Modern British Architecture

Housing numerous museums and being the site of the Great Exhibition of 1851, South Kensington, in West London, is known for its value as a cultural centre. In 1983, a new building entered this historic centre of culture and added to it, albeit in a decidedly un-English way. The Ismaili Centre was designed to be a meeting place, academic institution, and place of worship for the 8,000 Ismaili Muslims in Great Britain (Long) the first of its kind in the West. Located at 1 Cromwell Gardens, the Ismaili Centre is on one of the busiest streets in London, and is directly in the middle of the historic and cultural centre of South Kensington.

Although I will primarily focus on South Kensington, and the Ismaili Centre’s place within it, it is important to understand South Kensington in its urban context, as part of a larger whole. South Kensington is part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the second-smallest local authority in London geographically (the Corporation of London is smallest), and the most densely populated in all of Britain (Lightfoot 54). The Royal Borough is a relatively new entity, formed as a merger of the Royal Borough of Kensington and the Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea in 1965, and stretches from Notting Hill in the north all the way down to the river Thames. The former Royal Borough of Kensington (so titled by King Edward VII, whose mother, Queen Victoria, was born and raised in Kensington Palace) includes the area to the immediate north, west and south of Kensington Gardens, while the Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea further south still. (Lightfoot 5) As a whole, the Royal Borough is the most affluent area in Britain, with an average household income of £42,272 annually in 2006; almost double the national average of £25,000. (Lightfoot 6, 54) It is home to some of the most well known landmarks in London, including Kensington Gardens, Notting Hill, Harrods, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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In March 2000, British Education and Employment Secretary David Blunkett introduced a new program of City Academies, intended to revive underperforming schools in disadvantaged inner-city settings. Academies would be independently managed schools, funded primarily by the state, with an initial voluntary investment from private parties within the nearby community. Each of these schools would identify a specialist focus in one subject area, but must admit students without regard to demonstrated skills or aptitudes.

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What makes a building fashionable? The vocabulary of couture is not inappropriate to a discussion about architecture. Both media flirt simultaneously with the artistic and the practical, the quotidian and the exceptional. Buildings are as essential to human society as clothes, and like clothing they can stand apart from or blend into their respective environments. Just as some garments are branded “loud”, a certain school of architecture has been called “brutal”, but these modifiers seem as referential to their objects’ milieu as to anything inherent to the objects themselves. A Hawaiian shirt stands out on a rainy day, as does a brutalist highrise on a street of stucco townhouses. In the urban landscape, context is key; a straightforward principle, perhaps, but deceptively so. For while the object, once finished, remains a constant (so long as it isn’t thrown out), context is ever-changing. Thus when it is well-made, a bit rare, and symbolic of a past era, a jarring object can be redeemed. It comes into fashion’s focus; it gains “vintage” legitimacy and retro cool.

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Daniel Libeskind’s LMU Graduate Centre overlooking Holloway Road

As if to make up for its historical reluctance to, and often outright disavowal of, modern architecture, England and London in particular have become a hotbed of architectural advancement and ingenuity. Home to the Architectural Association School and studios of major-label architects like Zaha Hadid, London has seen a surge of new and innovative buildings within the past several years. Creations by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and the like have cropped up almost everywhere imaginable, both stretching the city’s imagination and establishing an architectural reputation to the rest of the world. Most of these novel buildings, bridges, and structures have grown up in the most predictable places, on the banks of the Thames, within the heart of the City, and among the office space of the flourishing financial district. Prime names will, after all, get prime real estate. Yet one finds Daniel Libeskind’s addition to the London Metropolitan University Graduate Centre, however, in the most unlikely of places, along the seedy strip of Holloway Road. Home to a notorious illegal tobacco trade and LMU students on their way to anywhere but there, Holloway Road seems to be the last place one would find the work of an architect now famous for his work on Berlin’s Jewish Museum and the Ground Zero memorial project. But there it is, looking like a series of jagged steel bricks dropped along the edge of the street, seemingly entirely unrelated to its context. Despite its alien form and facade, the LMU Graduate Centre Building is in fact a “good neighbor,” an asset to the university, and a welcome sculptural break from the glum Holloway norm. It is a haven for students and a flicker of hope for local revitalization.

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Figure 1. Front View of the Laban Centre from the front lawn performance space.

It is difficult to discuss the Laban Centre for Contemporary Dance without some notice of its neighborhood context. Located on the eastern edge of Deptford in the borough of Lewisham, south of the Thames opposite Canary Wharf, and off the edge of most London maps, every article published in the London Times surrounding the Centre’s opening in 2003 made some reference to the area’s “inner city decay (Binney),” the “dark, deserted and creepy” streets surrounding the site, and the “landscape of bleak neglect (Craine)” that serves as a background to this beautiful building. Architectural discussions of the Centre in the years following its opening however speak of a change in the overall atmosphere, with the Laban Centre serving as “the catalyst of regeneration in the area” (Powers). As a piece of modern architecture, the Laban Centre has succeeded in creating a space that is new, exciting, and altogether quite striking in an otherwise downtrodden area, while not forcefully asserting itself as a symbol of the future of artistic architecture.

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The changes that have been made to the London Docklands in the past 25 years have been among the most striking and most dynamic developments in the world. The London Docklands Development Corporation (1981-1998) played a huge role in the area’s transformation, turning what used to be industrial wasteland into a vibrant area for commerce, residential life, and tourism. The area of the Docklands is over eight and a half square miles, all of which have been affected by the new developments in businesses and transportation. The Docklands represent one of the largest concentrations of twentieth and twenty-first century architecture in the world, and with new projects in development now, it will continue to grow, benefiting not only the area but London as a whole.

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Historically a vibrant if rather seedy neighborhood, bounded on the north by the Thames and trailing off into suburbs in the south, the borough of Southwark was populated largely by poorer citizens and boasted theaters, brothels and taverns before the advent of industrialization turned it into a place of railway bridges and grimy warehouses. Bombing during the Blitz and a series of fires over the centuries have had a particularly devastating effect on its architecture. Southwark has lately sought to revitalize its status as a place rich in the arts and culture; cut off from the rest of the City by the Thames as it is, it faces the challenge of attracting tourists and inhabitants over the river, a task facilitated by the construction of bridges (most recently the Millennium footbridge) and the revamping of its northern limits, the Bankside area (Godley).

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The British Library, if nothing else, contains promise. Within it is the promise of the future of literary texts, the promise of growing culture, and also the promise of bringing up a neighborhood out of a somewhat grimy past. Some would say that the British Library cannot possibly succeed in transfiguring the area around it while at the same time becoming a centre for intellectual growth and culture. However, I think that with the slow expansion of the Library and the increase of transit to and from this destination, ultimately it is possible for books to bring on a revolution.

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It is difficult not to get swept up in the excitement surrounding the city of Wembley these days. Between the brand new, already legendary stadium that was just opened earlier this year and the massive regeneration project taking place in the community, the new energy in the area is palpable. Wembley Stadium is being touted, and with very good reason, as the best stadium in the world, and when you walk out of the Wembley Park tube station and see the great white arch of the stadium soaring across the sky, it is hard to disagree. Replacing the old Wembley Stadium, the new stadium has acted as a catalyst for one of the most ambitious regeneration projects in London which, led by the Brent Council and the London Development Agency, aims to transform completely what has been referred to by locals as a “drab industrial estate� into a cosmopolitan area that will attract visitors and new residents not only for the great football but for all of the leisure and cultural attractions that are springing up as well. All in all, the stadium has already brought a great deal to the area, but it is just the beginning.

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