Clock this

The Clock House at 13 Pretoria Avenue is just one of the eighteenth-century villas built by wealthy families around Walthamstow village, at a time before all the terraced houses sprang up, replacing the orchards, market gardens and country estates. The area was favoured by merchants, early commuters who could live in style and take a conveniently short coach ride to the City to attend to business. The journey, about seven miles, must have taken no more than an hour.

Waltham Forest council's website has a page devoted to the listed buildings of the borough. It describes the Clock House as "Grade II: Regency style detached villa, erected in 1813 and the original Walthamstow home of the Warner family. Originally set in extensive landscaped grounds fronting Marsh Street (now High Street)". There's a china plate at the Vestry House museum showing a view of the house in its original park setting. Those landscaped grounds surrounding the house were soon developed, though, as Walthamstow became more built-up. The Warner properties along Pretoria Avenue were built in 1888, coming right up to the edge of the house, and Mission Grove was driven through what would have been the front garden. The grand entrance now looks rather out of place so close to the street.

I photographed the house as part of my project to document some of the interesting buildings in the area, and posted the photos on Flickr. Walthamstow man Dan K saw this one and sent me a link to his own photo of the house, with comments sent in over the past few years. A lady by the name of Amanda ("almost 44!") says "I was born and brought up in Walthamstow... We lived in Pretoria Avenue and Chewton Road - in Warner properties (and bought our house in Pretoria from Warners). I expect it's all changed there now - we moved when I was 16 and I haven't been back since my grandparents passed away in the 90s. I miss it - but don't want to go back because I fear it's changed out of all recognition." If nothing else, those new flats behind the house would be a surprise, but otherwise Pretoria Avenue can't have changed very much since then. She continues, "I remember seeing an old photo of it looking very grand in a park like setting - it belonged to the Warner family and I guess it was their home. When I was little it used to be a flour factory and I remember a HUGE chute at the back where sacks of flour used to be shot down to waiting lorries".

The present owner bought Clock House in 1999 when it was used as a warehouse, and spent a year restoring it as flats. He had a hard time convincing the council to allow the change of use, and had to comply with stringent Listed Building requirements for the way the work was carried out. The side of the house had been made into a two-storey advertising sign with lettering made of cement render, which you might think of as an interesting part of the building's history, but that had to be removed. The original stone portico was completely missing, and a new portico was built, no doubt at huge expense, to a historically accurate pattern based on old illustrations and photographs.

Scaffolding palace

In the industrial depths of Walthamstow, and those do still exist, you can find a baffling array of anonymous sheds, gleaming stainless steel structures of unknown usefulness, just two old factory chimneys (as far as I know) not to mention a thousand white vans. But the premises of M J Stapleton and Son, Scaffolding Contractors, are far from anonymous. Located across the road from the municipal dump (which is now a well-organised recycling centre) their huge enclosure is made entirely out of scaffolding poles and corrugated iron. Which makes perfect sense. The structure is picturesque, although you would not get away with this ramshackle approach in most places. The dump itself has a similar structure, purpose unknown - an open shed ten metres high, containing nothing more than a few old fridges. These pockets of industrial activity are not exactly attractive, but they give a sense of authenticity to the area, a sense that the place exists for a productive purpose beyond just being a place where people live, something that will be missed when the whole lot is pushed out by the ever-expanding demand for land for building blocks of flats.

Mirror mirror

The mirror glass office block on Euston Road is a rarity, a huge building completely covered with an impenetrable skin of mirrors, right down to pavement level, so perfectly reflective as to give no hint of what might be happening inside. It stands out from its surroundings, reflecting the other buildings and on occasion drenching them with reflected light. Yesterday the low morning sun was bouncing off the mirror surface and covering the green and white hospital opposite with strangely intense dappled brilliance. Later in the day it often has a similar effect at the bottom of Euston Tower, with everything in deep shade except where the reflection hits, picking out the buses in a luminous bright red. Crossing Euston Road at lunchtime, you can walk into a pocket of brightness and be suddenly dazzled. But at least the facade is flat - so there's no question of the buses bursting into flame.

The building itself is tall and bland, reflecting the dull grey of overcast days, or deep blue and fluffy white summer skies. Move a bit closer and you get reflected plane trees, overlaid with the actual trees that line the pavement, the whole thing neatly divided up into rectangular panels by shiny chrome glazing bars. The glass isn't perfectly flat so all the reflections are distorted, quite a pretty effect. Closer still, you walk past trying to resist the temptation to watch yourself in the mirrors, not knowing if someone inside will be thinking, what a dick... you can't tell. Reflective glass is usually two-way to some extent, but this is apparently one hundred percent one-way mirror. You walk past wondering what goes on inside, what possible reason there might be for such intense privacy. But it's just the architect's conceit, a fad for using the latest glass technology of the time to glitzy if tasteless effect.

