Formerly the House of Fraser, this prime slice of real estate will now allegedly house a rooftop cocktail bar. It won’t happen for two reasons: 1. The men in white coats don’t think that Scottish folk can be trusted to imbibe on rooftops; 2. We can’t be trusted to behave ourselves on rooftops, especially after a gin & tonic served in a slipper or whatever the fuck the Hipster zeitgeist utilise as highball glasses these days.
Bye for now.
Further reading:
A rainbow above KFC at Meadowbank. This is quite the surreal moment.
This Orwellian building on Gorgie Road was an eyesore by day. Home to Edinburgh Council ministries, it was a depressing affair trudging past here every morning, the gruesome monument ruining my Fleetwood Mac U.S. Route 66 fantasies.
At night, though, it was gleaming, almost cosy and welcoming. Weird.
And it’s now being converted to yet more apartments. As is the rest of Edinburgh in its present ‘gentrification’ frenzy. Nostalgia will no doubt kick in one day and I’ll start to mourn the metamorphosis of Chesser House.
At this moment in time, though, I’m not bothered. I’ll give it a decade.
Further reading:
https://regencyresidential.co.uk/news/penthouse-plans-for-superflats-in-edinburgh/
Took this snap with a Tesco Hudl tablet hoisted on a wee micro tripod, crawling on the floor as some tourists stood bemused at my ‘antics’. It was during this moment that I recalled a troupe of Americans got stuck in the monument’s staircase on their attempted ascent to the top. It was Edinburgh’s own version of In Bruges (2008). What a hoot.
Situated on the Royal Mile and in its current incarnation dated from the late 14th century, I’ve walked past it roughly 6,000 times yet have never been in the fucker. My reasons are multifarious, but one of them is that I don’t enjoy the manipulation, i.e., architectural determinism, of it all. The splendour I can enjoy from afar. Some find a solitude in churches; I just have visions of the terror they’ve inflicted, and this presently includes the tractor beam that pulls in hordes of cretin tourists. Sorry not sorry.
Shot in Fabijoniškės, Lithuania, this 5-episode mini-series by HBO is a cracker so far (one episode in). It puzzles me how there’s not, to my knowledge, been a major TV series or film about Chernobyl until now. One wouldn’t expect this would come from the Russian slice of the former Soviet Union, but you’d think Ukraine (its ‘western-oriented’ regions) would have put something together.
Documentaries have been galore, the main theme that the disaster was indicative of the pitfalls of communism, and a metaphor for the swift end of the USSR in the Gorbachev era of glasnost and perestroika.
This is mind-blowing, though, a real-life 28 Days Later (2002) with wild animals replacing the ‘infected’:
I know a good lad I met in Budapest, a fellow traveller named Paul. He’s the only person I’ve met who’s wandered into Pripyat’s Zone of Alienation with a Geiger counter. I have an epic image of him strolling about in a Walter White biohazard suit, with a beer hat atop the garb.
Further reading/viewing:
https://variety.com/2019/artisans/production/hbo-chernobyl-lithuania-nuclear-plant-1203208391/
Brande in Denmark has a meagre population of 7,000 and there is very little to distinguish it … until now.
The Danish clothing company Bestseller, its headquarters in the town, aims to put Brande ‘on the map’ with its construction of a 320-metre skyscraper, newspapers mockingly referring to it as the Tower of Sauron, this an all-seeing ‘evil thing’ in the Lord of the Rings works that didn’t quite make sense. And that wasn’t the end of the nonsensical with those movies – one could have summoned an eagle and had the fucker drop the ring in that volcano.
Anyway, back to Denmark. The skyscraper will house offices, a hotel, and some shops. More shite, just what an unspoiled landscape needs ….
Further reading:
https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=2020721
Grim as fuck, this one. It smacks of the ’60s – poverty and deprivation in the so-called swinging era. It’s the type of building a skag head would chuck himself off. Some things need demolished; this is one of them. Yuk.
I squirm at this but can’t stop staring. 146 apartments in Montreal, a breathing Lego kit with its own ecosystem. Designed by Moshe Safdie, this was meant to revolutionise affordable housing but its legacy is the opposite – a unit can set you back up to $1 million.
I guess it looks better than most dilapidated high-rises but for fuck’s sake, your crib is a tourist attraction. Every time you look out the window an army of Jimmy Stewarts are outside looking in, a Rear Window (1954) role reversal. Disturbing. What if you’re caught with a prossie?
If this is a glimpse of the future, I don’t wish to stick around for it.
Further reading:
https://www.mtlblog.com/lifestyle/what-a-1000000-apartment-looks-like-in-montreals-habitat-67
http://www.towertrip.com/inside-the-most-beautiful-habitat-67-unit-that-just-hit-the-market/
What is it about the Evil Empire and their ugly-as-fuck brutalist buildings? A legacy imbued with obsessions of ‘social realism’ shows scant regard for anything ‘real’ about its constructs; concrete eyesores sticking out like sore thumbs, their centrepiece buildings merely highlight the lunacy of the ideology running the system.
In the Kaliningrad enclave, we have this anomaly plonked there, a robot geezer built beside the rubble of Königsberg Castle. It speaks to the USSR’s fixation with technology and its precedence over the human element. A central administration building, its interior was never finished and the project ran out of cash. It did, however, receive a paint job in 2005.
Nuts.
Further reading:
https://failedarchitecture.com/the-rebuilding-of-a-hornets-nest/
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 