their drill, but I did not. Saw shoals of flying fish close to vessel.

" 15th. Sunburnt feet, nice and warm, flying fish all about. Boxing Match in the afternoon. Concert at night.

" 16th. Nice and warm - sea smooth - Boxing Match - service at 6 p.m.

" 17th. Hot, had hot sea water bath. Shoals of sharks passed. Boxing Match in the afternoon.

" 18th. Wet. Saw flock of swallows going North, and lot of small birds. Arrived Serre Leone 6 p.m. A very pretty place, put very warm. It fairly oozed out of us while we were there.

May 19th. Very hot. Vessel taking in water and coal. Water was pumped out of a ligther, but niggers came with the coal. Itwill take too long here to describe their methods of coaling, description of them and their food, as I have to hand this in to-night. I bought some pines, limes, and cocoa nuts, as I wanted fruit badly, and need hardly say I enjoyed them.

" 21st. Left Serre Leone 5 p.m. with H.M.S. "Kent", and three extra liners with black troops.

" 22nd. Wet and stormy. Vessel sighted cruiser, chased after her, and we were all ready with our lifebelts on but it was harmless.

" 23nd. Wet. Inoculated 7 a.m.
" 24rd. Crossed Equator. Sports.
" 25th. Hot in morning. Wet rest of day, and lightening.

" 26th. Cool and wet, Sports, Tug of War, Cock Fighting, Bolster Bar etc. etc.

" 27th. 24 Hours Marconi Sentry. Hot.
" 28th. Hot. Sports Continued.
" 29th. Cool. " "

May 30th. albatross following us.
" 31st. Sports, - Concert - Warm.
June 1st Kit inspection.
" 2nd. Warm, Inspection in full marching order.

" 3rd. Cool - Service - six albatross following, and also smaller black birds.

" 4th. Cool in morning. Arrived Capetown Harbour 12 o'clock went into Dock 7 p.m. ( Cruiser left us and went to Simonstown). Took in water and provision. No leave granted, but some sneaked off.

" 5th. Left Capetown 10 a.m. - cold - 24 hours Deck Sentry.
" 6th. Very stormy waves going over top deck. Had some feed to-day. Some of our mess sea sick.

I must now finish this diary as I am going to give it to a sailor friend who will post it in England after he has been to Australia. This boat is going from Durban to Australia. for troops, so we are changing boats at Durban, and as we expect to reach Durban tomorrow, I must give this to him to-night for fear I do not see him again.

-------oOo-------

New ups #1

2010-05-26T07:29:00.000-07:00

• English episode w. J. Shapiro up on third ear (subscribe to listen).
• Emilie Östergren's new website is up, also check out her dino blog.
• Photos from Nordicomic workshop & exhibition, I helped organize are up.

A cork in the machine of things, an interview with Dorte Marcussen

2010-05-24T12:04:00.000-07:00

To extend on the post about the Museum of Everything, here is a short interview with a Danish outsider Dorte Marcussen of Haderslev. Who is a self-taught and self-proclaimed naïve artist.

Q: Would you tell us a bit about yourself?

A: 55 years old. Started painting in the late eighties, but have always painted, drawn, and done a lot of cutting and pasting. I was, unlike many from my generation, lucky to attend kindergarten, where drawing and being creative was encouraged. A friend of mine took me to her evening course in painting in Haderslev. The city had taken a long time to redevelop the centre; in consequence many of the old houses were still there, but without it looking like a museum.

A lot of people on the course painted these houses, they sat there painting houses from photographs. That was not for me. A building or structure is something in itself, but also part of its context; the building next door, the people in the street, the street’s furniture etc. The time of year and its weather also influence how you perceive a building or a space in the city.

These things where what I decided to paint. My first naïve painting was a depiction of the main square in Haderslev with the Erik Heide sculpture (and the unpopular mayor stepping in a pile of dog shit)

Haderslev Square

Q: In your paintings there are often references to history; heraldic coats of arms, stylistic elements from the middle ages and fantastic creatures from folklore, but also people just going about everyday things. What does this combination of a great and a small narrative contribute with?

