a four part sonic exploration of modernist architect ernö goldfinger’s utopian drive to build for a better world. featuring architects, historians, artists, and residents of his social housing schemes, the series examines themes of landscape, community, architectural legacy and the modern home. taking form as radiophonic documentaries, each episode is constructed over a collage of field recordings and found sound, all having been sourced from in and around goldfinger’s four major london buildings. produced by james torrance and charlie warde, in association with the national trust’s london project and 2 willow road. 

first broadcast on resonance fm, september 2013.

www.homesoftomorrow.wordpress.com

homes of tomorrow - episode 1: landscape

"dwellings are built and homes are made", so claimed architect erno goldfinger. this second episode in the series includes a tour of his hampstead home, further readings from his archive and the experiences and recollections of residents who live in the tower blocks he designed.

produced by james torrance and charlie warde, in association with the national trust’s london project and 2 willow road. first broadcast on resonance fm, september 2013.

www.homesoftomorrow.wordpress.com

homes of tomorrow - episode 2: home

"The success of any scheme depends on the human factor – the relationship of people to each other and the frame of their daily life which the building provides". This episode includes a Balfron Tower art project, a Goldfinger family journal, Ballardian connections, the social space of lifts and the question of high rise communities against their low rise alternatives. 

produced by james torrance and charlie warde, in association with the national trust’s london project and 2 willow road. first broadcast on resonance fm, september 2013.

www.homesoftomorrow.wordpress.com.


homes of tomorrow - episode 3: community

"the step we must take now – which will be a really revolutionary one – is to bring this possibility of an easier life within the reach of everyone". in the final programme of the series we hear from an internationally renowned architect, a local design team, visual and sound artists and a social enterprise scheme, all of whom have been influenced or inspired by erno goldfinger and the ethos of 20th century utopian design.

produced by james torrance and charlie warde, in association with the national trust’s london project and 2 willow road. first broadcast on resonance fm, september 2013.

www.homesoftomorrow.wordpress.com. 

homes of tomorrow - episode 4: legacy

A Hörspiel triptych of psychic melodrama, set in a London both past and present:

1. Greenwich Aggregates - 2. The Three Compasses - 3. A Blackened Emirates.

Disparate narratives coalesce in a trail of crime and misdirection stretching across the city, leading us ever closer to an unknowable truth. Everything connects, nothing is reconciled. “Only now & then, something would make me remember…”

Musical interludes courtesy of Bernard Herrmann’s Concerto Macabre.

Debuted on Radiophrenia 87.9 FM (Glasgow) - 29/08/16


Hörspiel

A London Noir

A hörspiel of speculative documentation.

Voices: Alison Smithson, Peter Smithson, Peter Daniel, Neave Brown
and a chorus of anonymous narrators.

Organ: Mozart's Fugue in G Minor played by Martin Haselböck.

Text extracts: Paul Sheerbart's Glasarchitektur (1914).

Featuring recordings from the initial demolition stages of Robin Hood Gardens.

"God in Christ, why do we destroy our prophets and our poets? Like animals we soil each other and the land around us. Hollow men in a wasteland - it is too late, too late." (PD)

A sound installation from the Disappearing Landscapes exhibition at LUBOMIROV / ANGUS-HUGHES Gallery, 4th - 26th November 2017.

In memory of Neave Brown, 1929-2018.

cassette masters

A thin veneer of fake brick cladding  and the bitter sensation of loss

Recorded with no agenda a few 100 meters from Grenfell Tower on 13th June 2017, the afternoon before its tragedy occurred. Following the fire, I had no wish to make this recording public with reference to its origins - its resonant drones now weighed with foreboding. But after two years of shameful injustice, I'm doing so in honour of the 72 dead, 223 survivors and many more bereaved. Who would have believed that our authorities could make their pain so much more and continue to put lives at danger through incompetence and inaction.
www.justice4grenfell.org

James Torrance

Popular tracks