Sykes, Theo, Dennis Sharp, 2021

VIBRANT. Theo Janek Sykes Ricardo Ruvio Against Abstraction, 2020

Some images from a google search: Vibrant London

Oh, to be full of energy and life!

How are we promoted to understand vibrancy in the city? We are often instructed what vibrancy is, so frequently in fact that we might well begin to believe it. Vibrancy is: busy streets, smoke emitting terraces, pubs that spill engulfing pavements, street-markets that sell, squares made full, shops worndown by footfall, filled paddling pools, clubs and bars, vomit, nightlife, cyclists and their lanes, drug dealers, street-food, kebabs, fried chicken, sunsets, tarmac, plants, fear, beer taken by the riverside or quay, a functioning high-street, both day and night, non-corporate, locals, real locals? These assumptions raise further questions: Does vibrancy emerge in real time, as a lived condition, or is it created? Is “vibrancy“ a label that spawns from within a local community, or is it, rather, proscribed? Would it be normal to hear a Londoner describing themselves and their city as vibrant, or is the term perhaps more often used in the property, and tourism industries? A term of seduction, to tempt and disarm purchasing power.

So do we really know what it is to be vibrant? Vibrant is jargonic, an applique applied to areas that long for something that has left. Vibrant is a period of time mid and post gentrification. Vibrant is a tool in the mechanisms of utopianism, a hoarding. Vibrant is the skyline, the constant heron dance of the cloud scraping cranes. Vibrant is the (re)development of the previously unbuildable. Vibrant is an architectural monoculture of apologetic formalism. Vibrant is the architectural trustafarian, poverty porn. Vibrant is avant-gardeism's usurped by neo-liberalism to make the increasingly small increasingly cool, think co-living. Vibrant is the accidental charade of the soon to be made (un)local. Vibrant is the empty apartment block. Vibrancy is a cross party lie, a criminal folly; the vacuity of the contemporary modern city made obvious.

Class war.

It’s moving! It’s alive!

Quick, get the gun! “the ends are changing guess that’s gentrification, property prices rise and they drive us out” Jesse James Solomon — Boiler Room

The nineteen-sixties were important years. One such importance occurred in 1964 when sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in her publication: London. Aspects of change. “One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes – upper and lower. Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed.”1 The term offers a wry subversion of gentry,2 to apply their being landed to the urban context. Gentrification is now something we now something we know all too well, from Notting Hill to Hoxton to Chelsea there is movement. This displacement is that of economic change, the forcing out of the ‘original’ via an in-affordability; property, rent and land prices rise until the ‘original’ must move. It is a mechanism of change. A self perpetual system, self-feeding even, for if someone is displaced they must (re)place somewhere else, replacing the former ‘original’. This is vibrant, a rapid movement.3 The fodder of gentrification is manifold, though its primary feed is a lack of housing, namely ‘affordable’4 or social housing.5 However, the speed at which the mechanisms of gentrification are taking place and concluding are growing ever faster. A positive feedback loop. It is even more vibrant.

This is in part, due to the aforementioned feed, London is becoming increasingly unaffordable; no time to chew, just swallow. The appetite of London is after all, insatiable. Though the fodder is material, bricks and mortar, its nutritional value is more contingent, ephemeral, even informational. Where would London house prices be without London’s culture? Like sex, it sells.

1 Glass, Ruth. “London: aspects of change” p.17 London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1964.

2 People of good social position, specif ially the class of people next below the nobility in position and birth.

3 The root of vibrant is in the Latin — vibrate — to shake to and fro, soon meaning rapid movement.

4 I should say af fordable is often not such, social is the word that should be taken with preference here, it is cheaper, more af fordable than af fordable.

5 This trend is not limited to London, though it is symptomatic of such. In the UK 3 million social homes must be built within 20 years to meet needs. 200,000 were pledged to built in 2014. They are yet to have been built. This all occurs while homelessness increases, with 400,000 people being either homeless or at risk of.

Lets invent some, render-worlds and hoardings

Vibrant Culture and vegan fish!

