Demolitions
This month's programme of carefully scheduled disappearances.
Every great cultural calendar has its headline events. Ours arrive with a permit, a puff of dust, and a building that was here yesterday.
This month’s programme is busier than ever. A characterful corner house, its green shutters much photographed, makes way for something with more storeys and fewer windows. A garden wall that has stood since before living memory is reclassified as an obstruction and duly reclassified into rubble. A façade (façades are very popular this season) is retained as a single brave sheet of stone, propped on steel while everything behind it vanishes, then quietly absorbed into the render.
Audiences are encouraged to arrive early. The best demolitions are over quickly, and the queue for the skip is long. Bring a mask; the afternoon haze is part of the experience. Listen for the satisfying crunch, the cheer of the gathered crowd of precisely no one, and the silence afterwards where a streetscape used to be.
Catch them while you can. By their very nature, these are strictly one-night-only engagements, and they never, ever come back.
