One usually finds a variety of functional, urban and historical themes in Farrell’s work. In this instance – one of the few buildings which positively addresses the Thames – they include employing the air rights over the 1863 rail station; external service cores (as at Lloyds, as Farrell points out); historical references to the large houses and palaces once lining the Thames between the City and Whitehall; references to Ledoux in the water feature of the lobby, to the Moscow Kurskaya station on the station platforms and, near the Embankment, to Otto Wagner’s Vienna stations. Nevertheless, the building does have its own identity.
The new work sits upon the old station undercroft of brick vaults (a feature that is comparable with the work of Farrell’s ex-partner, Nick Grimshaw, at Waterloo), making it reminiscent of conquering cultures building new temples upon the foundations of the existing ones, literally absorbing history into what is contemporary (and, in this case, simultaneously regurgitating other historical themes). Strong features and contrasts characterise one’s experience of the building. For example, there is the massive scale and character of structural acrobatics involved in spanning the rail tracks (best appreciated from the South Bank, from where one can also see how the service towers straddle the sides of the upper offices and the station itself). There is also a (not unsuccessful) contrast between the building’s Baroque presence and the scale of older buildings, especially in Villiers Street, on the east side.
The Station Hotel (Strand side,1863-64), is by E. M.
Barry, (1830 – 80), third son of Sir Charles (1975 – 1860), who designed the Houses of Parliament; it is one of the first buildings to use artificial stone. Barry was also involved in work at the Royal Academy and the Royal Opera House.
Once reputed to be designed by Inigo Jones, York 14 Watergate (1626), within Embankment Gardens, SW3, was built by Nicholas Stone (master mason for George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham), as the gate to York House and marks the bank of the Thames before the Victorian Embankments were built. One’s imagination might bring back the ghosts of river travellers, mounting steps such as these in order to get to York House and, later, to the streets immediately behind. The latter included Villiers and Buckingham Streets – some of the first speculative developments in London (1670’s on), founded on the novel and modern idea of order and regularity, and developed by the notorious speculator, Dr Nicholas Barbon. (Execution usually produced an appealing form
of irregularity resulting from the development of individual plots by separate builders.)
The Thames Embankment is a
tremendous 3.5 mile engineering feat of health engineering and was constructed — against all the odds — in 1868-74, by Sir Joseph Bazalgette. Major parts of London’s rain-water runoff and sewage is taken by the tunnels of the Embankment to east London, where pump houses change its level and discharge it to sewage works and the river. One of the Embankment’s key features, Cleopatra’s Needle, is a plundered Egyptian obelisk dating from 1500 BC. Strangely, no one seems to notice it very much.
1A The Royal Festival Hall, SE1, was built as a ‘people’s palace’ for the celebratory Festival of Britain in 1951 and remains its lone survivor (the rest having been demolished by a disgruntled and reactionary Winston Churchill). It was principally designed by Leslie Martin, Peter Moro and Edwin Williams at the LCC Architects Department as an inner ‘egg’ (the 2600 seat auditorium) surrounded by foyers and other accommodation, including a remarkable ‘flowing’ staircase concept and as much transparency as possible.
The building is a monument to when post-war architects believed in socialism, progress and the notion that ‘art should lead the facts of science’ and experts were closely involved from the very beginning in the design of its auditorium. But the constraints of time and budget meant that it was never completed as intended and, by the early ‘60’s, its neo-Scandinavian aesthetics were being dismissed as ‘nautical whimsy’ (Warren Chalk) and the building overlaid by more robust neo-Corbusian enthusiasms that included extensions, refronting and relocating the main entrances from the side to the river front. By then the building was a firm feature of new masterplans for the Southbank and its lost ‘small hall’ became the seed for the Queen Elizabeth Hall — added to by the Purcell Room, a gallery idea (now the Hayward) originating with an ICA scheme to move here and the National Film Theatre (a reinvention of the Festival’s ‘Telekinema’). Much of this became the ‘brutalist’ concrete buildings and surrounding decks created by London County Council architects (who included the Warren Chalk,
Ron Herron, Denis Crompton trio of Archigram).The RFH remains a splendid building, now more easily accessible because of the new Hungerford Bridge. The restaurant was refurbished a few years ago by Allies and Morrison, who are currently architects for a larger refurbishment and master-plan scheme aiming to restore some of the original features and cope with the deck issues. Some of this work was being realised in the summer of 2005.
The National Theatre, Upper Ground, SE1, designed by Sir Denys Lasdun & Partners (1967-77;
17 petulantly denounced by Prince Charles as something akin to a nuclear power station) makes a superb contrast with the RFH. Where the latter’s spaces are open and filled with light, people ‘pouring’ down its grand staircases, the National offers a different aesthetic agenda more enthused by (a Japanese-like) enthusiasm for shadows and contrasts between dark, light, for huge cantilevering horizontal planes, and embodying an underlying obession with castles (surely the major clue to the whole place?).
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Photo: Donald Cooper |
The plan configures three halls into a more or less square plan cut across by a diagonal axis that focuses upon the north-west corner, adjacent to Waterloo Bridge, emphasising this entry corner and locating service and support areas to the south and east sides (in different circumstances, the back end of the building). The scheme is simple but the experience is complex and dramatic: in-situ concrete finishes, enclosed staircases, views between floors, a plush purple carpet and wonderful views toward St. Paul’s. Well, it was that way until generations of managers silted up the place in order to provide the layers of before, between, and after performance servicing that theatre-goers now demand (the airport equation that is more about the incidental, in between opportunities to milk the wallets of customers than the principal, dramatic reasons for visiting the place).
The outcome was late ‘90’s revisions to the lobby area by Stanton Williams that deeply troubled Lasdun and compromised his architecture (they were completed in ‘98; Lasdun died in 2001). Alternatives from the original architect that might have improved access — especially car drop-offs and other vehicular servicing, together with proposals for tented structures populating the rather underused terraces and providing cafes and the like — were rejected, although he did manage to prevent ‘pollarding’ the terracing and having the SW proposals approved on the basis that everything could be easily reinstated. However, this is a robust building and well worth exploring. Go to the Lyttleton for a performance. But also go some sunny day when the National is empty and quiet, and you can explore its castle-like spaces and search out the ghost of its architect: some little boy probably still excitedly rooting around what he finds to be the most interesting place in the world.