China Mieville’s ‘Iron Council’ details the exploits of Remade revolutionaries that start a socialist collective on board a perpetual train bound for the edge of the world

…more or less…

In escaping the Militia sent to quell the uprising, the fReemade perpetual city/train races along the edge of the Cacotopic Stain; a place of twisted and ruptured physics(!). Here they encounter the smokestone; clouds of billowing liquid stone, that set as mountains and plateaus and vapourise back into mist without warning.

They race through the cloud of stone barely escaping before it sets:

“An enormous boiling of rock is where the train came through. The rails disappear into it, embedded forever or until it desolidifies again. (…) There is motion, and Judah’s face curls to see in the mid of the new rock geography a forearm protruding, jutted like some horizontal cliff plant, still clutching or trying to clutch as the nerves of the corpse within the smokestone die.”

One wonders if the Xuankong hangin monastary in the Shanxi province of China met a similar fate. Frozen in a cliff of liquid stone.

“every…Bernd and Hilla Becher Prison type Gasholders” Idris Khan 2004.

Idris Khan’s super imposed photgraphs, trade on the rigourous methodology of Bernd and Hilla Becher. The Bechers photographed and catalogued industrial buildings around Germany and the USA, maintaining a strict set of guidelines that encouraged objective analysis and comparison between similar built types.

Khan’s photographs superimpose each photograph from one of the Becher’s series onto one another to form a single photograph. Admittedly (and I don’t want to play chicken and egg here…) the method is similar as that used in Megan Gould’s “Google Averages”as well as Jason Salavon’s “Every Playboy Centrefold”. However in this case the effect not one of an abstract blur but an emphasis in the similarity of form and the minor discrepancies of detail.

“every…Bernd and Hilla Becher Spherical type Gasholders” Idris Khan 2004.

Which appears to bear some relation to this devastation.

And thanks to Evan who pointed me in the direction of the wonderful Bechers in the first place.

This competition entry was submitted with Hannah Tribe and myself and was awarded first place. Let’s hope they go ahead with the suckah.

This proposal aims to serve the dual purpose of consolidating North Sydney’s major public transport interchange and providing North Sydney with a tangible and defining marker.

The scheme comprises a thin steel roof that links the three sites and provides a continuous covered way from the train station to the bus stops. At the top of Mount Street Palza the plane of the roof folds up into a series of moulded towers. Beneath these towers is the entry to the train station and a proposed flower market.

Along Miller Street the continuous flat roof plane is supported by slender steel columns. The density of columns varies along the length of the scheme to demarcate separate functional areas.

Plan

Elevation

At night the towers are lit from within and the perforations at the top mark the centre of the North Sydney CBD.

The Bus Stops. The bus stop is one of many functions under the continuous roof. This covered way acts as a platform that allows a variety of uses to take place beneath it; small cafes and coffee carts, fruit stalls, seating for adjacent cafes, newstands and the like.

Freestanding timetables (old school, real-time, virtual, holographic etc) and benches sit beneath the roof where required.

The Train Station Entry and covered Flower Markets. At the top of the Mount Street plaza the roof folds up to provide a canopy to the Train Station entry and the North Sydney Flower Markets. This Canopy is a steel framed structure clad internally with mirror finished stainless steel and externally in a matt white powdercoat steel.

Their formal character is derived from the vertical drama of rising out of the train station tunnels and draws on the language of North Sydney’s neglected but nonetheless beautiful precast facades. The tower forms mark the entry to the station as well as announcing this major urban intersection and terminating the Mount Street Plaza.

The reflective underside of the roof over the flower markets would create a field of flowers on the underside of the canopy. Commuters would rise out of the train station tunnel into a canopy filled with flowers. We think this would be a very pleasant way to greet the working day.

Hannah Tribe and I have been awarded first place in the North Sydney Bus and Train Station Shelter Competition. RAD.

I will have a rundown of the submission later on today when I have things in order. There will be an exhibition of all the entries starting next Tuesday at 6pm at the Northpoint Plaza in North Sydney.

There are two disclaimers that should be issued before you go anywhere though.

Firstly. If you follow that link, the image you see on the page IS NOT OUR DESIGN. It is an indicative design from the masterplan for the site. Goodness knows why they have not put up any images of the winnning or commended schemes.

Secondly. Although the competition was run with in conjunction with the RAIA and DARCH and I am involved with DARCH, I was in no way involved in any part of the competition and any conflict was declared from the outset. The competition was also entirely anonymous.