best building in london?

  • Thread starter simon silverdollar
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owen

Well-known member
you should, it's a bit special...

further nomination, spurred by a visit to the serpentine a couple of days ago- ballard fave the park lane hilton
the_hilton_park_lane.jpg


it was going to be even more looming and intimidating but apparently the queen demanded it be shorter so she didn't have her view of the bloody albert memorial obscured by it or summat. also it has an evocative, if passing resemblance to icon of commie technocracy the comecon building in moscow-
2166.jpg


also this thread is lacking a pic of st pancras in all its goriness and greatness so here y'are
stpanstation.jpg


there's a wonderfully clunky modernist church in catford but the pic doesn't quite do it justice...
063k.jpg
 

luka

Well-known member
this is maybe my favourite dissensus thread. i wish i could post pictures like you technocrats. i nominate the PLA building, tower hill. its pretty mental. also, if you like john soanes, how about his church in bethnal green?
 

sufi

lala
2stepfan said:
Speaking of Brick Lane area -- the old synagogue
is that the one that was originally a hugenot church & is now a mosque? ... never seen it myself but it's rep precedes...

mosque.jpg
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Dunno about favourite but every day on my way to work I go past 1 Poultry and that is absolutely hideous. When I found out what used to be there I almost cried, how was that allowed to happen?
I'll see if I can find some pictures to back up my point.
I like the Hawksmoor Church on Commercial Street that someone mentioned and also the Masons' Lodge that he did.
 

luka

Well-known member
where is hawksmoors masonic lodge? i've never heard of it. but you reminded me of the masonic temple in holborn which is pretty bloody impressive. a bit of a partner for the port of london authority building. very grand.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
IdleRich said:
Dunno about favourite but every day on my way to work I go past 1 Poultry and that is absolutely hideous. When I found out what used to be there I almost cried, how was that allowed to happen?
I'll see if I can find some pictures to back up my point.
http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/england/london/poultry/angle.jpg
vs http://www.geocities.com/londondestruction/photos2/mappinandwebb3.jpg

I see your point.

By the way, can we have some off topic submissions from the rest of the UK too, or do we need a seperate thread for that?
 

luka

Well-known member
i'm sure that temple was built in the 1930s or something. i'll try and find out who the architect was, one tick...
 

luka

Well-known member
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
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Freemason's Hall, Great Queen St
This mysterious and rather oppressive building hosts the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England.

Built in 1927-33, the Masonic Hall covers two acres with the impressive Grand Temple at the centre of the design (they wouldn't let me take a picture of that)."
Looks as though you are right. Annoyingly. I've always "known" that that was Hawksmoor - now why is that?
 

owen

Well-known member
ah, the return of my favourite ever dissensus thread!

IdleRich said:
Dunno about favourite but every day on my way to work I go past 1 Poultry and that is absolutely hideous. When I found out what used to be there I almost cried, how was that allowed to happen?
I'll see if I can find some pictures to back up my point.
I like the Hawksmoor Church on Commercial Street that someone mentioned and also the Masons' Lodge that he did.

no 1 poultry is fucking horrible. the reason why i tend to be scathing about pomo is that this monstrosity exemplifies it perfectly...a horrible grin of a building. actually one of the mooted plans for the site was a mies van der rohe tower- another masterpiece nixed by charles bloody windsor (cf richard rogers' national gallery extension)
the culprit for no1 poultry was james stirling, who funnily enough was a leading brutalist in the 60s, famous mainly for this-
hist021.jpg

before his apostasy (marked prob by the time he threw a drink over alison smithson) which resulted in loads of horrid ice cream psuedo-deco corporate progstrosities...
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"horrid ice cream psuedo-deco corporate progstrosities..."
It does look like ice cream. That building is truly horrible in it's own right and I hated it at a fairly low level for a while. Then one day I saw the picture of what used to stand there and I realised that it was more than just a bad building, it was pure evil.
What's the thing in the picture that you just posted Owen? It's really good, hard to believe that it's the same person.
 

owen

Well-known member
it's the engineering block at leicester (as was) polytechnic...

on the subject of the smithsons...this, in poplar
rhg3_small.jpg

is sad and beautiful. v similar in its materials and general design to their economist building in st james'
economistbuilding_l.jpg

but being social housing, has been left to rot by the council- there's this blasted mound in the middle, like this little patch of scrubland with some burnt stuff at the top....
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
owen said:
it's the engineering block at leicester (as was) polytechnic...

on the subject of the smithsons...this, in poplar is sad and beautiful. v similar in its materials and general design to their economist building in st james' but being social housing, has been left to rot by the council- there's this blasted mound in the middle, like this little patch of scrubland with some burnt stuff at the top....
Out of interest, is anyone still building modernist-esque social housing that attempts to correct the assumptions of the 50's / 60's - especially, afaict (feel free to attack these if you feel I've missed the point)
i) the oversimplified conception of social dynamics and of what people want from a home
ii) that concrete will continue to look good for some time in a cold wet climate and
iii) that local authorities will spend large amounbts of money completing all the details of the project and maintaining them afterwards?
Or are we condemned to more and more generic semis that seek comfort in copying the basic look of older houses but without applying the craftsmanship, materials and attention to detail that makes them either attractive or pleasant to live in.

I've seen a fair number of public, commercial and institutional buildings that rock a modified functionalism very nicely, but never housing.
 

don_quixote

Trent End
that's not leicester polytechnic, it's "proper" leicester university. my sixth form college just pokes out in the bottom left!
 

owen

Well-known member
we'll make plans for buildings and houses

aw! but i thought it kinda appropriate...i just really like the word 'polytechnic'

Slothrop said:
Out of interest, is anyone still building modernist-esque social housing that attempts to correct the assumptions of the 50's / 60's - especially, afaict (feel free to attack these if you feel I've missed the point)
i) the oversimplified conception of social dynamics and of what people want from a home
ii) that concrete will continue to look good for some time in a cold wet climate and
iii) that local authorities will spend large amounbts of money completing all the details of the project and maintaining them afterwards?
Or are we condemned to more and more generic semis that seek comfort in copying the basic look of older houses but without applying the craftsmanship, materials and attention to detail that makes them either attractive or pleasant to live in.

I've seen a fair number of public, commercial and institutional buildings that rock a modified functionalism very nicely, but never housing.

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
lon288.jpg

is socially considered a 'success', and is not coincidentally inhabited 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.
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
lon215.jpg

i love dearly but have to admit a certain crapness when it gets damp...truth to materials perhaps not always a good thing...
iii) will they fuck.
as to the last point-- hmm well its conspicuous by its absence. no-one seems interested in the question of social housing anymore. i would love to see the capitalist constructivists like norman foster and richard rogers attempt social housing...or even the more touchy-feely likes of will alsop or david adaje...but its really not where the money is, is it...? there is this, in manchester
C_4_Articles_19603_BodyWeb_Detail_0_Image.jpg

http://www.newislington.co.uk/#
but it looks a bit twee- taking anti-fuctionalism to a rather wilfully eccentric level; and also rather exclusive as well- rather like greenwich millenium village
greenwich1.JPG

http://www.c20society.org.uk/docs/building/gmv.html: fascinating in a desolate, ballardian way, but by no stretch of the imagination social housing.
one can't really conceive social housing without a concommitant idea of the social. and there, i would say, is the rub...
 
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