UCL Revisited

 

Broken bond again. This is at the rear of the Wellcome Building on Euston Road an area that was very familiar to me as an undergraduate student at UCL from 1969 to 1972.

There is a lot of interesting history connected to this building, designed by Septimus Warwick around 1930. This is very much the backside of the scheme, but still carefully detailed. The main facades wrapping around two sides are clad in Portland stone in a fairly austere version of the Ionic order. But let's get back to the brickwork.

English Bond with a three-quarter bat resulting from the width of the window openings. Why wasn't it designed to a brick module? Beats me. Could be connected to the soldier courses above and below. Or maybe the architect was following some other logic, focusing on proportions without regard to the brick size.

Maybe the brick was substituted for stone during construction for cost reasons.

 

Whatever the case you have to agree that the building is in good condition as it approaches a hundred years old. I don't want to say that this is better or worse than the modernist work of Le Corbusier and others around the same time. Both reflect different aspects of our shared history. Taking sides in retrospect seems futile to me.

I just enjoy trying to get my head inside the past with all its subtle complexity. Due credit to all involved from the architect (and client) to the bricklayers and other trades.

I spotted this building from just outside Waterloo Station. Now a dormitory for an American Catholic University's London branch.

Designed by Sir Charles Nicholson in 1905 in a somewhat eclectic style. The distinctive glazed tiles were also a feature of the interior: Doulton picture tiles depicting Nursery Rhymes. 

 

Were we worse off when this kind of Hospital provision was dependent on charitable contributions? In some ways yes. But you can't really separate this out from the macro changes to society. Opinions will differ. Much has improved. Some good things have been lost.

Certainly it's good to have buildings like this to remind us of our complex past and the determined efforts of some to provide for the less fortunate.

 

 

SINGAPORE & LONDON

 

Boat Key, Singapore. This is an AI reimagining of a low quality photo that I took in 1997 during a whistle-stop tour of Singapore and KL. That photo was digitally captured rather crudely in 2003 before I left for Dubai.

The trip was intended to give me inspiration for the only office tower I ever designed, what became Century Towers. I have worked on taller projects since then, but not as lead designer.

I know these types of buildings as Shophouses now, a distinctive tradition all up the coast from Singapore to Malaysia. I think the watercolour treatment conveys the picturesque quality of the buildings at the time.

Completely cleaned up and "restored" now, which is good of course for the inhabitants, but inevitably some of the romance is lost.

 

On Thursday I took the train into London for the first time since I moved back to UK. It was an eventful day, mostly positive but with a twist at the end.

I had a ticket through to Euston changing at Waterloo. This involves leaving the mainline station and walking across the road to the Underground. Naturally I was keeping a lookout for interesting buildings.

This church is Greek Revival. A reaction to the excesses of Victorian Gothic. Simple clean lines and sparse, stylised decoration. Everything is shallow relief and underplayed. St. John's Waterloo built in the early 1820s and designed by Francis Octavius Bedford.

 

 

 

I spotted this building from just outside Waterloo Station. Now a dormitory for an American Catholic University's London branch.

Designed by Sir Charles Nicholson in 1905 in a somewhat eclectic style. The distinctive glazed tiles were also a feature of the interior: Doulton picture tiles depicting Nursery Rhymes.

Were we worse off when this kind of Hospital provision was dependent on charitable contributions? In some ways yes. But you can't really separate this out from the macro changes to society. Opinions will differ. Much has improved. Some good things have been lost.

Certainly it's good to have buildings like this to remind us of our complex past and the determined efforts of some to provide for the less fortunate.

North Gower Street. I used to live in the double fronted house, top left. I was in a tiny little box room, right below the front door. It's just up the road from UCL main quad which was how you got in to the Architecture department (School of Environmental Studies)

It has since moved down the road and reverted to being The Bartlett. As I write this I'm sitting in St Pancras Church, a splendid Greek Revival edifice, completel with Caryatids. Those were heady days. Coming of age story.

I'm here for a reunion. Not sure how many I will know but the memories are already flooding back.

 

 

 

ZIMBABWE FIRST AND LAST

 

Some snapshots from 1981, August /September when I first arrived as a volunteer building teacher. Cultural symbols absorbed during my first couple of weeks acclimatisation when I was put up in a rented house in a rented house in a formerly white suburb of what was then still called Salisbury. Zimbabwe TV logo with drums beating in the background. Oil drums and the flag.

The skyline at Rusununguko secondary school on Blue Waters Farm, 2000 hectares of prime agricultural land bought with Dutch aid money for an Education With Production experiment. There's a radio mast on the hill, barely visible. The graffiti is by Kundai, a precocious young niece of the teacher who would become my wife.

Sister Janice was tied up with ZIMFEP, the organisation behind six new schools dotted around the country, pursuing this educational experiment. I was brought up fundamentalist protestant and by 1981 was basically Atheist, but was recruited by a Catholic organisation, CIIR, which later changed its name to Progressio 👀 and then fizzled out. I found this out while trying to make contact with the organisation to share experience.

The mixture of youths and teenagers clearing ground for a building became students of mine. They had been in the Bush in Mozambique during the war and one year into independence were trying to catch up on missed education. Great guys, but I was swamped by numbers.

 

This was one of the last projects I designed before I moved from Zimbabwe to Dubai. It's not very far from the first house we bought in Harare. I was looking on Google Earth for an image of that house and strayed across to look for the living units that were under construction when I left.

 

To my surprise the Nursery school was also there, just based on these concept sketches. It's a home for Aids Orphans. No idea how it has developed over the past 23 years.

This was put together very rapidly using Autocad and Photoshop (or similar) I was quite proud of it at the time, but put it out of my mind because it never went beyond early concept design.

 

The project was brought to us by Gardini and Sons a building company with strong connections to Clinton and Evans, who had done the work on Victoria Falls Hotel that I had been involved a few years earlier. They were always willing to work from basic drawings plus discussions on Site.

That's an excellent way to build if you have mutual trust.