Elephant and Castle - grimmity grim grim (grim)

When researching 'Elephant and Castle' (this handsome author's favourite is, of course, Altavista accessed on Netscape Navigator), a lot of the top hits are links to grand regeneration plans.  On the face of it, such modernisation is quite exciting.  Although, on reflection, the message is also 'it's a bit shit - come back later'.

Still, everything looks nice on a sunny day.  Ish.

Elephant is famous for being a roundabout and having some shops.  But there's actually more to it than that.  There're two roundabouts.  And a half-used shopping centre, circumscribed by roads to the north, south and west, with a train line on the east side (providing with burghers of Wimbledon with direct access to this fine part of SE1).  It's a horrible site for the pedestrian.

A charming office block, Hannibal House, sits atop the shops.

The shopping centre was, apparently, the UK's first enclosed shopping mall.  There seem to have wanted to reinforce this hermetically-sealed feeling by giving the place no windows.  Still, there is some awesome unreconstructed decor (and lots of unused units).

From the days when tartrazine was fashionable.

At the top of the complex lurks a timewarp Superbowl.  It's like going to a birthday party in 1988 (but without someone's Dad complaining about how much it costs and refusing to pay 20p for a go on Out Run).

 'Welcome to the London Palace'.

The above photo really is something of a classic.  I tingle with a horrified delight at the grim jollity of the five rainbow-striped concrete joists appearing from the nicotine-yellow dank.  Happy!  There's a lady in a headscarf riding an escalator.  Fun!  And the opaque windows.  Nothing to see here!  It's like a Butlins version of a deathcamp. 

Outside the shopping centre is a shanty town of cheapy market stalls, and fuck loads of traffic.

At the bottom of a ramp that's slightly too steep to walk down, sits a boozer sometimes calling itself 'The Charlie Chaplin'.  Chuck apparently came from these parts.  The way in looks like a fire escape door, and Charlie's doing that 'One meeellion dollars' thing with his little finger.  'Charlie's Wine Bar' reads the paper sign, with the carefree undertone 'We will stab you if you come in here'.

'The Unofficial Student Bar'.  Anyone seen Hostel?

The shopping centre is approached by a network of underpasses.  These subways are always a bit grim, and Elephant's don't disappoint.  Whilst thankfully (fairly) free of piss, they remain confusing and reinforce the message that pedestrians are unwelcome and really shouldn't be here.

Exit number 91.

The walls are tiled using that special palette of leisure centre / Fenchurch Street Station ceramic tiles, with a 'fags floating in a fountain' outcome.  There're also some crappy images of a Georgian street scene that doesn't exist anymore.  I just imagine Jim Bowen saying 'Look what you could have won'.

Rubbish.

Across the roundabout (on top of the Nando's and Wetherspoons) is a late 50's bit by Ernö Goldfinger, Metro Central Heights.  Looking at that stairway, and the bit of cantilevering jutting out from the slab on the right, you can see early hints at the design of the Brutalist megastructures of Balfron and Trellick Towers (in edgy East and, um, edgy West London, respectively).

Just back from the shops lurks the fuck-me-that's-big Heygate estate, which was used as a Channel 4 ident to signify 'grim'.  Some doomed Brutalist concrete, which is all going to be knocked down and replaced with stuff with white render (one imagines), thereby making everyone happy (one doubts).  There's some good stuff here about the current vogue for knocking stuff down rather than bothering to maintain what's already there.

50s bridge (right) kissing a 60s flying walkway (happy yellow paint).

There is a quite unbelievable art installation in the public realm across from the shopping centre: a forest of dinge-orange zebra crossing lamps.  

Quite a witty joke, but it seems at the expense of Elephant's horrible design flaws, rather than celebrating the area. Then again, what is there to celebrate?

Is 'Alcohol Control Area' the title of the art installation?

Next to this mixed media is the Metropolitan Tabernacle.  The front is Victorian neo-Classical facade in warm stone, but the back is 50s sport-hall.

Even odder is the way that some sensitive sole has plonked some (more) concrete Brutalism right up alongside it.