A: I have never consciously thought about that- or put it into words in that way. I pick things I use from two sets of criteria, both are very visual.
#1 That they, with their shape and colour, fit into the slots in the composition left empty, or generated with the folding of the perspective. #2 That they contribute to the telling of the story about the building or space, to the portrait of it that I am creating.
I strive, on different levels, to visualize walking around, on and (in)to a building or a space in the city, to create the same effect you get when you are actually there. But that said and when you are asking, I guess it has something to do with the mere physical presence of the architecture that has an impact on the people and stories that unfold. In the same way the history of the building means something- no matter how old it is. Accomplished architects capture something defining of their era in their buildings- and something of the possibilities put before people of that era. All this reminds people to appreciate their possibilities, to respect architecture, heritage and appreciate cultural diversity. But also to encourage them to break set perspectives and boundaries, not to be indifferent to bad architecture and to respect other people’s heritage. And that every individual is but a cork in the machine of things.

Q: The level of detail and the diagrammatic character and precision in your paintings give the impression of the same kind of urgency you find in for example botanical drawings from the 19.century. Those images were scientific documentation, what’s at stake for you?

A: Interesting that you see it that way. And you are right I take a kind of pride in that all details of the building and the city space make it on to the canvas. Some gallery owners want me to paint more people in the painting "so people get their money’s worth," like one said (he doesn’t get it), but what’s at stake is that things should be so well depicted that you can reconstruct the building from my painting. But it also has something to do with the answer to the last question and the details' importance for the whole and how their intercourse affects the whole. It’s also a signal of how the whole is the important thing and how every detail needs to know it’s place, to accommodate everything. You can’t go breaking perspectives left and right, if you are not true to your point of departure, chaos will ensue, not esthetic order.

Ribe Domkirke

Q: You are often asked to paint for big public institutions. Are the works you do for them a counterpart to classical portraiture, and if so how does it affect the dialogue you have with these patrons?

A: The comparison with portraiture is right, that’s what I call it anyway. I don’t know how much dialogue there is, the majority of patrons just want their buildings painted and trust in my judgment, they give me the freedom and all the information I need – but are often surprised by what makes it into the painting. It’s different with people who commission me to paint their house. They have so many expectations and want their own story included the painting. But I guess there's a lot of tradition attached to people having paintings done of their possessions. In the past there were painters who made their livelihood traveling between farms and painting them, later you have aerial photography. Patrons probably want to boast, to display their power by showing off the possessions they own. More ‘normal’ people just hang it over the sofa and get pleasure just from watching it.

Amagertorv

Q: Do you see a kinship between your work and marginalized and outsider art?

A: Yes, I hope there is. I also think so as I’ve been at INSITA (in 2007 and now 2010), Triennial for Self-taught art. So the jury must be of the opinion that I ‘... have achieved exceptional standards in my creative output’ and that ‘The jury will exclude all works manifesting any imitative or artificial qualities, as well as works reflecting conscious academic or professional criteria.’ I hope show a kinship to marginalized and outsider art. My ‘nerdy’ approach to the details, which you call urgency and their place within the whole, that people are subordinate to the buildings, space and environment are likewise outsider-ish. I also have a sort of fear, maybe too big a word in this context, of copying myself. Every work must be original. So contrary to what other naïve artists are doing, I rarely do the same motive twice, the colour scheme changes from painting to painting, (what else when you have to capture the atmosphere) and the size of the canvas is never the same. There are maybe two exceptions: ‘Alphabetical Shops in X Dimensions’ or ‘The Landscapes of Times’. But here the individual works are a part of a whole, and assembled they are a universe onto themselves.

For more info on Dorte Marcussen or to see more of her works go to:

dortemarcussen.dk

Growth Assembly

2010-05-09T07:11:00.000-07:00

Mini documentary about the design for futuristic synthetic biology. The beautiful natural history drawings are done by my tutor from Central Martins College, Sion Ap Tomos. Lifted from Boingboing.

Growth Assembly - Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & Sascha Pohflepp from Sascha Pohflepp on Vimeo.

