Slough (of despond)

Taking some linguistic liberty, I can claim that Google defines Slough as:

1) A swamp;
2) The dropping off of dead tissue from living flesh.

Inviting.

Bullied by by Betjeman and Brent, Slough is famously shit.  I'm disappointed to say that I've missed the Brunel Bus Station, a brown-and-concrete megalith that, given my esoteric / perverse tastes, I might have rather enjoyed.  But, happily, Slough is partway through its Heart of Slough remoulding and modernisation.

One part of this scheme has been completed, a new £12 million bus station.  The wonderfully partisan Slough Times website (which really should be in Comic Sans FULL CAPS) loathes this structure, and cites such heart-breaking tales of public transport woe as A Pensioner misses her bus (which concludes 'she was forced by Slough's uncaring Labour-run council to stand in the pouring rain waiting for her next bus') and the eschatological thought-provoker Everything closes at 4pm.

It's certainly an odd bugger.  I suppose that modern bus stations don't want to end up being places for loiters and tramps to hang around, so seek not to be particularly comfortable, with a tolerable dwell period of about ten minutes.  Taking some cues from Vauxhall Bus Station, the Slough structure is a two-pronged silver thing that (deliberately?) provides limited shelter from cold, wind or rain.  The Council's website says that the metal cladding will 'change character with the varying light conditions', which I think means that it will look darker at night.

The two worms-in-cross-section meet a larger worm-in-cross-section, where there's a caff and a mini newsagent, but the interesting glass end seems sadly to be a staff room (well, I couldn't find a way in).

In between the bus and train stations and the shops, somewhat unhelpfully, thunders a pair of dual carriages that form a ring-road.  A glass-and-steel bridge that spans the roads was presumably paid for by the massive millennial Tesco, but the tiling looks like a naff version of a 70s Jubilee Line platform, and absolutely everything (tiles, handrails, flooring, glass) is liberally plastered with pigeon poo.

Welcome to Slough

The smashed safety-glass panels make a pleasing installation of urban art in the winter sun.

Welcome to Slough.

Across the shit-and-shrapnel assault course sits the concrete fundom of the Queensmere Shopping Centre.  T'internet suggests that this will be flattened and rebuilt as something nice (/with a greater rental income).  At the moment, it's a distinctly lacklustre affair with an unhealthy number of 99p and discount stores.  Someone's tried to hide the exterior concreteness with a cheap and unadorned internal façade of white plasterboard, and a bunch of light fittings that are often bulb-free and/or just a cable hanging from the roof.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO HER TEETH?

Out the other side of Queensmere is a redeveloped square on the High Street, with some street furniture, a new cinema, and some charming dining options.

CCTV ensures that no-one steals the pigeon poo.

Adjacent is the Observatory shopping centre, which is a rather nicer PoMo affair with Lego-blue detailing and some decorative capitals/balcony-type contrivances.

On the way up to the roof of the Observatory carpark, one can visit some charming toilets, and perhaps experience the alfresco thrill of weeing in a cubicle that has had its door smashed off.

Well, at least they are appologising for the iconvenience.

On the roof, there are three lifts - one of which is, surreally, the pin-coded entrance to an EasyGym.  From this lofty vantage, one can look down on some utter shit strewn across the roofs at the back of the High Street.

Will this also be rectafied shortly?

After the vigorous exercise of urban exploration, one might seek a refreshing beverage in a local hostelry.  The 'friendliest pub on Slough High Street' comes with the stern and slightly confusing warning on its front door 'Do not attempt to use public toilets unless you are a paying customer'.  So, they're not public toilets, then?  Or do different terms and conditions apply if seeking to use the staff toilets?

FRIENDLY.

Sadly, it seems that one can no longer source a horse pie in Slough  :(

Although this has thankfully not dampened the spirits of the locals, who have chosen to have a fun time in the piss-soaked alleyway alongside.

Polish lager, fags and jaffa cakes.  A classic Berkshire night out.

If you would like to live and work here, a local job shop suggests becoming a leering chef and serving up a tasty platter of raw potato wedges, accompanied by a bowl of radishes.  Mmm.

Um.  Nice curtains.

A nearby store sells some genuinely exotic treats, like eyebrows.

Bargain.

In all, Slough might actually be the crappest place I have visited in quite some time.  Although perhaps my memory of Bracknell has faded.

Keep up the good work, Berkshire.

