Posts Tagged Food and drink
A great white hope in Avilés, Asturias
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on July 1, 2011
The Asturian city of Avilés is betting on its new Oscar Niemeyer arts centre delivering the 'Guggenheim effect'
If first impressions were everything, you might not bother with Avilés. The A66 motorway takes you along the bank of a river that eventually opens into the Cantabrian Sea, but there's no water to be seen through a mephitic landscape of factories and warehouses. As you approach the city centre through the industrial grime, however, two things catch your eye: on one side of the estuary, a harmonious jumble of old town roofs; on the other side, a collection of grand buildings in curvaceous white forms.
Avilés is a revelation wrapped up in a surprise. The northern Spanish region of Asturias, under the radar for far too long, is finally taking its rightful place in British hearts thanks to its unspoiled beaches, its mountain landscapes, its gastronomy and idiosyncratic local culture. Oviedo is posh and pulchritudinous, Gijón a rough-and-tumble harbour town. Until quite recently, Avilés had seemed the post-industrial Cinderella of the three. Yet, thanks in large measure to a futuristic new cultural centre designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, things are picking up.
On an evening in late May I walked up to the Plaza de España, the city's front room, where one side is formed by the imposing Town Hall, and a few steps away lies the Palacio de Ferrera (Plaza de España 9, +34 985 129080, nh-hotels.com, doubles from €70), an urban stately home transformed into the best hotel in Avilés. From the square, cobbled and flagstoned streets radiate out into the best-preserved medieval city in Asturias.
It was getting on to 11 o'clock, but I needn't have worried about finding a decent dinner. The Casa Alvarín (Calle de Los Alas 2, +34 985 540 113, casaalvarin.com), a cider house with sawdust on the floors and Joselito hams hanging from the ceiling, was still serving up plates of octopus and slabs of Cabrales cheese.
Historic and cultivated, with one of the best harbours on the Cantabrian coast, for centuries the city did well out of fishing and trade. In the early 1950s the rot set in. Avilés was earmarked for an industrial future by Franco's government. The wetlands of the ría (estuary) were partially drained, the course of the river altered, and the giant factory complex of Spain's premier steel works, Ensidesa, installed within a few hundred yards of Avilés' charming old town. Smoke from factories painted the stones of the old town a shade of charcoal grey and the estuary became a dead zone.
In recent years, however, the spiral changed direction. The 1960s-built airport, 15km out of town, was extended in 1994 and again in 2000 (EasyJet flies there from Stansted). And now the city has just lucked out big-time. Niemeyer, the architect responsible for the building of Brasilia and masterpieces such as the contemporary art museum in Niterói, over the bay from Rio de Janeiro, had won the Prince of Asturias prize for architecture in 1989. In 2005 the Prince of Asturias Foundation contacted past winners as part of the prize's 25th anniversary. Niemeyer's contribution to the celebrations was a design for a cultural centre, to be sited wherever the government of Asturias might see fit; it would be his first building in Spain. As it happened, Avilés was just considering how best to engineer a socioeconomic change in the city by means of contemporary culture, earmarking parts of its decaying ría for a project that might have the same transforming effect that the Guggenheim had on Bilbao. The Centro Niemeyer (centroniemeyer.org) has just opened, and is intended to be the beginning of what will eventually become the Isla de la Innovación, a Norman Foster-designed "green city" entirely transforming the ría.
The Centro is a composition of simple forms arranged over a wide open space, described by its creator, with all the youthful idealism of his 103 years, as "a square open to the sea for all the men and women of the world, a place for cohabitation, education, culture and peace".
What strikes you first is the sudden glare of whiteness in this grey-green temperate zone. The auditorium, which seats 961, is housed in a wave-shaped building, the stage opening on to the square for open-air concerts. A long, low, curving form known informally as "the banana" has a cinema, meeting rooms and a cafeteria. The cupola, made by spraying white concrete on to an inflatable dome, is the centre's main exhibition space.
Shows lined up for the rest of 2011 include a Julian Schnabel Polaroid exhibition, a concert by Brazilian singer and guitarist Gilberto Gil (29 July), and the Bridge Project, with Sam Mendes directing Kevin Spacey in Richard III in September. The Niemeyer has just four permanent staff, but a roster of advisers that most arts centres would give their eyeteeth for, among them Spacey (theatre), Brad Pitt (architecture), Stephen Hawking (science), Woody Allen (cinema, and the occasional appearance on trad jazz clarinet).
The Centro is now the city's main attraction, and is just a short walk from the heart of old Avilés, where most tourists will spend the rest of their time, exploring the medieval centre's network of pretty streets, such as Calle de la Ferrería and Calle de Galiana. Avilés has few major monuments, though you wouldn't want to miss the church of San Francisco, its Romanesque facade eaten away by centuries of salt spray, or the barrio of Sabugo, formerly the fishing quarter, where you can see the stone table beside the church where mariners met to finalise their travel plans.
What the city has most of, however, are bars and taverns, restaurants and tapas joints. Avilés is rich in old-fashioned grocers' stores with high ceilings and flagstone floors, selling everything from tinned cabbage to maize flour and jars of tuna in olive oil. There are two Michelin-starred restaurants – Koldo Miranda (La Cruz de Illas 20, +34 985 511446, restaurantekoldomiranda.com) and Real Balneario (Avenida de Juan Sitges, +34 985 518613, realbalneario.com), above the beach at nearby Salinas, with its beautifully presented "new Asturian" food and sea views to die for. There are also gastrobars such as Sal de Vinos (Calle de la Muralla 36, +34 984 832053) and La Dársena de Fernando (Calle de Llano Ponte 7, +34 984 832900, ladarsenadefernando.com). In the pastry shops, the range of traditional sweetmeats has been joined by a new invention: dome-shaped little cakes variously known as Niemerinos, Niemeyitas and Avimeyers.
A "Niemeyer effect", smaller in scale but analogous to the "Guggenheim effect", is already at work in the city.
