East End Review

Tag: Architecture

Pick of the bricks: Wilton’s Music Hall and Alphabeta win RIBA awards

Wilton’s Music Hall. Photograph: Helene Binet

East London architecture down the ages is rich and varied, from Hawksmoor’s churches to the high modernist Balfron Tower.

But there are supreme examples of contemporary architecture in East London too, which the Royal Institute for British Architects (RIBA) acknowledged when announcing the nominees and winners of its annual awards.

Wilton’s Music Hall

Once a rowdy hub of Victorian popular entertainment, Wilton’s Music Hall has been named London Building of the Year, after a restoration project that saw the theatre strengthened, sound-proofed, heated and ventilated without compromising its unique character.

“We just want to stop the clock so that it’s safe and it’s structurally secure,” Oona Patterson, the venue’s marketing director, told the East End Review in 2014, before much of the work had started.

Tim Ronalds Architects followed a principle of “doing only what is essential”, putting an “enormous amount of care into apparently doing nothing’.

In Victorian times, tightrope walkers, the first British can-can show, and performances by music hall greats graced Wilton’s stage.

Everything possible from that era was preserved, from disused roofs, Georgian brickwork, fragments of plaster and ceramic electrical fittings, to an abandoned birds’ nest.

As the restoration unfolded so traces of previous occupation and abandonment emerged.

These found qualities of the building have also been preserved, adding to a subtle and engaging visual narrative.

Alphabeta Building. Photograph: Hufton and Crow

Alphabeta

This large-scale office space on Finsbury Square incorporates parts of the old Triton Court building.

The building, which has bagged a London RIBA award, has been transformed into a contemporary office space for workers in the tech and finance industries.

Its original tower and cupola have been restored but rooftop office space and open terraces now offer panoramic views.

Architects Studio RHE removed old extensions and alterations, stripping back the listed building to reveal riveted-steel columns and brickwork.

But the most impressive detail is its glazed atrium, the sides of which are clad in contrasting materials. Projecting meeting rooms cantilever out into the space, and a huge cycle ramp behind a glazed screen takes cyclists straight down from street-level to a large cycle store in the basement.

What one considers an office can range from a kitchen table to a rented shoebox to something altogether more grandiose –Alphabeta firmly belongs in the latter camp.

July 11, 2016
London Festival of Architecture – preview

Brutalism: the Balfron Tower

The London Festival of Architecture, taking place this month, is this year centred around the theme of ‘community’.

Although a capital wide affair, several events will invite Tower Hamlets residents to consider the impact of the built environment on their lives, as well as hear about exciting ideas and initiatives for the future.

Stock Bricks to Brutalism: Housing Design History in Poplar

This guided walk, taking place throughout the month, focuses on the massive overhaul of housing stock in Poplar during the 20th century. Overcrowding, dilapidation, poor sanitary conditions and bomb damage in Poplar spurred some of the most emblematic and bold designs that continue to divide opinion.

The two hour walk will aim to trace social housing from the end of World War One through to the 1980s. It will stop off at estates built between the two World Wars in the ‘economic Georgian style’ (e.g. Will Crooks Estate) before taking in some celebrated and notorious post-war estates: Lansbury, Brownfield (home to Brutalist masterpiece the Balfron Tower), and Robin Hood Gardens. The walk is led by Andrew Parnell, a qualified City of London Guide, who will be seeking to impart a little of the history of Poplar along the way.

Shoreditch Architecture Surgery

Shoreditch architects Finkernagel Ross, designers of “bold unassuming architecture and interiors for high-end residential, industrial and commercial clients”, are throwing open their doors on 16 June and inviting visitors to come in and have a look at their work.

Models, renderings, and drawings will all be on display, and the practice will also be offering professional advice to anyone who needs it on all matters relating to design, planning or construction, with a 30-minute one-on-one meeting with an architect. There is no charge to attend the architecture surgery, though donations of £25 to homelessness charity Shelter are encouraged.

Lansbury Estate. Photograph: Michael Owens

Homes not Houses: Putting Wellbeing First

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has declared the housing crisis “the single biggest barrier to prosperity” and has vowed to build more houses. But in last month’s East End Citizen, Nicholas Boys Smith of research institute Create Streets argued that housing is not just about numbers. High land costs and limited housing supply, he said, is a “vicious circle” that will lead to buildings that are “less popular and that people don’t want to live in”. Smith will be discussing his own radical lower-rise vision at the Legatum Institute in a panel that includes architecture critic Rowan Moore.

