something for
the weekend / February 10, 2012
your cultural 5-a-week

Tobacco London Dock is a magnificent building – a symbol of London’s industrial prowess, clad in Victorian red brick and fine ironwork. Built in 1811 and situated next to the London Docks in Wapping, it served as a store for imported tobacco.

However, despite being Grade 1 listed and situated a stone’s throw from the Thames, it is now sitting on the Building at Risk register after a succession of failed attempts to find it new purpose.

Most notable of these was the £47 million refit in 1990. The Covent Garden of the East was the vision – a mecca for artisan shops, restaurants and coffee houses. But hopelessly disconnected from public transport and situated in an East London that lacked its present swagger, the centre flopped. Rumour has it that a solitary café continued to exist within the complex many years after the rest had been abandoned, serving daily teas to the security guard employed to patrol the perimeter.

It’s worth a walk by, if you’re in the area. It’s got a whiff of a 90’s US sitcom about it - twee statues of families holding hands, faded maps and weathered signs pointing to what were once hubs of energy and commerce.

Tobacco London Dock is now silent. Closed off from the world by heavily padlocked gates as endless new schemes are dreamt up, proposed and, after a while, inevitably drift off into inaction. All hope, expectation and promise of what could have been, now long gone.

Empty buildings are beautiful. Having long captivated photographers, they’re now spawning many an online community dedicated to cataloguing these forgotten structures. A favourite of mine is deadmalls.com - a directory of all the empty shopping malls in the USA, organised by state. The site is so popular it even has its own range of branded goods.

Even if you’ve never been an avid empty building fan, trust me, the site is great. Or rather, I should say, the malls themselves are great - soulless concrete shells littering the landscape – the 28 Days Later of commerce.

Along with the destinations, deadmalls.com also provides a short bio detailing each mall’s conception, history, and ultimate decline. Cherryland Mall is one such entrant. Opened in 1978 in Traverse City, Michigan, it once housed the mighty Sears, until a larger mall opened locally in 1992, poaching many of the better Cherrlyand Stores with it. Not even new signage, installed in 1998, could reverse the decline. By 2002, it was abandoned.

Hence, where once there stood a church to consumerism, there now exists a canvas for budding photographers and urban explorers. If traipsing to desolate small town America to visit these bygone malls isn’t your thing, the photographs themselves do a wonderful job of capturing their desolate spirit.

'People there were joking that no one in Denaya could afford to live there. If these apartments sell at all, it is to speculators.'

The Chinese dream. Proof that empty buildings aren’t always abandoned for new climes, but instead bought by speculators and the emerging middle classes as investments. Dead cities litter China. New, shiny, empty. (Exactly as Milton Keynes should have been).

One can’t help but question the merit behind these investment decisions. China is smack in the middle of the most enormous asset bubble. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, of the 35 major cities surveyed last year, property prices in eleven – including Beijing and Shanghai – were between 30 and 50 per cent above their market value.

Prices in Fuzhou, capital of the southeastern province of Fujian, were part of the nation’s worst property bubble. Average house prices there were more than 70 per cent higher than their market value, according to the 2011 survey.

You can’t help but feel that this could all rather quickly, and easily, come crashing down.

But maybe that’s too simplistic a view.

Another perspective, bandied around on the internet, is that these dead cities – often centrally located and built on high ground - have been established by the Chinese government as preparation for the humanitarian crisis that will occur when the comet Elenin crashes to Earth. The fall out from this (apparently) widely predicted disaster would be the immediate submergence of many of parts of the globe – leading to millions of people seeking refuge inland.

All of which will, someday perhaps, teach me not to judge the economic literacy of the Chinese suburban middle classes.

Being empty isn’t necessarily a state of permanence. Every night hundreds of office blocks and buildings convert from thriving centres of enterprise into dead spaces in the matter of a couple of hours.

And no-one ever turns off the lights. Or their monitors. Or any other pieces of electrical equipment.

Cost to business? Gazillions. Environmental impact? Catastrophic.

You know the drill. It’s bad, and you and me are bad. Naughty, even. But I won’t patronise you with signs, or helpful emails, or LOLcats being electrocuted. It’s not helped before; it won’t help now.

Other technological solutions for the problem are equally well-recognised. Motion sensors, timers, or a combination of both seem to populate the top of the ‘Green your Office’ lists. (Normally sponsored by a smug, self-centred agency showing off their green credentials)

This all sounds a bit defeatist doesn’t it? But there’s a reason why things are this way. Most lights used in offices aren’t designed to be turned ‘on and off’ regularly. The life expectancy of Compact Fluorescents – a commonly used light – is directly impacted by the number of times it is switched on and off. Turning it off at night actually costs companies more than leaving it on.

It’s quite remarkable isn’t it? The seemingly simple problem of how to turn lights off when they aren’t being used still stumps the brightest minds. My solution? Deduct a percentage of a company’s basic running costs from its employee bonus pool.

Simple.

The website begins: In England and Wales, squatting is not a crime.

Great for would-be-squatters but not so funny if you’re on the other side. Like those two sisters from Leyton who went on holiday only to find that a Romanian family had moved into their recently deceased Mother’s home.

But, if you’re considering getting into the squatting game and even have your eyes on an empty property in your area, the following may be of some help:

- Stake out your chosen property. You can’t move into somewhere where the owner has just popped down to the shops (despite what The Sun implies)

- On entering, change the locks immediately and repair any damage you may have made. This way you can avoid any risk of being charged with criminal damage

- If the Police turn up, be polite but firm – squatting is a civil matter

- Have someone in the home at all times, and try to get to know your neighbours. A cup of tea or home-made scones always helps

- Research ownership of the property. Ideally it will be someone who lives very far away

- If they try to evict you, stand your ground. That new rug and the £17 you paid Dodgy Dave means you have every right to claim the property is now yours

My last, and genuine piece of advice is not to squat in Brazil. In Pinheirinho, nearly 6,000 squatters had taken over a district owned by a local, corrupt businessman. After several years of legal wrangling, 2,000 members of the Sao Paulo Military police entered the district causing damage to person and property, including over 10 dead and 100’s injured.

You have been warned.