• EasyJet (easyjet.com) has flights from Stansted to Asturias, half an hour's drive from Avilés, from £43 return
Tasmania’s cheekiest devil
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on December 19, 2010
Provocative and irreverent, the gambling multimillionaire David Walsh has built a breathtaking art gallery – billed as "subversive Disneyland" – on his vineyard outside Hobart in Tasmania
"Please see reception if you are planning a pool party or a ritualistic orgy." The advice is typical of David Walsh's irreverence. Walsh is the owner of eight designer glass-and-steel guest pavilions and a vineyard outside Hobart, Tasmania. Instead of the "Do not Disturb" sign, guests can hang a "Don't fuck with me" sign on the doorknob.
The luxurious riverfront pavilions, a restaurant and live music events are ways in which Walsh has been attracting visitors to stay on his 3.5-hectare estate, Moorilla, for longer than a swift tasting. He had a museum of antiquities on site for a while, too. Nobody came, he admits. Yet his new idea is to create Australia's largest private art gallery. Sex, death, myth and religion are the central themes and its very air threatens to be thick with ripeness and decay.
Walsh, a mathematics whizz, is probably the state's richest man, having developed a gambling system that successfully and repeatedly beats the house. He's now taking his biggest gamble yet – building a new museum in the bowels of the earth to house his considerable personal art collection. Billed as a "subversive Disneyland", the A$76m (£47m) Museum of Old And New Art (Mona) will open to the public on 21 January just after Mofo, a music festival curated by ex-Violent Femmes bassist and fellow Tassie resident, Brian Ritchie.
One of the stand-out exhibits will be a piece by Jannis Kounellis (Untitled) featuring rotting sides of beef which will be fed into the artificial digestion tract of Cloaca, a separate work by Wim Delvoye. Cloaca is a machine that reproduces, with gross exactitude, excrement. Handily, you will be able to fortify yourself for the assault on the senses beforehand at the museum's underground bar.
Walsh, 49, is an old rocker in a T-shirt, jeans and shades, who was raised by his mum in a council house on the other side of Mount Wellington, the peak that dominates the colonial port. He dropped out of university, but has since built up a successful winery, brewery and tourism business – as well as a A$100m art collection.
Moorilla is on a private peninsula in the Derwent River, 15 minutes outside Hobart. It was originally established by Italian immigrant Claudio Alcorso in 1958. Walsh used to look at the place from his old house across the water and, in the 1990s, he acquired it along with the riesling, gewürztraminer, chardonnay, pinot noir and cabernet wines it produces. He's since added Moo Brew beer and fine dining at the Source. But Mona – his "unmuseum" – is central to Walsh's vision.
The museum has been created by excavating a giant hole in the sandstone bluffs of Moorilla. From above, it is barely there – its entrance is via a shaft cut into a floor of a remodelled heritage villa on the cliff top. But approaching from the water it looks formidable – a fortress with impenetrable bunkers of sandstone-coloured waffled concrete and panels of rusted steel. There's nothing bijou about it – Mona is similar in size to both Queensland's and South Australia's state art galleries.
Walsh hopes a good chunk of Tasmania's 910,000 annual visitors will make a pilgrimage to his temple to secularism. The best way to arrive will be up the River Derwent from central Hobart on the new rivercat service, docking at the foot of a flight of stairs cut into the cliff. If it feels like arriving on a Greek island, that's deliberate – Naxos was the model. You ascend to this antipodean acropolis, negotiating a children's playground, a Sunday market and walk across a tennis court before reaching the museum entrance – Walsh's aim is to challenge ideas about what great museums should be like right from the outset.
Australia can be a very conservative place, but Tasmania's cheap living and craft traditions have made it an attractive home to artists and other nonconformist downsizers from the mainland. The island state is reinventing itself from a place dedicated to shredding old-growth forests for paper into somewhere that cherishes its pure, natural beauty. Once-shameful convict-period prisons have been declared Unesco world heritage sites, and luxury eco-lodges seem to open each year.
After you have climbed the steps to the villa entrance, you descend again to a subterranean canyon. From here, Walsh's architect, Nonda Katsalidis, has built three gallery floors extending out of a rock face. The ceiling, a grid of concrete coffers (deep recesses), reads like a brutal take on classicism. Concrete piles driven into the living rock are dripping caryatids. A rusted-steel staircase snakes between floors.
Moving through the windowless voids is deliberately bewildering. A personal audio device is both the only guide to the art and a way for Mona to track you – it can tell how long you stand in front of each work. Walsh thinks he will swap around the 10 most popular and least popular pieces each week.
A circular tunnel leads under the foundations of a second historic house to a separate pavilion built to house Sternenfall, Anselm Kiefer's 6.5m-high stack of lead books.
The collection combines Walsh's antiquities (he has ancient coins worth more than any of his paintings) with Australian and international contemporary works and he is happiest creating dialogues between the periods – Egyptian mummies will be on nodding terms with YBAs.
One gallery is especially devoted to sex and death, with a bordello-red velvet curtain and peep holes to objects through a gold-leaf wall. If the virtually-all-glass guest pavilions are about exhibitionism, this is about voyeurism. "It's the opportunity to mess with your head," admits Walsh, as is the gallery bar: "I like the idea of people having a couple of beers and looking at the art, having a couple more and changing their mind."
Mona's labyrinth is rich with myth and mortality. Even in the roomy cinema, a Christian cross of black seats is set out among the red. There are artworks like Julius Popp's Bit Fall, a delicate waterfall where words appear digitally in the tumbling raindrops. Then there's serenity in Wilfredo Prieto's Untitled (White Library), where a gallery is entirely lined with thousands of white books. Every page is blank. It's one of David Walsh's favourite pieces.