Oddly, the strong impression of opacity diverts you from realising that the building is not really opaque. I must have passed the place hundreds of times, and imagined perhaps twenty companies inside, dingy corridors and grubby carpets, but completely failed to realise that you can see inside if the lights are on, vaguely. Especially after dark, the strips of window are lit up almost like any other office building. That does allow a dim view of typical cluttered offices - the dimness makes it seem claustrophobic.

Finally, on impulse, I walked in through the entrance doors, encouraged by the constant flow of people in and out. Like any office building, it has an open front entrance, a lobby and reception desk, so I walked in along with the lunchtime crowd and stood there trying not to look conspicuous. I needn't have worried. The building is entirely occupied by University College Hospital and heaving with activity. It’s evidently an enclosed world known only to those who work there. Comings and goings are controlled, loosely, from the front desk. But you can walk straight through to a rather good canteen, incongruously set in a glazed vault, a pastiche version of a Victorian arcade, all green metal, bricks and potted palms.

It's antisocial and dated, a typical expression of the crass commercial architecture of the late 1970s, but in its way also rather special.

Skateboard heaven

The end of the holiday season and rain every day, not all the time but consistently dull overcast weather, drizzle and heavy downpours and just the occasional burst of uplifting sunshine. For once I had a three-week break but gardening in the rain wasn't tempting and long cycling trips were out of the question, so drifting down to the South Bank was inevitable sooner or later. Just before new year's eve, I found myself down there for the third time in as many weeks. It's one of the few places in London where you can be indoors without buying a ticket or eating a meal, sit around in comfortable chairs and use the free wifi, look at things and quite likely drop in casually on some kind of unusual entertainment. There are controversial plans for a huge new extension there, and if nothing else it was an opportunity to look at the way the place is now and what might be lost or gained if the changes go ahead.

Apart from the depressing scrum outside the London Dungeon and only a modest queue for the Eye there wasn't much going on. Nothing on in the Clore ballroom and only a small exhibition of old protest posters upstairs at the Hayward. Outside was bit like a tawdry funfair after the crowds have left: bright yellow staircases bolted on to the wet concrete, a few set-piece attractions scattered around and sad dim fairy lights overhead. A few people were pedalling the two bicycle-powered snow domes but it was hard to see any effect to reward their exertions. The Gift Factory, a plywood shed painted to look like brickwork, was being dismantled - the tall factory chimney lying on the ground while the walls were taken down. Looking down from Hungerford foot bridge, muddy water churned past one of the oval concrete piers. On the flat top of the pier, dozens of unwanted skateboards were scatted around like an abandoned art installation, a sort of impromptu skateboard graveyard.

The skateboarders at least were carrying on as usual, casually executing undemanding jumps and studiously ignoring the audience, such as it was. It's perhaps the most authentic attraction on this stretch of Thames riverfront, apart from the river itself of course. Change is threatening the status quo, though. A small group displayed a placard reading SAVE THE SOUTH BANK and they were selling tee shirts with the same message. Save The South Bank From Relocation, Support Skateboarding, if you read the small text. The Southbank Centre has plans to develop the space and that will mean booting the skateboarders out.

Once upon a time, museums and art galleries didn't sell anything except a few postcards. Going back more than a few years, the QEH had a canteen-style cafe on the ground floor and a huge empty lobby: no bookshop, no restaurants, certainly no shops selling DVDs and designer junk. The Hayward was the same, a cafe on the ground floor where the bookshop is now, not a franchise but run by the gallery. I don't know what has changed to the extent that these places are now desperate to make money but that is certainly the case. Whatever the reasons, the Southbank Centre is hell-bent on expanding and they want more shops to help pay for that to become a reality. Nobody is saying, of course, how much of a difference a few lettable units is going to make. The place they have targeted for more shops is that skaters' paradise, the undercroft of the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

The undercroft is a sunken space with concrete walls, floor, ceiling, concrete ramps and steps, and distinctive mushroom-headed concrete columns, reflecting the brutalist aesthetic of the building above. It was not apparently designed for any useful purpose: it's just a left-over space that has been used for skateboarding and BMX riding since the 1970s. There is a sense of subversion about the place, with wall-to-wall graffiti (albeit neatly masked at the edges), no supervision, a complete absence of any kind of officially-provided facilities. It is very different from a purpose-made skate park, with none of the flowing curves you see in those places. That quality, the not-designed accidental suitability, is exactly what the skaters value. I haven't asked them, but their views are recorded at length on the Long Live Southbank and Save the South Bank websites. This place is the South Bank as far as they are concerned.

