While searching for some evening entertainment in Reykjavík I came across a list of times for The Volcano Show at Red Rock Cinema. I was intrigued but struggled to find any further details or reviews, eventually I found one description online - "a bit of an oddity that attracts geologists and curious tourists alike". That sold it for me.

Arriving at the Red Rock Cinema you are immediately struck by the beautiful small red wooden buildings. We began to realise that we were the first, and perhaps only, people to arrive but this was a bonus. From a quick glance around the images in the foyer we recognised the man that appeared from the back room as the film maker and director of The Volcano Show. Villi Knudsen has been filming the volcanoes of Iceland for decades and took over from his father, Ósvaldur, who started in the 1940s. Their life-time dedication has paid off and left them with thousands of hours of footage, piles of canisters and videos can be seen through the window of the editing studio. Villi was keen to chat, not just about his work, but also about us. He was curious, interesting and I was slow to notice his wonderful dry straight-faced sense of humour which later crept through in the film.

Two more people arrived. We were shown through to the small cinema surrounded by maps and filming equipment. Villi gave us some background to the films and Iceland's volcanic history. The films are split into two, you can watch one or both and there are showings in different languages. Part one is entitled "Villi Knudsen's Volcanic Adventures". A younger Villi appears on screen and the film begins.

Regrettably we couldn't stay for part two. I didn't mind missing the film too much but I wanted to hear Villi talk some more and stay a little longer in his Red Rock Cinema.

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Posted by Maraid on November 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Not so much a case of there being nothing to see here, as there being (almost) no way of getting here. Vallay House lies abandoned on a tiny island off an island off the far northwest of Scotland, only accessible by land at particular times when the tide recedes. It is a rather eerie experience stepping out across somewhere that the sea has just momentarily revealed, knowing that it’ll eventually come back.

This wasn’t helped by a local telling me the ominous sounding tale of a woman who was making her away across the sands to Vallay Island one day when the mists descended. She apparently wandered round and round in circles, unable to make her way back to the shore, getting more and more lost until the tides crept back and she was drowned.

Vallay House was the creation of Erskine Beveridge, the head of a successful linen company based in the town of Dunfermline in Fife in the nineteenth century. Beveridge was known as not only an industrialist but an antiquarian with a passion for photography. Armed with his tripod and weighty box camera, he wandered Scotland recording the country’s landscapes and buildings, documenting its vanishing edges.

Beveridge was particularly enamoured with North Uist and visited here on holiday many times. Then around 1901-02, he commissioned the building of Vallay House to provide a more permanent base for his trips to the edge of the world. After Beveridge’s death in 1920, his son George inherited the house. Living alone here obviously got to George, as he turned to the drink, selling off the family silver in order to fund his habit. Tragedy struck in 1944 when George, undoubtedly after a few too many bevvies, drowned whilst attempting to cross one of the island’s causeways.

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Posted by Rosalyn on November 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Poundbury, Prince Charles’ most famous attempt at town planning sits quietly at one end of Dorchester. So quietly in fact, that we arrived there completely by accident. It isn’t signposted and doesn’t appear on any of the maps we were carrying, in an "if you have to ask you can’t afford it" kind of way.

It’s a "pioneering example of urban development" built on the pillars of ‘A Vision of Britain’, the Prince of Wales' infamous intervention into architecture. Designed by the European architect Leon Krier, planning started in the 1980s, building in 1993. Phases one and two have been completed and work will continue until 2025 when Poundbury will have space for 5,000 people.

What sets Poundbury apart is that it’s a new town built in an old way. The architecture is designed in a traditional Dorset style and built with local materials. In the centre, Pummery Square is dominated by the traditionally-styled Brownsword Hall (above). Across the street is Poundbury Village Stores, or Budgens to you and I but they’re not allowed to say that on the sign in case it ruins the effect. All aspects of town planning are tightly controlled, with any alterations needing approval from the Duchy of Cornwall. This extends right down to signage which has good intentions, but the lack of visual clutter is really weird. It's all a bit too tidy.

In a strange way, these attempts to ensure that the "character" of Poundbury remains intact ensure that it has none whatsoever. It's astonishingly bland, spectacularly banal. There's an amazing lack of patina - the sort of scuffing or wear and tear that makes a place look lived in. In fact, that’s probably against the rules. You get the feeling if anything did become worn a little man would scurry out to touch it up again. As a result it doesn’t seem real, more like a model village than an actual one.

Instead, the “character” is planned in, and sticks out like a sore thumb. Period elements like bricked up windows (a feature of old English houses during the era of the Window Tax) look really hokey. In Dinham Walk there’s a decorative fountain that wouldn’t look out of place in Portmeirion. Prince Charles was greatly inspired by Clough Williams-Ellis’ fantastic Welsh village and it really shows. The difference is that Portmeirion pulls it off. It has tremendous warmth and a gorgeous higgledy-piddledyness but here it’s po-faced and embarrassing. It’s difficult to work out why one works and the other doesn’t - maybe because Portmeirion doesn’t discriminate where it borrows from and was allowed to grow over time. Here it’s all a bit too exclusive and forced. Trying to keep the modern world at bay isn’t sustainable. An architectural flourish on a double garage just doesn’t seem right.

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Posted by Anne on November 09, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7)

Construction on the Chong Hua Sheng Mu Holy Palace was to be the beginning of a grand complex for spiritual rejuvenation, an oasis of calm within the sprawling suburbs of western Houston. But with the US government preventing the group leader's 2001 return from a trip abroad, all work stopped, without much hope of seeing the Tien Tao temple complex completed.

It has the architectural air of Dr. No meets Wernham-Hogg or Dunder-Miflin. The dramatic gold dome looks perfect for housing a doomsday weapon and twin minarets flank either side, but the construction and materials has all the grace and inspiration of a mundane industrial office tower. The entire property is gated and fenced off, but exploration of the north wall may reveal an accessible entrance. Once on the grounds, visitors to the building will find it buttoned up tight with robust security gates around all the main entrances and side doors. With the project stopped before the interior was started, the inside (apparently) has little to offer. Windows are either blacked out or too high to gaze in on, so the simple bizarreness of the building will have to do. The palace, for an abandoned building, remains surprisingly tidy and seemingly maintained. Grass mowed, parking lot relatively free of garbage and graffiti painted over.

That being said, the rarely trafficked streets and expansive grounds are conducive for relaxation. This island of calm may not be what the religious group had in mind, but it does seem to be a perfect retreat to reflect on spiritual fulfilment and the transient nature of this suburban dream.

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Posted by Robert on November 01, 2008 | Permalink