6. Edwin Heathcote

Journalist
London - UK

‘Soft City’

Many aspects of literature are quite rigid. We have a lot of assumptions around how we read. We assume that we start at the beginning and must read until the end; that if a text is written and printed then it must be absorbed in a linear way. There is a lot of shame associated with ‘dipping in and out’. When teaching, I am constantly trying to work out people’s assumptions, to understand where they are going. This normally involves knocking things over, like cats in YouTube videos. You may try to steer them away from one reference, or point out that they are giving a certain resource too much respect.

I know you have only recently moved in, but could you give us a brief introduction to the library, and either how it is organised, or perhaps how you are planning on organising it?

I moved in a month ago, so I haven't got a lot of the books sorted yet. The study downstairs is stacked with boxes of books. Prior to moving here, I had been living in the same place for ten years. When packing, I suddenly started questioning why I have thousands of books; questioning what they actually do! They became a real burden. When settled they become a compelling resource again.

It is a vast and fantastic library. The topic of unread books is a consistent thread across the Arch-ive platform. This idea of potential knowledge being held in books and that by being in their presence, knowledge can seep into your psyche, allowing you to tap into that field of thought.

It is an interesting idea. A lot of people I encounter, who are not big readers, will demand to know that I have not read them all. It feels like an odd statement, as if the idea of me looking at them in the future reduces their viable position within the library. For me, the point of books is to offer a constant reference point, to offer potential for new ideas. The books on my shelves that I have not read, I delight in. I occasionally despair that I will never have time to read them, but on the whole I delight in their potential.

I suppose it is the difference between owning a library and owning a collection of books. A collection of books you buy specifically to read, one at a time, whilst a library is a reference point, something that you can refer to for information, but also something that holds memories and recollections?1 In this regard, why was it that you started Reading Design?

Reading Design was in response to the idea that a large proportion of young people don't read books anymore. Rather, they read fragments of text online. The platform was built to try and tap into that - offering a range of articles and excerpts. Alongside the super short manifestos, surprisingly, some of the longer articles on the website are the most popular. I think because they aren't readily available elsewhere.

Articles can fall between the cracks, especially those that are less likely to have been digitised. Finding them can be quite tough.

Exactly. With the collapse in architectural magazine publishing there are enormous gaps. Magazines do not really do book reviews anymore. America does not have a prominent architectural magazine. Enormous gaps. Platforms like Dezeen are not filling the space that those missing elements left behind. A chasm has opened up between different forms of literature, which are often either academic texts or popular vanity projects. There are a few magazines remaining, although they are often funded by adverts and highly topical, rather than critical. Then there are a few newspaper critics like me, fragments leftover from another age. People talking about books, or even buildings, are quite neglected within criticism.

I was reading an extract from Caitlin Murray's Donald Judd Writings: 1958-1993 (David Zwirner Books, 2016) where Judd spoke about the importance of not only being critical, but also being comparative. For him, the idea of saying one piece of art is better than another allows the profession to develop; to extract why a piece of work is better, for the evolution of the discourse.

That quality of judgement, or critique, is what is missing.

How did your library develop into its current collection?

It has definitely shifted. When you move, you are suddenly confronted with books from all eras of your life. My previous library had double stacked rows, so there were a number of books that I had not seen for a long time.

A secret library.

Exactly. A lot of those books were bought in my formative years when I was young and discovering things. You are extremely ambitious in the books you want to read. There are countless examples of 'failed reads'. Robert Musil's, The Man without Qualities (Perigee Books, 1965), which amazingly, I have two copies of and have not read beyond Volume . I know that I won't ever read a lot of these books and should get rid of them, but somehow, I am still on the verge of deciding. At that stage in your life, you don't necessarily have a lot of knowledge, but you are hungry for all kinds of new information. New experiences, new kinds of writing. These books have a presence in your house. You can track the development of your interests through the physical manifestation of books.

Reading and literature has clearly played a pivotal role in the way you amass knowledge. Is there anything from the early part of your career when you were working as a municipal architect you would highlight? Or perhaps a key text in your transition to becoming a journalist?

I will give you a few examples and undoubtedly, as they formed the literary cornerstone for my generation, they will be somewhat cliché. I would begin with Italo Calvino's, Invisible Cities (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974). I am sure everyone cites this book, but I just found Calvino's way of writing about a city, or writing about architecture, without it being an architecture book, absolutely incredible. For a long time I returned to it regularly, although I feel I am familiar enough now with it to not have to. The same goes for Georges Perec, with Species of spaces and other pieces (Penguin Classics, 1997), or Life: A User's Manual (The Harvill Press, 1987). The latter is an extraordinary tale weaving a narrative around a single Parisian apartment, embodying the human stories found within the buildings, rather than the buildings themselves. Another influential, and perhaps less clichéd book, is The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (MacGibbon Kee, 1967). An absurdist piece of writing about a man who finds himself in a very strange version of rural Ireland with a curious relationship to objects. It questions the nature of the material world and how we interact with it. It has been very influential to me. A work of absolute genius.