Walsh reckons Mona might outdo the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra in terms of visitor numbers but he adds, not entirely convincingly, he's not bothered if visitors don't come at all. That's not the point, he says. "It's fun to make a big, complex, elaborate joke – it's about subversion, but it's not too serious. It is a counterpoint to the Met and Moma. I'm not trying to bestow wisdom. It is just me doing stuff." He also says he doesn't care if rising sea levels drown his temple to secularism in decades to come.
That's not convincing either, of course: Walsh is keen to raise hell and debate and to show how art can reveal what we try to hide about ourselves. He's planning more architecture – a warehouse gallery in Hobart's docks and more accommodation at Moorilla itself, taking his spend on the estate to A$100m: "Eventually I want to build a hotel and make it a cohesive whole. Everything is a function of Mona: Moo Brew, the pavilions, the function centre. I'd like the hotel entrance to be via a shaft through the rock from the waterfront. But I need a lot of people to come first."
Those with sensory overload can retreat from Mona to the guest pavilions with their sybaritic bathrooms and the peaceful prospect of the wide Derwent and the hills beyond. But even here, there's no escaping Walsh's obsessions entirely. Beneath original artworks ancient and modern, and the giant photo-murals of naked couples making out, you can browse books such as Blasphemy: Art that Offends while grazing on dishes whose ingredients include abalone, periwinkle and smoked oyster oil.
On the floor of one pavilion is a large black rug on which writing, picked out in red, reads: "Apropos of nothing, it's nice to have you here. Thanks, we need the money."
Essentials
Mona opens to the public on 21 January. The boat service to Moorilla begins on 23 January, and costs A$15 return from Brooke Street pier on Hobart waterfront. There is limited on-site parking, but people with disabilities can arrange this by calling +61 3 6277 9900.
Mona's guest-pavilion rates range from A$490 to A$950 per night, including breakfast in the Source restaurant or in your pavilion. Entry to Mona is free (mona.net.au). Qantas (qantas.com) flies daily from London Heathrow to Hobart via Melbourne from £960 including all taxes and surcharges. Valid for departure 16 April - 20 June 2011
Head for Valencia fishermen’s quarter – before the bulldozers get there
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on May 7, 2010
Valencia has developed into one of Spain's coolest cities but, as bulldozers threaten one of its oldest and most atmospheric barrios, what is the price of such rapid progress?
"To be alone in Valencia," theatre critic Kenneth Tynan quoted an American as saying, "is to be permanently 20 minutes this side of suicide."
Spain's third-largest city has come a long way since Tynan himself dubbed it the "world capital of anti-tourism" 40 years ago. The old quarter has been tarted up, Santiago Calatrava's space-age fantasy, the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, has been virtually completed, the America's Cup sailed into town in 2007, and it hosted a Formula One grand prix a year later.
From being a slightly forlorn and forgotten sister in the Spanish family, it became a hot destination.
With so much new-found pride in their city, it was easy to imagine that Valencians would never again commit the architectural crimes of the past, that the knee-jerk cementing of the coastline and construction of characterless apartment blocks was a thing of painful memory.
We were wrong.
If you are in the Valencia area this year, be sure to visit the old fishermen's quarter, El Cabanyal. This working-class jewel of art-nouveau style – officially a "protected historical zone" – may not exist in its present form for much longer. If the city hall planners get their way, bulldozers will continue punching a large hole through the middle of it to extend a modern avenue from the city centre to the sea. Residents have protested vociferously, and the highest court in the country – the Tribunal Constitucional – has ordered a stop to the demolition, but Valencia's Mayor, Rita Barberá, has insisted she'll go ahead.
In existence since the 13th century, El Cabanyal has become the common term for what are in fact three neighbourhoods stretching north from the port – El Canyamelar, El Cabanyal and Cap de França – and owes its name to the rows of thatched fishermen's cabins, also known as barracas, that used to line the beachfront. The remains of some can be seen today, with their characteristic steep – formerly thatched – roofs.
A major fire in the late 1700s, and the growing affluence of the inhabitants as the port was expanded, meant that most barracas were replaced around the turn of the century by elegant two- and three-storey townhouses. The Moors first brought a ceramic industry to the Valencia area more than 1,000 years ago: drawing on an ancient local tradition of covering facades with brightly coloured tiles, residents finished off their new homes in the styles in fashion at the time.
Art nouveau may be the dominant flavour, but you'll find anything from baroque to eclecticism, and even a few examples of something approaching art deco. Residents will tell you that their grandparents weren't overly concerned with the purity of the design when they were building these houses – that they simply used whatever materials appealed to them. A Mediterranean sensibility to light and colour and a certain degree of keeping up with the Joneses means the area is unique, leading more than one visitor to describe it as "an open-air museum".
Concentrating on maritime shades of blue, green and white, the tiles are often spaced to create a zigzag, or checkerboard pattern, and the effect is vibrant and harmonious. You may find the face of a sea god staring out at you from above a doorway, or a mosaic depiction of pesca dels bous – a kind of dragnet fishing that involved pulling laden boats back on to the beach using oxen, a scene local artist Joaquín Sorolla depicted in some of his impressionist paintings.
This is a barrio for taking a slow stroll through, criss-crossing from one street to another, and getting to know what is still a working community with a strong sense of identity. Although El Cabanyal has officially been part of the city for centuries, the people round here still talk about "going to Valencia" if they are travelling to the city centre.
Start near the port end and wander along Carrer de la Reina. This is the main artery running north to south; all the streets are on a grid system, with the houses oriented east to west to benefit from the cooling easterly winds off the sea in the summer. As you meander along, you'll eventually cross Avinguda Mediterrània, leading from the sea to the indoor market. This is where El Cabanyal proper begins, and the area most affected by the city's plans. It is also where you'll find some of the most enchanting houses.
Find Carrer Barraca, and the streets parallel to it, and let your eyes wander. On Carrer Progrès, look out for No 262, with its turquoise-and-white tiled facade, amphora designs above the windows in mosaic, and griffin-head drains running off the terrace roof. Opposite, No 279, finished in green and white, is more sedate, but no less spectacular. Around the corner on Carrer Padre Luís Navarro, the narrow fronting of No 309 has been covered in modernist tiles with delicate vegetable motifs in green and ochre.
