TVAM

A building of the media, for the media, heralding the beginnings of our saturated age with its palatially cheap-and-cheerful exuberance, TVAM (by Sir Terry Farrell) was a complex, clever, and delightfully giddy stage-set, back-drop, and active instigator in the nation’s newfound –commercialised- breakfast pleasures. Mad Lizzie and her team did aerobics under the neon keystones of the its retro-futuristic-classical-pop entrance arch, while its oh-so-eloquent plastic eggcup finials were beamed straight into our living rooms as the utterly endearing markers of the end of each morning’s entertainment, and the beginning of the working day (no doubt while some of us were eating similar boiled eggs from very similar eggcups). Its interior was like the very coolest American industrial design and Italian fashion had exploded on impact with the dour British working environment, performing with perfect ease as the backdrop for impromptu broadcasts, being far more interesting than the majority of the actual TV-show sets themselves.

Buildings, spaces, tools and machines of high-tech media content, whether it be smartphones or studio buildings, are today mostly the very inverse of that which they contain and produce –they are all too often black boxes, slick tablets and neutral sheds. TVAM was something it would be wonderful to see more of: a rapturous celebration of its contents, a building that functioned perfectly as a studio, but which also performed brilliantly as an architectural embodiment of, and story about the new world we were entering, in which old categories were dissolving and hierarchies collapsing, in which cleverness could be a joy, old could be new, pop could be culture, and architecture could be free to be sophisticated, fun, fashionable and communicative. It was a stylistic explosion of pent-up tectonic energies that formed itself around the volatile excitement of a new media age, and in the process became entrenched in our national consciousness.

As Paul Greenhalgh said, postmodernism stands in relation to our own moment as the Steam Age did to its own oil-powered future; the mediated nature of our economy and lifestyle that was only beginning with TVAM has now effloresced into a saturated environment unimaginable at that time. TVAM encapsulated the complexities of its time -good and ill, beautiful and ugly- with stylistic bravado and architectural panache. It would be very good indeed to see young architects picking up the baton, and throwing themselves headlong into the maelstrom of contemporary culture, bringing some of its raw brilliance back into the built environment. In its spirit, it is a model to be revaluated, revisited and taken-up once again.

What would a TVAM of 2016 look like?

Taste, Style and Loos

^Il Bagno Blu in D'annunzio's Vittoriale. An extreme illustration of the points below.

Two extracts from the collection of translated essays by Loos "Creating Your Home With Style" that summarise in the most unadulterated form I could find his stance on the relationship between the inhabitants of a space, their evolution as human beings over time, the design of that space's interior and the disposition and gradual accumulation of objects and furniture within it governed by the interaction of those various agents. It is the only view I could conform to entirely in the collection, and whilst it was repeated in various guises elsewhere, it tended to get mixed up in strange ways with his fear of dirt, with his Anglophilia, hatred of ornament and his utter terror of freestanding cupboards, amongst other very odd things. This is followed by a small statement on the circularity of fashion as being at its core a primer for finding pleasure in things once loved, which given a certain period of time away from our gaze -with a drizzle of scorn- can once again be enjoyed... ad infinitum.

The painters however were right. They who, thanks to their training and experience, have a much sharper eye for all outward appearances, have always been able to recognize the superficial, pretentious, the alien, unharmonious nature of our “stylish” apartments. The people do not fit in with these rooms, nor do the rooms with the people. But how could they? The architect or the interior designer hardly even knows the name of the person for whom he is working. Even if the person has paid for the room 100-fold, they are still not his rooms. They always will remain the intellectual & spiritual property of the person who created them. That is why they do not, simply cannot appeal to the painter. They lack all intimacy and personal connection with the people who live in them. They lack that unique personal touch that he finds in the room of the simple peasant, the poor labourer, or the old spinster.

I did not, thank God, grow up in such a “stylish” apartment. It was just not possible at that time. Now, sadly, things have changed in my family as well. But in those days… Our table for instance, was a crazy jumble of wood adorned with some dreadful metal ornaments. But it was our table, our table! Can you imagine what that meant? Can you imagine the countless joyful hours that we spent at it –by the lamplight? In the evening when I was a little boy I could just not tear myself away from it, and my father had to imitate the night watchman’s horn to make me scuttle off in fright to the nursery. Then there was the desk, and on it the ink spot, where my sister Hermine had spilled ink on it when she was a tiny baby. And the pictures of my parents –what awful frames! But they were a wedding present from my father’s employees. And this old-fashioned chair here, a left-over from my grandmother’s home. And here a knitted slipper in which you can hang the clock, made in kindergarten by sister Irma. Every piece of furniture, every object, every thing had a story to tell –the story of our family. During the period in which the pressure to furnish one’s home in “style” became greater and greater –when all one’s acquaintances had “Old German” rooms, how could one simply refuse to adapt? So, all the old junk was thrown out. It might be junk for anyone else, but revered relics for the family. The rest was left up to the upholsterer.

