LONDON CITY NIGHTS: architecture

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Review: 'Trap Street' at the New Diorama Theatre, 13th March 2018

Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

'Trap Street' reviewed by David James

Rating: 4 Stars

Britain's post-war housing estates were borne from utopian ideals. The days of mouldy Victorian terraces were over: replacing them would be elevated communities in flats with all mod cons: cosied by central heating, blessed with stunning views and boasting pleasant green spaces in which to socialise. What could possibly go wrong?

Cut to the modern day and the estates that survive are, for the most part, graffiti-covered hellholes with pissy lifts. The scared residents that remain have barricaded themselves behind steel security bars and the social spaces are occupied by bored and hostile kids. Culturally these places are now bywords for neglect and criminality - and make excellent backdrops for low budget horror and gangster movies.

Kandinsky's Trap Street tries to explain why this happened, the effects the transformation had on long-term residents and the consequences of the estate's demolition and redevelopment. The vehicle for this is the story of the first family to move onto the fiction Austen Estate in Bermondsey, whose story we follow from their arrival in the early 1960s to the demolition of the estate in 2017.

The story centres on Valerie and her daughter Andrea (both played by Amelda Brown). Their story is one of slow disillusionment with the social systems designed to take care of them, with Valerie fighting a Sisphyean battle against the estate's social collapse and, in 2017, the now elderly Andrea struggling to sell up for a reasonable price and remain in the neighbourhood.

Trap Street tells a half-century long, cross-generational saga with impressive ease. But this story is just one facet of an information-dense tapestry that includes dramatisations of how the view of estates shifted in the media, from a bright n' perky Pathé film introducing this wonderful new housing philosophy to a Clockwork Orange parody that shows the increasing suspicion the public had of the estates.

For me, the show was most affecting when it dramatised the contemporary housing situation. Andrea is taken on a virtual reality tour of the 'next' utopian ideals in housing, which are priced at about £1 million a flat. Andrea nervously enquires about the 'affordable housing' she's heard about - only to be informed that 'affordable' is defined as 80% of market rates. Do the maths, then wonder to whom that's supposed to be affordable?

Perhaps the true tragedy of Trap Street is that the decline and criminalisation of these estates was never inevitable. The Barbican Estate was constructed on precisely the same utopian philosophy by architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, working from Le Corbusier's ideas. With its lush green spaces, hanging baskets, fountains and multiple residential/cultural facilities, the Barbican Estate is still very much in demand.

Meanwhile, down in South-East London, the similarly designed Thamesmead Estate lives up the stereotype: damp-stained and litter-strewn with seriously bad vibes. It's no wonder that Chris Cunningham shot Aphex Twin's iconic Come To Daddy video here.

The difference is that one houses the poor and one the rich - you don't have to think too hard to work out which group have been preyed upon. While the wealthy Barbican Estate residents largely own their flats and happily fork out for an army of caretakers, gardeners and maintenance workers, the Thamesmead residents have suffered the consequences of 35 years of ideological warfare against social housing.

The most effective weapon in the Government's arsenal is that councils are obliged to send half their rents and the vast majority of their profits from house sales directly to Whitehall. This means there simply aren't the resources to improve or maintain conditions: the buildings are left to decay until they're demolished and replaced by glittering (and empty) luxury flats. The developers ensure the right people get a nice wodge of cash in their back pocket, while communities are scattered to the winds.

Just around the corner from the theatre there's a large piece of graffiti scrawled on the Euston Road Underpass which reads "People are living in tents and million pound flats lie empty!" Couldn't have said it better myself.

And if you want a more visceral look at the consequences of chronic underfunding and social stigmatisation just hop on the tube for twenty minutes, get off at Latimer Road, and take a sobering look at the burnt out husk of Grenfell Tower.

But despite all this misery and horror, and the most viciously targeted policies of successive governments, the dream of utopia still lingers in the imagination. The V&A recently announced that they're taking an eight-tonne fragment of the demolished Robin Hood Gardens estate to the Venice Biennale. This will be displayed on an outdoor scaffold, allowing visitors to stand on the iconic 'streets in the sky' as they look out onto the classical beauty of Venice, intended to make people reconsider how these architectural ideas can “can inform and inspire current thinking”.

