At aged 14 I went through quite a serious ‘military aircraft phase’ which involved a subscription to a magazine devoted to the subject, hours spent pouring over photos in books, and even going so far as to join the Air Training Corp with a school friend. The ATC is part of the Air Cadet Organisation, and is a voluntary youth organisation supported by the UK’s Royal Air Force.

Mostly, the ATC involved lots of marching up and down a school playground in a horrid, scratchy uniform made of wire wool, and being barked at by the Warrant Officer. But it did have three exciting benefits: 1) older girls in tight uniforms; 2) running around muddy fields late at night in camoflage, pretending to carry out tactical missions, and 3) gliding lessons. I stuck it out at the ATC long enough to experience taking over the controls of a glider, but the scratchy blue uniform and the marching eventually got the better of me, and I left.

The Windsor flyover [Source: Flickr user synx508]

Another thing I stayed with the ATC long enough to experience was a peculiar rumor, or fact, uttered in the back of a white Ford Transit on the way to a muddy field late one night. Passing underneath the flyover bridge of the dual carriageway which leads from Windsor to Slough, a fellow Cadet mentioned that the bridge had been designed specifically to offer Harier Jump Jets parking space in the event of World War III breaking out.

How could it be, that a familiar and deeply civillian part of Windsor, a sleepy middle-class commuter enclave on the Thames and occasional home to the Queen – the place that I had grown up in – had been planned with a mind for its tactical role in WWIII? The thought was chilling, and a bit exciting, and the image has stuck with me to this day.

So this evening, just out of curiosity, I tried something out. And then I got that chilling feeling again:

Suburban contingency plan for Doomsday

Kifissia is a northern suburb of Athens nestling beneath the Penteli mountains. Named for the currently dried-up crag of a river which runs through it, the Cephissus, Kifissia had been a half Christian, and half Muslim village during Ottoman rule. Following independence and the later construction of a railway line in the late 1800s, it became a popular place for wealthy Athenians to build second homes away from the heat of the inner city (Kifissia is a couple of degrees centigrade cooler than downtown Athens). They built large villas amongst the farm houses which had dominated the landscape for hundreds of years.

Social ebb and flow

The area retained much of its village-like character until the 1970s. During the military junta, rampant building was allowed to transform the area into the current rabbit warren of boulevards and twisting alleyways lined with ostensibly charmless boxes. But even with the arrival of so much concrete, some of Kifissia’s heterogenic mix of richer and poorer has remained, a situation partly explained by long standing land ownership. So it’s not uncommon to walk down a street lined with exclusive designer boutiques and hotels, then turn a corner and come across what looks like a tiny hundred-year-old farm house.

Boutique urbanism

Whilst much of what has gone up in recent times might be deemed architecturally without merrit, it’s not uncommon to find some interesting examples of modernism and brutalism; or abandoned mansions; or a large, freshly built complex, possibly a health farm, weathering away in a state of deep sleep, waiting for some financial Prince Charming to kiss is back to life.

Brutalism: straight out of Fahrenheit 451

Modernist pile

And then there is the kind of all-out weirdness only attainable when large amounts of money collide with fantastic bad taste:

Post modern futurist hangover: straight out of Star Trek