John – Page 491 – { feuilleton }

Paolo Soleri, 1919–2013

Hexahedron, The City in the Image of Man (1969).

“We must build up, not out,” said Soleri. “The problem is the present design of cities are only a few storeys high, stretching outward in unwieldy sprawl for miles…turning farms into parking lots, and waste enormous amounts of time and energy transporting people, goods and services over their expanses.”

Paolo Soleri, visionary architect, dies aged 93

For obvious reasons, Paolo Soleri’s plans for kilometre-high megastructure cities towering over green landscapes were popular in science fiction books and magazines in the 1970s. Soleri’s solution to unstoppable urban sprawl seems eminently sensible despite the difficulties of building anything on this scale; complaints about undesirability can be countered (in Britain at least) with dismal stories such as this recent report. Or maybe it’s better to live in a Hong Kong shoebox? Soleri devoted most of his life to thinking about how architecture could better serve our limited planetary resources; with Arcosanti he was leading by example.

• LA Times: Paolo Soleri, architect of innovative city Arcosanti, dies at 93
• Arch Daily: Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti : The City in the Image of Man
• Architect Paolo Soleri – a life in pictures
• Flickr: Arcosanti, An Urban Laboratory

Babel IIB, The City in the Image of Man (1969).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The paper architecture of Brodsky and Utkin
• Hugh Ferriss and The Metropolis of Tomorrow

The Web by Joan Ashworth

Another animated gem, The Web (1987) is an eighteen-minute film based on Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels which dramatises the lethal duel between Flay and Swelter. Director Joan Ashworth reduces the cast to manservant, cook, and bedridden earl, no doubt for reasons of economy since the film was originally a student work. Economy or not, for me this has always captured more of the flavour of the books than the BBC’s well-intended but ultimately unsatisfying television adaptation. Watch The Web here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Peake’s glassblowers
• Mervyn Peake in Coronation Street
• The Worlds of Mervyn Peake
• A profusion of Peake
• Mervyn Peake at Maison d’Ailleurs
• Peake’s Pan
• Buccaneers #1
• Mervyn Peake in Lilliput
• The Illustrators of Alice

Memories

Untitled cartoon by Gerald Scarfe (early 1980s).

Margaret Thatcher saved career of police chief who made Aids remarks

Margaret Thatcher helped save the career of a police chief constable who said Aids patients lived in a “human cesspool of their own making”, newly-released documents show.

THE TELEGRAPH, 04 Jan 2012

Sir James Anderton, then chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, faced calls to quit after making the comments, which were perceived as homophobic.

Now documents secured by the Manchester Evening News give an incredible insight into the 1986 political storm – and show how close the country’s second largest police force came to meltdown.

It can revealed that the government staged a series of crisis meetings aimed at keeping Sir James in post, and that other chief constables accused Sir James of ‘bringing ridicule’ on the police service.

The papers also show that senior civil servants were dismayed over the top cop’s ‘religious overtones’ and feared he had a ‘taste for martyrdom’, but that Mrs Thatcher, the then Prime Minister, privately backed Sir James’s right to speak out – and stamped down demands for a public inquiry into the state of the force. (more)

Belgrano Nightmare – Thatcher Wakes Screaming (1982) by Gerald Scarfe.

Cartoon by Steve Bell (2000).

Vertumnus

Rudolf II of Habsburg as Vertumnus (detail).

With the spring here starting to show its reluctant face it’s an apt moment to find a handful of Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s paintings at the Google Art Project. Vertumnus is the perennial favourite, Arcimboldo’s portrait of his patron, Rudolf II of Hapsburg, as the Roman god of the seasons. I’ve always thought this portrait flattered Rudolf more than those which faithfully depict his homely features. We’re told the Emperor was very pleased with his fruity likeness.

Rudolf II of Habsburg as Vertumnus (1590).

Summer (1563).

Four Seasons in One Head (c. 1590).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Arcimboldo’s Four Elements

Weekend links 154

Collage by Chloé Poizat.

• Xenis Emputae Travelling Band plays the Music of John Dee, and free at Bandcamp: Victorian Machine Music by Plinth, the “creaking, winding, piping, chiming and wood-knocking of Victorian parlour music machines”.

• Jeremy Willard on Mikhail Kuzmin, “the Oscar Wilde of Russia”. Related: Conner Habib on the Disinfo podcast discussing pornography, sexuality, and whether sex be a revolutionary act.

• Ed Vulliamy paid a visit to Hawkwind’s Hawkeaster festival. The Hawks’ Warrior On The Edge Of Time album is released in a remastered edition next month.

• Blasts from the past: Mahavishnu Orchestra, live in France, August 23rd, 1972, and Ashra (Manuel Göttsching & Lutz Ulbrich) in Barcelona, 1981.

An illustration by Alberto Martini for Raw Edges (1908) by Perceval Landon.

• NASA’s cover designs for Space Program manuals, guidebooks, press kits, reports and brochures.

• PingMag—”Art, Design, Life – from Japan”—makes a welcome return as an active blog.

• Suzanne Treister‘s Hexen 2.0 Tarot designs.

• Listening to records that no longer exist

• The architectural origins of the chess set

• The Bohemian Realm of Absinthiana

• Les sources d’une île: a Tumblr

• Hammer Without A Master (1998) by Broadcast | Test Area (1999) by Broadcast | Make My Sleep His Song (2009) by Broadcast & The Focus Group