Friday 31 March 2023

Tony

 

If you are lucky enough to have Covid, or some other horrible illness, you might have made time to watch a late afternoon repeat programme on BBC2 called 'The World's Most Extraordinary Homes'.

The programme is presented by the dream team of Comedienne Caroline Quentin and Architect Piers Taylor, and introduces us to some of the world's most amazing modern homes. Mostly they really ARE 'amazing'.

Watching the programme reminded me of a very short conversation I once had.

I have a very good friend who used to design such things. He worked in Dubai, and was responsible for some of their most iconic buildings; I'm sure you've seen pictures of them. This is Tony with me below when we were still both art students. I'm the good-looking one on the left!


I asked him.....

"How many of your designs end-up looking exactly how you'd first imagined them, before you put pencil to back of envelope?"

"All of them"! he replied.

I'd been expecting him to say "None". How wrong I was!

15 comments:

  1. I thought that photo was of Pete and Dud (Cook and Moore)!

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  2. They are a good team to review houses.
    Some of them are just a dream built in 3D, others you can see why...and make sense

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    1. We only caught a couple of the programmes, but we were fascinated. Unfortunately the series came to a sudden end.

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  3. How very satisfactory to see one's designs reproduced exactly. So many people have to compromise.

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    1. None of my paintings ever came-out as I'd envisaged them. I'm rather surprised that his buildings did!

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  4. I don't wish to upset you but I thought the fellow on the right was far more attractive than the gargoyle on the left.

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    1. You would. That just shows us how wrong you can be!

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  5. Replays of British TV helped us survive 2020-2021.

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  6. These TV programs can be interesting. It is amazing what can be built today. I am glad I built my home on the lot I chose. The architect was brilliant and great fun to work with.

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    1. The only new-build I've lived in was when I was very small. My father designed the house, then gave his design to a lady architect who made it more liveable-in. It wasn't a 'modern' design, but based on an old Sussex Farmhouse. It was a lovely house, where we lived until I was 14.

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  7. I used to imagine being an architect. I look at floor plans in newspapers and magazines and alter them to suit myself, but that's as far as I go.

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    1. I was offered a place to study architecture when I left school. When I went to be interviewed by the college principal, he was so rude and nasty that I told him he could 'stuff his course'. I don't regret it.

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  8. I toyed with the idea of being an architect and started out in that direction after A Levels, but my maths let me down, and although my designs were "interesting" (to quote one tutor) my calculations were hopeless, maths not being my best subject, so I gave up. I would have been fine if I could have just stuck to single-storey glass sided boxes!
    I thought the photo was of Pete and Dud at first glance too!

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