Paul Auster's early works would also be added to that list of influential texts, particularly The New York Trilogy (Faber and Faber, 1987).

Absolutely. An incredible book. It disregards everything you thought you knew about the format of the novel. It would be fascinating to reread it to see the details unfolding. I can imagine it would completely alter your perception of the book. Do you still read a lot of fiction?

I do. Although not as much as I used to. I like quite adventurous fiction - writers experimenting with format and what a book can be.

Is there anything in particular that stands out?

I recently read Ulysses (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1986) by James Joyce, which I enjoyed very much. It is interesting how a book can be a struggle and a pleasure simultaneously. Another book, House of Leaves (Pantheon, 2000) by Mark Z Danielewski. It is a horror novel, really, but it plays with footnotes, letters and found archives to create a unique proposition. It reads as a conventional horror story at the beginning, much like a Stephen King novel, but as the characters burrow into the house and its history, it becomes more sinister. Things are uncovered and the book begins to deteriorate into a mess of footnotes and letters. The plot is slightly clunky in places, but the way Danielewski plays with the format of the book as a device is very interesting.

I just finished The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2021) which similarly occupies a grey area between fact and fiction. It is an account of Jacob Frank, a character from the 18th century who claimed to be the messiah. Vast amounts of archival research was undertaken by Tokarczuk, often narrating Frank through the eyes of his contemporaries. She also wrote Flights (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017), which is incredible!

Yes, I have read Flights, which I really enjoyed. I don't know if you know B.S Johnson, a British avant-garde author from the 1960/70s. One novel, The Unfortunates (Secker & Warburg, 1969) was a box of printed sheets, which you could read in any order. It was up to you if you wanted to mix the parts around.

I find that fiction and this type of thinking can impact my own writing as well. I often find it easier to be influenced by fiction when writing non-fiction. The subliminal, or subconscious influence, is perhaps easier to gauge whereas non-fiction can be too close to your own work.

That leads us on to how you work with books. Does fiction have a direct stylistic impact, or is it more through osmosis of language? Beyond that, how are you using the books around you?

I am particularly bad at taking notes from books, actually. I am involved in The Cosmic House, designed by Charles Jencks, with whom I was close to. My title is 'Keeper of Meaning'. He knew I needed to be lured in with a good title [laughs]. Charles was a complete bibliophile and it is fascinating browsing his books, because he was a fanatical scribbler. He would write notes in book's margins, add sticky notes, slot newspaper articles into books, which also had their own inscribed marginalia. There were layers and layers of text. I don't really do that. I will maybe dogear a page, perhaps write a little note in the back in pencil. Generally, I am using books from a journalistic point of view. I am reading bits of books. It is a very immediate process, whereby I read a chapter, or an article, put the book aside and start writing.

Building a collection of relevant texts...

Exactly. When I am writing a book myself, that process tends to be a little different. Then I will gather a number of books on the subject. For my most recent publication, On the Street: In-Between Architecture (Heni Publishing, 2022), I created quite an impressive selection of books on street furniture.

The book has quite a particular format, what was the thinking behind this? Was it a visual process? Printing images and placing text next to them?

It is quite difficult to explain. It is a book about street furniture, which makes it sound extremely geeky; a catalogue of postbox numbers, or models of phone boxes. It is not about that at all. Instead, it is street furniture filtered through the visual language of street photography in the 20th century, mostly Hungarian photographers, such as Brassaï, Moholy-Nagy, and Kertész. Characters who snapped moments in the city, using street furniture to frame them; street lights, cobbled paving, park benches, kiosks. I noticed that the language of the architecture of the street was often most beautifully captured in photography. I worked with Heni Publishing on this book, a small art publisher because I knew I needed to use certain photographs. Without these the book wasn't going to work. My pitch to Heni was for a publication on street furniture, but one that could be read simultaneously as a brief history of 20th century photography. Two ideas running in parallel.

It relates to Perec in that sense and the idea of the street embodying the life and stories of people. Noticing those elements of the street that are not normally noticed. I read another of your interviews where you were discussing the aesthetic consistency of street furniture across municipal Paris in the 19the century. It is something that we think about as urban practitioners, but rarely have an opportunity to engage with. As street furniture proliferates, it would be exciting to see that level of care re-introduced to the makeup of our streets.

Particularly at the moment where there is an explosion in street furniture: 5G masts, communication boxes, broadband housing, metal structures... A profusion of signage. Within the last 20 years there has been a real burgeoning of street furniture. It is often junk and there is no uniformity to it, although that could come from an influential municipality, like it did in Paris.

I really enjoyed your comment on Tom Wilkinson's Tweet about the Bloomberg building and how, for you, it was the most poignant statement about the building. Its simplicity was enough to perfectly capture the situation. Its abruptness was more powerful than any building review or article could have been. It is interesting to think about social media and the role it plays in creating a platform for voice. Historically that may have been a headline. How do you think writing has changed and what impact do you think that has on reading?
I definitely read less. I am on social media more and to tell you the truth, I find it quite compelling. I read fewer newspapers than I used to. I've been on Twitter all week so I have had enough of the news by the weekend. But engagement with the news via Twitter is brief. When you open the newspaper, you generally sit and read the whole article. I also read fewer books, but I think that is also related to less travel over the pandemic. My habits have definitely changed.

