This is less of a crisis blog than the last...
This snow's been hanging around for a while now, but I hadn't really got out into it very much - just slip-sliding my way to the shops and into college mostly, but last night's new coating re-covered everything and will probably be the last before it warms up next week. So I thought I'd go for a walk and take some pictures of the neighbourhood with all this pristine virgin snow draped over it.
Except I couldn't really find any pristine snow. It wasn't black slush, it was still blindingly blue-white, but there were tracks everywhere. I'd left the house at a little after 8am and already every street, pavements, side alley, grass verge was trampled. Across open spaces sets of footprints arc'd from corner to corner, dog's paw prints zigzagging over owner's straight lines.
It reminded me of those flow diagrams Space Syntax used at the South Bank, looking at how and where people moved and used the site. As I left my quiet side street the number of tracks of the pavements increased, became indistiguishable from the general trampling of the snow into slush. Getting to Clapham, the roads and pavements were back to a shing wet black and grey, thousands had already been here. If you want to know where people are going and in what volume, maybe snow is the best answer... The packed down, black iced areas have seen the most traffic and the rare empty patches of snow, although offering the best footing, have the least.
I carried on to the Common. At least here there would be some untouched snow to march across... but it eluded me. Half the fun of snow is to find the virgin stuff and march across it, leaving your boot marks in a line, and clearly here, I was too late. Others had had the same idea.
Would all these tracks, visible from above, look like some gigantic barium enema spreading through the entrails of the city? Single tracks denoting capillaries, neurons, villi... and darker groups showing veins, arteries, intestines or blockages?
This snow's been hanging around for a while now, but I hadn't really got out into it very much - just slip-sliding my way to the shops and into college mostly, but last night's new coating re-covered everything and will probably be the last before it warms up next week. So I thought I'd go for a walk and take some pictures of the neighbourhood with all this pristine virgin snow draped over it.
Except I couldn't really find any pristine snow. It wasn't black slush, it was still blindingly blue-white, but there were tracks everywhere. I'd left the house at a little after 8am and already every street, pavements, side alley, grass verge was trampled. Across open spaces sets of footprints arc'd from corner to corner, dog's paw prints zigzagging over owner's straight lines.
It reminded me of those flow diagrams Space Syntax used at the South Bank, looking at how and where people moved and used the site. As I left my quiet side street the number of tracks of the pavements increased, became indistiguishable from the general trampling of the snow into slush. Getting to Clapham, the roads and pavements were back to a shing wet black and grey, thousands had already been here. If you want to know where people are going and in what volume, maybe snow is the best answer... The packed down, black iced areas have seen the most traffic and the rare empty patches of snow, although offering the best footing, have the least.
I carried on to the Common. At least here there would be some untouched snow to march across... but it eluded me. Half the fun of snow is to find the virgin stuff and march across it, leaving your boot marks in a line, and clearly here, I was too late. Others had had the same idea.
Would all these tracks, visible from above, look like some gigantic barium enema spreading through the entrails of the city? Single tracks denoting capillaries, neurons, villi... and darker groups showing veins, arteries, intestines or blockages?
Nice blog, Architectural designer in Clapham,
ReplyDeleteArcitecture designer in Clapham