Many of these houses run through from one street to the next. Get chatting with the locals and you may be invited inside for a peek. Large pitch-pine doors open up into living rooms tiled with more intricate designs, with elegantly carved window frames and arched ceilings. You can even stay in one of them: the B&B Cabanyal is on Carrer Josep Benlliure (+34 963 364521. Recently renovated, it is run by a friendly young couple who are more than happy to tell you all you want to know about the local area and its traditions, or they can put you in touch with a group who provide guided walks through the streets. It's also excellent value, starting at just €20pp a night, including breakfast.
(A quick word of warning – thanks to years of official neglect and degradation, this area has become a haven for drug dealers. You're almost certainly safe, but it's best to be aware.)
Good places to eat in the Cabanyal, particularly for fish, are not hard to find. The Casa Montaña (Carrer Josep Benlliure 69) is a former bodega that has become one of the best-known restaurants/tapas bars in the city, not least for its vast wine cellar (20,000 bottles). El Cabanyal, (Carrer de la Reina 128), which is right in the planner's line of fire, is known to be frequented by the very people who now want to tear it down. Meanwhile Casa Guillermo (Carrer Progrès 15) is famous as the home of the local "anchovy king".
But my favourite is the Bodega La Pascuala (on Carrer Eugènia Viñes 177), just a street away from the beach. Noisy, busy and a bit grimy, it's an authentic neighbourhood bar, with rows of dusty brandy bottles lining the walls, and it offers cheap, working-man-size sandwiches with names such as "The Republican" and the "Bribe-Giver", and delicious paella on Friday lunchtimes. Perfect for filling up after a dip in the sea.
Thankfully, Valencia is today far from being the suicide-inducing city that Tynan knew, but as you knock back a glass of brandy, it's hard not to reflect that the place you're sitting in may soon be a pile of rubble. The future of El Cabanyal looks uncertain, but while it's still standing, visitors have a last chance to explore this unpolished gem on the Mediterranean before it is destroyed for ever.
• The neighbourhood pressure group is Plataforma Salvem el Cabanyal; its members can organise guided walks through the area. Ryanair flies to Valencia from Bournemouth, Bristol, East Midlands, Liverpool and Stansted; easyJet flies from Gatwick
Jason Webster's detective novel set in Valencia, Or the Bull Kills You, will be published by Chatto & Windus in February 2011
TwiTrip to Leeds – the verdict
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on February 25, 2010
Benji Lanyado's Twitter-led trip in search of the soul of Leeds took him from baroque music in a Grade II-listed building to a punk gig in an old working men's club - via the oldest pub in the city, naturally
This TwiTrip had a tough act to follow. The finale of my last Twitter-fuelled adventure - to Blackpool - involved a transvestite cabaret act. Hopefully, Leeds was up to the challenge.
As with all of our previous adventures, nothing was planned. I was to turn up at Leeds station, sling questions into the Twittersphere, and wait for tips to be fired at my profile. Then I would do exactly as I was told. You can see how it played out here ... and below you'll find what the good people of Twitter helped me find.
The Twitter tips
It has become TwiTrip tradition to precede the day's events with a little train-time trivia. As I set off from King's Cross, whizzed through snow-covered Peterborough and headed for Leeds, I requested some intriguing facts to keep me entertained. The Twitterers delivered. I was informed by kateigray that the tripe stall in Kirkgate market was the first on the internet; by Seven_Arts that Jimmy Saville lived in Roundhay Park; and by MatMurray that he once saw a woman fall over in the Leeds City Markets, after which a nearby dog tried to mount her. Not all trivia is created equal.
Then I was there, posing like a hopeless tourist in front of the station. And I was hungry. The mob roared loudly, and there seemed a near-unanimous recommendation. According to BigLittleThings, LeedsGrub, and tenderbranston, the best sarnie in town was to be found at Pickles & Potter. It seemed dangerous to ignore the sandwich advice of anyone who traded as 'tenderbranston', so I duly plodded into the town centre and joined a queue stretching out of the door and into the Queens Arcade - this was clearly a popular choice. Inside, they made me a thing of beauty: slices of red-centred beef joined in gastronomic matrimony with a hunk of smoked cheese, a wholegrain bap, and some kind of marmalade. A very good start indeed.
Next up, I requested some cultural tips ... a wide remit that was answered by scores of tips. I was most intrigued by Marc_Leeds' suggestion of a "forty-part motet" at Opera North in the Grand Theatre. The installation is housed in an assembly room on the upper levels of the Grade II-listed Grand Theatre on New Briggate, and comprises 40 audio speakers arranged around the room, each playing an individual part of Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium. The effect was extraordinary. In pale midday light filtered by stained-glass windows on all sides, people were drifting in and out, settling on benches equidistant from all 40 speakers, and closing their eyes to listen. I joined them, and - quite literally - became surrounded by music. Have a listen for yourself below.
I needed to refuel, and took the advice of amandeep86 and loveleedsmore by nipping to the Opposite Cafe stand in the Victoria Arcade, where a nifty barista made me a coffee topped with a beautiful swirling foam motif. It powered me onwards, to the marvellous tiled hall of the Leeds Art Gallery, as recommended by djdavedanger and leedslibraries, who had tweeted at me from their offices inside the building.
Having tasted the cultural offerings of a couple of Leeds blockbusters, I wanted something a little off-grid. Luluartist came up with the goods, directing me to Project Space Leeds, a fascinating venue on the ground floor of a newly-built block on the banks of the canals south of the train station. Inside the industrial, high-ceilinged space, the work of local artists was displayed on sparse walls - Matthew Shelton's piece was a collage of drawings on pieces of paper found scattered across the city, including certificates of achievement, shopping lists, and ASBOs. Inventive.
