Wednesday December 2nd 1998
Tom was dropped up to school on Monday morning by his mother. But Tom didn’t want to stay at school that day. As the other childen left their coats and filed into the literacy hour, poor Tom decided he would walk home to see his mum. He walked over a main road, all the way up Ditchling Road, across scrubland. Everyone who hears of this feels – just think what could have happened….
Wednesday December 2nd 2020
I’ve been thinking about the view over Brighton from Varndean Green. There’s a difference between a photogenic view and an experiential view - a view that must be experienced. A photogenic view is that chocolate box shot that’s both incredibly conventional and very photographic. Some views are both, as many of the views in the English Lake District or Yosemite are.
But an experiential view is much more deeply layered, more meaningful and more absorbing than a pretty chocolate box vista.
The view from Surrenden, way across the schools campus, over city villas and houses, apartments and offices, seems to zoom down to the station and the i360, then swoop up and out to the distant horizon of the Rampion Wind farm and the English Channel. This is an experiential view because it in deeply engaged with the human, with the vernacular built environment, with artifice and technology. But it is also deeply elemental, engaging the human with sea and sky and wind, light and shade, storm and stillness. The great green sweep of the playing fields refreshes and replenishes the viewer. The openess of the vista lifts the spirits. Changes of light and cloudscape call forth wonder and delight in young and old alike.
The experience of the view from Varndean Green sets its own agenda, plans its own strategy. The viewer is cradled, embraced and reassured by nature on the verge, is reaffirmed in citizenship as the eye is drawn to the heart of the city, and is challenged to hope and thoughts beyond self by the open panorama that bids us all to think with vision about the future we want for future generations.
Friday December 2nd 1988
On The Guardian front page:
‘Late 1980s Britain and the influence of design and of the Design Industry is greater than ever. The declared intent is to present ideas, products and information as directly as possible. But the actual direction is towards the refining and redefining of techniques of manipulation. Design is no longer just a creative process – it is being used to conceal a social system on the brink of collapse.’
