Kaltwasser and Kobberling's Jellyfish Theatre

Kaltwasser and Kobberling. Jellyfish Theatre, 2010. South London
Jonathan Glancy wrote yesterday about this project in the Guardian, with a quick survey of informal building practices from found materials, from the precision of Walter Segal and the eccentricity of handmade houses in the 1970s to more current informal architecture in European cities.

A theatre out of pallets and scrap wood, ephemeral, shaggy; a political and social project.  Kaltwasser and Kobberling's projects appear to be quite loved and propose an alternative to, as Glancy says, 'more public places and shopping malls'.

Here, and I can't see why it would be any different in Europe, building is so regulated and so narrowly conceived, that the thought of alternatives to our increasingly tedious urban environment is both fragile and socially provocative.  It speaks to an intolerance of any kind of alternative ideas for everyday life.  Propriety is a powerful social force, from Mrs Grundyism to repressive community associations that pass visually illiterate judgement on all new buildings proposed for their neighbourhoods. 

We seem to be out of love with things that can be valued for their materials, or their cleverness, or their inherent beauty.  Instead we seem to love brands and all that they represent.  City branding is a particularly hot topic. Calgary is abandoning its previous brand, 'Calgary, the heart of the new west' underlined by a crayon cowboy hat, and has hired Gensler Los Angeles to come up with something better, which is going to be, evidently, 'Canada's most dynamic city'.  As long as we think of a city or a building, or a house or a pair of shoes as a brand, it doesn't really matter what it actually is: the thing becomes invisible behind the brand.  

Will there be room in Canada's most dynamic city for a theatre made out of pallets?  Um. I don't think so, but we do have an enormous new Holt Renfrew, dazzling and white, and just like the Vancouver one.