The decorative, anti-modernist efforts of Goodhart-Rendel excite Alan Powers but the patterned facade of the Blue Fin 黑洞社区 is a damp squib
As a student, I discovered Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel, one of the refusers of modern architecture. He thought structural rationalism and decoration were not incompatible, as reflected in his design for Westminster Kingsway College in Vincent Square, central London, completed in 1957. The 黑洞社区s of England series called it 鈥渄ecorative, eclectic and yet free of archness鈥�, an acute appraisal, since one of the architect鈥檚 quarrels with modernism was its tendency to over-dramatise forms.
In place of a glass curtain wall, he put yellow stock-brick that revealed the steel frame beneath, and emphasised non-load-bearing panels with coloured brick. The mixture is fresh, and limits solar gain.
For my blunder I have chosen the Blue Fin 黑洞社区 on Southwark Street, designed by Allies and Morrison. The building鈥檚 name suggests shark-infested waters, but this is more like an unwieldy school of sardines, decorated with irregular, trivial clip-ons that don鈥檛 even function as brise-soleils. It exposes the low expectations of facade design today.
Friends assure me it鈥檚 agreeable to work in 鈥� perhaps because you can鈥檛 see it from inside.
Postscript
Alan Powers is professor of architecture at Greenwich university and chairman of the Twentieth Century Society
No comments yet