The protest is not particularly articulate, focusing as it does on the history of the place rather than its future value, and no doubt it will be over-ruled - even now that Boris Johnson has expressed support. The development proposals put income-generating retail space in this prime spot, inevitably, but a new skate park is also proposed to compensate for the loss of the present space. The skaters' campaign is in fact just the most visible part of wider arguments against the redevelopment proposal. The National Theatre has submitted a detailed statement of objection. The Twentieth Century Society thinks the sixties architecture should be preserved as it is: they commisioned an artist to make illustrations showing the huge glass extension dumped on top of the Albert hall, and another showing it resting on top of the Tower of London, to illustrate their point about cultural vandalism. Others think a huge insensitive addition on top of the Hayward is exactly in the spirit of the developer-driven culture of greed and appropriation that is rapidly changing large chunks of London.

On the face of it, moving the skate park is a reasonable proposition. As the official website puts it, if the Southbank Centre were commercial developers that would probably not happen: the skaters would just be told they have had a good run for free, but not any longer. They do recognise the cultural value and they are trying hard to make the change palatable. Unhelpfully, they are also reserving the right to use the new space for their own events, and perhaps going the wrong way about designing a new space.

The published design is not an unashamedly modern, state-of-the-art purpose-made park. Quite the opposite, it's designed to look accidental, like a bit of post-industrial wasteland that's been tastefully adapted as a skate park. The proposal is ultra-careful to get it right, using French architects who have done this sort of thing before, and even the architects themselves claim to be skaters. Some actual skateboarding persons have even been brought in as consultants. But somehow they have missed the point. Iain Borden, the professor of architecture at University College London, and the man in charge of organising the proposals, admits it would be preferable to keep the existing undercroft. It's an impossible brief, he says. We want a place that is great to skateboard in, but that doesn't look explicitly designed for skateboarding. The protesters refuse to discuss this option at all, and I think they are right. Bogus authenticity: no wonder support is thin on the ground.

 

Housing boom

After a bit of a hiccup, otherwise known as the recent recession, the frenzy of housebuilding seems to be back in a big way. Along the Lea Valley in east London, the old factories are disappearing one by one, most of them simply bulldozed to clear the site for this kind of architecture-by-numbers apartment blocks. These are fairly typical, built on an industrial area in Walthamstow. There is the usual depressing split between the market apartments, which are quite nicely laid out, and the so-called affordable part which looks a bit like an open prison. Integrating the two is a common aspiration and if I've understood correctly the same developer has done that successfully elsewhere - but that doesn't necessarily happen. It's very much easier to resolve the differences by splitting the site.

In the foreground, another factory bites the dust. There are two problems with all this - firstly, one of those old terraced houses that surround this site are almost certainly what people really want but are now becoming unaffordable, and secondly, those old factories provide affordable business premises which are not getting replaced. Things do have to change, but you can't help wondering how it will work out in the long term.

Watch the birdie

Regent's Place is an island of high-rise development on the edge of Camden, now pushing its boundaries to squeeze in as many square metres as possible. The result is an uncomfortable jumble of very large buildings, all different and competing with each other for attention as well as plot space. Although there are four elements in the last part to be completed, they were designed by two architects, one doing the offices and the other the residential parts. The offices are glossy glass structures which might not be too bad if they had a bit of space around them.

The residential tower, though, is quite possibly the ugliest tower in London, a grim grey structure that looks puny situated as it is alongside the no-frills bulk of Euston Tower (once the home of Capital Radio). A relatively low-rise block of flats along Hampstead Road was designed by the same architect. Come rain or shine, that overall matt grey finish and the complicated balconies do nothing to make the building seem friendly. The final touch, perhaps, is this surprising but not entirely welcome image of a bird fixed high up on the facade. Maybe there will be more of the same, but for now there is just the one. The artwork is by Gary Hume, the YBA who does extremely simple paintings using domestic gloss paint, so simple there is little to appreciate except I suppose a certain degree of abstraction. Here we get a biggish bird, some leaves and a stick, or at least it looks like a stick, although one's first thought is that it's badly drawn leg. Perhaps there are art world characters who think this is an achievement, but it seems perfectly valid to call it an unfortunate bad decision. If not something ruder.

There used to be a giant mural by Michael Craig-Martin on the site, not in the same place but nearby - a pop-art image of an electric fan, several storeys high and lit up at night. It didn't appear to have any particular relevance but it was quite nice as a landmark. The bird doesn't come close to replacing it.