“American tourists today think of the characteristically ‘European’ charm of the major Continental cities as - the cafes, the fountains, the craftsmanship, the particular uses of public space - owes much to the legacy of burgherdom and urban patriciate’s.... This kind of urban culture was overtaken very early in England by the growth of the national market centred in London.... Today’s urban landscape in Britain - the undistinguished modern architecture, the neglect of public services and amenities from the arts to transportation, the general seediness - is not an invention of Thatcherism alone but belongs to a longer pattern of capitalist development and the commodification of all social goods, just as the civic pride of Continental capitals owes as much to the traditions of burgher luxury and absolutist ostentation as to the values of modern urbanism and advanced welfare capitalism.”

Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism (London, 1991), pp. 108-9.

Development and redevelopment are mechanisms of the constant change of London, of gentrification. These redevelopments are manifold in their stainlessness, scale and location, though are concerned with nothing other than being sold. This is where a coming together, or crossing over occurs: commodities are cultivated and culture commodified as stated: it sells. Or rather, it’s idea sells, for it is reduced to a series of buzzwords pulled from marketing jargon: community, creative, honest, historic, distinctive, authentic, eclectic, vibrant. Endearing terms of a monoculture of preordained vacuity. These claims are not only asserted in marketing brochures and boards, but are announced on the hoardings of the building sites. These words that bulldoze point to that which people long for, something cosmopolitan, something moving, something alive; something you can now buy. They often display either buzzword(s) or a rendering of the future environment, and frequently one atop another. The renderings themselves don’t often show the building as a lone monolith, or object, instead as a vague part of the city’s fabric. In fact, the building becomes secondary, anonymous even, hidden behind a negligee of trees and lifestyle for this is what they are truly selling.

Women walking with coffee, men working from laptops, leisurely couples, considered planting, security guards, railway infrastructures — culture therefore. It is a Utopian lifestyle of champagne, power-lunches and apartments bought off plan.

The hoardings surrounding Fish Village announced three things: AUTHENTIC, ECLECTIC, VIBRANT. All things we long for. The fullstops after their bold type almost make us believers; it is final, an irrefutable truth. Fish Village is a redevelopment on the edge of Hackney Wick for 1000 residents at a ‘social rate’, ie. below the London average, with prices

Hoardings and Renders of devopments.

Visual marketing jargon.

FishIslandVillage Hoardings Pie chart from Transparency International

beginning at £432,500.6 Integrated within it is – the Trampery, a 6-acre campus of studios, facilities and social spaces spread over 10 buildings.

It will provide the apt injection of culture that is needed to live up to the prior three claims.7 A plastic form of: “creative vibe of this bohemian borough of London.”8 Though, this community of artists is what was forced to make way for Fish Village and the Trampery. Hackney Wick recently had the densest concentration of artist studios in Europe, at around 600.9 A result of the de-industrialisation of the area, the empty factories became cultural producers as low-rent studio space. Cheap freedom but an early indication of change, vibrancy, gentrification.

Though they were accessible, the Trampery isn’t. It is geared toward ‘innovators’ and small businesses, perhaps the new creative class. “By day, the community comes to life to create and innovate and by night, the streets are filled with the sound of live music and the aroma of fresh street food.”10 Vibrant? It is thus a remembered site, a recollection of that which has been disabled, destroyed and recreated for the market — “in order to exist they must eradicate that which preceded them.”11 This is trend symptomatic of redevelopments. Reproduction is Vibrant, it is an absence that requires us to look back — “although it provides a replica of the real thing, it can never be the real thing, because it’s cheap magic is anticipated.”12 Perhaps the hoardings were right after all.

Within vibrancy there exists another form of absence; that of the empty apartment block. It is true that a lifestyle is sold — that of the (post-)vibrant vibrant, but the vibrancy is also that of the portfolio, the upward march of investment, around 10 percent a year.13 The vibrant lifestyle is aspirational to the, often foreign, investor. A 2017 report undertaken Transparency International to expose the impact that overseas investment and corruption has on the London property market started to make obvious the market audience here. Of the 14 Landmark properties analysed the proportion of benefactors coming from overseas sits at around 80 percent. London is cosmopolitan, but to what end.

The vile Elephant Park Development is emblematic of this trend. The Heygate estate, a product of the Welfare state, was sold by the council to developers, emptied and swiftly demolished in 2016. 1,212 council homes were destroyed, of which 189 were leaseholders. Just 82 of the 2,704 new homes will be for social rent.14 Whose regeneration? Sales for the first stage of development South Gardens began in Singapore, off-plan, off6 For a one bed, affordable!