Museum of Everything

2010-05-03T15:49:00.000-07:00

'The Museum of Everything's recent announcement, calling all outsider artists to submit work to their exhibition #2 at Tate Modern 14.-16. May 2010, is the opportunity I have been waiting for to write about my all time favorite art museum which closed its doors on its first exhibition in Primrose Hill earlier this year.

Dandy Primrose hill with its location just north of Regent's Park and with it's clear view of central London, an unlikely place for the likes of the Museum of Everything, comprising 500 unregarded and obscure works by untrained artists: nuns, savants, janitors, psychics, madmen.

The space, seemingly neglected, cramped and labyrinth-like (featuring artists' work neatly presented in rooms themed by styles or wholly dedicated to a single artist) - suddenly disentangling itself and becoming a vast room with paintings and drawings from floor to ceiling. It's a breathtaking display governed by no imposed order again collapsing into narrow passage ways and hidden rooms underneath staircases.

It is a leap from the cryptic cataloguing of the neurotic, to the anarchic universe of the manic, and on into the reclusive architecture of worship and the mundane. It is by this unlikely presentation that the organizers manage to reconcile this myriad of different stories and works, and create a truly unique show.

It is by miracle of the unlikely, that Exhibition #1 at Primrose Hill leaves you with a true sense of discovery by introducing you to so many works of art, even masterpieces and artists you never knew and that you could not imagine in any other context than this one.

Some artists:
Louis Wain
Henry Darger
Aleksander Pavlovitch Lobanov

Here's the call for entries from the website:

'Are you a marginal or self-taught artist? Do people call your work strange, amateurish, obsessive, even ugly? Have you received a divine calling to depict new worlds? Or discovered a cache of anonymous doodlings? Or are you perhaps an artist with a disability, whose brilliant creativity has been undeservedly overlooked?'

Exhibition #1 is now on in Torino, Italy it's an extended show with 800 works.

Jan Kattein on 'The Doubtful Guest'

2010-05-02T03:25:00.000-07:00

Here follows an extract from architect & tutor at the Bartlett School Jan Kattein's work 'The Architecture Chroicle'. It is his reflections on Edward Gorey's 'The Doubtful Guest' and offers some unique insights into this work. The extract is published with his permission.

'I did not find anything today (at Holloway Road Flea Market), but Chrysanthe bought a most curious little book entitled The Doubtful Guest (1998) by Edward Gorey.

Every second page is taken up by a monochrome ink drawing that is hatched to show shadows and textures. The other pages feature a short paragraph or sentence of text. The precision and sharpness of the black lines on the white background remind me of etchings. The book tells the story of a family that receives an unannounced visit by a furry creature wearing red shoes and a stripy scarf the creature has the most extraordinary habits. It enjoys standing with it’s nose to the wall, hiding in a terrine, eating the dinner plates and dropping gold watches into the garden pond. Most of the illustrations feature the interior of an eighteenth-century country house; the architecture is drawn with precision and technical understanding. There is a hallway with a wide staircase and a balustrade with wooden spindles. Dark wooden panelling lines the walls .The gain of the wood suggests oak. The panels are held in place by horizontal and vertical framework. The moulding that covers the gap between is mitred. There are construction joints where vertical and horizontal elements of the framework meet. The grain on the framework follows the direction of the wood. The grain on the panels is vertical. The proportions of the panels are pleasing and the ratio between panels and framework is natural. The top of the panelling is terminated with a piece of mouldering. The wall above the panelling is wallpapered. The pattern of the wallpaper is floral, but regimented. A painting is hanging on the wall it has a dark frame. On the right is a heavy curtain that is slightly too long, trailing along the floor. A lampshade in the shape of an onion is hanging on the far right. The carpet seems thick and it is patterned. In spites of the high tones of interior finishes. They appear heavy. Surfaces evenly illuminated by an overcast Sunday afternoon. The characters that appear in the drawings are angular and slightly gawky. They dress appears old-fashioned.

