Paris on Holidays / Berlin Loves Volkswagen

Here's my submission for the yearly competition that Spanish airline Vueling holds for the front and back cover of their inflight magazine Yorokobu. 

Since airlines are normally associated with travel, and it's normally people that do that, I asked myself what if buildings went on holiday? Moreover, what if the Eiffel Tower, epitome of France and all that's French, was to drift away on a patch of Paris down the Seine into the Mediterranean? Yes, it actually flows into the English Channel, the opposite side of Europe, but buildings don't eat paella either as far as I know. It should manage to bob past Gibraltar in the first place...

The back cover of Yorokobu is traditionally sponsored by Volkswagen so following up with random stuff I thought to myself 'Volkswagen is German. I like cities. The capital of Germany is Berlin. Berlin most definitely likes Volkswagen cars'. Let's turn the famous car manufacturers' logo into a map of Berlin! At its centre we will have the Brandenburg gate with West and East Berlin on either side and the Tiergarten at the top. Across the zigzagging river Spree, there will be Museum Island with the cathedral and the Bode and Altes museum. Encircling it, a ring of modern glass buildings and one of those famous German speed limitless motorways with iconic Volkswagen cars on an evolutionary race.

London Stories: The Blitz

Recently there has been the Serco Prize for Illustration which is a yearly competition by the corporation that runs Transport for London. The winning illustration is displayed on a London Transport Museum poster which, for any city lover, is an honour for this is the oldest underground network in the world. Unfortunately, I didn't win but here's my submission. 

This year's theme was London Stories. Participants where encouraged to produce a vision of London inspired by fictional or historical narratives set in London throughout its long history. In my case, the main inspiration is a fascinating photo taken during one of Nazi Germany bombings in World War II in December 1940, more commonly known as The Blitz. The image shows St Paul's Cathedral dome still standing behind a massive smoke column while London is ablaze.

Thanks to the lives of many firefighters, St Paul's survived more than 50 days of consecutive bombing and still stands today as a symbol of British endurance in a war that back then must have seemed impossible to win. The fear of a Nazi invasion of Britain was very likely at a time when much of the European continent was under the grip of fascist governments. London Underground played a major part in this story not only in guaranteeing commuters getting to work during the war but in setting up improvised air raid shelters in its underground stations. 

Thus this illustration shows a busy London running under the shelter of St Paul's Cathedral encouraging its people to keep calm and carry on. 

Further down there's the poster version I submitted to the competition without the explosions – to make it more palatable. Could all these bombs falling from the sky and the overall Dantesque look have put the jury off?

A Map Of Clerkenwell

Slightly North East from Central London, Clerkenwell is plenty of history and probably the most central area to join London's recent mass gentrification. Named after the Clerks' Well that still stands nearby –albeit enclosed within a building and behind a glass window– the area is linked to a long forgotten monastic past. A backdrop for historic characters of the likes of Oliver Cromwell –he owed a house there– Charles Dickens– a scene of his Oliver Twist is set in Clerkenwell Green– and Vladimir Lenin, who used to work at number 37a, now the Marx Memorial Library. 

This map stems off a commission that fell through, but that allowed me to explore and investigate the rich history behind an area that best reflects the old-village-absorbed-by-Victorian-metropolis feel. Find out more about Clerkenwell's living landmarks, starting clockwise from Angel. 

The clock tower built by J.D. Smith and Sons marks the entrance to The Angel in the Borough of Islington and its long strip of shops recalling an era of clockmaker business. 

Further down South there's Northampton Square where City University's main campus is. It houses the prestigious Inns of Court School of Law.

Due to being built on marshland St Luke's church laid abandoned for 40 years until it was refurbished into a music hall operated by the London Symphony Orchestra. 

Densely populated with web-based companies, Old Street Roundabout has been nicknamed Silicon Roundabout and is infamous among cyclists. 

Flanked by elegant early council housing, Whitecross Street livens up every Thursday and Friday at lunchtime with food stalls serving all sorts of delicious take aways. 

Hidden away off Moorgate, there's the Honourable Artillery Company's grounds, the second oldest military organisation in the world, now a charity. 

Designed by the same architects, the Golden Lane Estate is the forefather of the Barbican, notorious in its darkest times for suicides from the rooftop and now sought after 60s property. 