So aaaanyway, back to Trap Street, which is great.

The cast, Amelda Brown, Danusia Samal and Hamish MacDougal are all great. The live score by Zac Gvirtzman is great. Joshua Gadsby and Naomi Kuyck-Cohen's set design is great. And writers/directors/producers James Yeatman and Lauren Mooney have clearly done their homework (for the sake of completeness, they are also great).

With Trap Street Kandinsky further solidifies its reputation as the go-to theatre company for political and social theatre free of stodge and preachiness. I can't wait to see what they tackle next.

Trap Street is at the New Diorama Theatre until 31st March. Tickets here.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

'Judgement' at arebyte Gallery, 7th July 2015

Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Surrounded by cranes, shorn of floodlights and apparently devoid of life, the London Olympic Stadium has become the centre of a ghost town. Its neighbours, the velopark and aquatics centre, are generally closed to visitors, park paths are punctuated by steel mesh barriers and the sculpted greenery brings to mind an abandoned golf course. Colossal pedestrian boulevards; once funnels for thousands of happy Olympic spectators now host only the occasional lost Westfield shopper and steadily diminishing numbers of curious tourists. Looming over it all stands the skeletal Orbit, now less like a celebration of British architecture and more like a memorial to happier days.

There are, of course, big plans for the stadium. After much legal kerfuffle, West Ham football club are to be its new tenants, hopefully ushering in a new sense of purpose and atmosphere to this increasingly sterile place. But what's to be done in the meantime? After all, nature abhors a vacuum. This is where Ariel Narunsky steps in; proposing a gigantic piece of artwork to occupy the stadium.

This is Judgment: a spiral running track enveloped by walls, sending visitors through a 6000m long corridor that ends with them proceeding down into the earth and through a tunnel. Making your way through the thing looks like a pretty unrewarding (albeit hypnotic) experience, roughly akin to being a rat stuck in a maze. But even a rat gets a piece of cheese at the end, visitors to this end up unceremoniously squirted out somewhere south of Victoria Park.

The exhibition imagines what a visitors centre for this construction would be like. Played completely straightfaced, it behaves as if this enormous proposal has been accepted and will soon undergo construction. With sans serif corporate font, colour coordinated businessquirky orange and cosy sofa-based infomercial watching, the atmosphere is cool, controlled professionalism.

Judgement is a curious mix of the corporate and absurd; the project would require the decommercialisation of a hugely expensive piece of London real estate, one already subject to much legal quibbling. It'd also mean the construction of a tunnel bored right through the rat's nest of subterranean London. All for a piece of art that seems purposely designed to dehumanise, bore and antagonise those within.

The back of the glossy programme lists the corporate sponsors of Narunsky's project; including the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and Balfour Beatty, the building company in charge of the redevelopment of the park. After examining every carefully laid out display in the exhibit; the posters bleating stentorian gobbledegook like "An Unknown Game with Ultimate Things" or "New Things Are Near"; the promotional video that draws parallels between Roman gladiatorial games designed to distract an unruly populace and the chic 3D printed models I began to wonder - do these companies realise they're being made fun of?

To my eyes Judgement is a multi-levelled satire; taking aim at the worth of sports, egotistical design and authoritarian architecture. The idea of a pointless leg and mind numbing running track subverts the original idea of the stadium, boiling back its purpose until all the grandiosity has disappeared to reveal people fruitlessly running in circles.

Narunsky's rat's maze design, from which deviation is neither tolerated or possible, neatly echoes the Queen Elizabeth Park's winding paths that subtly manipulate the visitor through a predetermined route. There are no great walls in the Olympic Park, but the slightest sense of adventurousness will (and I'm speaking from personal experience) herald the arrival of a black-painted and logo-clad Audi estate driven by unfriendly men in hi-vis jackets pointedly asking what it is you're up to.

