Remember, Buildings Must Die
Recalling one of Richard Seifert's lost gems, a Muriel Spark masterpiece and the international story of the new towns
Everyone I’ve spoken to this January has spoken of feeling blue. I wonder if it’s not just the short days and the weather, but also the UK election being pushed back, and the rising dark of the US one too. So I’ve been rummaging in the archives for pictures and thoughts on one of my favourite lost buildings of London, the International Press Centre, to transport us away from this bleak present moment.
A long lost Seifert
For centuries the British press centred on Fleet Street in London, the road that famously follows the path of the River Fleet. It was a street that kept up with the trends of modernisation, whether it be the technology churning away behind the facades of warehouse buildings and offices, or the construction of bright modernist ones, such as the Daily Express HQ, in gleaming black, one of London’s most dramatic streamlined moderne landmarks, designed by Owen Williams and opened in the mid-1930s.
As the press industry grew, particularly with the expansion of publications around the world wanting a presence in London, so came the pressure to provide a home to international journalists in the UK. Richard Seifert designed the International Press Centre for Shoe Lane, just off Fleet Street, which began construction in 1968 and was completed in 1972. Like the Daily Express building, the IPC was a modernist box with curved corners, but rather than being a highly polished gem this would be an 18 storey rough concrete tower rising to 238 feet in height. Rather than being a single block, the IPC was instead a cluster of four slender towers, each projecting from the central core at angles, much as Seifert’s later NatWest Tower did on a much larger scale. In plan for this created a lucky four leaf clover form, much as NatWest’s aped the company’s three rotated chevrons. The IPC was notable for its lozenge-shaped windows recessed into the concrete façade, a style mirrored almost exactly in Camden Town Hall, designed by that borough’s in-house team and completed a couple of years later.
The building was topped out on 3rd March 1972 in a ceremony by the environment secretary Peter Walker, and by 1975 it was occupied by its sponsors, the Foreign Press Association, the Newspaper Society and the Press Club. As well as offices there were conference rooms and radio studios. The International Press Centre was a bustling place, with that most essential journalistic tool – a pub, The City Retreat – on the ground floor, whose incongruous coach lamps and hanging baskets emerged awkwardly from the rough concrete. At the other end, the top of the centre was a seldom used helipad, from the days when there were plans for regular helicopter ferry services creeping into all plans for London. Its most frequent user was Mirror owner Robert Maxwell, who used to land his copter on the roof without permission.
Its imitator, Camden Town Hall, can still be seen opposite St Pancras Station, not just renovated but extended upwards. Not so much the IPC, which suffered as the media landscape shifted in the new millennia, away from print towards digital, just as the papers themselves had fled Fleet Street for larger sites in Wapping and Kings Cross. It also suffered due to its pre-personal computer ceiling heights, which didn’t allow for all the digital cabling required. It was demolished in 2013 to make way for a messy steel and glass tower for Land Securities, now home to Deloitte. I have fond memories of the International Press Centre, a friendly and oh-so-late-sixties egg box space freighter landmark in the narrow tracks around Fleet Street. I took these photos back in 2010. Did it need to be demolished? No. Is it missed? Not really, not enough. It doesn’t even make it onto a list of Seifert’s buildings on Wikipedia. But through images of those lozenge-shaped windows we can glimpse a different version of modernity, with ashtrays and memos and microfiche and analogue computers. I was sad to see it go, and would love to hear some stories about what it was like to work in. Do get in touch if you have any!
Dirty New Town
Join Owen Hatherley and I for an online event about new towns around the world, as part of Milton Keynes Literary Festival. What do these places have in common, and what challenges do they face? Join us for a fun, opinionated and enlightening discussion of Cumbernauld in Scotland, Nowa Huta in Poland, and Tama in Japan – set against the story of Milton Keynes itself. Tickets and more information here.
Remember You Must Die
A few years back I was lucky enough to a guest on Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life into old books. I chose Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori, the brilliantly dark, funny and imaginative story of a group of elderly people terrorised by a voice on the phone telling the to remember they must die. You can hear the episode here. Years before there was a great Screen 2 adaptation of it, starring a whole generation of extraordinary actors, including Maggie Smith, Michael Hordern, Stephanie Cole, Thora Hird and Renee Asherson. Okay, so they changed the ending, but it’s still wonderful. And it’s just been re-shown on BBC Four, meaning it’s on iPlayer for the next 28 days or so. Well worth a watch on these cold winter evenings.
I remember doing some of my Bar exams there in about February 1993. We must have used one of the conference halls. I seem to recall it being very seventies with low ceilings and wide shallow stairs leading everywhere at odd angles, bit like the Barbican. Seemed very old fashioned then but now it would be fascinating. Interesting that you mention the low ceilings that combined with the wide spaces is probably my most vivid memory.