Text and image share a symbiotic relationship. The text describes the drawing and the drawing illustrates the text. The text-drawing relationship is a closed system where the text appears to justify the existence of the drawing and the image the existence of the text, but there is no reference to known settings, known characters or a particular era. The book concludes: 'It came seventeen years ago- and to this day it has shown no intention of going away' The drawing shows the perplexed family gathered around the furry creature that is sitting on an upholstered stool looking into the opposite direction. The German translation for stool is 'Hocker', 'Hocker' also translates into 'sticker' [=guest who outstays his/her welcome], but it is unlikely that Edward Gorey, an American who hardly ever transgressed the boarders of New England and certainly never came to Europe, would have been aware of this coincidence.

What is implied is more important than what is said. What is shown in the drawing is less important then what is concealed and what is implied by the text is more important than what is explicit. Gorey's work requires imagination beyond the literal. A Gorey reader reads between the lines and beyond the picture plane.'

Event: Tegneseriebeats

2010-05-01T14:42:00.001-07:00

This Thursday I participated in Danish Comic Council's Tegneseriebeats event together with Danish comic artist Rasmus Bregnhøj & American musician & comic artist Ron Regé Jr. at Ideal bar in Copenhagen. It was a great night and I throughly enjoyed myself in the company of these accompliced artists.

Reclaimed stories: Norman Evans.

2010-04-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

Here follows two dicoveries:
One about a man unlocked by an object.
One of an object found on a trip.

The medal.
I was twelve when Mrs. L died. And when that happened I was left in charge of a piece of the family legacy, A medal. The ribbon was orange, black, blue & white. On one side it featured a bearded man in profile, the other a naked rider holding a short sword, his mount was stepping on a shield with a germanic eagle on it. Beside the sheild lay a skull w. crossed bones. on the rim it had an inscription: 214968 DVR N. Evans R.A.
Twelve years went by and I moved to London. Upon returning four yrs. later I got the medal from my sister's basement. And using the inscription I found a document (shown above) in the The National Archives. Apart from the medal under my protection it told of another one I remember wagely. It featured the same bearded man only on this he was wearing a crown. on the other side was a sandstone fortification. From the document I could decipher that the medal had a bar on it, 'Afghanistan 1919' it reads.
Norman Evans was my great grandfather and what I learned of him was this: He was responsible for two of the six horses in an artillery battery, and one of eigth men manning it. He served in the great war and in the 3rd Afghan war.

A postcard.
When I was living London, I went on a trip to Llangollen that lies on the river Dee in North Wales. This Is where Norman Evans lived before for death of his second wife and he moved to Denmark to be with his daugther Mrs. L. I visited his house, the cornmill he work in as a clerk and visited on a trip from Denmark when it had been turned into a weaver's workshop- I had a pint and a meal there, because it was now a gastro pub. I also visit local history museum where my mother years before had met a woman who knew Norman Evans. I met her and she told me that when she was a girl she brought eggs to him, eggs he got in exchange for corn he gave her mother to feed the chickens. 'It was a long way to his house from the town, and you had to walk up a hill'. But he was always gave her a soda when she visited.
She gave me a postcard he once sent her mother for christmas, it featured a picture of the house my mother grew up in. 'They where good friends, he would always send my mother a card for christmas. Alot of things got burned or thrown away when mother died, but this survived I have no idea how or why.'

The monstrous carbuncle*

2010-04-24T03:26:00.000-07:00

The Poultry no. 1 building in London in P. Bronstein rendition from 'Postmodern Architecture in London' (ISBN 978-3-86560-173-5) and my rendition from the test pages submitted to the Danish Art Council last year.

I just got Bronstein book in my mailbox this morning, and was immediately very taken with the classical, hand rendered drawings depicting the buildings neglected in an overgrown, and almost depopulated London.
The one of Poultry no. 1 shows the building perched on an elevation, dirt steps leading down beneath what is today street level to an expanse littered with columns indicating a vast archaeological excavation.

Bronstein's drawing seems informed by the fact that London’s financial centre, where the building is placed, is situated on the site of the old roman market place and close to where the roman Mithra temple was excavated. But an even more interesting fact is that the building as it stands today overlooks the Bank of England- designed by Sir John Soane. In 1830 Joseph Gandy rendered this, at the time brand new building, as a ruin in a distant future. This architectural fantasy resonances well with the post modern sensibility, and I’m sure Bronstein has been looking at Gandy’s drawings when he did his book.