It was Friday, and it was 5pm. I had little choice but to go to the pub. Tonypreece directed me to Whitelocks, the oldest pub in Leeds, first licenced in 1715. It took me half an hour to find it. The pub is hidden down a tiny alley leading off Briggate, accessed by a blink-and-you'll-miss-it gap in between a Carphone Warehouse and a branch of Northern Rock. Once located, under a illuminated lantern and a fug of cigarette smoke wafting from the smokers congregated outside, it was superb; a nostalgic ye olde pub of polished brass pumps, stained glass and a cacophony of post-work chatter.
Onwards. More pubs. Jccgardner, lindseyhampton and steererscott aided my crawl, pointing me towards The North Bar, home to a creative crowd and more beers than you could shake a drunkard at. I opted for a delicious pint of Roosters, brewed just north of the city in Knaresborough, before moving on to my next stop. Mostly due to its name, and Talullah and guyatkinson's recommendation, I headed to trendy bar A Nation of Shopkeepers, where the stringent door policy refused entry to those wearing sportswear, pirates, fancy dress, large groups, jefforys (anyone?), and grumpy faces. A largely student crowd were largely drunk, crammed on to leather sofas under arty projections as electro music beeped around the room.
My stomach needed lining, and foodiesarah and ecalpemosgreen recommended Nash's as the finest fish and chips in the city ... perfect. A giant lump of cod coated in thick batter and pillowed by chunky chips basted in salt and vinegar. Yes and more yes.
Fuelled by delicious carbs and salty fat, I headed for Headingley for my final stop of the day. Tips had been flying in about the Brudenell Social Club since the TwiTrip was announced - one tipster, djthedutchess, described it as a "gorgeous, shabby, ubercool ex working men's club in Hyde Park". The band playing that night, The Eureka Machines, had noticed the Twitter noise, and invited me along, too, bless their little punk rock socks. The venue was superb; on a suburban backstreet in the Hyde Park area, where a community pub hosts live music in a musty low-ceilinged side room. I also managed to snap my favourite photo of the day just outside, as an immaculately-Mohawked local loitered near the entrance.
And the Eureka Machines did the business, blasting out punk to an adoring local crowd as front man Chris Catalyst cracked jokes in between songs. Their final number even came with a wonderfully soppy intro that you can treat your ears to here:
From baroque polyphony in a Grade II-listed building to a punk gig in an old working men's club ... another end to another excellent TwiTrip. Thanks for all your help.
• Benji stayed at the Quebecs Hotel (doubles £89 per night including breakfast and VAT; +44 (0)113 244 8989; theetoncollection.com/quebecs), as recommended by LoveLeedsMore and tonypreece, which has double rooms from £89 B&B. East Coast's trains operate direct up to every half hour between London and Leeds. Advance returns, booked online, start from £26 Standard Class or £94 First Class. Times and fares also on 08457 225225 or by visiting any staffed station
• All photographs by Benji Lanyado
Ouseburn: the beating art of Newcastle
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on January 4, 2010
Ouseburn's once derelict factories and warehouses are buzzing again with artists' studios, music venues and cinemas. Stephen Emms guides us around
Ouseburn was, until 10 years ago, a monument to an industrial past, its derelict factories, red-brick warehouses and mills lurking in the shadow of Victorian bridges and viaducts less than a mile from Newcastle city centre. Now, this picturesque valley, either side of the river Ouse (once used to carry coal by boat from Spital Tongues down to waiting barges on the Tyne), is the creative heart of Newcastle.
Following years of post-industrial decline, its regeneration, kick-started by community-driven enterprise rather than corporate business (the Ouseburn Trust in partnership with the local authority), has given the area's unique architecture and riverside setting a new lease of life – in the form of artists' studios, live music venues, an independent cinema and galleries. Here's a quick tour to get you started.
1. Cumberland Arms
Not just the best pub in Ouseburn, but arguably the finest in Newcastle itself. Built in 1836 (owner Jo will show you the hatch where women, refused entrance to the main bar, used to be served), it's boozer heaven: wood-panelled, roaring fire, simple furniture, leaded windows, a smattering of salvaged art, and shelves heaving with paperbacks. Session ale is the "Rapper", named after the Northumberland sword dance, and there are six guests, as well as 12 types of cider. An upstairs room plays host to music, theatre and comedy. Its isolated position overlooking the valley means stunning views not only from its terrace, but also the windows of its four spacious, very comfortable bedrooms.
• James Place St, +44 (0)191 265 6151, thecumberlandarms.co.uk.Doubles from £70 a night including breakfast.
2. Star & Shadow Cinema
A converted former prop department for Tyne Tees Television, this tiny cinema is run by volunteers, from film programming and projecting, to gigs and promotion. Every year there is a charmingly named "Building Festival" where volunteers come and help build, improve and restore. One Sunday a month there is a "Make & Mend" arts, crafts and flea market. Meetings every Monday at 6pm, films every Thursday and Sunday, and gigs, films, club nights and art events programmed on Weds, Fri and Sat.
• Stepney Bank, +44 (0)191 261 0066, starandshadow.org.uk. Open daily.
3. Biscuit Factory
Britain's biggest commercial art gallery is a whopping 35,000 square feet over two floors of exhibition spaces and artists' studios. Paintings, drawings prints, ceramics, and jewellery including artists such as Emma Tooth (whose Concilium Plebis are Caravaggio-style portraits of those dismissed as "chavs and hoodies"), and Maria Rivan's stunning 3D collages. My tip is to refresh yourself at the café, which groans with inviting home-made sandwiches and cakes, while contemplating the industrial views over the Byker Wall (see below), rather than at the blandly-furnished, expensive restaurant.
