This was how Portsmouth’s Conservative Party were runnning for office in the local elections of 1994, when I was a student living in the city. What struck me then as a sinister and deeply absurd bit of campainging, hasn’t lost any of its crassness now, and if anything has become more potent in the wake of David Cameron’s pronouncements following the UK riots this summer.

But three years after these flyers circulated, Blair’s New Labour were in power nationally and CCTV cameras became a ubiquitous feature of the urban environment all the same. Close to half a billion Pounds have been spent on CCTV equipment in London alone, but internal Metropolitain Police reports warn of their neligable role in crime prevention, with only 1 in 1000 crimes solved using CCTV images in 2008. Caught-on-camera riot galleries and Flickr dragnets are probably part of a wider strategy to improve these figures.

Down a couple of pints of export strength lager in some Southsea boozer, and the flyer might start to resemble something Vorticism threw up. But the cheap single-colour printing, berk typography (Futura with Eurostil?) and the martiality of the target motif make for an ugly bit of populist urban propaganda. The implication that car parks and shopping centers constitute “our heritage” now reads less like dark humor and more like grim self-fulfilling prophecy.

On 18 September, Berlin votes for a new government. A comparison of the campaign brochures produced by the five parties currently in parliament reveals few themes where real differences can be found, particularly in matters of urban policy. The political colour spectrum merges into a single unified colour. This colour can be defined. Mixing the signature colours of the five political parties – SPD, Grüne, CDU, Linke and FDP – results in a shade of brown (RGB 65/96/36, CMYK 14/40/80/20).

→ rgb1659636.net

Today’s paper, and our graphic from last year

The story being illustrated by the inverted image is the juicy, scandalous conclusion to a piece of news which has been rumbling away quietly in the culture pages of the papers for a couple of weeks already.

It all started with architect Hans Kollhoff. He won third prize in the design competition for the rebuilding of the Palace, but was unhappy with the murky way in which the commission was awarded to prizewinner Franco Stella by the Federal Ministry for Building (Bundesbauministerium). So he went to the Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartelamt) to stir up some shit. And shit was duly stirred.

(l-r) Kollhoff, Stella [Images: kollhoff.de; Tagesspiegel (Krauthoefer)]

Result: the Cartel Office declared the commission as null and void, because the Building Ministry broke its own rules by awarding the contract to Stella. Competition rules stipulated that architectural practices may only take part if they a) have an annual turnover of more than 300,000 Euros, or b) have no fewer than 4 employees. In two of the three years declared by Stella, his office had an annual turnover of less than 100k, and to his four employees he included himself. On that turnover you have to ask yourself what his staff were being paid …

That Stella was on shaky grounds from the start must have been well known to the Ministry, since they awarded the contracts not directly to Stella’s firm, but to a construct called Franco Stella Berliner Schloss Humboldt Forum Projektgemeinschaft. Working as subcontractors within this construct are the offices Gerkan Marg and Partner, and Hilmer and Sattler who both also took part in the design competition, but won no prizes. So having landed themselves quite a bit of work through the back door, you can begin to understand why Kollhoff was so mightily pissed off.

The Tagesspiegel speculates that the Ministry were so keen to push through Stella’s designs (which were dull enough to hit the sweet-spot of broad consent), that they were willing to ignore some of their more inconvient competition rules. SLAB shares these speculations.

The Federal Minister for Building, Wolfgang Tiefensee, has responed by basically saying, we’re making great progress, and building will begin in 2010. Well, hurrah.