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School of Social Sciences You can guarantee cool, refined work from STA and this 7000sq. m. university building is no exception. It is very energy efficient and, as one might expect, internally flexible, with its accommodation centred around a central 4 atrium or ‘hub’ feature which aims to serve as the focus |
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The building is adjacent to the three blocks of Tecton’s Spa Green Estate (1946 – 50). The engineer (as at Highpoint) was Ove Arup. |
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Independent Television News (200 Gray’s Inn; Foster & Partners, 1989; Tube: Chancery Lane) is a 10 storey, heavily serviced, 37,000 sq. m. building, with two of the floors underground. Its architectural interest principally resides in three features: the central atrium; the elegant double-glazed cladding with its 300 mm gap; and the set-back entrance area sporting an extremely tall revolving door once intended to lead to a more lively space, where the public could experience the news broadcasting. Unfortunately the construction timing hit the recession and the possibility of low rental incomes, cutting back the budget. The entrance works well, the atrium has a dramatic hanging mobile by Ben Johnson, and the openness of the building is engaging, but there is a certain blandness about the place. |
Finsbury Health Centre, designed by 05 Tecton, 1935-38, Pine Street, EC1, belongs to a beginnings of a former age of Modernism when architects and their patrons were overtly socialist and humanist and there was a belief in the power of architecture to contribute to the well-being of others, especially the deprived and disadvantaged. They believed in a different future, mediated by a design that would throw away the past and embrace a new, egalitarian future of well-being. The key designer among the architects was Berthold Lubetkin (his partners were well connected ex-Architectural Association students he had teamed up with in 1932, after coming from Russia via Warsaw and Paris). As a young practice, they had managed to design and exhibit a clinic design seen by people from Finsbury — then one of London’s poorest boroughs, with appalling health problems. English social connections, left-wing politics and European inspiration with a mix of impeccable sources (Russian Constructivists to Perrault and Le Corbusier) had made an unlikely meeting. The outcome was a remarkable Modernist exercise in the tradition of ‘art leading the facts of science’. Two wings (exhibiting with self-evident beaux arts symmetries) house administration and consultation rooms, and a central mass houses reception, waiting areas and an upper lecture hall — all designed so that services, accessible from outside, could rise at the blank ends and run along the fagades, into the accommodation. The framed construction and the way it is serviced and organised is a model of rational design, an example to the profession of how architecture could be at once modern, instrumental, at the service of the people, and beautiful. And yet there is an odd note indicative of the period: the basement was designed as a processing and delousing unit into which coach-loads of children would be driven, mattresses brought and burned — a concept with undertones reminiscent of the functionalist, ethnic cleansing machines of National Socialism!
Sadly, FHC is a rather neglected building but, together with Tecton’s Highpoint buildings and the Penguin Pool at London Zoo, it is a rare example of a European – inspired modernism intruding into a London scene otherwise preoccupied. It was a design that married instrumentalism and aesthetics into a model architectural configuration that remains as a bench-mark for contemporary architects.
Brewery Square (north St. John Street, EC1; 2004) started off as a design from Eric von Egeraat, the Dutch architect, and ended up by Hamilton Associates (run by former Denys Lasdun people and better known as a production outfit hidden in the background). Take a look: this is a fine scheme, with novel projecting elements that still lend the whole a rather un-English character. (BDP have their offices in a warehouse behind here.)
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Whitehall & the West End 86 Gazzano House This apartment block is a refreshing infill, with both a materiality and a character that copes well with urban grittiness, offering us Corten steel cladding in that currently fashionable ‘cookie-cut-out’ style beginning to crop up all over in 2005 (see, for example, the Feilden & Clegg school at Chalk Farm). The (fashionable) layered / ^ cookie cutout facade is well handled and the Corten steel g (OK, also fashionable) manages to offer itself as at once gritty and elegant: a proverbial metaphor of authenticity. |
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See John Winter’s house in Highgate for the only other notable example of using Cor-Ten steel in London. |
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St. Luke’s Church was a derelict shell without a soul: broody, romantic (John James; wonderful obelisk spire by Hawksmoor; 1728). But now it has been revitalised as a music education centre (serving a programme called LSO Discovery) and at the heart of the new body is the Jerwood Hall: a large, galleried rehearsal and recording facility for the London Symphony Orchestra, able to accommodate an audience of 350p. A new steel structure of internal ‘trees’ props and frames the new roof and underground excavations to either side of the church (in the crypt and former graveyards) provide ancillary accommodation. Acoustics, of course, were a prime concern and a silent (as the grave) heating and ventilating system utilises 100m deep undergound bore pipes and the stable conditions at that depth. It’s impressively done, but also a polite English interplay with an important old building that avoids real dialogue across time. For example, the interior is impressive, but externally, the new work is almost entirely suffocated by the coffin of the old shell. |
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Be aware that many building occupiers and their security teams are increasingly intolerant of architectural photographers. This is for a mix of obvious reasons and no particular or sensible reason at all. Unlike in France the British architectural author has no copyright control over the image of his or her design. The Corporation of the City of London have advised me that you can snap away and use the images as you see fit from anything deemed to be a public highway or a public place, so long as you aren’t obstructing it. However, commercial photography can only be used in publications if it is explicit that the building or occupiers are not endorsing or promoting a service or business without their permission.
In addition, be wary of photographing children or infringing rights to privacy — people can get upset. In addition, it has become rare for people to allow you to photograph internally unless you ask for permission — which will sometimes be given if you are on a formal visit and you are polite and considerate.
Be aware that some alleys and streets that look public are often private and security guards will often seek to prevent you taking photos (this often happens at Canary Wharf and in the City e. g. at Tower Place, Merrill Lynch, No.1 Poultry, Broadgate, Alban Gate, Lloyds Register, etc.). However, such places invariably have public rights of way as a part of their planning conditions — ways that, usually, can only be closed on special occasions and with due warning. At all other times you are on public territory and no one has a right to stop you taking photos. You _ will sometimes see rows of stainless steel studs in the paving — that is usually the right of way, of^arks an ownership boundary line. However, note the point above about any public place, not just ‘rights’ of way’.
If in doubt, contact the local Planning Department and seek out the conditions of Planning Permissions.
Don’t attempt to make sense of these security policies — they are rarely consistent. And the guards are invariably just doing their job and following instructions.
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Your big opportunity to get inside buildings is each September when, on the third weekend of the month, Open House London (an educational charity) organises free entry to some 600 or more buildings all over London — buildings you normally can’t get into. Unlike similar events around Europe and the UK, Open House has always emphasised access to modern and contemporary buildings. You can then photograph all you want!
Check their website at www. openhouselondon. org. uk