The most brutal of the buildings are the ones I find most photogenic.
Despite being Europe's biggest single arts complex -- a space designed for cultural expression and fun -- this can be one of the most depressing places in London, especially the spaces that have been sealed-off:
There's an air of hard, viciousness about the place:
An impression not softened by the dominant reading -- a modern castle in a police state, complete with overbearing, fortified guard-towers:
Not all the complex is amenable to this reading -- or, indeed, to any sort of reading, so mysterious are some of the massive concrete forms:
And even where it's obvious we're looking at a structural form, the sheer scale makes them overbearing:
And even the spaces to protect you from the elements are, when you glance up, hard and cold:
There's a sense of being overlooked, spied-on, controlled:
And much of the complex seems to be saying there's no place for you here -- this is a fortified place where you are not welcome:
And the sheer mass of the structural forms makes even playful geometric compositions appear inhuman:
There really is nothing for you here:
Possibly the single most successful element of the design is the stairs, which have an intriguingly sculptural form and (almost inevitably) more human scale:
But even here it goes wrong, with oppressively low headroom suddenly crushing you beneath the weight of concrete:
Although, from the outside, there is some pleasure to be had looking down at the interlocking shapes:
That's a small consolation for the disappointment given by what should be an open, gay complex, a space designed for the highest forms of human expression and for sheer pleasure, an adult (and children's) playground:
No, that's not what this building is telling me, either.
5 comments:
It amazes me that an architect would design something so dehumanizing.....to house art man's highest achievement. So brutally sad. But your photos are great.
For me the complex is saved by the minute detail you see up close - the wood grain that lies on the surface of cold concrete...
Chris: Actually I love the effect of shuttered concrete, but you can't let the concrete get stained and broken, and it has to be in a sympathetic setting. There's just so much of it here, and so little else (other than hard pebble-dashing) that it is overwhelming. The attempt to brighten it up, by painting the stairs in primary colours, just makes matters worse, I think.
Brian: thanks for the praise, but it's the camera that deserves it.
Isn't that complex grim and depressing, something even the Soviet Union might have been ashamed of. Brute concrete like that grows old gracelesly, particularly in UK where there's rarely much sun to highlight the shapes (if they merit highlighting) and lots of nasty damp weather which helps the stuff grow old disgustingly. We should not pander to the vanity of architects who seek to create monuments to themselves at the expense of the long-suffering public.
bg
Good potography there. The cold hard brutality of the place makes it look like a building I would expect to see in 1984.
Put a human in the frame and I'm sure they would look comparitively beautiful, even if not typically attractive in the normal sense.
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