Birmingham: a tale of two libraries

My family lived within a few miles of Birmingham for three years in the late Eighties, but, for reasons that don't really make sense to me, it seems that we only went into the city centre twice in that time.  I recall spilling UHT milk over my father's suit in a café near Snow Hill station on one of those occasions.  This is perhaps why we did not come back.

So, returning to the place some twenty-five years later, there was almost nothing for me to remember.  I did distantly recognise the Stirling green handrails and globular PoMo lights of Snow Hill (which seems to be a car park with a station attached, rather than the other way round), but nothing of the city itself.

Retaining the charm of the underside of a motorway flyover.

As England's Second City (TM), Birmingham is lucky enough to have its own Pevsner guide, which is a really great book (they all are #fanboy).  This blog here has a great account of the rebuildings of Birmingham, so I wont re-cover any of that.  My interest was in the soon-to-be-demolished Central Library, which the Pevsner describes as a building 'of European importance', although in Culture Minister Margaret Hodge's judgement, there was 'insufficient architectural value' and 'insufficient historic importance' for the building to be listed.  So it should therefore be flattened forthwith, and the land flogged (cf Preston Bus Station).

From 1974, when the library opened, and colours were wrong.

As if often the case with such post-War schemes, little of the original masterplan, which would have included a drama centre and athletics institute, got built.  What was finished is in two main parts.  The low-rise curve of the Corbusier-meet-carpark Lending library doesn't attract much hatred because it's pretty inoffensive.  The larger structure, that which gets all the attention, is the Reference Library.  It forms an inverted hollow ziggurat, cantilevering out into the sky from improbable stilts at the base.  That mass of floating concrete creates the distinct menace of impending doom. An intimidating architectural game of Chicken.  A Thwomp from Mario about to smash into you from above.  Standing in the centre of the structure, at that time open to the sky, must have felt like being in the eye of a hurricane.

This primal death-from-above fear is perhaps the point of the original design (along with flipping the concept for Lasdun's 1966-7 University of East Anglia accommodation blocks on its head).  The Library was supposed to be impressive, challenging and intriguing.  Of course, it was never intended to look like the nearby Town Hall (please try to remember quite how daft it is that our Georgian and Victorian forebears built things that looked like Greek temples), although perhaps some sensitivity of scale should be acknowledged.  It was a building block for a post-war future, a proud civic monument.

Seeing the building today, it's really really hard to recognise that.  It's clear that the structure has been loathed for some time, and fashion-conscious councils have sought to change or soften or disguise or, oh dear, 'improve' it.  In the same year that Prince Charles described the library as looking 'like a place where books are incinerated, not kept', a tubular steel and glass canopy was jammed between the concrete masses.  Today, punters are lured inside by the charming transfat treats of Greggs and Mcdonald's.

Hanging baskets.  The last-ditch attempt to disguise something hated.

Inside, the space has been roofed in, and a bunch of single-storey retail outlets clutter up the place.  From the library itself, you can look down on the plasterboard ceilings, power cables and other mess on top of these commercial portacabins.  In its current state, it's a horrid experience.  And it's not to be renovated, or restored, or preserved.

Approached from the other side, a late-80s walkway over the ringroad is framed by a pair of unloved PoMo glass boxes (one of which is the Copthorne Hotel, which must be visited if only for the ZOMG mirrored ceiling on the ground floor and Leuven-centred beer selection), grimy red-framed windows like bleary eyes from one too many Steakbakes and Stellas the night before.

One can follow that same walkway over to Centenary Square, where the new C21 library is nearing completion.

Taken from the builders' hoarding, hence the join.

Finished in concrete, this might have looked rather like a Brutalist pile of boxes.  But the architects have sought to hide this hunmdrumdom behind a cladding designed using a Spirograph.  Here's a Youtube CGI flypast of the site and tour of the building with music taken from an early series of Location, Location, Location.

I've nothing in particular against what Charles Jencks would enthusiastically call Radical Postmodernism, although, much like the nearby MAKE-designed Cube, it will date absolutely horribly.

Perhaps it really will make everyone happy.  I can only imagine that future generations of Brummies will be vacuously braying for this to be pulled down because it's not in keeping with the surrounding area and doesn't look like Corinthian temple (or, if tastes have changed that much, because it doesn't look like a Beton Brut megastructure...).

I'll leave you with a rather balanced interview with John Madin, the architect of the Central Library, who passed on in January 2012.  RIP, John.