I know I was when I was first planning my comic about a European capital in the distant future.

*quote: HRH Prince of Wales

Reportage: Queen orchastrates elaborate rescue on 70th Birthday

2010-04-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

An unconscious young man is taken from the intensive care unit at Rigshospitalet, fitted with a neck brace, strapped onto a stretcher, put into an ambulance that, accompanied by a secret service car, two police bikes and a rapid response unit, drive in reverse all the way to the city hall square. Here he's unstrapped from the stretcher, the neck brace is removed and he is quickly dressed in his ceremonial uniform by the paramedics and carefully placed in a fetal position. The rest of his company ride up to him backwards in two columns bringing his horse with them. The horse, carefully instructed, proceeds to prance and as it does so the young man makes a tremendous leap up into the saddle, awakening from his unconscious state the moment he leaves the ground. The startled horse is calmed by the cheer of the crowd and their waving of flags- they are gathered on the square especially for the occasion and have received their cue from the queen who, walking backwards out of the door of City Hall, has waved her hand at them. She now mounts her carriage together with the prince consort and they all ride backwards through the streets of Copenhagen to Amalieborg Castle where the queen retires after a job well done.

other fantastic moments:

The Royal Guard is stopped (scroll down)

Robin Hood Gardens

2010-04-16T04:58:00.000-07:00

Robin Hood gardens

I'd read about Brutalism in connection with a project about architecture at my school sponsored by the MI5, and by the time I'd finished the project, the style, the ideas it was based on, as well as the issues around it had captivated me. Especially the demolition of Pimlico School and the debate about the fate of Robin Hood gardens were inspiring to me, so when I was commissioned to do a comic by publisher 'Aben Maler' I decided to use the opportunity to investigate further into the site and document a debate around it, a debate where it was hard to delineate what is fact and fiction.

In order to succeed in these two respects I felt I had to disentangle myself from the biases of the very opinionated debate. To do this I set up my own parameters to judge the merits of the architecture by, based my own observations on living in London. An example of an observation that informed the comic would be the short hand I used to determine how livable the flats were, for instance making a note of how people made use of their balconies. In many London estates they're used like spare rooms: packed with old clothes, bikes, storage boxes, or even the washing machine. In Robin Hood gardens on the other hand, you only saw the occasional line with washing, which led me to conclude that the flats there are spacious and not overcrowded. This strategy plus trying to deal with both the architecture itself and the debate around it resulted in the comic becoming an interesting, but slightly confusing read.

If asked to extend beyond the findings put to paper in the comic I'd say that doing well in comparison with an average council flat is hardly an argument for being great architecture worth saving.

One of the new ideas Robin Hood gardens brought with it was the 'streets in the sky' -a board walk way that extends the length of the buildings on every floor and which were conceived to mimic the terrace house street and inspire a sense of community. Having a front door on street level is not desirable in the East End of today, on two occasions friends of mine have had their door kicked in and their flats robbed. That said there is a sense of community in Robin Hood
gardens, perceptible the minute you get there and that can do a lot to remedy potential down sides of this design.

Most of all, Robin Hood gardens leave me with an impression of being built on visionary ideas conceived a long time ago about a future that never materialized. This is perhaps its most redeeming feature and the best argument for listing it, so it can inspire others. In June around the same time as the comic came out, Robin Hood gardens was the subject of an exhibition at RIBA organized by the 20.th Century Society, who advocates the listing of RHG. James Goggin, representative of the vanguard of London graphic designers did the exhibition design and set the catalogue in his in vogue, sans serif version of courier*, thus underlining that RHG is now very much a cause célèbre, so a listing by popular demand isn't unrealistic.

Photos of Robin Hood Gardens
The Gardens
Entrance
Walk way in the sky

*A minor note by James Goggin: the catalogue was typeset in stencil and typewriter typefaces used by the Smithsons on their plans and in their correspondences. Not in Courier Sans.