Modern British Architecture

The 1000-year-old Tower of London stands menacingly on the North Bank of the Thames. One of the biggest tourist attractions in London, the Tower is an infamous structure that has served as a palace, a prison, a place of execution and torture, an armoury, a treasury, a zoo, a mint, an observatory, and a public records office. It receives 5 million visitors each year, half of whom actually pay for the tour; the other half just take pictures. With that many visitors to the Tower, it is vital that the space around it be able to handle large crowds. However, until recently, this was a major problem. Over the years, the area around the Tower had become cluttered with urban development which made the approach to the tower unpleasant both logistically and aesthetically. Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), the trust that manages the Tower, decided that a drastic change was needed.

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The Royal Festival Hall opened in 1951 and is the only surviving structure from that year’s Festival of Britain. Its design is most commonly credited to the architects Leslie Martin and Peter Moro. As our guide (name?) pointed out, however, the postwar development of the Southbank site was a complex collaborative process that involved many engineer-architect teams as well as administrative bodies like the (now defunct) London County Council. The Royal Festival Hall stands at a nodal point both in London’s political history and on the modern architectural timeline. As the sole remnant of the Labour-Party-planned 1951 extravaganza, the RFH reflects that government’s preoccupation with social welfare programs and its aim for broad postwar socio-economic reform (strongly opposed by recently-ousted Conservatives, including Churchill). The building echoes Labour’s left-wing agenda from within. Its design embraces the egalitarianism (or “democratic-ness,� as we heard several times in reference to the auditorium) of the modern architectural zeitgeist. In 1951 its concrete walls maybe seemed to whisper: “social change is in the air.�

Much has been made of Martin et al.’s “egg in a box� design metaphor. As we discussed in class, the innovation here was to enclose and elevate the auditorium. The acoustically-isolated room faces south and almost suspends in the air, shouldered by an Atlas-like skeleton of foyers. The architects’ principal intent was practical: to shield the auditorium from the rumblings of the Northern Line below ground (thus the room’s elevation) and the commuter rail above (thus the building’s buffering frame). The egg was to be an enclosed space, enveloped in the protective glass and concrete of the surrounding foyers.

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If shown this detail out of context, my first instinct would be to attribute it to a Minoan palace, or some other ancient Mediterranean culture. Upon a more thorough examination, the column in this detail is too intricate to be something out of the early Cycladic period, but in many ways the column is similar to those found at the palace at Knossos: the red coloring of the column and the flattened capital to name a couple. Clearly this column is making a reference to ancient Greece, in this case, perhaps, specifically Aegean Greece. So, especially considering that the Greeks were pagans, the fact that this detail belongs to a modern, Christian church is a bit puzzling.

Though the use of the ancient Greek style seems odd to me, the column does have elements that tie it to the rest of the building thematically. For example, the feathery design that fans out at the top of the column. This motif is repeated in many places in the building (indeed, in this image the pattern occurs in the frieze about the column). What does this pattern mean? Is it making some sort of reference to birds? to flight? to something else?

St. Paul’s is a grand, late Renaissance cathedral, designed by Christopher Wren. It is an impressive building, but I was initially drawn to it more for its symbolic qualities than for its architectural values. It was built in the late 17th and early 18th century and was completed in 1708, following the Great Fire of London in 1666, which destroyed the previous St. Paul’s. So, while it doesn’t fall within the time period we are studying, it’s a building that is very important to Britain’s artistic and political history.

It has a strong symbolic value in London because it was one of the few buildings to (remarkably) survive the German bombing during World War II. This is a testament to the strength of the building’s design. The famous picture of the cathedral standing intact while flames from German bombing lick up around it is a powerful image representing British tenacity during the Battle of Britain.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the building is its massive dome. The dome is actually composed in three parts: the outer dome, which is visible from the exterior of the cathedral (see picture below) is purely ornamental and has no structural purpose. Visible from the interior of the building is a different dome, which is intended to provide balance to the interior design. Between these two domes is a structural cone which supports the whole dome structure.

The west side of the cathedral (shown in the picture below) demonstrates the neo-Classicism that was typical of the Renaissance. The facade, complete with Corinthian columns, references Ancient Rome, while the dome is directly influenced by St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

The use of the two levels of columns in the front is interesting to me. It gives a groundedness and weight to the front that is juxtaposed with the two towers flanking the facade and the dome, which give the building a sense of reaching up.