I have been following the debates round the planned demolition of Marks and Spencer’s prime store in Oxford Street since it’s beginning and was a signatory to the letter in the Times on Saturday.  But nothing has convinced me more of how important it is as a case study than a thread on Twitter by SAVE which covers the range of different ways that department stores have been successfully renovated across the country, including – very notably – Whiteley’s which has been completely repurposed by Norman Foster.

Marks and Spencer used to be at the heart of the high street.  But the way they greeted getting planning permission was shameless and showed that their senior management was totally out of step with any environmental concerns.

At the weekend, I was told – I think correctly – that it is a test case for the new government.  Will they keep the existing building or will they be in thrall to the army of highly paid lobbyists who will argue that demolishing the building is necessary to the health of Oxford Street, an obviously specious argument when you look at the imaginative ways that existing department stores have been redeveloped.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/article/2024/sep/01/debenhams-departments-stores-john-lewis-development-town-centres-high-street?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I thought I would climb the nearest hill, which turned out to be far from straightforward, but very beautiful on top:-

I may have got the best of the day as I walked down first thing into the local valley as the mist cleared:-

It’s very misty in west Wales, but last night the late evening sun lit up the woods:-

Inspired by St. Anne’s, Limehouse, I went also to St. George-in-the-East, similar to St. Anne’s, but slightly less muscular, more elaborate in its detailing, not at all like Vanbrugh:-

I was bicycling down the Limehouse Cut and stopped to pay my respect to St. Anne’s.

They are doing an exhibition of Hélène Binet’s Hawksmoor photographs which opens on September 14th.  They were shown at the Venice Biennale in 2012 and then the following year at Somerset House.  I missed the exhibition, so only know the work from the beautiful small book by Mohsen Mostafavi published by Lars Müller in 2015.

Meanwhile, here’s the church:-

I have realised in remembering the three days I spent in Santiago de Compostela that I totally neglected its wonderful food, most especially the two restaurants near the food market.  Abastos 2.0 is in all the food guides, but we also had lunch in a less formal café nearly opposite the Igrexa de Santo Fiz de Solevio called (a bit confusingly) A Café Café, also run by Iago Pazos.

If you’re in Santiago, I strongly recommend them both.

This was a stall in the food market, which explains why the ingredients are good.

I have been waiting for the article I wrote on the Fundación RIA for the July issue of The Critic to be posted online. 

It seems a long time ago that I was in Compostela, but it was a very stimulating three days, not just exploring the astonishingly well-preserved streets, but attending a remarkable conference on issues of historic preservation organised jointly by the Fundación, then not yet open, and the Oslo School of Architecture.

https://thecritic.co.uk/in-praise-of-spanish-practices/

I have rather belatedly been reading the admirable, recently published book about Julian Stair’s work Julian Stair: Memory, Material, Ceramics.  I was familiar with some, but certainly not all of his career and the book has increased my respect for the authority, some of it sacral, of his work:-

It is hard to beat David Anfam’s description of himself and his skills and interests on LinkedIn:-

Writing, curating, lecturing, public speaking, consulting, seeing, eating, drinking, cooking, traveling, driving (particularly over high mountain passes), cricket, snooker, pool, table tennis, squash, weight-training, running, connoisseurship, cyberspace… and editing. By contrast, I can barely ride a bicycle, am hard-of-hearing, tend towards Luddite technophobia (tho’ I’ve forced myself to overcome it) and am, according to some friends, clumsy beyond belief. Workaholic; worrier; sometime insomniac; Hispanophile; and hedonist.