 

Fitzrovia reloaded

One minute the hoardings seem to have been there forever, then suddenly there are six tower cranes and some very substantial concrete shafts soaring skywards. This is the long-empty Middlesex Hospital site and development is powering ahead. Naturally this is not popular with local businesses and residents. Never mind the encouraging images of red telephone boxes and other heritage paraphernalia on those hoardings: you don't even have to look up the plans to know what it's going to be like. The giant stair cores say it all. It isn't going to be anything you would want to find in the wonderful and historic narrow streets of Fitzrovia, not refined small-scale buildings with unique businesses, art galleries and coffee shops and useful stuff that's been there forever. Inevitably, it will be just like all the other big developments, like the glass slabs of Triton Place on the Euston Road or the orange and green bulk of St Giles Place for example. There will be huge anonymous office buildings let out by the thousand square metres, flats that will be bought as an investment, and some other stuff tacked on. Of course there will be some supposedly public space and some grudging proportion of so-called affordable housing, probably even some coffee shops and a token art gallery, but it's also going to be big and unfriendly and contribute nothing very positive to the character of the area, apart from not being left derelict any longer. The public space will not of course be managed by the council, as a truly public space would be - it will be privately owned and policed by private security guards.

Back in 2011, Fitzrovia News reported breathlessly 'there is an emerging cultural shift where a wave of anti-consumerism has now penetrated mainstream thinking about cities'. That was before the friendlier version, which did have something to offer the local community, was ditched in favour of the maximum return for outlay model. Going up...

The ghost of Euston Tower

A little tower nestling up against the almost-iconic Euston Tower, once known as the home of Capital Radio. The unfinished residential tower is a dull unreflective grey and features an unattractive and rather pointless basket-weave design. When it's finished it might at least be lit up at night, but for now it looks thoroughly sinister. Just one part of the mishmash of overdevelopment currently going up on the Triton Square / Hampstead Road site.

A view from above: 1 New Change

The huge all-glass hulk that is 1 New Change, round the back of St Paul's Cathedral, is not everyone's idea of how London should be developed. It's big and bland, almost completely featureless except for some shading patterns printed on the glass and some wacky angles, like giant crystals dumped opposite St Paul's churchyard. It has a certain something, but that something works only because of the architectural interest that surrounds it. At least, though, the new public roof terrace offers some amazing views over the city, previously inaccessible and completely free.

What developers love to do, is to take a whole city block if possible, where there might have been twenty or thirty buildings all constructed individually, each with its own character and not quite the same as its neighbours, sometimes not even similar in height and style - and fill the whole block with a single building, usually much higher than what was there before. The developers will talk about financial reality, about ensuring they get enough sellable units or enough square feet of retail space to make the project financially viable. In fact, London woud be a bit of a grim place if we had nothing but street after street of unchanged Victorian buildings. The big set pieces do contribute something, opening up the street pattern and making London a contemporary city, not a historical set-piece. Even so, the pressure for large projects is insidious.

Construction projects are a huge part of the country's economy, so that lends pressure to the introverted logic of those profitability arguments, which seem to be taken at face value by everyone concerned whatever the merits of the project. Step outside of that mindset, though, and you see a process that isn't always creating change for the better. Imagine, as the developers do, that eventually all but the best listed buildings, everything except the heritage centrepieces, will eventually present an opportunity to cash in, and you can see how London might be edging towards a completely different look, a city of giant developments with the odd quaint old building dwarfed between them to amuse the tourists. Does that sound familiar?

1 New Change was designed for Land Securities by French architect Jean Nouvel. The shaded glass idea seems to be borrowed from an even uglier building in Manhattan by Frank Gehry. Nouvel's 23-storey residential tower at 100 11th Avenue is a straightforward vertical block with one curved side and a rather pleasing façade of random square windows. It sits side by side with Gehry's building and completely outshines it, which makes it ironic that St Paul's got a design influenced in that way.

Colour explosion at Kings Cross

This splash of colour is what used to be the worthy but dull Kings Cross branch of Barclays Bank. As a matter of fact the bank is still there, but the rest of the building is a newish fashionable hotel, the Megaro, with interior designed rooms at more than 200 quid a night. At first sight it's quite striking, but a splash of colour is all it is, there's nothing very inspired about the design, and it completely muddles the architectural language of the building. It's not illegal (although it's in a conservation area no planning permission was required) but you could say it's short-sighted, not really worth the permanent damage.

The hotel is a typical London block, built in the early twentieth century in red brick with lots of fine carved limestone details, nothing very exciting by London standards, but just try looking for that kind of thing in an American city, for example. That paint is guaranteed for twenty years, apparently, but the novelty is going to wear off much sooner than that. Will it come off? No, most unlikely: even intensive graffiti removal techniques don't entirely remove all the paint, and over an entire building that would be ridiculously expensive. Sandblasting might work but it destroys the surface of bricks. So the original natural materials are likely to be covered up permanently.