With mysterious sympathy, the Brutalism's roof line matches.

Finally, there is some evidence of shiny-shiny regeneration.  The Strata Tower (the one with the wind turbines built in) sits to the south of the shopping centre, surrounded by a large, clean expanse of paving.  The older, and now dwarfed, tower block is being renovated.

Postmodernism checkbox:

Context?  Picture of an elephant.  Tick.

Iconic?  Pointy top, turbines.  Tick.

Given Elephant's nearly-central location, two Tube lines (and not even the crap branch of the Northern Line) and 27 bus routes, the place really ought to work.  Any perhaps, just maybe, this regeneration scheme will fix all the gyratory and dingy problems.  But I do encourage the urban explorer to go and have a look before it gets fixed.  The current lumpen mess is really fun.

The Future of the Past: Battersea Power Station

Since the failure of the Rafael Viñoly plan for Battersea Power Station (a photo is in this blog entry), there has been much excitement afoot with regards to the future of the building and the site.  Perhaps a little prematurely, Google Maps is already showing the proposed extension of the Charing Cross branch out west.

 (Unbuilt).

Terry Farrell (him what done the MI6 building, the Home Office, and, oh, Charing Cross...) has chipped in a vision for BPS, one which involves retaining just the front and back walls, and knocking the rest down.

Eerily high Thames.  Has the Barrier failed?

The casual observer might not realise quite how much of the power station this 'modern ruins' plan would involve removing.  Compare with the below pic of the current state of the building.

And what are those ghostly buildings we can see flanking BPS in Farrell's publicity image?  Of course - flats.  Lots and lots of flats.  Those are the reason here for the plans to preserve yet minimise the current building - lots of lovely space for riverview apartments.  Note also that none of the publicity shots for the proposal show the umpteen tracks of mainline trains (compare with the Google screen grab at the top) that pass close to the power station - and even closer to many of the flats.  The below Farrell image rather cutely fades all the train tracks to a soothing and neutral grey, whilst emphasising the verdant greens around the BPS shell (and Battersea Park, on the other side of the train lines).

Compare the density of flats in the Farrell scheme to those of the 50s Churchill Estate in Pimlico, in the top right of the image.

Another plan, by Allies & Morrison (thems what redone the Royal Festival Hall), is to turn BPS into a 11,000-seater concert venue.

From the CG sketches, it looks like much of the brick would be maintained - the bdonline site notes that the 'former coal bunker area and Grade II listed Water Pumping Station will be kept. Housing would be built on surrounding land.'  Ah, housing again.  I wonder how much of that there will be, and quite how close is would be to the trains and venue...  The Morrison proposal also features a really horrible sketch of what appears to be the apocalypse drawn on an Etch-A-Sketch.  Shudder.

What are those lines in the sky?  The vapour trails from incoming warheads?  The very fabric of reality breaking down?

Another proposal for BPS is to use it as Chelsea FC's new stadium.  The Daily Mirror has a lovely 16-bit graphics mock-up image of the results.  I wonder how many fans could be crammed into that space (considering the Morrison venue proposal would host just 11,000). The rest of the grounds would be... 'shops, offices and affordable housing.'  Oh, housing.

You'd've thought they'd bother to landscape the area around the stadium.

All of the above plans seem something of a distraction.  There's no particular interest in BPS itself, just a desire to secure planning permission to build shed loads of flats on some lovely land.

So what do I think should happen to BPS?  Well, I quite fancy turning it into some sort of gated Children of Men Ark of Arts (a sort-of fascist Tate Modern).  

Or, ideally, a really lovely Moderne flat.  For me.

But, before any of this happens, the BPS grounds will be used as a giant car park for itinerant police vehicles during the Olympics.  Woohoo.

Woolwich: Faded Glory

So much of London has been gentrified, even since I've been here.  The property boom of much of the 2000s led to lots of rather humdrum suburbs becoming newly-desirable, and awash with organic wooden toys and hand-fired single-varietal macchiatos.