7 “Work-spaces”Accessed 11/2020. https://thetrampery.com/workspaces/fishislandvillage/ 8 “Our Vision.” Accessed 11/2020. https://www.fishislandvillage.co.uk/our-vision/ 9 Furseth, Jessica. Accessed 11/2020. “The artists working to save Hackney Wick.” https://www.apollo-magazine.com/the-artists-working-to-save-hackney-wick/ 10 ibid.

11 Bennes, Crystal. “The Words that bulldoze our Cities.” Accessed 12/2020. https://crystalbennes.com/portfolio/death-sentence-the-words-that-bulldoze-our-cities/ 12 Further Abroad “Get High.” Episode 3. Johnathan Meades. BBC1, 1994.

13 For London housing. See: Engel, Matthew. “The bubble that turned into a tide: how London got hooked on gentrication.” Accessed 11/2020. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/24/the-bubble-that-turned-into-a-tide-how-london-got-hooked-on-gentrifcation 14 “Heygate Regeneration.” Accessed 11/2020 https://35percent.org/heygate-regeneration-faq/

Elephant park An empty luxury tower in Vauxhall

render, 2 years prior to them going on sale in London. Though London’s market was superfluous to their needs, all 51 of these apartments were sold abroad.15 These apartments are not social, not affordable, you will pay from £600,000 to well over £3 million.16 The average wage in Southwark last year was £32,000 per annum.17 Whose regeneration?

Last October I toured in a flat in the redevelopment along with a friend to see what they were really selling. Internally they say nothing, nouveau luxe which amounts to shades of beige, pine, brushed brass, large windows, concierge and small apartments. Its not as though the buildings say more from outside – apologetic formalism. They look over Newington Estate.

Next to go? The apartment was dressed with objects that caricatured Britishness; tea sets, a spy manual alongside “drops of truffle.” Here the culture sold, is first that of “A vibrant neighbourhood”18 and secondly that of England. Though I wonder if any buyers will experience this seemingly longed culture, of just enjoy the market fluctuating rewards instead.

Patrick Kellier suggests that within the new developments that now makeup London the “frequently ensuing sterility is perhaps not so much a question of culture as of residential densities.”19 Though I would beg to differ, it’s not a product of sparse living and extra large apartments, it’s a product of these large apartments having an extra-large price tag and being bought to be left empty. “Look around you, all around you are housing blocks, but they are no longer houses, they are blocks of money bought by global investors.”20 This is far more than an investment in shelter, family, community or even one’s self. Investment in investment?

To simplify this fractal to the level of individual greed is reductive, the investor being part of something bigger than themselves, devoted to the reproduction of capital. Is it not a question of faith? Faith in the market, in collective desire, and therefore in growth. Growth for growth’s sake — and, yes, consequently investment in investment. The plastic vibrant is flat and seamless like an infinite gif, reproducing its self insofar as it is profitable — a part of the vibrant economy.

15 Transparency International UK – “Faulty Towers.” Accessed 10/2020. https://www. transparency.org.uk/sites/default/es/pdf/publications/TIUK_Faulty_Towers_August_24.pdf 16 “New Homes.” Accessed 11/2020. https://www.elephantpark.co.uk/new-homes/ 17 “Payscales” Accessed 11/2020. https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Location=Southwark-England%3A-London/Salary 18 “New Homes. Accessed 11/2020. https://www.elephantpark.co.uk/new-homes/ 19 Keiller, Patrick. “London in the Early 1990s.” AA Files , Spring 2003, No. 49 (Spring 2003), pp. 20-24 20 Living in an Unreal World A Film – Adam Curtis. Vice. 2016.

Sarah Lucas, Islington Diamonds, 2001.

Alvan Fisher, Pastoral Landscape, 1854.

Disappearing act

‘The true identity of London is in its absence. As a city, it no longer exists. In this alone it is truly modern: London was the first metropolis to disappear.’

Robinson – London, Patrick Kellier, 1999.