One can only hope the owners will keep the facades freshly painted, and maybe next time do something that actually makes use of the architecture instead of camouflaging it.

Jean Cocteau in Leicester Square

Tucked away in a side street off Leicester Square, next door to the Prince Charles cinema, is Notre Dame de Paris, the main Catholic church for French nationals visiting and living in London, also known as the French Church. Stone steps and a fairly bland facade give no hint of what you might find inside, but this eccentric mural is just one of the surprises hidden away from the tourists.It's currently being restored, which is why the altar is covered with bottles and brushes. It's absolutely nothing like an English church. When I visited on a Sunday afternoon, a colourful collection of people were variously praying, sitting quietly or chatting together loudly in groups, while disembodied organ music came from somewhere up in the dome. Nobody else seemed to be there for sightseeing reasons.

The mural was painted by Jean Cocteau, French poet, artist, dramatist and film maker. Painted directly onto the plaster with the lines seeming to bleed into the surface, Cocteau had clearly established his regular style by this time. It depicts standard scenes of the Annunciation and Crucifixion, but the interesting thing is the way the figures are portrayed. Look for eyes drawn as fishes, faces gazing upwards with eyeballs protruding, figures joined together, wispy beards, rounded and protruding body parts - lips, nipples, backsides - carefully exaggerated. You only see Christ's feet: the dominant figures in the crucifixion scene are the Roman centurions, nun-like characters, and what might be a self-portrait.

The church was badly damaged by bombing in WWII and rebuilt in a strange blend of neoclassical and Art Deco styles, keeping the original circular shape of the damaged building (once a Georgian panorama). Cocteau, by then an old man, was commissioned to do the mural when the building work was finished. There's an entertaining notice in the church describing how he surprised visitors to the church by talking to his characters as he worked. It took him only a week to finish the painting, in November 1959. He signed it in 1960, the same year his last film was showing in cinemas nearby.

 

Architecture at the BBC

Broadcasting House, the iconic Art Deco building at the top end of Regent Street, has undergone a transformation over the past few years. Where there was once a collection of down-at-heel nondescript buildings housing the overflow from Broadcasting House, there is now an architect-designed group of buildings arranged around a public plaza (still not quite finished) and the BBC has just moved it to the big new extension at the back of the site.

All well and good: the BBC needed modernising and it's good to see them keeping their main centre of operations right in the centre of London. There is a the problem though. Broadcasting House sits right next to the delicate and unusual church of All Souls, designed by John Nash and completed in 1824. Those nondescript buildings provided a bland backdrop to the church, and the calm solidity of the BBC building, with its curved front and small windows, somehow complemented rather than competed with the curved portico. Its dramatic spire was echoed by the dummy radio arial on top of the BBC but, since it was the home of British broadcasting, that was entirely appropriate in itself and not just a silly architectural echo. The new Egton Wing, on the other hand, shouts for attention. It has a perfectly sensible floor plan but the outside plays every trick it can think of to tell you, this is modern architecture with attitude, not just some anonymous office building. The curves are perfectly appropriate, but there is too much going on, apparently at random. The surfaces seem to be paper thin, even the stone parts, and variously peeling away or held at a distance off the facade by stainless steel arms, a sort of deconstructivist layered effect that is exactly the opposite of the original Portland stone BBC building. The glass facade around the courtyard is just a hovering layer with bits missing, enclosing nothing and apparently without any purpose. It's completely wrong for this site. From the side view, standing outside the Langham Hotel or passing in a bus, it's no so bad - if you stand in the right place you can get a view of the Telecom Tower too - but the view up Regent Street (pictured) is simply a mess.

So what would be an appropriate way to design a new building in that setting? Would you want to make something calm and solid - a neutral and dignified backdrop, built to last - or would you try to outdo both landmarks by creating something more in-your-face that you hope will itself become 'iconic'? The first course is safe, but the other approach is difficult, so hard to get right that it's not easy to see how it could have been done successfully in this instance. None the less that's what the BBC and their architects have attempted with the Egton Wing. On a site with not just one but two minor architectural masterpieces, what it doesn't need is some architect trying to compete.

As far back as 2000 the BBC saw the need to expand and modernise, and held an an architectural competition, which is the way major projects are often awarded: you get to see a design before choosing your architect. The competition was won by Richard MacCormac and his architectural practice MacCormac Jamieson Prichard who did the plans for the whole site. Broadcasting House itself was completely refurbished and the new Egton Wing opened in back in 2006. MJP have stated "the partnership looked at complementing the iconic status of Broadcasting House with an emblematic work of architecture which would sit elegantly and appropriately at the heart of historic Regent Street". Judge for yourself how well they have succeeded.

