Giles Gilbert Scott's masterpiece(s)

Went to see one of the most impressive buildings in London - the Battersea power station.
Designed by Giles Gilbert Scott.

Sadly the power station has been closed since in 1983 and despite intense public enthusiasm the building has been quiet neglected.

Over the last ten years many many schemes have been drawn up for its redevelopment and it was opened today as part of public consultation for it's latest redevelopment plan drawn up by Rafael Vinoly (Sadly this is the worst plan yet to be drawn for this great building!)
Hopefully the city will take better care of this building and stop the horribly out of scale development drawn up for its immediate context!

Here's one last pic of the power station.
In fact Gilbert Scott designed another power station in London - the Bankside power station - near London bridge which now houses the Tate modern gallery.

Here's a few snaps of Bankside (the glass box on top was designed by Herzog and DeMeuron when the building was converted into a mueseum for modern art).

Like Battersea, Bankside also has some great brick work on its huge facades. And the last image is from the terrace of the power station overlooking the Thames and city beyond.
Sorry for the slight diversion -back to Battersea now....

After seeing the power station along with a few friends from my office I made my way to the near by Park along the Thames and spent the rest of the day soaking in some beautiful summer weather while it lasts.

While in the park we also paid our homage to Lord Buddha!

I like my buildings : Modern

Even though London's authorities / media and in some case people have in recent years declared war against Modern architecture the city still houses an array of great Modern works designed by the likes of Wells Coates, Berthold Lubetkin, Denys Lasdun, the Smithsons and of course Erno Goldfinger (to name a few of the important ones).

And being a true architect I really love the work of Goldfinger, it has a lot of character and charm. Most poeople call his work 'Brutal' I call it 'Powerful'.

Here's a few photos of two of his buildings in the city.

The first five snaps are of the Trellick Tower high-rise housing on Edenham Street, west London, build between 1967-1973






And the rest of snaps are of his Elephant & Castle development scheme, south London, build between 1959-1966




I hope to visit his project for 1-3 Willow Road in Hampstead, North London where is lived for many years soon! Will post images of it if I ever get there : )

Also need to visit at least some of Lubtekin's buildings.

This building is not build - its cast!

I recently went for a very interesting talk by a panel of speakers at the Queen Elizabeth Hall about the awesome Hayward Gallery (which is part of the South Bank Centre).

The talk was introduced and moderated by Ricky Burdett (Architect/ Professor at LSE) – he spoke about the making of the Hayward gallery and its 40 years of existence highlighting some of the key exhibition hosted by this eccentric little building tucked away behind it’s more glamorous sisters.

He was followed by Dennis Crompton one of the architects who were part of the London County Council’s architecture team that designed this building. (Dennis along with a few of his colleagues from the project went on to form one of the most influential architectural groups of the 60s – Archigram). Dennis showed their initial ideas and process of its design. Though he was very glad to see the building celebrating its 40^th anniversary with much fanfare he reminded us of a time when the building was much neglected and hated by many Londoners. It’s always great to hear an architect talking about an early work that has gradually grown to be liked by most and in his words – “…the more people become familiar with the Hayward, the more they will like it….”

(The building with all its additions for the on going Psycho buildings exhibition looks exactly like it was portrayed in one of the early collages made by Archigram)

Next came one of the most important contemporary artist on the London scene - Anthony Gormley – he shared a completely different yet equally passionate point of view towards the building, that of an artist whose career has been deeply influenced by his exhibiting in its great galleries. He spoke about the hidden space of the building – its vents and shafts.. the space between the gallery and its pyramidal roof lights.. Its cluttered electric rooms and spoke about “..the tension between the building’s basement and its super ego...” As an artist who has worked with the building he insisted that there is a great poetry in its spaces hidden behind what looks like a grumpy bunker. He reminded us what Paul Virilio had once said: “the awe form of modernism is the bunker”!

( The Hayward gallery - A bunker for Art)

The last speaker of the day was - AliceRawsthorn - the ex-director of the Design Museum and design critic for the International Herald Tribune. To summarize her own affection towards the gallery she quoted Philip Johnson, who having seen the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao said: “When a building is this good, who the fuck cares about the art”. To illustrate Hayward gallery’s position in popular culture she equated the building to London. She pointed out how its is eccentric.. layered.. and composed of various features and styles like London itself. And to end she used yet another quote, this time from the director of the Serpentine gallery: ”The Hayward is only a millisecond away from being really cool!!!”

( Like Gormley said : "This building was not build - its cast", I love that you can see the patterns of the wood on the concrete, imprints from the planks used to cast this building)

All in all the talk was a great way to better understand a really great building. A couple of days after the talk I went to the ongoing exhibition titled “Pschyo buildings” And though I really enjoyed many of the installations put up in and on the building none of them could even try to steal the show from the Hayward.

(Inside one of the installations of the Psycho buildings exhibition)

Making special the NORMAL

Any architect that dares to say something like this today (in an age when every building wants to be the next Gherkin) is worth listening to carefully. On top of that if his work is as powerful as his words, it really is inspiring.

Last night David Chipperfield delivered THE lecture of this years London Festival of Architecture (I can't imagine anyone on this year's list being able to top this!).

He argued for Modernism ... of course a more humane .. more sensitive modernism ... but one that lacked not an ounce of its optimism!

Thru a series of his build projects he explained he struggle to evoke empathy towards architecture ... he stressed on how architecture was part of Memory and History of the city and the importance of this continuity.

Towards the end of his lecture when he was asked how he designed his buildings ... its proportions and dimensions he said : "It's all intuition; Architecture is not a science"

Wow .. that was a great lecture!!

Day out at Wimbledon

Spend a day watching some great tennis and waiting in never-ending lines : )

The day started early - was already at the wimbledon car park #10 where the loooong queue for the day ground tickets was snaking around - at 7:00 in the morning.

When I got my queue ticket it was close to 8:00 and I was # 2800 something.

And after some five hours of waiting I was finally in and what can I say it was great to be there!
Spend the first few hours walking around the grounds peeping into the free courts (which is all the courts expect the two big ones - centre and first) and soaking some great festive atmosphere and finally some sun!!


While watching some random matches all over the grounds I went to have look at only Indian female to play at this level of the game - Sania Mirza - she was playing doubles and together with her partner put up a good fight and won quiet convincingly.

This is Henman Hill where people were just glowing in the sun and watching some great games on the big screen. Meanwhile I sat in yet another never ending line to buy second hand tickets to watch at least one of the big games of the day being played on Centre court.
While waiting in this line for another couple of hours I took short break from the line and watched some more tennis in a near by court.

But finally I got my ticket and ran to the centre court to watch the most awaited game of the day!

It was none other than the Spanish hero Rafael Nadal. And boy did he play hard. Over 7 hours of queuing was made well worth it.

Even though I'm a greater fan of Roger Federer's graceful game, today Rafa played like this championship was always meant to be his!

What a great day!! And thank god for the beautiful weather!!