In 1897, Charles Dickens’ Dictionary of London noted that 300,000 people used 800 drinking fountains every day. The first fountain was built on Holborn Hill, on the railings of the St Sepulchre-without-Newgate church on Snow Hill, and moved in 1867 to its current position at Holborn Viaduct. The first wave of British drinking fountains was propelled by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain Association in 1859. Drinking fountains constitute the most non-judgemental and natural demonstration of a town or city’s concern for its inhabitants. Viewed in this way, the water kiosks become objective symbols of communally shared space and essential, uncomplicated purpose - refreshing trig-points of architectural, functional, and behavioural clarity across a nation whose democratic-cum-demonised urban spaces, buildings, and interiors are remotely observed by an estimated five million CCTV cameras. Their different designs are engrossing so, too, is their use of ceramics. The kiosks designed by Adam Architecture, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Eric Parry, Hopkins Architects, Studio Weave and Zaha Hadid Architects are, with one exception, rather more than simple drinking fountains. There is both charm and an implicit civic critique in the design submissions for the Kiosk competition prompted by the AJ and its partner Turkishceramics. Corporations own and profit from water issuing from taps, spigots and drinking fountains but, in terms of its own substance and fluid properties, the water flows freely and we drink it freely as its fountainhead bobbles upwards from chunky little spouts.
TOWNSCAPER PROPELLED PORTABLE
Packaged drinking water becomes a Natural™ experience, a portable convenience rather than a basic connection with nature’s visible, and invisible, watercourses.
TOWNSCAPER PROPELLED SKIN
That’s not possible with a nipple-tipped bottle of Highland McSpritz, whose polyethylene terephthalate skin crackles like burning twigs in our collaterally branded grip. One typically has to bow slightly to drink from a water fountain, and in those few seconds we take the form of supplicants to the most important life-substance in our physical world whether we’re bond dealers, homeless, job-pulped commuters, or lividly bulked-up xenophobes, we experience, in a modest one-to-one manner, a simple communion with nature. Even if we don’t feel humble as we lean forward, we will surely feel humble as we drink. When we drink from a public water fountain, it’s a humble act. It’s tempting to consign drinking fountains to the category of urban bric-a-brac so loved by that ardent 1960s townscaper and editor of the Architectural Review, Hubert de Cronin Hastings.īut is there, to rework the title of Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize-winning novel, a god in these small things? Can the gulp factor become as important as the wow factor among planners, architects, and developers hunched over their World Class Mixed-Use Regeneration Design Kits? The momentarily pleasant act of quenching thirst at a fountain might also seem insignificant.
I mean the unremarkable kind that are little more than a partially enclosed standpipe surmounted by a small metal bowl and a cobra-headed nozzle, from which water spurts in small, softly lucent arcs. Now that it's out for real, I don't doubt it'll keep popping back in for a quick vacation for many months to come.Imagine a simple public drinking fountain. It's an extremely simple wee thing, and if you're looking for anything resembling a challenge, you'll probably find yourself clocking out in seconds.īut met on its own terms, diving in when you've a few spare minutes to lay down a new neighbourhood, Townscaper is an absolutely joyous little time waster that's kept me busy since it first hit early access last year.
TOWNSCAPER PROPELLED UPDATE
A recent update even lets you export your town as a 3D model for printing, prototyping or whatever else you fancy. With high-res screenshot options, texture toggles and the ability to move the sun itself, Townscaper makes for a shockingly good desktop wallpaper generator. Sure, you can awkwardly finagle the camera to a street-level view, but I long for an update that'll let me stroll the boardwalks myself. It's just a shame you can't zoom right down to a first-person view. Townscaper may not have the complexity of a Cities: Skylines, but its quaint towns littered with cobbled streets and old churches, dockyards and lighthouses feel more instantly homely than the sterile American-styled metropolises of "real" city-builders-even when your town includes impossibly tall citadels or Bioshock Infinite-style floating cities.
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