H\Blog
March 2007

Watch With Glittering Eyes... Date added 23.03.07 by Anna MacDougall Publication Watch With Glittering Eyes... ...the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places”. Roald Dahl, The Minpins David Bickle and I were in Blackpool on Tuesday night for The Civic Trust Awards at which we were the recipients of an Award for The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre. We took the opportunity to visit the redeveloped South Promenade which incorporates a major series of new public art works commissioned by Blackpool Borough Council in 2001. The piece which struck us the most was the enormous glitter ball ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’ by Michael Trainor and The Art Department (2002). Appropriately, as the Awards were held in the famous Empress Ballroom of the Winter Gardens, this piece celebrates Blackpool as “the ballroom capital of Britain”. The 6-metre diameter mirror ball rotates slowly, creating dramatic patterns of reflected light on the walkway and adjacent buildings. There are 47,000 individual mirror squares glued to the fiberglass shell which is supported on a steel framework. It weighs 4.5 tonnes!

Edouard Francois Date added 05.03.07 by Daisy Houang Publication 'The grey facades are a triple critique: of the shameless copying of heritage, of the excessively strict relationship between interior and exterior, and of an artificial conflict between modern and classical.' Tucked in on a block surrounded by two side streets that intersect the infamous champs elysee, the building is hardly noticeable through all the tourism and chaos of the tree-lined boulevard. With the prominent location and the heritage commission, it isn't surprising that Edouard Francois chose the Haussman style as his design for Fouquet's Barriere hotel being that Baron Haussmann practically rebuilt the city and gave us what we know as Paris today. What might be a bit odd, however, is the architect's reinterpretation of the Haussmann style, using it as a means to express some of the concerns of modern day architecture. In his design, Francois copied the facades of the existing buildings on the block, and like one would do with tiles, replicated the flattened facades with concrete panels in such an exuberant way that even the polished steel doors take on the haussmann style and seamlessly follow the concrete in their impersonation. The only elements that do not follow the rigidity of the classical facade are the windows, which show six floors in a facade of four and use the modernity of mirrored glass as one means to distinguish themselves from their concrete skin. Is this design a critique or a piece of art? And is Francois being heroic or facetious by saying, 'if doing something has meaning, you should do it'?