London’s contemporaneity

A principal feature of London’s contemporary architecture scene is the indistinct salience of its leading edge — by which I mean a curious quality of prominence enjoying a significance out of proportion to the presence of the few exemplars which establish a special status. There is a momentary fuss, a clamour, an excitement and debate; and then life moves on. Suddenly, yesterday’s hot – properties become absorbed into the generality of London’s architectural fabric; their salience has evaporated. This particularly applies to ‘movements’, after which hindsight presents us with a thin, ghostly presence of the past debate whose representative works often seem so few and now relatively unimportant, with a weak impact on the overall scene that constitutes the metropolis as a whole. One notes, for example, how the so-called architectural Post-Modernism and its companion Hi-Tech of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s has left a comparatively small legacy upon London’s urban fabric out of proportion to the heat of the debate engendered at that time (one could also say the same of pre-war Modernism and Art Deco). The better examples — such as Venturi’s Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery — and Rogers’ iconic design for the Lloyd’s ‘86 building — now exist as singular examples of what, at the time, was celebrated as a broadly indulged fashion. And when London came out of its architectural recession around 1994 – 95, this contentious posturing and counter-posturing was silently dropped and ignored. No one said anything. Post-Modernism evaporated and, with it, Hi-Tech too. Even Stirling and his ill-appreciated partner, Michael Wilford, were soon lost from the scene (even if the peculiarity of their lasting monument, No.1 Poultry, remains there to perplex us).

So what is the contemporary? Recent work? Current taste? The prevailing style? Everything that is new and novel? Work exemplifying some spirit of the moment — a kind of sub­category of the Zeitgeist? Perhaps. But the difficulty is that such criteria tend to exclude the idiosyncratic, the almost – all-right and the unfashionable which characterises the bulk of London’s vitality. Meanwhile, some of London’s most prominent architects on the global scene — such as Chipperfield and Hadid — have little or nothing in the capital.

Any reference to what is contemporary courts such difficulties. But there is an alternative perspective seeking to define contemporaneity in terms of what is pertinent, as that which has relevance, what seems alive and a part of some current vibrancy. This broader definition might enable us to embrace works off-centre, idiosyncratic and marginalised — and even old — as valid aspects of the current scene. Such indicators suggest that value lies in some strange equation of relationship between ourselves at any moment in time and what is pertinent and draws our attention: what serves as a spark of vitality and meeting ground between ourselves and the building before us. One must, of course, be wary: on this basis almost anything can be contemporary; nevertheless, it is with such issues in mind that this guide whispers about older, nearby distractions even as it points you toward what enjoys newness, novelty and, of course, merit. Go to Foster’s 30 St. Mary Axe, for example, and you will find that the new building exposes a full frontal view of a 1914 building by one of Holland’s most famous architects: H. P. Berlage. The problem is that you have to work at it, because this facade was meant to be seen obliquely rather than frontally. Or go to Bank to see Stirling and Wilford’s exercise at No.1 Poultry and take the time to cross the road in order to visit an equally idiosyncratic work of some two hundred and fifty years earlier: Hawksmoor’s St. Mary Woolnoth. To see older works simply as history might be to miss the point. One could attempt, instead, to see them as bearing a possibly moribund content that may have lost its original horizons of relevance but which, perhaps, can still be brought alive in order to excite and live as ‘contemporary’ architecture (particularly as an admirable architectural gamesmanship). To do this is perhaps to see these buildings as works that were once novel, new and arousing an interest which can still be awakened by one’s attentiveness. The ‘contemporary’ is then whatever is current and, as it were, brought ‘alive’. It is now the site of a meeting place between yourself and the content of your attentions.

I hope that, in using this book to find what is currently going on, you also have the time and inclination to cast a glance toward the rich mix of London’s other architecture.

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty:

The City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill:

Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, William Wordsworth, 1802.