I am trying hard to appreciate a plan to put a 19-acre vineyard on the roof of a new terminal building for Amerigo Vespucci airport in Florence, from which wine will be “crafted and aged in specialized cellars beneath the terminal’s roof”. This idea will, it’s reported, contribute to the building’s sustainability rating, “while crystallising Italy’s rich artisanal traditions”.
I’m always up for designs that try to give some pleasure and depth to the experience of travelling, rather than seeing an airport only as some transport engineering with a whole lot of retail thrown in. But it’s hard to see what’s good about going to this constructional effort so that passengers can view – apart from some glimpses through skylights of actual vines – the underneath of the structure that supports a vineyard. One wonders, too, about the effects of jet fumes and fuel dumps on the vintage and the practicalities of combining harvests with the functions of an airport. The project is by Rafael Viñoly Architects, who promised a “public park” at the top of the Walkie Talkie skyscraper they designed in the City of London, which turned out to be a corporate hospitality opportunity furnished with some plants. So I’m sceptical.
Tall stories
What to make of proposals for a skyscraper in Oklahoma City, which at 1,907 feet high would be the tallest in the United States? Real estate clickbait? A ploy to get the city authorities to relax a 300-foot height limit in the area in question? Possibly. But it’s also an indication that super-tall buildings have become commonplace. I’ve nothing against Oklahoma City, and I have only positive, if hazy, memories of my only visit there just after I left university, but it’s not Chicago or New York, the cities which at various times held the records for the tallest buildings in their country and, indeed, the world. There, they were indications of enormous, if hubristic, economic power. Now, as modern engineering and construction techniques have made them considerably easier to build, they are within range of large, attention-seeking property developments pretty much anywhere. Once skyscrapers were futuristic. Now they’re just another kind of building, and an old-fashioned one at that.
Agony and ecstasy
I am sometimes told, not sincerely, that I am in my writing “a little ray of sunshine”. Indeed, the 25-odd subjects I was considering for this column don’t offer a lot of cheer (the French Islamophobe Eric Zemmour, also accused of misogyny and transphobia, bringing his poison to Whitechapel, my neighbourhood for 30 years; or the grotesque spectacle of Russian estate agents selling war-damaged apartments, whose owners have fled or died, in the devastated Ukrainian city of Mariupol).
This misery is not all down to me, I’d argue, but to the state of the world. But, anyway, I thought I’d share some of the things that have recently given me happiness.
These include the little-known art deco treasures of the French Basque town of Dax, which I visited for my article in today’s New Review about the town’s pioneering Alzheimer’s village. Also, the Instagram reels by the musician and comedian Garron Noone on such questions as whether mashed potato is the Irish guacamole. And ruminations posted on X under the name of Harry Wilkins, whose fascination with such things as textured concrete, baroque architecture and 1970s car colours is uncannily close to my own. Greater even than these joys, my partner and I are about to get married, in the culturally contrasting settings of St Paul’s Cathedral and the London Irish Centre in Camden. It’s a union, if you will, of themes of Wilkins and Noone.
