If you’re feeling generous

You could buy Mr Cinnamon a little sabbatical. He’d be ever so grateful…

ionic surprise

One of the more interesting aspects of neo-Classical architecture (in the very widest sense of that term) is how its decorative features have become almost ubiquitous. Gothic architecture doesn’t have this; the primary device of the gothic – the pointed arch – is at once too integral a feature, relying as it does on being part of a wall, and too particular, too distinctive. Putting in a Gothic arch is tapping into a rich seam of mystery and Catholicism, of heady light and holiness, of the artisan and the gargoyle.

Classicism, on the other hand, has no mystery. It is the architecture of rationality and reason; it pertains to perfection and therefore represents nothing at all. Instead, Classicism proliferates by being represented, for which we can mainly blame Palladio. All you need to make your regular rectangular room seem Classical is to dig out some copybook of pillars and porticos and – yes – pediments, scale up the appropriate feature to the appropriate size and stick it on. Easy!

Well, OK. Maybe it’s all a little more complicated than that (as Dr Goldacre would say) but sometimes that’s how it seems. What I guess I’m trying to say is that Classicism is cheap. And I really don’t mean that in a bad way – I’m a big fan of cheap. (I’m also a big fan of expensive, but that’s another story).

So here we have the excellent Rolyns News Building, of North Road Brighton. In many ways, it’s your common or garden variety news agent. But seriously – check out those Ionic pilasters. Technically speaking, they’re pretty dreadful. The building’s on a hill but no attempt has been made to allow for this, so the pilasters on the right float above the pavement and the left ones are flooded by it. The volutes – the scrolly bits at the top – are angled in a traditional way, which would be fine if they were capitals on top of free-standing pillars (where the angling helps the scrolls be seen from more angles) but in this building we’re only ever going to see the capitals from the front, so they should be the more traditional flat variety.

See? Dreadful, cheap, architecture. And I really like it. Someone – someone ordinary whose name won’t be recorded anywhere, someone trying to build a building and earn a living – that someone decided he or she wanted some architecture, something fancy and decorative and clean and acceptable for his or her building and decided on these fun little pilasters and stuck them on and that was that. Architecture doesn’t have to be great to have a purpose.

Eastside Story

So I took a trip Eastwards on Saturday over to a part of Brighton that’s fairly out-of-the-way and residential but no less levely for that. The major developments, architecturally speaking, in the East of Brighton are mostly along the seafront – the whole Kemptown fiasco. But a little further inland is the lovely Victoriana of Queen’s Park. The park was developed initially in the 1830s and a couple of fine villas built overlooking it to the north, one by Sir Charles Barry (who also designed St Andrew’s Church on Waterloo Street. Oh and some fancy-pants Gothic building on the Thames).

The only remaining villa (Barry’s excellent house was torn down in the 70s, the rotters), which dates from 1851 according to a plaque outside, is this one and it’s very pretty.

Clearly it’s been extended with an extra couple of bays on the right (though it’s so sensitively done I’ve really no idea when. Sorry, let me rephrase that. It’s so sensitively done it was almost certainly done a very long time ago.) The chimneystacks are very classy:

Nonsense and piffle (but it’s kinda pretty)

So the Graun, usually quite good on environmental accuracy, claims that this house is somehow “zero-carbon“.

And apparently this all comes from one of those clever Grand Designs from Channel 4. But what they fail to mention is that this house is built of bricks. BRICKS! and glass. GLASS! If you can explain to me exactly how those are made without any carbon being produced, well I’ll be slightly surprised. Seems like nonsense to me.

And whilst we’re on green issues, if you didn’t watch Brian Cox (no, not the one who played Sidney McLoughlin in Mad about Mambo) on nuclear fusion, then you should have done.

And whilst we’re on telly, don’t watch Vertical City unless you want to be told that tall buildings are tall and can be seen from a long way away AND NOTHING ELSE ABOUT TALL BUILDINGS AT ALL.

Good bye and big lick.

Black Lions Treat

So we have another new building in Brighton to marvel at. Well, actually and technically we don’t. I’m lying slightly in the vain hope that somehow that will make you more curious and hence more likely to continue reading. And now I’m self-referentially commenting on the fact. Oh how desperately Modern I am. Anyway, back to the marveling.

It’s science,Jim, etc.