Now we have had enough. We want to be masters of our own four walls again. If we lack taste, that’s fine, then we will furnish our homes in a taste-less manner. If we have good taste, all the better. But we refuse to be tyrannized by our own rooms any longer. We will buy everything we feel that we need and what appeals to us.

What appeals to us! That is the style that we have been seeking for so long, the style we wanted to bring into our apartments. The style that does not depend on all-pervading lion’s heads, but on taste –or, perhaps the lack of it- of an individual or family, things that comply with their sense of well-being. This sense would be underscored by the fact that the owner had selected all these objects & pieces of furniture in a room. And even if he were to prove to be somewhat capricious, especially regarding the choice of colours, it still would not be a disaster. A home that has grown along with the family can put up with quite a lot. Putting just one single ornament that does not belong into one of the “stylish” rooms can ruin the whole “effect”. In a “family” room it would immediately be absorbed into the whole. Such a room is somewhat like a violin: just as a violin is broken in by repeatedly playing it, a room can be “broken in” by living in it.

[]

Taste and the desire for change have always been closely linked. Today we wear narrow trousers; tomorrow they will be wide, and the day after narrow again. Every tailor knows this. Well then, couldn’t we just forgo the wide trouser period? Heavens no! We need it in order to enjoy our narrow trousers again. Just as we need a period of simple rooms for festive occasions in order to prepare us for the return of lavishly decorated ones.

A Bedchamber and a Boudoir, Balzac's Architectures of Pleasure.

Here are two spaces described in two of the three novels that make up Honore De Balzac’s ‘History of The Thirteen’, books written at the inception of the Human Comedy. They capture the beginnings of his ability to mix architecture, art, ornament, design and decoration into an inseparable continuum with the passions, dreams, impressions and activities of the people who play out their lives within their walls, an ability which reaches its apogee in the pages of his novel “The Wild Ass’s Skin” where he manages to describe the entire state of a civilisation, its dreams and nightmares, through long scenes which flit effortlessly between objects, conversations, tastes, smells, lust, art and architecture. It is a tendency in his novels which is partially explained in his book “Seraphita”, a strange tale which explains his philosophy on art and life, heavily influenced by the eighteenth century Swedish mystic Swedenborg, and which emphasises the nature of all materiality as being something through the understanding of which an interconnectedness, and totality, can be touched or adumbrated through its apprehension:
“If matter terminates in man by intelligence, why are you not satisfied to believe that the end of human intelligence is the Light of the higher spheres.”And conversely, that divinity, or the unique and spiritual essence of ‘nature’ is present in any work of man, and by this renders all possible relationships between the parts of man’s creations to be something profound beyond the material of their parts and the consequence of their existences.
“Earth has divided the Word –of which I here reveal some syllables- into particles, she has reduced it to dust and has scattered it through her works, her dogmas, her poems. If some impalpable grain shines like a diamond in a human work, men cry: ‘how grand! How glorious!’ That fragment vibrates in their souls.”Hence Balzac, who called himself a Historian, wished to describe a complex continuum, not a sequence of facts, and his science, while always vivid and descriptive, never fell to cataloguing. He was looking for an urban ecology which made every furnishing and candelabra pulse with whatever pathetic fragment of divinity Balzac managed to divine.
These two novels were meant to be his History of love in the efflorescence of luxury that occurred at the time of the Bourbon restoration in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.