• Stoddart St, +44 (0)191 261 1103, thebiscuitfactory.com. Open daily
4. The Cluny
A former whisky bottling plant a stottie's throw from Byker Bridge, The Cluny is owned by iconic party boozer the Head Of Steam (worth a visit, opposite Newcastle Central Station). As well as a live venue, which showcases both young Geordie bands and international artists, the simple main bar and lounge (runner-up in the Observer Food Monthly's awards 2006 for best quick eat in north-east) offers local ales and informal yet hearty snacks, such as good quality house salads (£6), home-made burgers (£6) and Sunday roasts (£7).
• 36 Lime Street, +44 (0)191 2304474, theheadofsteam.co.uk.
5. Seven Stories
The first museum in the UK dedicated to the art of British children's books protects the heritage of British classics for families and curious adults alike. Temporary exhibitions at the former flour mill (such as the current retrospective for Tiger Who Came To Tea author Judith Kerr, which runs until May 2010) complement the permanent collection, whose earliest acquisition was Puffin Books editor (and Puffin Club founder) Kaye Webb's archive. Philip Pullman is a great supporter and has given work from the His Dark Materials trilogy and the Sally Lockhart quartet. The huge bookshop is free to enter, as is one of the best cafes in Ouseburn, which offers sleepy views over the Ouse – and great mugs of coffee.
• 30 Lime Street, + 44 (0)845 271 0777, sevenstories.org.ukpen Mon-Sat 10-5pm, £5.50 adults £4.50 children
6. Mushroom Works
The scream of gulls and clink and hammer of the docks fill the air outside this hard-to-find gallery, originally a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, in an area once known as the "Mushroom". Opened in 2004 by furniture-maker Nick James, there are 12 studios, including painters, illustrators, jewellery makers, animators, architects, and glass artists. They host eight exhibitions a year, and the shop, with its emphasis on affordability, currently stocks work by 32 artists. The Stairwell Gallery has just opened upstairs, given over to exhibitions by other artists. A 50% off "studio sale" runs from Jan 9-Feb 6.
• St Lawrence Road, +(0)191 224 4011, mushroomworks.com. Open 12pm-5pm Weds-Sat.
7. Northern Print
Northern Print began life in 1994 on Fish Quay, North Shields, and moved in 2006 to a former pottery in Ouseburn. Now a gallery and contemporary print-making studio offering affordable prints as well as classes, it's worth also spending a penny in ceramic artist Paul Scott's impressive tiled toilet. Also, don't miss the large screen-prints decorating the sides of the offices opposite.
• Stepney Bank, +44 (0)191 261 7000,northernprint.org.uk. Open Weds to Sat 12pm to 4pm.
8. Byker Wall
Set between the roar of the flyover and silence of the river, the Grade II-listed Byker Wall, a 1970s primary-coloured brick, wood and plastic-built unbroken block of 620 maisonettes, was placed on UNESCO's list of outstanding 20th-century buildings. Designed by Ralph Erskine in Functionalist Romantic style, the low-rise construction represented a break with the high-rise architectural orthodoxy of the time. Its iconic, triangular Tom Collins House is visible from miles around.
9. Victoria Tunnel
Testament to the achievement of Victorian labour, this two-mile tunnel was built in 1838 for transporting coal from Spital Tongues colliery on the Town Moor to the river Tyne, and in the second world war converted to an air-raid shelter. A short section, with its last remaining accessible entrance on Ouse Street (behind the Hotel Du Vin, see below) re-opened in 2008 to give visitors and locals an experience deep below the city.
• newcastlecommunityheritage.org.
10. Hotel Du Vin
The first hotel in Ouseburn opened in 2008 in the former headquarters of the Tyne Tees Steam Shipping Company, which once served as the company's maintenance depot and storeroom. As such, a nautical theme pervades the 42 rooms, many of which have outstanding views over the Tyne Bridge. Its glass and brick bistro is the most glamorous evening eating option in Ouseburn, even if you're not a resident (great value too with two-course menus boasting locally-sourced ingredients from £15.50).
• Allan House, City Road, +44 (0)191 229 2200, hotelduvin.com/newcastle. Standard rooms from £160. On Sunday nights, spend £75 in the bistro and room is only £25 if you book online.
• Newcastle is served by East Coast Trains: for the best deal on advance fares, book online via nationalexpresseastcoast.com, or call 08457 225225.
My Cambridgeshire: an insider’s guide
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 31, 2009
Kevin Jackson, author of Bite: A Vampire Handbook, lists his top tips for the county
Leper chapel, Cambridge
If it's eeriness you're after at this time of year, Leper chapel fits the bill nicely. You'll find it just outside Cambridge, on the road to Newmarket, and as its name suggests, it was once the place of worship for a hospital devoted to sufferers of leprosy. Its doors are locked much of the time, but a sign tells you how and where to pick up a key. In recent years it has made a highly atmospheric setting for a variety of dramatic productions, and there are rumours that a local vampire group has applied to stage an event there in 2010.
cambridgeppf.org/leper-chapel.htm
Wandlebury hill fort and the Gog Magog Hills
Just a few miles south of Cambridge, with a fine view over the city from certain points, this area in and around a prehistoric hill fort is a splendid place to walk by anybody's standards, but has been a particular magnet for occultists ever since the 60s, when the maverick archaeologist and advocate of pendulum power, TC Lethbridge, declared that he had discovered the forms of three solar gods hidden just beneath the turf. The fact that conventional archaeologists have declared these figures entirely imaginary has never daunted psychogeographers and other modern antiquarians. While there, be sure to visit the grave of the Godolphin Arabian, great-grandsire of a noble strain of racehorses.
