fifth column for Kazin

My name is Oliver and I am an urban explorer.
You must all wonder what does that mean. Well, my favourite hobby is going around cities and exploring abandoned places. What got me into it is the attraction towards the derelicts that our progress leaves behind. I do not know if you ever entered an abandoned factory – the atmosphere that reigns inside it is simply surreal. It is an artificial place in which different stories had happened and the weight of all the activities that the place hosted give an identity to the place as a defined being. There was something of post modernity in the fashion of building huge sumptuous lofts in old factories. There was an amazing beauty in seeing features of skyscrapers and old houses face to face. But now, today, in the London that is getting ready for the Olympics there is something sick about building up. I live in Shoreditch, east London. Off Shoreditch you find Brick Lane – what was called few months ago the new heart of London. Now, this is a heart that is hosting the best experiments of postmodernism in terms of architectural rearrangement of internal spaces of old fabrics. Brick Lane was in fact the biggest area of brick factories of the city. Today it is a place that hosts the coolest pubs, clubs and venues. The last derelict buildings are about to die. In the whole area the massive wish to build more and more is condemning to death some gorgeous houses. One of those, located in front of the Tea Bar, that is on its last days. They have already demolished a third of it. This is the case in which an urban explorer gets into action. Digital camera and craziness is all an urban explorer needs. Then is just him and the space to explore. Up on scaffolding we were two urban explorers getting more and more emotional the more we would climb up the house. We then reached the roof and spoke to the house. “We feel sorry you will cease to exist in a week time”, my friend said.
From the roof the panorama it was breath taking. But there is something of an immense beauty and an immense ugliness at the same time: the new skyscraper of London. Behind it is the cucumber of Norman Foster. However the new skyscraper will be massively high and it is already facing the sky in a way no other buildings do here. All glass and height. Simply glass and high as if we are transparently admitting our wish to touch God. And to do that – look how funny – we are destroying our memories, our roots, our small old houses.
Bricks. Why should we keep using bricks when we can just do a steel and glass stairway to heaven?
Let’s do a bet. Go to pass your fingers on an old brick wall and pass them on a glass wall. Brick Lane against Moorgate. Try the difference. Feel the texture. There is a weird smell of history bumping out of the humid bricks of old houses. On the other hand the glass will tell you much – a bit of an artificial perfume. A rose from a garden against cheap and chic by Moschino. Both amazingly poetic. When I go back home and I watch the pictures that I took during the exploration I just feel good. I have some memories trapped in my computer. I can print them: the building (a creature) will keep living in those images. Memories. Memories. And memories can become a creature again in the form of a picture. I dream of a big open air exhibition around the whole of Hackney in which my pictures will be printed as big as the huge advertising of Intimissimi and in stead of naked women posing there people will walk the streets and see the buildings that once where there. Imagine…Imagine a time in which the City of London will be composed of glass – only glass – and the walls of it will be decorated with huge pictures of the old brick buildings. Such a high poetry elevated to the sky. In the dream of scratching god mind I will hope to see the ghost of hackney road’s old buildings (that will be all demolished in few months time) elevated on the wall of our skyscrapers. Because we have to scratch the sky. Get up to god. To the minor god of a multiple multinationality of a big mixture of all cultures and all dreams. London is a bit of this: a mixture of all dreams of all humans. And I. And I love to explore that tunnel.