Though the last sentence might seem somewhat obtuse, some truth pertains – London is certainly absent. When something is gone we tend to long for it, this is normal. McLuhan outlines: “The content of the 19th Century mind was the Renaissance; the content of the 20th Century mind is the 19th Century. We are obsessed with it.”21 The obsession of the present is often a reality that preceded it, either exactly, or with a slight delay. As discussed this is vibrant, for vibrancy comes at a moment when something is no longer our reality but instead a rebranded, manufactured reality, plastic. McLuhan continues; “The content of this new industrial, mechanical environment was the old agrarian world, and there was this upsurge of awareness and delight in the old agrarian environment of arts and crafts-the pastoral world. This discovery of the receding age was called the ‘romantic movement.’”22 The industrial forced us backward, to confront the agrarian within the industrial, as a framed natural. The pastoral and the picturesque were the modes of this gaze, the means of rationale. This sounds vibrant; cities now often evolve in ways that involve social change and subjectivity rather more than actual physical alteration.

Vibrant is a view backward.

The pastoral is an romanticised view of rural characters and scenes, negotiating the relationships between an “implied high viewer/reader and virtuous low subject,”23 frequently a “more socially and economically advantaged audience, often those that employed or extracted rent from these ‘low’ subjects.”24 Thus; the “pastoral is not necessarily simply a question of rural subject matter but is an attitude and a perspective on social relations.”25 Julian Strallabrass introduces the notion of the ‘urban pastoral’ in his book, High Art Lite, 1999, prompted by the yBas26 relation to Hoxton. Applied to the urban it is an attitude toward the everyday artefacts and social abjection of working-class life by detached socialites.

It is the production and re-imagining of urban space for a more affluent, outside group.27 Adolf Loos states: “A person who dresses picturesquely is not picturesque but a buffoon. A farmer doesn’t dress picturesquely.

21 MacLuhan, Marshall. “The Invisible Environment. The Future of an Erosion” 1967, Perspecta 11.

22 Ibid.

23 Harris, Andrew. “Art and gentrification: pursuing the urban pastoral in Hoxton, London.” 2016, UCL Urban Laboratory.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Young British Artists 27 Stallabrass, Julian. “High Art Lite The Rise and Fall of Young British Art.” London: Verso, 1999.

Pop brixton (a p.o.p.s) Brixton Market

But he is.”28 The buffoon is the detached socialite, the inner city tourist, on the hunt for the vibrant with an urban pastoral gaze. If you are to ask someone from Peckham or Brixton (originally) what their area is, I am certain they won’t call it vibrant. They are the farmers. They need not fetishise vibrancy, it is their reality, not a feeling and not a word therefore.

A google search of (vibrant x), Brixton or Peckham, reveals descriptions of redevelopments, rental and buying guides, airbnb’s and apartmenthotels.29 The vibrant can be experienced, but for how long and for what is left up to you, and the developers.

28 Loos, Adolf. “Rules for Building in the Mountains, Ornament and crime: selected essays.” Riverside, Calif.: Ariadne Press, 1998.

29 https://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/stylish-studio-room-in-trendy-brixton-c.en-gb. html. https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g186338-d189226-r286611087-Brixton-London_England.html https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/32107230

Hot Air

Architecture can be a paternal affair, the fixers, the planners, the designers of buildings, of space. All else are the lay, it’s almost ecclesiastical. The top down has been going on for some time, though it can often be superfluous to need — felt to be necessary, felt. Archigram’s paper project, The Instant City, 1968-70, was a temporal “cultural circus” that would expose the rural and post-industrial British city to the joys of urban living. It would expose these joys in the astonishment created by a bouquet of the then modern technologies of projection, zeppelin and inflatable — a circus of the future. The sequence of this education is as follows; before i.c. a town is sleeping, descent, event, high-intensity, infiltration, network takes over. This placement of culture is evocative of the tenancies of the vibrant outlined earlier, the attempt to fix, to replace. The sequence too is directly evocative of the mechanisms of gentrification. Please see the figure across, 1. A town is sleeping, the rents are low, the space is high, it can be accessed. 2. descent, higher rent elsewhere makes this area appealing. 3. event. The culture moves in, galleries et. all. 4. high-intensity. popularity ensures, prices hike. 5. infiltration. land is bought up, people forced out, redevelopment occurs.