Similarly, the sheer scale of the project is calculated to intimidate and impress. Public art on this scale is, rightly or wrongly, criticised as an act of ego by both those commissioning and designing. There's an almost aggressive desire to leave your fingerprints on the urban landscape, to mould the public experience around your vision. In it's spiral design and oval shape, Judgement recalls that very fingerprint - as if a 10 mile tall Narunsky has bent down and pressed his thumb into the soft stadium floor.

It's a neat, slyly subversive exhibition, one that adopts the aesthetic and tone of corporate art so fully that its been embraced by the very people it's mocking. Worth checking out.

Judgement is at arebyte Gallery until 7th August. Details here.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

BBC Television Centre, 10th December 2012

Tuesday, December 11, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

BBC Television Centre is one of the more understated landmarks in London. Step out of White City and you'll find it looming in front you, its curved exterior immediately recognisable from a thousand channel idents over the years. This place occupies an enormously important place in the British psyche. It's a nerve centre of sorts, beaming out into practically every home in the country in some form or another.

But soon it is to close. Rising property prices in the area, and a desire to create a "smaller, fitter BBC" spell doom for the building, at least in its present incarnation as a major television studio. In 2013 broadcasting will cease forever, and a few years later the place will be converted into a luxury hotel. Tours of the building finish in February, so while I've got a bit of spare time I thought I'd better get in there and check it out. And I'm glad I did.

The reception

I was met by our two brilliant guides, Lisa and Susie, in the main reception. It's a smoothly designed, ergonomic and modern place, stuffed with people and authoritative looking security guards keeping an eye out for any troublemakers. They've got reason to be on the look-out; the place has been targeted by protesters throughout its life, whether it be the 6 o'clock news being invaded by lesbians protesting Section 28 in 1988, to Fathers 4 Justice storming the National Lottery or the news room being bombed by the Real IRA in March 2001.

This smooth and slick room proves to be the exception on the tour, this is a building very firmly rooted in the past, and behind this glossy facade it's extremely utilitarian and bodged together, with bits looking like they're held together with duct tape and good will. There are ominous echoes of this even here. The subtitles on the televisions are corrupted, showing a rolling feed of gobbledegook, while hastily scrawled post-it notes stuck on the side warn visitors not to touch the televisions under any circumstances.

After signing in we're led around to the audience entrance just down the street. I've attended a few BBC recordings, but always in the evening, and always with an eye to getting me in and out of the studio as fast as possible. It's nice to be able to take our time a little, and we're pointed out some of the landmarks and props dotted around the place. There's a Quattro from 'Ashes to Ashes' parked off to the side, and towards the main entrance there's a genuine TARDIS signed by the Doctor himself. This and the dalek that lurks inside the cafe are like catnip for those seeking a photo opportunity.

But, as quickly as we step into a sci-fi fantasy we're dragged back to the cold hard reality of 'now'. We're led up the stairs into a meeting room that overlooks the BBC news offices. This is the most recent area of the building to be renovated, being completed in the late 90s. Looking out onto the reporters working away feels strangely zoo-like. There are tours coming through here all day, if I was working a few feet away from a load of goobering tourists I'd begin to feel a little self-conscious. They do have some need for privacy though, and I was amused to learn that when you see a news room you see behind the news readers on TV it's a CG recreation. They used to use pre-recorded footage, but once Moira Stewart was reading the news, and wandered across the news room behind herself, deeply confusing viewers.

I expected the biggest news centre in the country to be a throbbing hub of activity, full of over caffeinated, totally wired journalists running around clutching pieces of paper and frantically tapping up urgent news reports. Maybe it is like that when 'big news' happens, but the pace when I was there was a bit disappointingly sedate. A guy was lazily editing a report on 'Strictly Come Dancing', while one of the guys from Newsround was mooching around in the background with not much to do. Perhaps all the white knuckle stuff has moved their new home in central London already. There were some neat things to look at here though, John Simpson's bulletproof jacket was hung ominously on the wall behind us, a reminder that while the people working here seem pretty safe and secure, they're sent from here into dangerous and volatile situations.