After that phase, some serious value engineering (architect speak for cost cutting) so incensed MacCormac that he stepped down, to be replaced by all-purpose mega architects Sheppard Robson - who in fact followed the MacCormac's design for the exterior, making the necessary budget cuts on the inside. Now, the BBC has moved into its enormous new extension at the back of the site. Unlike the front, it's a big and bland, expensive-looking building: just about right really.

Fitzrovia's fading mural

Half way down Tottenham Court Road is a gap in the shops, an open space called  Whitfield Gardens. It was once a burial ground, and then made into a public park in 1895. In 1945 a German bomb flattened the Georgian houses that separated it from Tottenham Court Road, making the larger space that exists now. All very typical of London: what's left is an accident of circumstances, an odd space  with the single surviving building sitting isolated in the middle of an expanse of concrete paving.

And dominating that space is the 1980 Fitzrovia Mural, faded and peeling, and covered in graffiti as high up as the spray-can artists can reach. People are quite attached to this mural. There was a fashion for murals at that point in history, and this one was commissioned by Camden Council, who own the building it is painted on. The Fitzrovia Neighbourhood Association are campaigning to get it restored, although realistically they admit the wall would have to be repaired first, so the whole thing would actually need to be re-painted from scratch. Some of the subjects are local characters of the time, perhaps not all of them forgotten. There are some nice touches with contemporary relevance: the cigarette advertisement featuring a death's head, the machines spewing out bills and final demands, and of course the developer's crane towering over everything else. Even so, it doesn't have the historic value of the Cable Street Anti-Fascist mural or the Hackney Peace Carnival mural, both in much better condition.

Like the 1960 BT Tower behind it, it's past its best and not that relevant any more. The tower recently lost all the satellite dishes which is what it was for in the first place, removed for 'safety reasons' which will inevitably make space for more advertising, but as an iconic landmark there's a lot of life left in it yet (the photo at the top of this blog shows how it used to be). That painted end wall is just paint, and maybe it's time to treat it as the ephemeral statement it was intended to be. Maybe it's time to make a fresh start with some imaginative, good quality landscaping and some artwork relevant to the twenty-first century.

Russian constructivism at the Royal Academy

The courtyard of the Royal Academy is currently the setting for this steel tower, a striking twin spiral supported on zigzag bracing, but somewhat overwhelmed by the architecture surrounding it. It is in fact just a scale model of the tower designed in 1920 by Russian architect and engineer Vladimir Tatlin, just three years after the October Revolution and before the USSR was established. Designed as a monument to the Third International, only a model was built at the time, and now just Tatlin's drawings survive. If it had been built, it would be 400 metres high, higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

It's widely held to be a masterpiece of Constructivism, the avant garde movement linked with the early years of the communist state - before reaction and repression set in. Conceived at a time that coincides with the Edwardian period in England, it's quite difficult to understand such an abrupt change, from the amazingly modern and forward-looking futuristic designs adopted by the budding socialist state, to the suppression of artistic expression that followed on all too soon.

Tatlin's masterpiece would have towered high above St Petersburg, but it was never built because of political uncertainty, perhaps because it was physically impossible, and because it would have been extraordinarily expensive. None the less it remains legendary both as an early expression of modernism, and as some kind of socialist icon.

The scale model at the RA was designed by architect Jeremy Dixon, who made a slightly smaller wooden version for an exhibition at the Hayward in 1971. This time around he has the benefit of computer aided modelling, not available in the 1970s, but because it's based upon drawings and photographs of the original model, none of which are the same, it's an interpretation rather than an exact scale copy. That circular base has nothing to do with Tatlin's design and rather spoils the effect of the dynamic form rising out of the ground, dissipating the vertical thrusting energy by introducing that broad wedding-cake base. No doubt that keeps it nice and stable, but it would have been better without it, better still if the whole thing was twice as big and really dominated the RA courtyard.

Serpentine pavilion 2011

Every year the Serpentine Gallery creates a new pavilion for the summer, a temporary architectural masterpiece (usually) designed by a famous architect who has not as yet built anything in the United Kingdom. This year is the eleventh in the series, the first in 2000 being Zaha Hadid (designer of the ill-fated Aquatic Centre for the London Olympics). This year we  have Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, famous among architects but otherwise little-known, who has designed a huge black box. This doesn't seem like a promising start on paper, but walking across Kensington Gardens, interesting qualities become apparent. The simplicity of the shape is unpretentions and sits in contrast to the relatively ornate Serpentine Gallery and the lush midsummer trees, in an oasis of startlingly bright green new grass. Each long black wall has three black open doorways, giving nothing away. The scene is enlivened by a severely plain string of white lights, although garish red 'keep off the grass' notices rather spoil the green-and-black colour scheme.