6. network takes over. the area is gentrified. Though here the actual physical alteration is momentary, fleeting, based on subjectivity, of experience, it is a circus or an exposition. It is a temporary communal infiltration. This too plays into the urban pastoral, though perhaps it is the neo-pastoral; it “enables a city to become a village for a week.”30 Here architecture appears not only as a consumer object but also as the creation of a synthetic environment. It doesn’t need to exist, is only an incident, perhaps even a way to show off something that has left. Marshall McLuhan speculates; “The future of the city may be very much like a world’s fair — a place to show off new technology-rather than a place of work or residence.”31 Vibrant thus? One wonders what these technologies will be; those of fraud evasion, surveillance systems, autonomous vehicles, investment machines, or something more holistic?

Brixton is mid, to late gentrification. A moment typified by the encroachment of investment enterprises, vibrancy becomes speculation within the structures of finance capital, the movement is that of a stock, aimed upward—let’s make it soar. In Brixton, what is the Zeppelin and the cultural circus? The soon to be Hondo Tower is a new development

by Hondo enterprises and Adjaye associates. Its site is that of former coal industries, an island of land between two railway viaducts; intended to link Brixton Village, Popes road and Brixton Market and add some 25,435m2 of office space.32 This pseudo viaduct and minaret of apologetic 30 Hobson, Benedict. “Archigrams Instant City – Peter Cook.” Accessed 12/2020. https:// www.dezeen.com/2020/05/13/archigram-instant-city-peter-cook-video-interview-vdf/ 31 MacLuhan, Marshall. “The Invisible Environment. The Future of an Erosion” 1967, Perspecta 11.

32 Urban, Mike. “Privilege, wealth and power: Brixton landlord Taylor McWilliams and his Housekeeping DJ Collective” Accessed 12/2020. https://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2020/05/ brixton-for-sale-who-is-taylor-mcwilliams-of-hondo-enterprises/

Hondo Tower Vibrant Viaduct

formalism will shout to all, but what will it shout? Brixton is Vibrant or Brixton is no longer Brixton. They state in their promotional boards that “The addition of more retail space will add to the vibrancy of the town centre and enhance Brixton as a destination.” One must ask again whose regeneration? Though, I daren’t enter the debate on community the rents have already increased by 22 percent last year in the Village.33 This Zeppelin is not hot air but red brick, it is the network takeover of gentrification, though it can’t leave, so quickly at least, but it certainly can displace. To return to vibrant as the post applique, of something plastic, we should also return to the circus. On a stage nothing is real, it is a simulation of the real, a way to sell belief, story and tale. Just ask Brecht.

The architecture of entertainment is that of a ticketed synthetic culture; vibrant.

We should not kink shame, we all have to get our kicks somehow.

33 Ibid.

A new communal We read!

Kink Shaming is bad?

But, sometimes the fetishisation of the small should be shamed, bigger is after all better. During London’s current housing crisis, houses are shrinking, but prices aren’t. In a proposed development in Barnet, apartments were designed as dog kennels, a home 40 percent smaller than a travel lodge room.34 Who said size doesn’t matter? This condition is the norm in London, and there has been an increasing attempt to make the small cool. To do so, Russian avant-garde mechanisms have been co-opted to sell a certain smallness, morphed into their aged neo-liberal cousin. “in post-revolution Russia, communal housing was the primary mechanism to create a truly collective society and eliminate the bourgeois domestic sphere…

There are many who see communal living or co-living as the ideal solution to the housing crisis, regarding a communal lifestyle as socially beneficial, sustainable and economically viable. the idea of pooling funds, space and resources for greater shared gains is becoming increasingly enticing and many are willing to give up on privacy to achieve these benefits.”

The above comes from a description page of a Royal Academy lecture titled A New Communal.35 The original political intent of the condenser has been usurped, communal to individual. That of the neo-liberal.

Replaced with a defeatist pessimism that bows to smallness, for smallness is the formerly large. The new communal is a total ideological coping mechanism, presented as a progressive opportunity. This communal is often centred around buzzwords, not dissimilar from those found on hoardings. Thriving community, cultural programme, bespoke, everchanging, vibrant. All things we are told to love, all things that make the small cool. It is a plastic ideology, late capital run amok. The new communal spaces are those of working out, co-working and leisure time.

