Diary has seen War for the Planet of the Apes so knows all too well the consequences of disrespecting our simian cousins. So there will be no banana jokes, no peanuts and no zoologically inaccurate references to monkeys when referring to Gus, the polygonal gorilla statue unveiled this week at Finsbury Avenue Square, Broadgate, EC2.
Anglo-Italian design house Marokka, Broadgate and animal protection charity The Aspinall Foundation have partnered in the tech-inspired exhibition, Wild Life, which combines sculpture with augmented reality to highlight the plight of endangered species. However, 3m tall Gus steals the show – they’ve put this ape together strong.
Cracking artwork
Property is a literal sector, one not given to struggling to distinguish between the physical and metaphorical in artistic expression. With that in mind, Diary draws one’s attention to Alex Chinneck’s new artwork, Six pins and half a dozen needles (pictured), on Assembly London, an office campus in Hammersmith, W8, developed by AXA Investment Managers – Real Assets, on behalf of its clients. It could be that it represents the metamorphoses and regenerating potential of real estate. Or maybe it exposes that, under the glossy exterior of the exciting and glamorous, we are all built the same way. Or maybe it’s a joke about papering over cracks.
The real (estate) hero…
Diary likes to keeps quiet about this, but it leads a double life. By day a mild-mannered property journalist, by night a superhero enthusiast (Marvel, not DC).
So imagine the excitement upon learning of what is surely the world’s first real estate comic book. Hard Hats boasts the cover strapline “Weapons of mass construction” and, according to publisher Tango Comics, stars “Chicago’s own superhero construction team”.
Creator and Chicago-based developer Robert Frankel says he turned to comic books as a frustrated screenwriter. “Write what you know,” he told Forbes. “I know real estate.” Well, Diary knows comics, but writes about real estate, so that must be where it’s going wrong.
The Neuberger gauge
The Supreme Court has bid farewell to its retiring president, Lord Neuberger, at a valedictory ceremony where tributes were led by his successor, Lady Hale.
The praise was fulsome and the thanks profuse for a judicial powerhouse who Lady Hale at one point referred to as “action man Neuberger”. He’s a tireless hard worker, but, she revealed, “no one could accuse him of being a patient man”.
Apparently he is in the process of having his official portrait painted for Lincoln’s Inn, but is on to his 17th sitting “all because he is incapable of sitting still for more than a few minutes”. Then, she said, there is the “famous Neuberger gauge”, calculated by a keen-eyed observer of the court’s proceedings online, through which the quality of submissions before him could be assessed by the extent to which His Lordship was slouched in his chair – familiar, no doubt, to property lawyers. Both ears below the crease in the leather back? That means: “This is a waste of time.” But before Lady Hale could go on, cue Lord Neuberger bringing the house down with a slump.
Merging on the ridiculous?
The whispers first started two years ago: BNP PRE was going to buy Strutt & Parker. A year ago, those whispers became louder. It was definitely happening, said, well, pretty much everyone in pretty much every Cannes bar at MIPIM. But despite becoming the world’s worst-kept secret, BNP PRE and Strutts never confirmed a thing. They couldn’t, said one source. Reporting periods and all that. Not that reporting periods are two years, but it seems both companies were expecting the deal to take a long time. In their submissions to EG’s Top Agents survey, the two firms were asked if they would be involved in any mergers and acquisitions over the coming 12 months. Both answered “no”. Now the deal is done, Diary is sure the answer must have been related to how long they expected things to drag on, not that it was just a little white lie.
