Walls

Architecture - what would I know about it? I didn't do very well at Tech Drawing in year 9 - inability to visualise things in 3D I guess. And town planning? Pfft - street corner wino's have a better grasp of what goes on in the heads of town planners than I do.

But I did come back from Canberra with a fresh perspective on walls.

I hate the fucking things.

All the photos you are about to see (if you can be shagged) were taken on the same street in Five Wog. This is typical of so much of suburban Sydney, and I am starting to think that a lot of Sydney looks like crap because of brick walls.

Like this one. It a solid sheet of uninteresting nothingness. It's a hard surface, reflecting noise back into the street and around the neighbourhood. It's a graffiti magnet. It adds to the non-green concreteness of this scene. Tarmac road. Concrete footpath. Brick wall. A few bits of grass poking through here and there. Not even a pile of trees can save this scene.



Another wall - just an uninteresting, boring blob of bricks. Goals have more interesting scenery than this.



This shabby bit of iron fencing could be a vast improvement - at least it allows you to see the grass and trees and flowers in the garden inside the property boundary.



I ended this particular walk thinking that the white picket fence - or the hedge - is the perfect and only thing to stick around the edge of your suburban block. White picket fence? Am I going all John Howard 1950's here? I think not. The picket fence is not threatening like raw brick, and the spacing between the planks allows some view of the other side through. (If you don't think that tall brick walls are threatening, try reading some blogs by military personnel in Iraq, and have a look at the photos.)



Even this low, ventilated brick wall fails to make the cut (apart from looking horrible).



I'm not too fond of this wooden fence either, as the height cuts the yard off from the street (which is probably the idea). Privacy and a bit of soundproofing are nice, but they add a terrible harshness to the street outside.



Hanging some creeping weeds off it does help.



If the Army ever gives me a free Leopard tank, I will add a dozer plough and spend my time productivly knocking down horrible brick walls in our neighbourhood. C'mon, you can trust me with a tank. I promise not to crush too many BMW's.