Kitchens are shared, unless you pay £300 extra p/m; privacy costs.36 In 2017 I visited The Collective in Old Oak, I found it to be a tepid building, with all the hall-marks of student housing. Even this had to suffer a re-brand. I find student housing to most often be god-awful and unconsidered as it is the assumption the student won’t care of their surrounds. They are instead there to pay excessive amounts of money to study or rather live away from home; have sex, vomit and set of f fire alarms. It is the soviet condenser come student housing for y.p. or yuppie. The political aim of eliminating the bourgeois domestic sphere is replaced with the possibility of networking over prosecco, pasta34 Booth, Ruth. “‘Dog kennel’ flats in Barnet will be 40% smaller than Travelodge room.”

Accessed 12/2020. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/27/dog-kennel-barnethouse-smaller-than-travelodge-room 35 “A new communal.” Accessed 11/2020. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/event/a-newcommunal 36 “Old Oak.” Accessed 12/2020. https://www.thecollective.com/locations/old-oak

A crowned terrace in Chelsea.

The Poor Poet, Carl Spitzweg, 1837.

pesto, saunas and yoga! Perhaps these are current political aims; leisure time and economic progression. This is a cultural celebration of the debasement of neoliberalism, awful with ribbons, small rooms, high rents but a vibrant community. The y.p.s who made up The Collective I saw to be the prosecco class, those who can’t yet afford champagne, so drink the charming enough substitute, perhaps beer is too base. Champagne is, of course, the aspiration, as is the hording(ed) redevelopment – Utopian! In fact I was kicked out of the building by a man holding two bottles of the stuff.

Though imbuing the small, the formerly large, with notions of opportunity and kitsch is not limited to collective living. The most pertinent expression of this in London is centred on the terraced house in the shrinkage of division and the little expansion of extension. Both of these are again products of the lack in housing stock and effectual inaccessibility of the market. Real estate investment has had to respond, it too has become small. If the vibrant is the imbuing of positive meaning on what is objectively a change for, often, the worse, then this is to invest with positive meaning what is objectively a decrease in the amount of square metres per capita of domestic space — to make it vibrant.

The Times lauded the mansard roof as the ingenious tool that is “transforming our space-starved terraces.”37 Space starved is without excitement, for me, let them eat cake I say. Entire terraces in Chelsea are crowned with this new bypass of dilapidation. Here there exists a defeatist pessimism, it’s an expression of the current state of the market in which large scale developments are not profitable, or rather affordable for the local market. (It should be noted that this is symptomatic. In England the local seems the pervasive enemy, replaced with Wetherspoons, TescoTowns and train stations.) There is basically no consumer market, as indicated prior, it is of or rather for foreign investment, for emptiness. In the wake of this otherwise vast emptiness, the small becomes inhabited, extra-inhabited, alive, moving, vibrant.

37 Graham, Hugh. “How the mansard roof is transforming London’s space-starved terraces” Accessed 10/2020. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-the-mansard-roof-istransforming-londons-space-starved-terraces-07zxc09gd

CU

LTU

RE

Vibrant?

In May of 2018 Grant Thornton, one of the worlds largest consulting firms, published their findings on London labelled — Vibrant Capital, Shaping a city in which Londoners can live, work and grow. They believe in profit for purpose, perfect for the city, centring it on the city’s “unique mix of industry, culture and heritage.”38 Though, ultimately finding that the vibrant economy of London is in fact not as “dynamic, and resilient, as well as healthy, diverse, and cohesive”39 as they might have predicted.

It is instead unaffordable, driving people to leave. They sum this up aptly in the following description of an imagined Londoner, Female, 18-30. “I bought a hand-held back massager as an object that symbolises London. You need it because living in London is stressful, you’re always busy and stressed... and you need a home massager because the cost of living is so high that you can’t afford a massage but need to look for a cheaper solution.”40 Her vibrancy comes from a machine. Produced in China, plastic, will break soon, purchased through Amazon. This simile is emblematic what we cannot afford we must make do with something other. This is either something worse, or something cheaper that displaces others to something worse. Both are imbued with positivity, made acceptable, made vibrant. The backache is gone, but for how long?

To return to Robison perhaps London is the first truly Modern city, perhaps it “was the first metropolis to disappear.” Though, if it has gone I do wonder where. Kate Tempest states: “Europe is lost. America lost.

