Sun drops dancing on air

A friend wrote of the strangeness of the sounds that keep her awake in her new rural home and I wrote this to remind her of the city she has left.

This morning a sound appeared: the heavy, slicing noise of a police helicopter hovering overhead. The sound grew so big it vibrated from the walls of the courtyard, it filled the house so solidly that I couldn’t determine on which side the machine was, until I spotted it over the children’s playground. The cutting utterance it makes is so loud it is muted and ends in an absorbed thud. When it left the distant police siren was whimpering.

The double glazing is so solid that the rain dances as silent glazed sun drops in the air eddies. The sound of weather is better heard by the passing of cars and the firm hiss of wet road under tires. Airplanes are boring through the atmosphere above the cloud layer; the birds are flying low after their air space was dominated by the huge metal insect.

This is Sunday in the city. As the minutes pass the rain grows heavier and falls into neat lines. Normally I like to travel or simply to walk and feel the sky around me but today would better be spent indoors and cleaning the windows to watch the rain more clearly.     

growing a little too old...

universiteit van Amsterdam

Some of the university of Amsterdam buildings are being demolished. They were designed in the mid-sixties. The architect was Norbert J.J. Gawronski- a city council architect. The buildings were designed to fulfil a tight brief in their era, they must have been whole-heartedly modern when completed. There was a lovely neat box modernism about them, I liked the pattern of the curtain walling, there was a satisfying rhythm. Now they are being replaced for something of "this century" something more suitable and more contemporary.

This is beginning to become a little personal: this building style was modern for me, I grew up unsure if I truely liked this but I loved the idealism that surrounded architecture of this time. Yes there are far too many really bad examples of rectangular box, curtain-walled buildings around us however there are some good ones as well. Before too many are lost I would like to see them documented and ensure some remain. The sixties had style and it may still be neglected, let's recognise some of the good elements, be selective but remember not everything from this era is too old and too out of date!