Upfront

By Grant Gibson

‘Architecture is not building. Architecture must go beyond buildings because buildings are not enough’ – Aaron Betsky

‘Above all what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying’ – Maggie Keswick Jencks

I promise not to add much to the reams already written about this year’s Venice Biennale, but I must point out that its problem, in common with so many architecture exhibitions, is its lack of humanity. Under Ricky Burdett’s curatorship in 2006 it was all about cities’ economic context; now Aaron Betsky seems merely to offer a space for architects of a certain ilk to talk at each other in opaque language.

Neither curator seemed too bothered about the people who actually use architecture, which is a shame because if previous biennales are anything to go by, there will be well over 100,000 visitors. I suspect Betsky’s show will only reinforce their preconceptions of the profession’s penchant for intellectual pomposity.

This disappointment with the way too many architects communicate might explain why a week later I find myself lining up with my father outside London’s City Hall at 10pm for a Night Hike through the capital. The event was co-created (with Open House) by an organisation that definitely grasps the link between cutting-edge architecture and the human spirit, the Maggie’s Centres for cancer care. We and 1200 others are undertaking a 20-mile sponsored walk, taking in a few of London’s more interesting buildings along the way (You can still donate at www.justgiving.com/grantgibson).

Maggie’s Centres are named for landscape architect Maggie Keswick Jencks, wife of architecture critic Charles Jencks. While undergoing treatment for a second bout of breast cancer in 1993, she thought about the sort of environments that seemed to help her in her fight against the disease. Her notion was to create a domestic-style space, attached to an NHS hospital, where the focus could be on the patient’s needs as a person rather than treating them only as a cancer sufferer.

The first Maggie’s, designed by Richard Murphy, opened in Edinburgh in 1996, a year after her death. Others, by the likes of Frank Gehry, Page and Park and Zaha Hadid have followed. The latest, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour at Charing Cross Hospital, is one of the visits this evening.

The make-up of the crowd (which is humming with enthusiasm as we wait for the start) is evidence that the disease is no respecter of class, colour or creed. As we set off you detect that while a few have a genuine interest in architecture, most are here for the cause. The buildings on the route are a cross-section of styles, starting with the high-tech of Foster and Partners, then meandering through the pomp of Somerset House and the Horse Guards and the epic scale of Scott’s Battersea Power Station to the more intimate – and beautifully appointed – interior of the Rogers’ Maggies.

On a purely architectural level, the stops provide a chance to compare Toyo Ito’s 2002 Serpentine pavilion – now hidden around the back of Battersea Power Station – directly with the 2008 Frank Gehry-designed version. Most people seem to agree that Ito’s is the more accomplished.

Yet, as the walk goes on, it’s the details you notice – such as the fact that there are no litter bins between Horse Guards Parade and Pimlico. And much as you want to look at the buildings, your critical faculties wane. At the Royal Geographical Society, for instance, we’re asked if we’d like to look around the exhibition spaces, but elect to keep trudging. Bonhomie fades and your own physical state takes precedence. You stop looking around and concentrate on the fact that your hips are creaking, your calves are stiffening and your fingers are puffing up quite alarmingly.

Even so, it’s difficult to ignore the city’s defining night-time characteristic: drunkenness. We encounter friendly drunks, who cheer us on, and colourful drunks, such as the group dressed as superheroes, singing Wonderwall at the top of their voices. There is the bewildered-looking Australian woman who stops us at about 3am in Hammersmith and slurs ‘Who? I mean what? Oh God. Why?’ before staggering off. There is the mini-skirted drunk who leaps off a bus in the West End and lands on her face with a cringe-inducing crack, before getting up and staggering off with her friends. There are posh drunks leaving the clubs on High Street Kensington and a destitute-looking drunk who tries to give us his last 20p. And there is the occasional car-load of abusive, drunken lads.

We arrive back at the top of City Hall at 6am on Saturday and stand on the balcony, watching the sun rise, with a sense of achievement. Did we learn much? I’m not sure. To understand London you’d need to walk much further than 20 miles. If you ignore the eerie, slightly intimidating industrial sheds lining the Thames along Nine Elms Lane in Vauxhall, then this was a very middle class, almost leafy, route, heading out towards Putney before looping back through sedate areas like Fulham and Parsons Green. However, the most striking thing about the city, even at this time of the morning, is its people rather than its architecture. And this is what successive shows in Venice have forgotten.