John Piper's big ass mosaic

Next we're led through the building all the way to the 'doughnut', the ring of studios where most of the BBCs entertainment over the last half-century has come from. We stop off en route in what was once the main reception to admire John Piper's enormous mosaic on the wall. The mosaic, tessellated ceiling and the wooden walls made you feel like you're in an episode of 'Mad Men' or 'The Hour'. It's always weird being in a sensitively preserved modernist building like this, somewhere designed to be forward thinking in a future that's passed it by.

"They needed a system, yes, an industrial-age machine."

This feeling carries on as we're led out into the centre ring of the doughnut with its statue of Helios, the Greek God of the sun, representing the radiation of television around the world. Two nymphs recline below him symbolising sound and light. This area was once a fountain, but according to our guide the sound of running water day and night was causing bathroom problems for the BBC employees so they took it out. We head inside and we're led to the studios. Wandering through this part of the building feels a bit like being in an old NHS hospital. The floor and walls are covered in scuff marks from things being quickly wheeled about, the pipes along the ceiling are exposed and dusty and there's signage in all sorts of 60s and 70s looking retro fonts about the place.

The place is labyrinthine, and the circular nature of the building means that pretty every corridor curves around. It's very easy to get confused and turned around here, and our guides keep a close eye on us to stop us blundering into Cheryl Cole's dressing room by mistake, or opening the door onto the set of '8 out of 10 Cats'. When we reach a studio we look down through a forest of lights. This system dates from the 1960s, using a phenomenal amount of electricity and producing so much heat special air conditioners are needed to prevent, say, Dick and Dom's bungalow becoming an unbearable sauna.

The Blue Peter set looking a bit shabby and drab.

Props and set stuff lost to time.

After seeing this, we're taken off to see an abandoned set from Blue Peter which has been left set up in a warehouse. The thing looks a bit used and depressing, when TV sets aren't under bright stage lights and massaged by nice camera angles it all looks a bit cheap and flimsy. The walls are a dull, plain grey without coloured lighting, and as you look closer you can see parts where it's chipped and stained. I guess this is a symptom of the transitory nature of television. All these props and sets, however welcoming and cleverly designed are temporary, designed to be discarded. Even knowing that this process is inevitable, it's a bit depressing to see children's drawings discarded in the same way, left to slowly rot in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere.

VHS graveyard

As we're led around these spookily empty huge spaces it almost feels like production has already moved out. You see the odd guy in a boiler suit wheeling something about, but apart from that the place is pretty quiet. We stop off and look at the set for Match of the Day, and as people pose on the sofa for photos I slip off and have a look behind the curtains. Back here there are thousands of VHS tapes containing god knows what. Who knows what could be on these? I'm reminded of the old policy of deleting programmes to make space for new ones, resulting in the loss of many classic moments in TV, from episodes of Doctor Who to the BBCs coverage of the moon landing (I mean c'mon archivists, that seems important). This enormous pile of obsolete media seems like a neat little symbol for why the BBC are leaving.

I was so tempted to start randomly flicking switches.

Television as traditionally produced here is becoming like the VHS tape, an anachronism unsuited to the modern era. For most of the building's existence this was the undisputed hub of mass-communication for the country, but now this power has been redistributed to the public. Rather than having 3 or 4 channels of television to choose from, we have a panoply of both professional and user-generated content to pick from. This shift leaves enormous television complexes not obsolete, but at least riding a wave that's already crested. You can see this in the prehistoric looking dials and switches hiding behind curtains, in the way the heating pipes gently clank and in the way everything is chipped and scuffed.

"It's an Ood! Oods are good. Love an Ood!"

This isn't to say that I didn't have a wonderful time here. As you turn corners you're confronted with holy relics of from the annals of the BBC. There's a Ood! There's an entombed Gordon the Gopher! The bust of Queen Victoria from the Queen Vic! A ripped open chest cavity from Casualty! I'm glad I got to see the place up close before it closed down, it deserves to be treasured and sensitively preserved, but all this heritage can't stand up to the steady march of progress. This is a monument to 'old' media, lumbering dinosaur-like towards an inevitable extinction.

