Long live the straight line

On Monday I was at the Building Centre for the judging of the IBP Awards. The judging was in the basement, which is now pretty hard to get too, because the front staircase has been shut. You have to go to the back of the building, down a kind of processional stair and then work your way forward again.
The reason is not hard to guess. Following that route takes you past many of the exhibitors' displays, and doubtless they were complaining before that they were not getting enough footfall.

So I can grasp the commercial argument, but it is really wrong. Buildings are meant to work - you are not meant to be directed off in a direction you did not want. Where else does this happen? At airports of course. When I was at Heathrow Terminal 3 recently, it was necessary to walk through an enormous maze of duty free before reaching a spot where you could sit down or have a cup of coffee. Again, the commercial imperative is overriding common sense. Terminal 3 is also interesting because half of the shops have ceased to be useful stuff (somewhere to buy a cheap holiday top, top up on sunscreen, buy a paperback) and become designer outlets. I guess this is a representation of the global trade in high end shopping.

When I got to Singapore a friend pointed out that the low-end visitor who has a few meals and drinks and maybe buys a present from the family is neither common nor the target audience. Instead most people are there to do SERIOUS shopping - thousands and thousands of pounds worth.
So we are not only in the kind of world we want, but we are not allowed to travel in straight lines either? It was good to see though that even in law-abiding Singapore, outside Marina Bay Sands people had created a 'desire line' through the vegetation to cross the road more directly. It had been fenced off but the damage had been done.

Buildings and landscapes need to serve the needs of users. We should not be manipulated either into travelling in ways we don't want, or to spending money we don't need to or can't afford. Long live the straight line.

Does twitter make you absent?

The IBP awards last week, which recognise the best in the construction and property press, were a really enjoyable occasion. I should declare an interest, since I judged two of the categories. The guest speaker was Daniel Moylan who is now Boris Johnson's airport expert, arguing for a single hub airport to the east of London. He was an ideal after dinner speaker, passionate about his subject but also very funny, whether dissing the current disaggregated nature of London's airport provision, saying 'bring it on' to any more architects who want to punt airport ideas, or confessing that 'I can't really see the point of the countryside'.
There was great jubilation among the winners of the awards - a particularly good harvest by Building, Property Week and The Architects' Journal - and some disappointment from those who were not successful.
In a taxi on the way home I caught up with what those present had been saying on Twitter. They were generally pithy, relevant, sometimes funny and sometimes moving. But I wondered if they were truly present? I did not tweet from the event because I wanted to chat, cheer and enjoy the atmosphere and it really doesn't seem possible to do both.
Years ago I used to feel that one could either experience a holiday or photograph it but not both. Is the same now true of Twitter? And who exactly follows those live tweets? I don;t know the answer but I think the question is important.