For more information visit londonfestivalofarchitecture.org

June 8, 2016
Elite architects rally round to save Robin Hood Gardens

Robin Hood Gardens

Britain’s architectural elite are going head-to-head with Tower Hamlets Council over the planned demolition of a Brutalist-era housing estate.

The 213-apartment Robin Hood Gardens is set to be set to be razed to the ground to make room for a £500 million redevelopment.

The dilapidated site in Poplar has a ‘stigma’ attached to it according to some residents.

But high-profile members of the architectural community, led by Lord Richard Rogers and the Twentieth Century Society, have launched a last-ditch effort to stop the redevelopment which will see the end of Robin Hood Gardens.

Architects including Robert Venturi, Toyo Ito and Zaha Hadid have rallied round in support of the campaign. Completed in 1972, Robin Hood Gardens was designed around the concept of ‘streets in the sky’ by controversial New Brutalism pioneers Alison and Peter Smithson.

Centre Pompidou architect Lord Rogers has written to 300 members of the design world asking them to lobby heritage minister Tracey Crouch to give the site listed status, a bid English Heritage rejected in 2009.

Rogers wrote: “In my opinion, it is the most important social housing development from the post-war era in Britain.

“Two sculptural slabs of affordable housing create a calm and stress-free place amidst the ongoing modernisation of the London cityscape.”

Lord Rogers told BBC’s Today programme that he would “absolutely” live on Robin Hood Gardens himself, and has blamed the council for the neglecting the building.

In 2009, the site was given immunity from heritage listing for five years, a decision the Twentieth Century Society has called “unsound” in a recent report.

This immunity expired this year, and Tower Hamlets Council has approved demolition and a £500 million redevelopment by Swan Housing Association, which promises 1,575 homes, and a new mosque and community centre.

The vast concrete blocks have been criticised for a range of flaws in design and maintenance alike.

Residents have complained of awkward layouts, asbestos and leaky ceilings.

But Rogers and some residents insist that neglect by council is at fault for the poor upkeep of Robin Hood Gardens.

Resident Ruman Chowdury, 42, told the Telegraph: “The council just doesn’t maintain the building. The whole area is neglected.”

The council has said its consultation concluded 80 per cent support for the redevelopment.

A council spokesperson said: “Redevelopment was the overwhelming preference of the local community.”

July 17, 2015
Constructing Worlds – review: architecture that compels to silence

Iwan Baan, Torre David #2 2011. Image courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, Los Angeles

The Constructing Worlds exhibition at the Barbican challenges perceptions and understandings of the built modern world we live in today.

It brings together 18 photographers from the 1930s to the present day, each with a unique approach towards photographing architecture.

The chronological journey begins with Berenice Abbott’s documentation of New York and the construction of the iconic Rockefeller Center in 1932, a time of economic, political and social uncertainty.

Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, American photographer Walker Evans escapes from New York to capture rural America in a straightforward yet intimate way.

He looks at “the ones who have been the most severely affected, but is elevating the everyday and the vernacular”, explains Alona Pardo, co-curator of the exhibition.

Chongqing IV (Sunday Picnic), Chongqing Municipality, 2006. Photograph courtesy of Nadav Kander and Flowers Gallery

The photographs reflect global, international, social and political issues, says Pardo, as we move from the upper to the lower gallery. “Location and geography have changed, but you get the same issues being brought up about living conditions, urban density and rapid migration in Latin America, China and the Middle East.”

Ecological and environmental issues are also raised. Bas Princen’s image of ‘Cairo’s Garbage City’, shot in 2011, is a captivating panorama depicting residents stashing the Egyptian capital’s garbage in their own roof terrace.

Nadav Kander takes us to China depicting fisherman perching in front of a half-completed bridge on the banks of the Yangtze River. The atmospheric pale yellowy mist of pollution suggests the impact of rapid industrialisation on the community in an almost poetic way.

Designed by the Belgium architectural practice Office KGDVS, the overall scenography of the exhibition manages the balancing act of presenting the work of the 18 different photographers in a very consistent and convincing way.

The exhibition brings it home how much of our visual vocabulary originates from the past 80 years and how it has been refined by the construction of contemporary cityscapes.

It may help to step back from the global issues raised to gain a clearer perspective of the photography as a whole. At other times though, more confined spaces force us into engaging intimately with the issues, such as with Hiroshi Sugimoto’s poignant blurred photograph of the World Trade Center, or Hélène Binet’s more psychological and lyrical work of the Berlin Jewish Museum – two images that will compel the viewer to silence.

Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age is at Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS until 11 January

Clinton Road, London 1997. Photograph: Thomas Struth

December 15, 2014