best building in london?

  • Thread starter simon silverdollar
  • Start date
DigitalHousesOfParliament.jpg


This impressive building on the Thames was originally built as the home of a parliamentary democracy. Other than being the venue for occasional commercial and heritage events, it has largely fallen into disuse.
 

owen

Well-known member
ho ho. can i be the first to say though that, at the very least at a formal level, i fucking hate that building.

ta for the hoover building pics luka. my dad's from round there...
 

owen

Well-known member
in a similar vein, this wonderful thing in bloomsbury
herbrand.jpg

which i had always thought was originally a swimming pool, but was apparently a garage when it was built in 1931...is a v good spot there- senate house at one end, the brunswick centre at the other, the brutalist Unison building, british library and st pancras round the corner.
 

fldsfslmn

excremental futurism
owen said:
mainly by the very wealthy. the very similar (styllistically speaking) thamesmead development
thamesmead-under-construction-00708-640.jpg

is considered a failure, and is inhabited by the very poor. the alienation 'caused' by these structures depends i think on the alienation the inhabitants already feel. but the 'social dynamics' are horribly complicated. the brutalists (smithsons etc) thought that their streets in the sky would be more attentive to the social needs of their working class inhabitants than the le corbusier inspired 'radiant cities' (eg alton estate in roehampton, with its masses of green space, its lack of a centre) and are now equally derided.

Absolutely fascinating post. Have you got any recommended books on the subject for me? I've got a summer's worth of lunchbreaks in which to get some quality reading done . . .

As for Thamesmead, it makes my heart glad to see it floating to the surface again. I spent a month there a few years ago and looking back on it now feels like a strange dream . . . Black & white television . . . reading Cities of the Red Night for the first time . . . a LIDL full of incomprehensible foodstuffs . . . a pony sticking its head out at me from behind a fence . . . some strange misty field—like a patch of ground for which no one had decided on a purpose—where there was a carboot sale and I nearly bought a pair of socks . . . the smashed up factory near the station . . . all the sharp, lurky angles of the estate . . . and also the feeling that the marshland was winning.

I bet it's terrible in winter though. This was a summer and the weather was just perfect.
 
O

Omaar

Guest
owen said:
in a similar vein, this wonderful thing in bloomsbury
herbrand.jpg

which i had always thought was originally a swimming pool, but was apparently a garage when it was built in 1931...is a v good spot there- senate house at one end, the brunswick centre at the other, the brutalist Unison building, british library and st pancras round the corner.

Ha, I've been meaning to pop up and snap a picture of this place since a friend showed it to me, for the purpose of posting it on this thread. I'd heard it was a car park building , hence the sloping floors of the spiralling ramp system on the right. Must be dizzying working in there.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
owen said:
these are very very interesting questions...
i) can you expand on this a bit? cos this is for me a class question. eg, the barbican
is socially considered a 'success', and is not coincidentally inhabited mainly by the very wealthy. the very similar (styllistically speaking) thamesmead development
is considered a failure, and is inhabited by the very poor. the alienation 'caused' by these structures depends i think on the alienation the inhabitants already feel. but the 'social dynamics' are horribly complicated.
Horribly complicated is the thing, and personally, I'm not entirely sure what the questions are let alone the answers. Certainly, a lot of modernist social housing was planned based on a certain assumption of how people would behave in a given environment which turned out to be optimistic. As you say, there's a fairly obvious class issue, compounded by (but not reducible to) the fact that rich people are more likely to be willing and able to pay for security, cleaners, effective lighting, lift repairs and so on.

Your point about alienation is spot on, but I've heard repeatedly (no authoritative research to hand, though) that there was a greater feeling of community in the old slummy terraces than in tower blocks and similar housing schemes - possibly this is just because the very act of moving people into tower blocks broke up the existing community, possibly there are other reasons. In any case, this is the sort of thing that I was wondering whether anyone has addressed.

Another point that I was rather conflating with this is that, from my limited understanding, the functionalist conception of what the function of a house was ignored people's territorial instinct to 'make their home their own' by - often - filling it with crap, or putting in random furniture, or otherwise messing with the pure minimalist aesthetic. I might be way off here, but that would at least suggest why modernism / minimalism / functionalism / brutalism have been so much more influential in designing public and corporate spaces, where individual territory is less of an issue...

ii) again some 60s types- the smithsons again f'rinstance- already made this criticism. but yeah it is an unanswerable one. something like the National Theatre
i love dearly but have to admit a certain crapness when it gets damp...truth to materials perhaps not always a good thing...
Well, I've seen some very nice modernist (afaict) stuff that mixes brick and wood and glass in with the concrete - I'm not sure how strictly that adheres to truth to materials, though.

iii) will they fuck.
Yeah, exactly. But pragmatically, are there features that can be incorporated into the design that minimize the effect of chronic underfunding? Although I guess your point
one can't really conceive social housing without a concommitant idea of the social. and there, i would say, is the rub...
is pretty much it.
 

mms

sometimes
luka said:
here we go...


'An imposing art deco building, covering two and one quarter acres, it was built 1927-1933 as a memorial to the many Freemasons who died on active service in the First World War. Initially known as the Masonic Peace Memorial, it reverted to the name Freemasons' Hall at the outbreak of war in 1939.

In 1925 an international architectural competition was held. One hundred and ten schemes were submitted from which the jury - chaired by Sir Edwin Lutyens - selected ten to be fully worked up. The winning design was by the London partnership of H V Ashley and Winton Newman. The building is now Grade 2 listed internally and externally and is the only art deco building in London which has been preserved 'as built' and is still used for its original purpose.'


http://www.grandlodge-england.org/ugle/the-history-of-freemasons-hall.htm


i went to a corporate event in that place once when the company i worked for at the time ws taken over, the party was on the theme of 'eyes wide shut' which had recently been released but without the sex etc, i snuck away and explored some of the out of bounds bits that were'nt locked .. lots of regalia, they had to mock up a ladies toilet for the event which was quite amusing.
 

luka

Well-known member
luka said:


background information'

'For retail early-1900s style, travel down to Whitechapel and you can see the curiosity of Wickham’s department store. It was the grandest store in the East End until it closed in 1969. But look again and you see Wickham’s was built in two halves, with a small shop in the middle. The little shop had been on the site since Mr Spiegelhalter had travelled from Germany in 1820 to set up his watchmaker business in Whitechapel. In 1927, the increasingly successful Wickhams wanted to expand, but the Spiegelhalter family stubbornly refused to sell out. The solution? Wickham’s had to build their new monolith in two parts – with the jewellers in the middle.'

look at the premises between the DIY store and Blockbusters. quality!
 
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luka

Well-known member
frankles trimmings, the art deco building on bethnal green rd is now much more better looking as its had a paint job. my photo of it is prettier than the one above but i dont have a scanner. someone invite mem round their house to use thier scanner please.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
'For retail early-1900s style, travel down to Whitechapel and you can see the curiosity of Wickham’s department store. It was the grandest store in the East End until it closed in 1969. But look again and you see Wickham’s was built in two halves, with a small shop in the middle. The little shop had been on the site since Mr Spiegelhalter had travelled from Germany in 1820 to set up his watchmaker business in Whitechapel. In 1927, the increasingly successful Wickhams wanted to expand, but the Spiegelhalter family stubbornly refused to sell out. The solution? Wickham’s had to build their new monolith in two parts – with the jewellers in the middle.'
Oh yeah, that's really cool. I used to live near there and I never ever noticed that. I reckon I walk by things like that all the time without taking it in. I've really enjoyed looking at this thread and I think it makes me look around me more when I'm walking through the city.
 
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