Bring it back to the streets

I have an addiction. It’s one of those shameful secrets that quietly festers away, like the embarrassing itch that comes from drunken sex behind a skip. It started off as a harmless bit of fun, but it’s become far more demanding than that. I’m increasingly making excuses to be alone, to indulge my habit, but if I’m honest, I can’t get enough these days. Enough, as a concept, doesn’t really cut it. Loads more, however – well, that can keep me going for hours, while my fiancé sleeps on obliviously in the next room.

What is this obsession, I hear you cry? Is it midget porn? Cocaine? Kraft Cheesy Pasta? No. It is [takes a deep breath] Google Street View. Hi, my name’s Neil, and I’ve got a problem.

Google Street View rose to public prominence a few years ago because a handful of waddling fatties objected to being shown ramming pasties down their throats five yards from the front door of their nearest Greggs. Infringement of privacy, could be having an affair, you can see my psoriasis, blah blah blah. After the fatties had their faces pixellated, everyone seemed to forget about the whole thing. But it’s still out there. And as a means of seeing the world and learning about places on a street-by-street, house-by-house basis, GSV is quite simply peerless. You can zoom in with excruciating clarity, to discover the weeds discreetly poking out of untended gutters, or the group of youths lurking with nefarious intent in the underpass. You can check out what sort of cars people drive on a particular street, and no piece of graffiti is safe from that 360-degree camera, which can go anywhere the tarmac permits.

I started using GSV through my job as a property journalist – it’s a marvellous way to learn about a street you’ve never been to, when you’re writing about a house that’s for sale there. However, the sheer scale of the Street View project has allowed it to take over more and more of my free time, as I obsessively ‘drive’ the wrong way up one-way streets in towns I might like to live in, or towns where I used to live, or work, or drink cider, or towns where my friends used to live, or ex-girlfriends, or basically anyone and anything. You don’t need a reason when you’ve got a broadband connection.

I urge any children reading this to avoid Google Street View – it’s crack for the eyeballs. I’m a hopeless addict now, and I’ll probably always be battling some craving to see what Old Bellsdyke Road in Larbert looks like now that metal storage container has been removed. (Did I mention that GSV gets updated quite frequently?) It’s too late for me, but you can still save yourselves. Just say no…

All killer, no filler

Let me preface my latest rage against the machine by saying that I have huge admiration for architecture as a profession, and architects as professionals. These extensively qualified and imaginative individuals can do great work. They can transform the aesthetics and desirability of some previously Godforsaken area that looks like it was featured in Children of Men, and is optimistically described in sales literature as being “up and coming” (i.e. the ceasefire’s still holding). Consider Anderston, Laurieston, the New Gorbals and Collegelands on the periphery of central Glasgow as four perfect case studies of architects working towards the greater good.

However, sometimes, architects waffle. And when they waffle, by God, they put all the holes in and smother it with ketchup. No stylistic reference is too obscure (hey, Jude), no crenellation too ornate, and no press release too pretentious. Consider this recent example of verbal diarrhoea, from the current design competition to choose Scotland’s new sporting performance centre:

“Meanwhile in Edinburgh it is Reiach & Hall who are assuming design honours, working in tandem with Heriot Watt University and City of Edinburgh Council to deliver a centre with a unique curving roof which arcs to trace the trajectory of Brazil’s Roberto Carlos’ goal against France in 1997.”

Now for those of you who didn’t see that particular goal in Le Tournoi at the time, it was an absolute screamer. It curved, it swerved, it harnessed astonishing technical prowess, and it made the French keeper Fabien Barthez look like a bit of a pillock. It’s well worth YouTubing. But it was a free kick, in a meaningless football tournament, on the telly, 16 years ago. Is anyone ever going to drive past Reiach & Hall’s building (assuming it gets constructed) and think “hmm, that roofline looks just like the arc of Roberto Carlos’s banana shot in Le Tournoi back in the 1990s”? I doubt it. I wouldn’t, and I reckon it was the second best goal I’ve ever seen. Plus I’ve been a property journalist for the last thousand years, so I’m quite good at spotting obscure architectural references in building designs.

I do appreciate that architects have to put spin (no pun intended) on their work. The firm in question are bidding against two other heavyweight design houses with rival proposals for Dundee and Stirling, so they need something to make their work stand out. But this? Really? Never mind the bollocks, here’s a stylish performance centre. Isn’t that enough?