The building is black inside and out, a plywood structure covered with some kind of black tarry-looking fabric - even the floor. Through each doorway, you enter a black corridor so dark the lights are on all day, leading indirectly to the interior. The inside is the main point of the pavilion, an enclosed garden with an overhanging roof and blue bench seats all round, and sumptuous planting in the central part, open to the sky. It does make you want to sit and contemplate, which is Zumthor's expressed aim here. Notice the fire extinguishers: the architect clearly anticipated the need for those, unlike the signs outside, and was able to avoid any hint of colour: they are chromium plated shiny silver. The planting is by Piet Oudolf, the Dutch landscape designer who pioneered the use of ornamental grasses in his gardens, and is recently known for the High Line landscaped walk in New York. Red flowers mainly, and the trademark grasses, just high enough to slightly obscure long views. Catch it before it closes on 16 October.

Folly under the flyover

Under the twin flyovers where the A12 road crosses the River Lea navigation canal, in what was a nasty, litter-strewn dark space that you would normally pass by quickly, there is now an unusual and imaginative structure built of scaffolding poles, rope and wire, and thousands of recycled wood blocks, like a gigantic Jenga set. Located in Hackney Wick just outside the Olympic site, this is a temporary cinema that popped up only a few weeks ago, and sadly it is already coming up to the end of its last week. It was built by a group calling themselves Assemble, with some help from architects Muf (it's complicated), using partly voluntary labour and mainly recycled materials. The auditorium is made of scaffolding and scaffolding boards, but more intriguing is the construction of the adjoining cafe (pictured) where the walls are made of blocks of recycled wood threaded on to ropes, so it looks like brick from a distance, but clearly wood when you get close. There is even a children's play area with a huge selection of the same wooden bricks - I saw some six-foot skyscraper towers which may perhaps have had adult help. It's lively even in the daytime with an inexpensive cafe attracting canalside walkers and cyclists.

More at the Folly for a Flyover website

More text and photos about the area around the new Olympic Park at the E17 Art Trail blog

Borough High Street bridge

Not quite new, this tubular steel truss bridge went up over the Easter bank holiday weekend. It took several months to build, of course, but the engineers worked out that they could build it on top of the newly-constructed viaduct alongside, where it could be worked on without disrupting traffic. The new railway viaduct has caused a lot of disruption to Borough Market, but that's another story. The original plan was to construct the whole thing some way down Southwark Street, and transport it up the road to its final position, where it takes two lines into London Bridge station. That plan fell foul of the network of underground services and tube lines that could be damaged by imposing such a heavy load on the road surface. So, the bridge was assembled high up on the viaduct, on temporary rails that would allow it to move to the final position. Over the holiday weekend 22 to 25 April the road was closed and the structure inched across at a snail's pace, supported on hi-tech motorised platforms, and then lowered into position. Too slow to stand around watching really, but Network Rail have put a time-lapse video on YouTube. The bowstring truss is just the public face of the bridge: the other side is hard up against the old railway bridge and it's just a flat girder, albeit massive. The aggressively muscular truss side is designed for effect, and not everyone will love it.

It comes as a surprise to find that no trains will use the bridge until work on London Bridge station is complete, some years hence. When everything is in place, though, this will be a vital part of the new Crossrail link currently under construction across central London.

Dalston goes high-rise



The new CLR James Library

The week before last this was a building site, but suddenly the hoardings are down and we can see the new Dalston Square. Sitting next to the well-known Dalston mural and the mainly Georgian buildings in Kingsland Road and Dalston Lane, this is certainly a change of scale, dragging the area into the twenty-first century with buildings up to 20 storeys (approximately), new shop units, a three-storey shell to replace the 1950s prefab that was the CLR James Library, and about 500 new flats. The centrepiece and original rationale for this large-scale redevelopment is of course the resurrected Dalston Junction station, derelict for many years and opened last year as one end of the East London Line. It must be welcome for connecting Dalston to rest of London. Across the road is the newish Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, a low-tech but stylish green oasis located on a section of railway track that was not needed for the new rail links. It's hard to tell what effect this modern district will have on the rest of the area.

From my point of view as a passing cyclist, Dalston Lane remains narrow and in the morning rush hour, the queue of cars and lorries blocks the single lane completely. Cyclists, I'm sorry to say, are resorting to using the wrong side of the road to get up to Kingsland Road, ducking in between vehicles when there is oncoming traffic. It would be good to see this addressed properly - and not just by putting up signs telling cyclists to use a different route.

