EUSTON ON FIRE

 

North Gower Street. Some confusion by the AI here. The "Festival of Britain style" building is by an unknown architect, not Maxwell Fry, who was responsible for the block to the South of the entrance to Tolmers Square, dated to 1940.

To complicate things further it seems that Fry did build in a less-than fully modernist way, and he used a version of that curvy entrance canopy in his work in Nigeria. So there are two interesting examples of British Modern here which may both be hostels for young women. Bear in mind that UCL was one of the first colleges to offer degrees to female students.

 

One version of the Modernist myth holds that it was necessary to make a clean break with the past. English culture on the other hand is well known for its ability to use compromise to ward off the violence of outright revolution.

So it's possible to trace a path from the chaos of Victorian Revivals, via the Arts and Crafts movement, stripped Classicism, the homely compromises of the Festival of Britain style, to the genuine modernists like Fry.

 

Continuing with Maxwell Fry / Jane Drew. An early project in the classical mode in the seaside town of Margate. So many of the early modernists had a thorough grounding in classicism, to their benefit. Sadly, when I started at UCL , classicism was barely mentioned, but to be fair, I have only warmed to the idea of acquiring a deep knowledge of the Classical Orders in the last couple of decades.

There is that wiggly canopy again. Who introduced that into the modern canon? Perhaps that is obscure. Ramsay Hall was quite close to UCL. I'm pretty sure I knew someone who lived there at some stage. Not a building I have ever been fond of. Difficult to judge the crematorium from this one picture.

I guess the main message coming across to me is that, whether you take Fry's career, or the trajectory of modernism in the UK from say 1920 to 1970 when I was an earnest young Architecture student, There is a beginning in Stripped Classicism followed be a gradual transition to the Modernism of Corb, Mies et al.

 

I have always liked Euston Fire Station. Arts and Crafts ideas expressed over a six or seven storey building. The extremely tall chimneys and oriel windows are definitely Arts and Crafts in feeling. The ground floor drifts more towards classical.

Whatever. I love the balanced asymmetry, the use of materials, the unity with variety. What's more it's a local authority job. You. Might have expected something safer, more boring. Great to see it being kept in good condition.

 

 

Is the plumbing original I wonder, and under the control of the architect? I certainly enjoy the "pipework as sculpture" As a student in say 1970 I really had little idea how plumbing worked, but the networks of cast-iron pipes at the back of London buildings spoke to my artistic sensibilities. I always wanted to do a series of paintings based on these aerial roots of the institutional bathrooms and toilets within.