Falling Skylons and Office Politics
Bastion House, the old Museum of London, and the denial of modern history
Long shadows
Philip Powell and Hidalgo ‘Jacko’ Moya’s most famous structure, the Skylon for the 1951 Festival of Britain, didn’t last far into 1952, but its shadow still falls today. The impact of their design, from Moya’s gestural sketch to the suspended sculptural marvel hanging above the South Bank’s new riverside embankment, and its swift demolition along with the rest of the exhibits has influenced the way we think about the optimism of that immediate postwar period. With food rationing still going it evoked hopes of a brighter future, just as the creation of the NHS and the welfare state did too.
When the Skylon was dismantled in 1952, seemingly at the behest of Winston Churchill’s government, it represented something culturally about Britain that isn’t great to see. A kind of small minded crushing of optimistic thoughts, and a reliance instead on the dead hand of pageantry to see us through. It’s ironic that Powell and Moya’s other Festival-era landmark in London is the estate that bears his name, Churchill Gardens.
There’s a lot at the moment that reminds me of that loss. One in particular is the fate of the old Museum of London and Bastion House, it’s towering brother, on the side of ancient London Wall in the City of London. Like the Skylon, both were designed by Powell and Moya. And like that futuristic rocket too, both hang suspended, their fates likely to cast a long shadow. I have a great fondness for both buildings: the museum, that tiled rotunda a protective citadel for the capital’s treasure, a burial mound exactly fitting for the ancient site; and the tower, a remarkable survivor from a pre-digital era. Both are awkward, strange and entirely of their time. Both are beguiling and brilliant for it.
Long before the Museum of London’s departure the City of London Corporation has been plotting ways to demolish the buildings on the old Route 11, an elevated walkway along the route of London Wall that joined together a series of postwar buildings on what would become the perimeter of the Barbican. They have been looking at the money to be made by creating much higher, more modern towers for the site, inconveniently occupied by visitors from the era of the Cold War. Those old dreams look small now beside the gleaming towers of the City or Docklands, the pinched ideas of whisky-soaked aldermen from the midcentury. Instead, this, one of London’s oldest occupied sites, must reject thoughts of history.
Postwar history appears to be particularly inconvenient for a certain type of entrepreneur who has made their way in the era of our most recent government. A recent campaign (advertising rather than crusade, obviously) by Thomas Heatherwick used AI to reimagine various British landmarks in the form of ‘boring’ modern architecture. The suggestion here is of course that postwar history is not real history, it has interfered with the natural order of things and should be dismantled accordingly. All it really does is make his own work feel even more of an unnecessary footnote. I’m never going to be as good as the past, his campaign screams. I’m just the latest chancer with a megaphone.
And so Bastion House and the old Museum of London await a fate every bit as grisly as that Heatherwick’s AI offers – only this time it won’t be his sniggering back-of-an-envelope joke, it will involve demolishing actual buildings that strongly represent a significant moment in our recent past with unconsidered trifles dashed up for a quick buck, against all of the current advice to reuse and refit. Maybe at some point someone will try to defend their replacements too. Good luck to them. If the careless attitude of today is anything to go by, I don’t fancy their chances.
If you’re interested and have time you could email Michael Gove who may yet call the scheme in for the independent planning inspectorate to examine.
Into the Library
All these thoughts of Bastion House have taken me to Michael Rosenauer’s 1955 book Modern Office Buildings, a strange and fascinating glimpse into working life in the mid-twentieth century. My copy was removed from stock of the Bath Municipal Library in 1988, and I can’t really imagine it got much use in Bath.
One of the things I most like about the book are the abrupt changes of gear and scale. So one minute we’re looking at Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier’s United Nations Secretariat Building or Skidmore Owings and Merrill’s Lever House in New York, the next it’s a low-rise office building in Hemel Hempstead new town. Must have been good for the egos of those working on minor office buildings in Britain at the time, which was presumably part of the point, to demystify the process and allow a new generation of architects into the skyscraper club – or the seven-storey club at the very least.
Rosenauer designed the Time and Life Building in London, which forms a major case study in the book. He’s straight in there on the first page, balancing economy with creating a healthy environment, and he’s prefabrication all the way. It’s written in the style of a rather abrupt lecture, and so we’re briskly hurried through sections on ‘vertical traffic-ways’ (that’s lifts and stairs babe), partitions and catering facilities, a bit like a guided tour when they can’t wait to get you out the door.
The most interesting section is the series of examples from around the world, featuring floor plans and background information, as well as some glorious photographs of postwar buildings caught in their prime. Looking at the images you can almost smell the ashtrays and hard liquor, hear the trimphones and adding machines, the functional futuristic dreams at odds with the culture of many of the people who occupied them, but helping to spur on a new age by their very presence.
Sad news about the decision on Bastion House. I was strolling in the area last week and took a few photos. I’ll be returning to take more in better light soon.
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