Architecture at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

The annual Summer Exhibition blockbuster includes a section on architecture, which reflects the fact that many prominent architects are members of the Royal Academy - the current president is architect Nicholas Grimshaw, who designed that peculiar hi-tech Sainsbury's in Camden Town. A room devoted to architecture does provide some diversity but it sits uncomfortably in a show devoted to pure visual arts. Dozens of models are crowded on low plinths and the walls are covered with framed illustrations, so there is plenty to look at, but it's hard work. Unlike a painting or even a sculpture, nearly everything on show requires some effort to understand what is going on, and raises questions: what's it for, and why is it like that? It it a real proposal or just an abstract architectural fantasy? Architects speak their own language and their idea of humour is a little specialised, which may be why a lot of the projects on show here are just not very interesting without some background explanation.

The star of the show is the Shi Ling Bridge by small practice Tonkin Liu - an organic, flowing perforated structure spanning a rocky gorge. It is rightly given central position in the room: at a glance you can understand the scale and the structural logic, and appreciate how it would enhance a natural landscape. Similar clarity is in evidence in the Hairy House by London architects Shiro Studio. Following a long line of one-off Tokyo architect-designed townhouses, this one is a simple rectangular slab covered in white astroturf, with a car-size indentation for parking and gloopy amoeba shaped windows apparently made of white perspex. At the other end of the scale, an elaborate model of part of Battersea Power Station imagines the interior as a sort of biological mutation. It's intricately built using 3D printing technology, and rather pointless.

Studio East by Carmody Groarke is a pop-up restaurant that was on the Olympics site last summer, built out of stretched fabric on a scaffolding frame. It's shown as a moderately impressive aerial photograph, one of the few images of a completed project. It's also probably the only project on show that has since been taken down. There are a couple of other photographs of oval structures in sombre black and white. FAT are showing a cartoonish but slightly dull birds-eye view of a suburban district in County Durham populated with their trademark quirky buildings.

Two architectural fantasies stand out among all the boring elevations and half-baked deconstructivism. An atmospheric black and white print elaborately titled Embankment, The Alchemic Plant, Tempelhof, Berlin, sits below a similarly elaborate print, The Reforestation of the Thames Estuary, River Elevation. The Alchemical Plant is an adaptation of Hunters in the Snow by Jan Breughel the Elder, with the hunting party and their dogs making their way towards a strange spaceframe structure in the valley, and a modern city beyond. The Reforestation is more original, a grim quayside scene (yes, in architectural elevation) with huge piles of lumber and cranes, again the modern city beyond, and some of those little Thames estuary Noddy houses off to one side.

So some exceptions do stand out - and please note I'm just mentioning a selection.

More information at Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

A White Elephant?

Stranded in Brixton with a Boris bike and worsening rain I finally found a docking station on the Elephant and Castle roundabout, and sought refuge and food inside the shopping centre. It was late on a Sunday afternoon, too late to be eating lunch, and I wasn't expecting much. The outside doesn't look promising in the rain, a huge concrete hulk surrounded by big roads, windowless at street level and with the entrances up concrete stairs and from a sunken plaza level approached by ramps and subways. A surprise then to find many shops and several good cafes open, people going up to the bingo on the top floor, and generally a modest cosmopolitan bustle, this being Sunday after all. I went for the biggest cafe, a thriving place full of hand-made notices and gaudy food illustrations, with orange vinyl seats and cheerful efficient service. During the week there's a street market in the sunken plaza around the perimeter which adds to the multicultural buzz. It's ugly, spectacularly ugly in places, reprehensible by modern urban design standards, but bold and dramatic, and not by any means derelict.

The Elephant and Castle shopping centre is well known from the outside, sitting as it does at the centre of a massive traffic and rail complex where you enter central London from the south. The place is notorious: in an area bombed flat in WW2 and redeveloped in 1965, this was the biggest American-style indoor shopping mall in Europe when it was completed, and began to fail almost immediately when it became clear that it was far too big. From the beginning it was impossible to let all the retail spaces and the three-storey structure, topped by the glass-and-steel Hannibal Tower office block, has been a problem area ever since. Despite which - people clearly still do use the place, pass through, shop and work there.

Another survival from the past, with something to appreciate before it goes, but also a lot that will not be missed. Southwark Council have been negotiating a 15 year redevelopment programme with architects Make appointed to design the masterplan. In May they abandoned plans to demolish the shopping centre, in favour of a more pragmatic refurbishment strategy - which is bound to antagonise those who hoped to see the big shopping mall replaced by a more permeable new development.

To find out more:
Information about Elephant and Castle regeneration at Southwark Council website
Images of a refurbished shopping centre on the AJ website