St Wendreda's church, March
Churches with angel roofs are something of an East Anglian speciality, and all are well worth the visit, but the one at St Wendreda's is of mind-expanding intensity. If you can manage it, count the roof figures – there are 120 in all – carrying emblems of the Passion, musical instruments or shields. The church dates mainly from the 14th and 15th centuries. Uplifting, moving, unforgettable.
stwendreda.co.ukBite: A Vampire Handbook by Kevin Jackson, is published by Portobello Books (£9.99)
Bedford Old and New rivers
So-called because the Earl of Bedford was the head of the group of speculators who set about their creation. Running roughly from Earith north-east towards Wisbech and King's Lynn, these are the largest of the many artificial rivers that were built in the 17th century by English and Dutch engineers to help drain the Great Fen (pictured above), from which much of modern north-eastern Cambridgeshire – including Downham Market and March – has been recovered. Before then, the Fen was a swampy area of sedge and eels – a grey and chilly version of the Florida Everglades. The drainage was a huge act of public engineering, a heroic enterprise – though the locals who were forced out might have had a quarrel with that view. It makes a bracingly bleak walk; or if you're feeling lazy, you can drive alongside it via the B1098 from Chatteris or the B1411 from Ely. A good place to start might be . . .
The Prickwillow Engine Trust and Museum of Fenland Drainage, near Ely
This is the sort of museum that would no doubt make James May feel as if he'd died and gone to heaven. The heart of the collection is a set of six large diesel-pumping engines, five of them rescued from pumping stations around the Fens, and one – the Mirrlees engine – that was used in Prickwillow itself (installed in 1924). As well as a collection of smaller engines, the museum also boasts a series of historical maps, photographs and displays outlining the history of the great drainage, and there are plenty of additional exhibits, including local agricultural tools. An ideal afternoon out for anyone with the faintest feeling for industrial archaeology.
01353 688360, prickwillow-engine-museum.co.uk
The Queen's Head pub, Newton
A superb example of the entirely unreconstructed village pub: stone floors, blazing open fires and walls festooned with antlers and other animal trophies. The food is excellent, particularly the thick and tasty soups which bubble away perpetually, subtly changing consistency and flavour as new ingredients are added. Take friends from abroad – they will swoon. Or go alone, and fantasise that time has stood still for centuries.
Fowlmere Road (01223 870436)
Napier: New Zealand’s art deco gem
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 26, 2009
New Zealand was your favourite long-haul country in the our 2009 Travel Awards. We focus on Napier, flattened by an earthquake but rebuilt in glorious 1930s style
'Grandad was on the loo when the earthquake struck," says Gill, a chirpy New Zealander who grew up in Napier. In 1931 this genteel port on Hawke's Bay, on the east coast of North Island, was struck by a tremor measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale. It flattened the city just as its children were starting the first day of a new school year. A total of 256 people lost their lives in what remains the country's worst natural disaster – although there were some lucky escapes.
"Our family had an outside toilet back then," Gill recalls, "and Grandad fell into the cess pit, where he was eventually rescued some hours later. The soft landing saved his life."
If you believe clouds have silver linings, Napier's is surely rimmed with neon and chrome, the shiny new materials of the art-deco age. For this was an earthquake that also gave back, tilting the coast up by a couple of metres and draining a huge lagoon that is now filled with fertile farmland, the city airport, and some choice stretches of 30s and 40s suburbia.
Downtown Napier, meanwhile, was quickly rebuilt in a colourful, confidence-raising art-deco style that married symbols of renewal – sunbursts, fountains, flowers – with robustly quake-proof buildings limited to two storeys. Out went brick parapets, gables and heavy facades; in came chrome speed-lines, ziggurats and naked women reaching for the stars.
What's remarkable is that it is still all there. Lovers of art deco will find plenty of individual gems to swoon over in metropolises such as Paris, New York and Shanghai, but Napier is exceptional because it offers such an engaging and strollable concentration of provincial 30s edifices.
According to the local Art Deco Trust, which arranges guided walks and bus tours and produces excellent background literature, the city has 147 art-deco buildings, decorated in styles that include Egyptian, Mayan and Maori. Many have been restored and repainted in cheery pastels, and star turns include the still-thriving 1938 Municipal Theatre, which has its original chrome and neon fittings, and a cubist carpet faithfully recreated from a pre-earthquake scrap found in the manager's office.
Walk down Tennyson Street and you meet one 1932 joy after another. Here is the curious Scinde Building, once a Masonic lodge; there are the former offices of the Daily Telegraph newspaper with its lotus flower capitals – it's now an estate agent.
Some buildings quietly tell tales about their owners' origins: there are sweet little shamrocks on the Munster Chambers, Scottish thistles on Parker's menswear store. A German national flag, in stucco, flutters above Hildebrandts, the chiropodist.
For many, the most engaging sight is the ASB Building, a 1934 bank adorned with a union of art-deco style with Maori motifs. Look above the modern counters and you see stylised hammerhead sharks, curling fern fronds and whales' tails dancing around the ceiling. In the flamboyant National Tobacco Building in the port of Ahuriri, roses and citrus fruits twirl around its stained glass dome as if to dispel the odium of smoking.
Out in the suburb of Marewa there are swathes of streamlined 30s homes with trademark flat roofs, curved corners and sunburst-pattern front gates. As if that wasn't enough, in nearby Taradale they've even got a 1931 hotel turned "McDeco McDonald's", which has achieved cult status with a particular strand of travellers.
As a result of all this, visiting Napier feels rather like discovering that there's a bonus track to the familiar compilation of New Zealand's greatest hits. We've all heard about the country's heartlifting landscapes, madcap adrenalin activities, intensely flavoured wines and the nostalgic notion it is how Britain used to be – and Hawke's Bay doesn't stint on such delights.
A 40-minute drive south from Napier lies the five-mile sandy expanse of Ocean Beach and the gannet-filled wilderness of Cape Kidnappers, a peninsula so named because in 1769 the local Maoris tried to abduct a Tahitian member of Captain Cook's crew, mistaking him for one of their own. On a rollercoaster tour of its breezy clifftops, drinking in the peace and the sea views, I find myself commenting feebly on how lucky Kiwis are to have all this fresh air and stirring countryside to play in. "We don't know we're alive," our guide reflects, just as I'm feeling very much the opposite.