Friday, July 6, 2012

'The Shard' Opening Laser Extravaganza Minireview, 5th July 2012

Friday, July 6, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 1 Comment

It did not look like this.

Top, up to the minute news from LondonCityNights.com here! Have just returned from The Shard's opening laser show, which was a let down exactly in proportion to the gigantic size of the building.

We were promised:

"The 309-metre-tall building will send out coloured lasers to 15 of London’s lofty landmarks, including the Gherkin, London Eye and Tower Bridge. The extravaganza will be soundtracked by Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and the Finale from Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, performed live by the London Philharmonic Orchestra."

Needless to say, this didn't happen. Having made my way down to the Thames at the Tower of London I quickly found the Thames Path stretch between Tower Hill and London Bridge was closed. This, to be fair, is not a big surprise as pedestrians generally get shunted between various dusty building sites rather than be able to walk this bit of the Thames Path. So my friends and I trekked up the river, eventually nestling myself between two buildings just before the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr. A number of other people had had the same idea, and there were maybe 200 squeezed into this little gap for what we were all sure would be the laser show of our lives.

Lasers have generally been good to me. From lying blissed out on a muddy field at Leeds Festival in 2001 to uh.. lying blissed out on a muddy field in Glastonbury in 2005, giant green lasers have generally been a comfort to me. Here is a recent example from Sion Park at their Enchanted Woodland 2011 event:-

Whoo! Also there was a banging techno soundtrack to this.

These are fun lasers. What we got from the Shard was more like this:

Hrm.

The disappointment among the crowd was palpable. Us plebs had been penned into one small space as the toffs were quaffing champagne and caviar down at Billingsgate. If we tried to peek over the wall burly security guards built like Chewbacca began menacing us. Our time was further spoiled by several large and low lights installed along the railings that blocked out most of the view in their incandescent fury. This lead to a rather peculiar sight of about 50 people holding their arms out into the air to block out the light, a sight which we all quickly realised looked a lot like the Nazi salute.

It looked like this is what I'm saying.

As we stared, our hands outstretched in what felt like a bizarrely appropriate fascist tribute to this monstrous spike some lasers plinked on and off from the tower while we caught faint snatches of classical music from further down the Thames. It looked like a grand old time just around the corner, the lasers from the tower appeared to be lighting up the building, and they were enjoying the full force of the London Philharmonic. We had to make do with blinding lights between us and the 'show' and quasi-Nazi imagery. I suppose this is somewhat appropriate. This tower isn't for the likes of us. We are there to look up at it apelike in wonder, our tiny minds barely able to comprehend the lives of those who live at the top of this glass colossus. If we want to briefly taste the luxury of seeing London from this height, it's £24.95 a ticket.

A day out to the Tower of London across the river, an amazing experience that can easily eat up a whole day, is £20.90. For a spin on the London Eye it's 18.90 (or £15 if you book online). So £25 to get a taste of what it is like to live the high life. Meanwhile the flats in the Shard are on sale from £30-50 million each, and are so exclusive that the sellers admit there are only a handful of people in the world who can buy them. These gods among men will enjoy perks like having a mini lift in their kitchen that literally delivers champagne and caviar on tap. This at a time when London councils are engaged in a campaign to relocate the poorest Londoners to places like Stoke or Hastings. Out of sight out of mind right?

The classical music petered out almost as soon as it'd begun, leaving us alone and silent, the monolith being illuminated in red, blue and yellow while tiny lasers plinked on and off from the side. The crowd was growing restless. It wasn't supposed to be like this. People started leaving in droves, and soon, what was a jam-packed corner of the north embankment became a bit desolate, with Strongbow cans jangling along the pavement in the breeze.

And so the Shard was inaugurated, not with a bang but with a whimper. Not an orgasmic union of light, technology and showmanship, but more a quick, shameful and pathetic spurt onto a hooker's shivering thigh in an alley behind some greasy kebab shop.

"IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,

      Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
      The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
    "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
      "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
    "The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
      Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
    The site of this forgotten Babylon.

    We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
    Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
      Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
    He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
      What powerful but unrecorded race
      Once dwelt in that annihilated place."

LONDON CITY NIGHTS