Whilst the impression may be an inexorable improvement, it seems rather that this may be part of London's natural ebb and flow.  So, I thought I'd explore some of London's less-loved areas, keeping an attentive eye out for former grandeur.  Hence Woolwich.

Approaching from the West, the impeccably-dressed cyclist comes across the William Morris Estate.  God knows why it's named after a proponent of local crafts and workmanship, as the estate is made of Danish system-built prefab point blocks and slabs (the same type that collapsed at Ronan Point in '68).

The estate map looks like a screenshot from the original Star Wars arcade machine.

 Underlining the meanness of the site, the mainline railway track cuts through the estate but doesn't stop there.

There's the train you can't get on.

This type of building is wildly unfashionable. But on a sunny winter's morning, the well-endowed cyclist could nearly infer the architect's efforts to play with light.

Moving further west, one comes across the rather attractive water feature of stagnant rain collecting on the happy space / roof of the communal garage block.

A bit further towards the town, the devastatingly-charismatic cyclist passes through a mish-mash of Victorian, 30s and 50s housing, and chances upon a particularly exciting public house, which is clearly the centre of the local community.

Wow, that many forthcoming events?

A touch further West, the witty and yet international homme en bicyclette chances upon the first real signs of lost glory, in the shape of some superb 30s buildings, now sadly in really horrible states of disrepair.  Gateway House, a rare piece of Streamline Moderne (which might be my favourite type of Art Deco), was once an Odeon, and is now a New Wine Church.

Why do I always have lampposts in my photos?

Across the road is the Grade II-listed Granada, which was once billed as the 'most romantic theatre ever built'.  It's now a Gala Bingo.

Oh hai lamppost (which is strangely of a different design to the one on the other side of the road).

The Royal Arsenal Cooperative, another great bit of Deco, is now derelict.

Sob.

Passing through the mainly-50s pedestrianised parade of shops, the plucky adventurer comes across a timewarp Sainsbury's, all brown and orange and low-ceiling'd.  It looks in my photo as if the block of flats on the left is connected by a flying walkway to the lift tower of the multi-storey carpark above Sainsbury's...  Surely that can't be right.  Surely.

All shops in Woolwich must be clearly signalled by massive orange arrows (Bye law 1.26.2).

At the far end of the shops is a post-Millennium public realm, with a whopping TV on stilts to help placate the grunting masses.  The sloping square has thoughtfully been subdivided by multi-level wedges of grass, again helping to assuage the English fear of open spaces.

Saluting any picture of Cameron on the TV is obligatory (Bye law 1.26.3).

The teasingly-wonderful urban raconteur has, of course, saved the best of Woolwich till last.  In the middle of the shops, an observant and well-muscled chap can find the area's principal tourist attraction - the world's 3000th McDonald's - the very first in the UK.  It's like looking upon the face of God.

 Mr Ray A Kroc later went on the manufacture a range of vile rubber shoes.

Stirling: Pre-Post Modern

So.  Post Modernism is back.

I'd actually meant to blog about the PoMo extensions to the Tate on Millbank and the National Gallery up at Trafalgar Square.  It occurred to me that I've lived within ten minutes walk of the Tate for about three years, yet can only think of a couple of times that I've bothered to go in (#philistine).  Likewise, I reckon I've been into the James-Stirling-designed extension, the Clore Gallery, but really can't remember much about it.

But whilst Googling the Clore, I came across a Gurniad aticle which noted that another, much earlier, Stirling building was just 15 minutes' bike ride away.  So, I thought I'd have a look at that, as a warm-up up the Tate.

Hiding near Camberwell, the dining and assembly hall for Brunswick Park School was designed in the late fifties, with Stirling's then-partner, James Gowan.  It's made up of three prism-like blocks of glass and light brick, with the fourth corner of the site marked by a chimney (which is presumably located above the kitchens).

There's a really strong 45 degree axonometry here.  You can see the graph paper's impact on the design.  The grass verge rises steeply to the perpendicular curtain wall of glass, which then falls back to the raised ground level.  The geometry is continued by the triangles of internal beams.  This drawing captures the whole effect perfectly.