For foodies, and the merely greedy, trails lead down roads lined with orchards and fields of melons and strawberries – this is where your supermarket apples may well have come from. Devotees of the assiduously sourced beach picnic can visit a wealth of small producers, such as the Hohepa farm shop near Clive, where the organic fruit and veg is as brightly coloured as snooker balls, and Arataki Honey in Havelock North, where a kilo of health-boosting manuka costs a mere £6.50.
Wine-lovers can explore a region best known for its premium reds – the finest I tasted was at Craggy Range, a shamelessly ambitious, family-run ego-trip beside Te Mata Peak. By contrast, at the small Clearview Estate on the coast near Te Awanga, the atmosphere is engagingly hippy-go-lucky, with the emphasis on "experimenting and having fun". Its self-taught owner, Tim Turvey, set up in 1988 and has watched Hawke's Bay fill to the brim with boutique wineries.
"There are two types of winemakers here," he says, "those in business, and those who are alcoholics."
Lunch at Clearview is a pleasantly boozy affair, with children welcome and the tables and chairs spreading out through the vines. As everyone sits in the sunshine sipping their delightfully crisp Sauvignon plonk and nibbling on tasting plates loaded with artisan breads, pumpkin hummus and Te Mata cheeses, I can't help thinking what a shame it is that New Zealand is so bloomin' far away. Why can't it be just down a bit from Brighton, rather than requiring so much of us in terms of expense, jet lag and movie-overload on that 24-hour, 11,400-mile fuel-guzzling flight?
It's testimony to New Zealand's enduring appeal that so many of us still choose to make the trek down to the Land of the Long White Cloud – particularly in the midst of a recession. I'd recommend going just on health grounds, because everything feels so darn safe, wholesome and 100% organic that just being here for a fortnight will surely up my life expectancy by, oh, five minutes.
In the past many of us were drawn here to visit relatives, but now we're just as likely to go for solid holiday reasons: sunshine, empty beaches, unique and rewarding sights and all manner of sporty things to do.
The living proof of this is Mary, my eightysomething mother and travelling companion, who had long nursed a desire to visit the country on the grounds that we had family there. Yet when I came to arrange the itinerary, she was so keen to see as many amazing things as possible that poor old auntie Jackie and assorted fruits still hanging on the family tree got unceremoniously dropped because they would take up too much valuable time. (And if you're reading this, hey, sorry...)
That's why we're in Napier (my call), having had an indulgent sojourn nosing round the Bay of Islands (Mary's choice) in the Northland region of North Island. With its Cotswolds-pretty mission buildings, Maori heritage sites and hassocks adorned with whales and kiwis, this scenic honeypot provides a soft, welcoming and refreshingly Lord of the Rings-free initiation into the gripping adventure story that is New Zealand.
Before that we had dropped in on Samoa, and on the way back we'll have a skyscraping spendfest in Hong Kong. Given that Air New Zealand flies round the world it seemed mad not to take up the circumnavigatory option and, let's face it, once you've decided to boing yourself off to the other side of the world, you're locked into trip-of-a-lifetime, we'd-better-buy-another-memory-card, territory.
Thank goodness, then, that it's all so worth it – although, as we explore Napier, I do have a niggling worry. It seems churlish to mention it, but what are the chances an earthquake might strike again?
"Well, they're due a big one in Wellington," one resident tells me, voicing the age-old idea that everything bad starts in the capital.
"Small ones are happening all the time," another muses with a disdainful shrug. "You come home and all the pictures on the wall are askew."
The doom-inclined should visit the absorbing Hawke's Bay Museum to watch a film of the day the ground "started to roll like a ship at sea", and hear eye-witness accounts. A computer screen gives continuous reports on how New Zealand is "rumbling all the time".
The rebuilding of Napier didn't just introduce a new architectural style – it gave its residents a revitalised sense of character too – what one survivor called "an extra soul". Walk down Marine Parade today, with its splendid avenue of Norfolk pines (that most art deco of trees), bright splodges of municipal busy lizzies, and the lovely pink and white 1935 Soundshell Stage, and you could be in an Antipodean Eastbourne – with the exception that many Kiwis seem regrettably uninterested in dress codes (be prepared for cargo shorts and adventure sandals in the smartest restaurants).
As with another famously earthquake-prone city – San Francisco – there is a sense here that life ought be enjoyed to the full thanks to the special permission bestowed by a past tragedy.
"The strongest tremor I've ever felt was a 5.8," reflects Don Alexander, a veteran guide working for the Art Deco Trust. "We were playing cricket in McLean Park at the time, and the bails just flew off the stumps..."
Bowled out by seismic activity, now that's one for the records.
Essentials
Getting there
Air New Zealand (0800 028 4149; airnewzealand.co.uk) flies daily from London Heathrow to Auckland. Return fares with connections to Napier cost from £969.
Where to stay
The best options are the centrally located, Edwardian-era County Hotel (00 64 6 835 7800; countyhotel.co.nz; doubles £112) or the contemporary Crown Hotel (00 64 6 833 8300; thecrownnapier.co.nz; doubles from £58) in the adjacent port of Ahuriri. For swish self-catering, the Dome (00 64 6 835 0707; thedome.co.nz; £212 a night for an apartment sleeping six) is a duo of luxury penthouses with terrific views set atop the town's 1935 T&G Building. B&Bs are good value. Try the Helm Crag ( 00 64 6 833 7483; helmcrag.com; doubles from £58), or for a full list see hawkesbay.com.
What to do
See artdeconapier.com for themed walks and tours, foodhawkesbay.co.nz for the Hawke's Bay Food Trail, and winehawkesbay.co.nz for a guide to local wineries. Wilderness Safaris (kidnapperssafaris.co.nz) offers off-road excursions into the Cape Kidnappers peninsula. Two good restaurants are Mission Estate (00 64 6 845 9350; missionestate.co.nz) and The Old Church (00 64 6 844 8866; theoldchurch.co.nz), while the Filter Room (thefilterroom.co.nz) serves samples of locally made beers and cider. More information from visit hawkesbay.com and newzealand.com.