St John's Gate reminisces Clerkenwell's monastic past. It was the entrance to the priory of the Order of St John, the Knights Hospitaller. 

In Victorian times Smithfield Market, London's main meat market, was described as the most pestilent place in the capital. It still serves its original purpose, being the last surviving historic wholesale market in Central London. 

Next to Chancery Lane station still stands one of the few Tudor buildings to survive two of the toughest moments in London's history, the Great Fire and The Blitz. The Staple Inn, currently the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. 

When Farringdon Station opened in 1863 it was the terminus of the Metropolitan Railway, the first underground metro line in the world. 

The Medieval City of London had business organised in different quarters by trades. The area around Hatton Garden was and still is the jeweller's quarter and centre of the UK diamond trade.

Lively Leather Lane with its daily food market and its Edwardian tenement blocks, the Bourne Estate. When the working day is over cycle couriers gather up around the repair shop/cafe Full City.

The spiritual centre of Clerkenwell, the Green, is presided by the Old Sessions House, a Classical style building that was the centre of the judicial and administrative court of the County of Middlesex, mostly part of Greater London now. 

St Peter's Italian Church was built for the growing Italian immigrant community that settled here in the mid 19th Century and made this area London's Little Italy.

For centuries the ground of the Sadler's Wells theatre has been dedicated to performing arts and it is currently one of the UK's foremost dance venues.

A photo of an A4 print.

Walkie Scorchie

Do you see that thing looming over the river? Does it get bigger as you look up? That's 20 Fenchurch Street the only skyscraper in London that does not block sunlight off the streets but reflects it back on several times brighter. Get your sunglasses. 

Designed by Rafael Viñoly, its unique shape stands out amongst the new breed of high rise that are sprouting over the City of London financial area. Apart from concerns raised by heritage groups about its visual impact on nearby historical sites it has also drawn mockery and been renamed the Walkie Talkie because of its distinctive shape. Some people even call it The Pint which I find even more appropriate.

But last summer the situation escalated when a car was found damaged in nearby street Eastcheap. Investigations followed and it was found that the reflection of sunlight on the Walkie Talkie's concave facade was generating a beam of light capable of frying an egg or even melting parts of a car's bodywork. This beam is 6 times brighter than direct sunlight shining onto the streets beneath! The media immediately came up with new names for the building, the most successful being 'Walkie Scorchie' or even better... 'Fryscraper'. Apparently, a building in Las Vegas by the same architect has a similar reflection problem and locals have dubbed it the 'Death Ray Hotel'. 

After reading the article in The Guardian, I could only see the Walkie Scorchie as a laser-equipped robot on a barbecue mission roasting cars and turning them into sausages. A bit like the War of the Worlds meets Bad Taste. However, there's more to that after what Viñoly himself saif after being questioned about the building's burning impulses. 

 "When I first came to London years ago, it wasn't like this. Now you have all these sunny days. So you should blame this thing on global warming too, right?"

Environmentalists have pointed out that the Walkie Scorchie's problem demonstrates the principles of solar power tower technology and would make a useful power source. Is the Walkie Scorchie in an environmental crusade for zapping cars off London streets then? After news like this, it definitely should. 

MediaCityUK

This is a collaboration I did a while ago for Soho-based animation studio Seed for a project proposal for MediaCityUK, a media village built on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal that hosts organisations like BBC or ITV. 

Originally part of the former Manchester Docks, MediaCityUK site Salford Quays became one of the largest urban regeneration projects in the UK after the dockyards closure in 1982. In a bold decentralisation move the BBC chose to relocate facilities from London to Northern England. This is only a small part of the ambitious Atlantic Gateway project that by 2030 sees Manchester and Liverpool linked in a strong 50 mile long trade corridor along the Ship Canal. 

For this job I was asked to produce a few quick visualisations of the site brought to life by the 'spirit of the city', imaginative and dynamic. Working straight onto image references I was given, I came up with an array of 'architectural fauna' born out of urban elements and buildings imbued with personality. These were to inspire 2D animations that would be combined with CG in the final product. 

These illustrations draw a great deal from Ralph Bakshi's work and Disney's Silly Symphonies.