So I thought you might not have realised that Brighton has its very own science festival. Well, now you have. I keep meaning to go (and by “keep”, I mean annually about this time for the past few years. Which isn’t really what “keep” normally means, “keep” normally being in a continuous state as opposed to a discrete one. Or a big tower with battlements and archers.

Ognatius: I keep shooting at the dratted Welsh fellow, but all that woad keeps putting me off!

Digressus: I know old fellow! It’s just not cricket, is it? Which reminds me, I must get my bat fixed this week.

Ognatius: Well would you adam and eve it? The blighter shot you in the head. Result!

Digressus: Good shot Welshie. I’m probably going to die. Which reminds me…

Ognatius: SHUT UP! *stomps on head*

So anyways, I’ll be going to the Big Science Saturday and maybe some other stuff. Because science is dead cool.

Kaplicky

Sad news on the architect front. Jan Kaplický died yesterday in Prague. Sadder still is that he was en route to celebrate the birth of his daughter.

Kaplický co-founded Future Systems and designed two of the most iconic buildings in this country in the last ten years – the media centre at Lord’s and the Selfridges store in Birmingham. Clearly Kaplický, unlike Rogers and Foster, both of whom he worked for in his career, sought to bring organic, curvaceous forms to architecture, rather than leaving them for decoration or shunning them entirely in favour of rectilinear buildings.

I admire him for his refusal to bow to the financial pressure to build glass cubes. We don’t have many buildings by him, but the ones we do have are really something. I must admit a certain reluctance to really like the Selfridges in Birmingham – it’s a bit too monumental and inflated for my tastes. Plus I doubt I’ll ever be able (or really want) to go shopping there. But the media centre at Lord’s is really something. When you go past on the bus you want to jump out and clamber all over it and see if it really is as squidgy as it looks.

Where is it written that buildings have to be boxes? … People aren’t boxes.

Regency Curves & Rectangles

Nothing too massively surprising here today. Two of the most familiar sights of the Hove seafront are Adelaide Crescent and Brunswick Square, which – if you include Brunswick Terrace – sit right next to each other vying for attention. In the eponymous cream corner we have Brunswick Square, with a fanciful mixture of detail – giant Ionic order articulated columns, giant Corinthian order pilasters, Doric columns on the ground floor, a fussy mixture of bays of differing depths, balustrades, balconies, pediments… you know the sort of thing. All very nice.

In the off-white corner we have Adelaide Crescent, which does things in a much more restrained fashion in order to basically draw attention to the beautiful reflected ogee curves that constitute the fundamental form and finest quality of the crescent. Like this:

Cunning plans that went awry

So, there have been a couple of planning applications recently rejected by Brighton & Hove City Council, one for the Marina and one for the old Royal Alexandra Hospital site in the Clifton Hill area.

You’ll remember the royal Alex from my earlier post here. It looks like my warning about its imminent demise were somewhat hasty; the Councillors assembled decided that the plans, submitted by Taylor Wimpey, weren’t good enough for two reasons. They considered that there wasn’t enough play area for the kids living in the proposed flat blocks and also, well – that it was ugly. I mean, they don’t say as much. They say:

It is considered that the development by virtue of its siting, height, scale, mass, detailing and appearance does not contribute positively to its immediate surroundings and would have a detrimental impact on the character and appearance of both the street scene and the Montpelier and Clifton Hill Conservation Area and the setting of the West Hill Conservation Area.

But basically, in the well-worn legalese of the planning department, that means it’s ugly. U-G-L-Y. Now, Clifton Hill and the surrounding area is arguably the prettiest part of a very pretty city. One day every year, sometime between late April and mid-May, Brighton wakes up: the stucco gets a fresh coat of sunlight and the buildings grow an inch for every storey. And on that day I inevitably find myself wondering along Clifton Terrace, wistful and light-headed and wollowing in other cliches, because that’s where the houses are whitest.

Don’t mention the “A” word.

And no, I don’t mean “anthropomorphism” or even “abstinence”, though I loathe both with a passion. This is an architecture-free post, so sorry if you came looking my learned comment upon the self-serving ramblings of Andres Duany and his wholescale dismissal of post-War Modernism, or to share my dismay at hearing of the recent death of the brilliant Jørn Utzon, because it won’t happen here. Nosiree.