From “Ferragus: Chief of the companions of duty”
Book 1 of “The History of The Thirteen”
P81
Madam Jules’ bedchamber was a holy of holies. Only she, her husband and her chambermaid had right of entrance. Opulence has fine privileges, the most enviable of them being those which give the greatest scope to the expression of our feelings, bring them to fruition through the accomplishment of the innumerable whims they inspire, surround them with a radiancy which magnifies them, with the studied attentions which purify them and the delicate touches of courtesy which add yet more to their attractiveness. If you hate al fresco luncheons and badly served meals, if it gives you some pleasure to see a glisteningly white damask tablecloth, a silver-guilt cutlery service, exquisitely delicate china, a gilt-bordered, richly sculptured table, lit with diaphanous candles and then, under emblazoned silver globes, the miracles of the choicest cuisine; if you want to be consistent, you must then spurn attics and house-tops, streets and street-walkers; you must say goodbye to the garrets and grisettes, to umbrellas and galoshes, you must abandon them to people who pay for their dinner with vouchers. Also you must understand the basic principle of love: it can only be achieved in all its grace on carpets from the Savonnerie, under the opal glimmer of a marmoreal lamp, between dicreet, silk-lined walls in front of a gilded fireplace, in a room muffled from all noises by Venetian blinds, shutters and billowy curtains, whether these noises come from the streets or from neighbouring flats. You must have mirrors which make play with human shapes and reflect to infinity the woman you would wish to be multiple and whom love does indeed render multiple. You must have very low divans and a bed which, with a sort of secretiveness, allows its presence merely to be divined; and, in this dainty chamber, fur rugs for bare feet, candles with glass shades amid draped muslins, so that one may read at any time of the night; also flowers whose scent is not too heavy, and linens whose fineness of texture would have contented even Anne of Austria.
Madame Jules had carried out this delicious programme, but that was only a beginning. Any woman of taste could do as much, even though the planning of these things requires a stamp of personality which gives originality and character to this or that ornament, to this or that detail. Today, more than ever before, there reigns a fanatical craving for self-expression. The more our laws aim at an impossible equality, the more we shall swerve from it by our way of living. In consequence rich people in France are becoming more exclusive in their tastes and their attachment to their personal belongings than they were thirty years ago. Madame Jules knew what this programme entailed and put everything in her home into harmony with the luxury which went so well with their conjugal love. ‘Sixty pounds a year and my Sophie’ or ‘Love in a cottage’: only starvelings talk like this. Black bread is all right to start with, but having become gourmets if they really love each other, they come round to regretting the gastronomic pleasures they cannot afford. Love loathes poverty and toil. It prefers to die than to pinch and scrape.

From “The Duchesse de Langeais”
Book 3 of “The History of The Thirteen”
P366
That half of the boudoir in which Henri now found himself described a softly graceful curve, contrasting with the other half, which was perfectly rectangular and resplendent with a chimney piece of white and gilded marble. He had entered through a side door hidden behind a rich portiere with a window standing opposite. The horseshoe section was adorned with a genuine Turkish divan, which is a mattress laid on the floor, wide as a bed, a divan fifty feet in circumference, of white cashmere offset by black and poppy-red silk rosettes forming a lozenge pattern. The back of this huge bed rose many inches higher than the numerous cushions, the tastefulness of whose matching gave it even further richness.
This boudoir was hung with a red fabric overlaid with Indian muslin, its in-and-out folds fluted like a Corinthian column, and bound at top and bottom with bands of poppy-red material on which arabesque designs in black were worked. Under this muslin the poppy-red showed up as pink, the colour of love, repeated in the window curtains, also of Indian muslin, lined with pink taffeta and bordered with poppy-red fringes alternating with black. Six silver-gilt sconces, each of them bearing two candles, stood out from the tapestried wall at equal distance to light up the divan. The ceiling, from the centre of which hung a chandelier of dull silver-gilt, was dazzlingly white, and the cornice was gilded. The carpet was reminiscent of an Oriental shawl, reproducing as it did the designs and recalling the poetry of Persia, where the hands of slaves had worked to make it. The furniture was covered in white cashmere, set off by black and poppy-red trimmings. The clock and candelabra were of white marble and gold. There were elegant flower-stands full of all sorts of roses and white or red flowers. To sum up, every detail of decoration seemed to have been thought out with loving care. Never had wealth of adornment been more daintily disguised in order to be translated into elegance, to be expressive of taste and incite voluptuousness. Everything there would have warmed the blood of the chilliest mortal. The iridescence if the hangings, whose colour changed as the eye looked at them from different angles, now white, now wholly pink, harmonized with the effects of light infused into the diaphanous folds of the muslin and produced an impression of mistiness. The human soul is strangely attracted to white, love has a delectation for red, and gold gives encouragement to the passions because it has the power to realize their dreams. Thus all that is vague and mysterious in man, all his unexplained affinities, found their involuntary sympathies gratified in this boudoir. There was in this perfect harmony a concerto of colour to which the soul responded with ideas which were at once voluptuous, imprecise and fluctuating.