Taken from Flikr

I find it hard to imagine how space-age and modern the Stirling building must have looked to late-50's eyes.  Whilst looking a bit shabby now, this was a strikingly different architecture to the rather sensible Victorian pile of the school's main building.

Surprisingly sympathetic UPVC windows.

Without getting inside the dining hall, there 's not much more to say about it.  Other than the way that the axonometric angles and glass of the Brunswick building foreshadow Stirling's later, larger, red-tiled and better-known works at Leicester, Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

The Leicester University engineering faculty building, 1959-63.

Looking something like a space rocket on a launch pad.

The Cambridge University history faculty building, designed 1963.

Oxford's The Queen's College's Florey building, looking like a Space Invader, designed 1968.

There's clearly quite a lot of form-over-function these red-tile-and-glass shapes (the wings of the Cambridge building apparently hinting at an open book, from which knowledge is pouring out).  I wonder how that bodes for an art gallery.

But the above buildings were a couple of decades before Sitrling's Post-Modernist Clore gallery...  So I shall go and look at that.

Hatefilled Hatfield

With some regret, I have finally completed the set of New Towns orbiting London.  There've been tears of joy (the outdoor escalator in Basildon), unexpectedly high-quality tower blocks (Bracknell, Harlow), and wailings of genuine distress (Kodak Tower in Hemel - I still need to blog about that).

The order was entirely arbitrary, but Hatfield, a few miles south of the lush greenery of Welwyn Garden City, came up last.  Whilst I'd been pretty lucky with the weather during my other the-only-tourist-since-1961 New Town sallies, the trip to Hatfield was grey and dreary and a bit cold.  Perhaps that has adversely affected my view of the place.  Perhaps.  That, or Hatfield New Town is really horrible.

Firstly, it was deserted.  Completely.  Not even distressing Bracknell was quite so dismal.

Nothing to say.

No-one to say it to.

After appearances on the Roland Rat Show dried up, Erol's career went downhill.

The 50s New Town square and precinct have been completely killed off by the ring-road plastic PoMo shed of the Galleria.  But before you reach that, there are a few signs of sort-of life, in the form of more fucking plants (cf Bracknell), and a charity shop/brothel.

The Triffids ill-advisedly chose Hatfield as the site for their invasion of the Earth.

A cyber lady points to her sexy loins, sexily, in the window of a 'charity shop'.

Much like the other New Towns, Hatfield has plans for regeneration of the town centre.  'Phase One', a hoarding announces, 'will be the creation of two new buildings... creating a complete High Street leading down to Asda'.  Ah - so that's what's lacking from the town centre.  If only the original architects had included two more buildings, then the High Street would've been complete, and all would be well.  The whole scheme (um, 5 shops and 15 flats) comes with the dismal caveat 'as market conditions improve'.

Why would the original proposals not have allowed town centre regeneration to be delivered?

I include here a now-and-later imagining of how a nearby tower block will look when rendered and whitewashed.

Oh noes the drab present  :'(

Teh future's!!1

The piss-poor / propaganda Photoshop alleges that the dazzling tower will actually be a light source, casting shadows behind the Happy People as they bask in its urban realm.

So, onwards, via the 24 hour Asda, to the Galleria.

All lower case?  Good, because that will never date.

Loosely apeing the curved metal arched roofs of Stanstead, the Galleria manages none of the light airiness of Foster's work, and is cluttered with hanging lights and a random divider of fabric.

Most oddly, the Galleria (I'm refusing not to use a capital letter) has almost no useful shops, being some sort of Bicester Village (urg) stylee 'Outlet Park'.  Only the Superdrug saves the whole enterprise from being completely superfluous to human needs.

On the way back to train station (hourly fast trains to Kings Cross, for those keen to escape), I came across some cryptic graffiti.

After much deliberation, my best guess is that is that is says 'Steve writing on walls is', but that Yoda-speaking Steve spelt his name wrong.  An enthusiastic knuckle-dragger has added a further 'Devvo' of support.

In Hatfield, the mouthbreathers are looked upon as the elite.