London lost.” I think that instead of London disappearing, it is instead lost, constantly vibrating, constantly changing, constantly on the move.

But it is a city without a map. Various roads to take, what to choose, the pull of capital and plastic production is that which presently pervades.

What comes next is the insoluble question of hyper-reality. Develop, Develop. England, England Patriotism! What we can say, with pride: London is the Vibrant capital!

38 “Grant Thornton. Vibrant Capital. Shaping a city in which Londoners can live, work and grow.” May 2018.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

Bibliography

Glass, Ruth. “London: aspects of change” p.17 London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1964.

“Work-spaces”Accessed 11/2020. https://thetrampery.com/workspaces/fishislandvillage/ “Our Vision.” Accessed 11/2020. https://www.fishislandvillage.co.uk/our-vision/ Furseth, Jessica. Accessed 11/2020. “The artists working to save Hackney Wick.” https://www. apollo-magazine.com/the-artists-working-to-save-hackney-wick/ Bennes, Crystal. “The Words that bulldoze our Cities.” Accessed 12/2020. https://crystalbennes.com/portfolio/death-sentence-the-words-that-bulldoze-our-cities/ Further Abroad “Get High.” Episode 3. Johnathan Meades. BBC1, 1994.

For London housing. See: Engel, Matthew. “The bubble that turned into a tide: how London got hooked on gentrication.” Accessed 11/2020. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/ sep/24/the-bubble-that-turned-into-a-tide-how-london-got-hooked-on-gentrifcation “Heygate Regeneration.” Accessed 11/2020 https://35percent.org/heygate-regeneration-faq/ Transparency International UK – “Faulty Towers.” Accessed 10/2020. https://www.transparency.org.uk/sites/default/es/pdf/publications/TIUK_Faulty_Towers_August_24.pdf “New Homes.” Accessed 11/2020. https://www.elephantpark.co.uk/new-homes/ “Payscales” Accessed 11/2020. https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Location=Southwark-England%3A-London/Salary Keiller, Patrick. “London in the Early 1990s.” AA Files , Spring 2003, No. 49 (Spring 2003), pp.

20-24 Living in an Unreal World A Film – Adam Curtis. Vice. 2016.

MacLuhan, Marshall. “The Invisible Environment. The Future of an Erosion” 1967, Perspecta 11.

Harris, Andrew. “Art and gentrification: pursuing the urban pastoral in Hoxton, London.”

2016, UCL Urban Laboratory.

Stallabrass, Julian. “High Art Lite The Rise and Fall of Young British Art.” London: Verso, 1999.

Loos, Aldof. “Rules for Building in the Mountains, Ornament and crime: selected essays.”

Riverside, Calif.: Ariadne Press, 1998. https://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/stylish-studio-room-in-trendy-brixton-c.en-gb.html. https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g186338-d189226-r286611087-Brixton-London_England.html https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/32107230 Hobson, Benedict. “Archigrams Instant City – Peter Cook.” Accessed 12/2020. https://www. dezeen.com/2020/05/13/archigram-instant-city-peter-cook-video-interview-vdf/

MacLuhan, Marshall. “The Invisible Environment. The Future of an Erosion” 1967, Perspecta 11.

Urban, Mike. “Privilege, wealth and power: Brixton landlord Taylor McWilliams and his Housekeeping DJ Collective” Accessed 12/2020. https://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2020/05/ Booth, Ruth. “‘Dog kennel’ flats in Barnet will be 40% smaller than Travelodge room.” Accessed 12/2020. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/27/dog-kennel-barnethouse-smaller-than-travelodge-room “A new communal.” Accessed 11/2020. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/event/a-new-communal “Old Oak.” Accessed 12/2020. https://www.thecollective.com/locations/old-oak Graham, Hugh. “How the mansard roof is transforming London’s space-starved terraces” Accessed 10/2020. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-the-mansard-roof-is-transforming-londons-space-starved-terraces-07zxc09gd “Grant Thornton. Vibrant Capital. Shaping a city in which Londoners can live, work and grow.” May 2018.

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With thanks to:

The Bureau of Agricultural Techno Matton Clarke, The Hato hoarding designer Stadt Wien LendLease