On the other hand, you might argue that the kind of critique has also changed. A lot of architectural criticism has been replaced with 'calling out' buildings, or its architect. I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. Sometimes you don't need to read 1500 words on a museum designed by BIG in provincial China. More often than not, you already know what is going to be said. Sometimes it is enough to read a Tweet, such as the one you mentioned by Tom Wilkinson. Something that succinct and funny gives you everything you need to know, whilst also containing a universe of condemnation and experience. Architectural criticism has changed. Media transforms constantly so you don't want to get too sentimental about a certain form. On the other hand, I do regret the decline of criticism, whether it's in the professional press, or elsewhere. The biggest website now is Dezeen, which showcases press releases. It is unmediated media. The end result is 'stuff'. I'm not singling this out as bad and they do occasionally do critique, but it has played a significant role in the decline of traditional forms of media. Other outlets have shifted their focus. For example, The Architectural Review, which is a compelling publication, now largely focuses on an overarching interest in social activism, rather than individual buildings. I find that critiques of buildings are now quite rare.

It can often be the context surrounding how the building got built, rather than the actual building itself.

Exactly. People may be searching for an interesting story in an unexpected place; some form of community involvement or activism. That form of media is actually a relatively small pond - the feel good architecture stories that we want to hear about.

It is interesting to think about your discussion on social media here in relation to your own book. Some of the text in the book is quite closely aligned with the length of a Tweet, or a post on Instagram.

I would say that it is more closely aligned to a newspaper article than a Tweet! [laughs]. But yes, it is a book for the attention deficit age, to which I include myself. One of the essays is one sentence, but most are somewhere between 500 and 2000 words. You don't have to read it in one go. I expect people to dip in and out. Almost as if you were scrolling the book, I suppose. You could argue that some of the most interesting architecture books now are photography books. Mark Pimlott is a good example, whose publication, In Passing (Jap Sam Books, 2010) is super. David Grandorge's books are also wonderful, with Still Beautiful (Canalside Press, 2018) being a good example. In today's culture, you can often read more from an image than you can through text. I must say Mark Pimlott's longer text-based books are also astonishing. They are dispositions on the nature of public space and architecture. For me, they are probably the best architecture books of the last 20, or 30 years. Mark has an unusual capacity for both visual sensibility and a way of conveying content in a digestible, non-academic manner.

Yes, I find Public Interior as Idea and Project (Jap Sam Books, 2015) incredibly compelling. For me, the transcribed lecture format, along with Mark's mesmerising narrative works exceptionally well. The writing is incredibly intuitive, whilst the book itself lends this idea of curiosity through the interaction of text and image. You almost have to search for an image and its description. It allows you to place yourself between the two and draw relationships between the content.

What do you think the future of books will look like? As we have discussed, the transcribed lecture is a prominent feature, but other formats have become more and more popular, for example, the publication of University work.

I was at a Peter Saville talk recently at The AA, with maybe 500, or 600 guests. On a cold and rainy Monday night. It feels like the demand for the presence of others is something that is growing. I think that is a positive future for books. Architects will always produce books about their own work, from Le Corbusier to Tony Fretton. Especially if you are a young architect, the book offers a route to re-live the building you may have just finished. It becomes a vehicle through which to disseminate to a broader culture. Sometimes a book at the end of a project can be more important than the building itself. The book can be the thing which propagates the architecture. Le Corbusier would not have been the figure he was without the books.

Another book that occurs to me is by Jonathan Raban, who sadly passed away a few weeks ago. He was largely a travel writer, but he wrote a book in 1975 called Soft City (HarperCollins Distribution Services, 1975). I think it was the best book I read in the first half of my life on the experience of living in the city. It largely focuses on young people and how they remake themselves in the city; how the city enables them the chance to create a new persona for themselves. It is soft, because the city is malleable. People create networks of places; their own routes through the city; they develop their own heart, which are then embodied in their lifestyles. It is a terrific book, but marginal to the world of architecture. You rarely hear architects referring to it but it is quite brilliant. Even though it was written in the 70s, when London was unimaginably, radically different, it still resonates.

It is interesting to think about your personal space syntax in that instance and what it must say about you. The frequently undertaken trips; from home to the office, or a particular route from your house.

Yes, albeit that is something that changes as you get older that in a way can become quite sad. There is a huge amount of joy and pleasure in the possibilities that the city offers. But there is also an immense amount of sadness as you begin to associate places with people who may have passed away, or hurtful memories. You have these pleasurable moments in the city which may have been removed; record shops, or cafes, or bars that you used to frequent that no longer exist. Walking through the city becomes a ghost tour at times, which accelerates as you get older. Yet, at the same time, you have inscribed those roots in parts of the city and it becomes a part of you. The city provides an armature for those memories.

All photography by Tim Lucas unless otherwise stated.

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6. Edwin Heathcote

Journalist
London - UK

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6. Edwin Heathcote

Journalist London - UK

Index

Journalist
London - UK