Outside the window the city is full of its repetitions, the sky full of its greyness. Identical terraced houses stretch left and right, chimney pots sitting on their roofs like top hats. If I had to give one word to the city it would be ‘repetition’.
In the early nineteen twenties John Brabin the Art Nouveau architect put forward a new model of terraced housing aiming to get ride of this repetition. Brabin, a good friend of Gaudi, publically criticised their uniform fronts and proposed that they should be stripped and rebuild. To minimise the vast work load he put forward six different façade designs which would be randomly ordered along the street, the interior of all the buildings would remain the same. He claimed that this would substantially raise the mental wellbeing of city dwellers, especially those living in the grim (his word not mine) industrial cities of Liverpool and Manchester.
He was of course instantly ridiculed; Gaudi or Gaudy as he was referred to at the time was still unpopular in England and was unable to help his friend’s cause. Yet looking out the window I couldn’t help agreeing with Brabin. I am sick of living in London; I feel a kind of nausea from seeing the same buildings day in and day out. Repetition after all has become the form of punishment we use in Britain today. We no longer torture or kill our criminals rather subject them to the repetition of prison. London has in a sense become my prison.
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