Architecture
High visual illiteracy
willia. Wilkins
Mine hosts Forte, Joseph, Davis and their ilk, are at their tills; no doubt the sheets are at he laundry, the chefs at their 'sir-loins,' but all right 'with London after three years of their intensive hotel building?
It started in 1969 when the Government Introduced grants to encourage the building of new hotels. The aim was simple: to provide What was deemed to be urgently required accommodation in Britain, and London in particular, was to enjoy fully the economic benpits of rapidly expanding international tour'stn. In London the developers' energies had already become somewhat under-exercised as„ a result of the restrictions Imposed on °like building in 1964 and hotel building apPeared to offer a diverting little opportunity. The availability of grants more or less ceased in March 1973. But during 'the season' some 24,177 hotel bedrooms have already ranked for subsidy in London alone. 'Ind not all the fruits of this enterprise have Yet ripened. On the one hand we have hotels nearing completion, like Grand Metropoli`,..an's little twenty-seven-storey job off Cromwell Road, and on the other hand a new generation is about to arise to demonstrate what our enterprising friends can do without the Public's funds, among them the Intercontinental London on Hyde Park Corner and
the 380ft South Bank Hotel, of which more later.
Now that all our bold hosts really are no longer little ducklings needing public protection, nor yet show signs of becoming lame in their maturity, how do we feel, standing back to survey the fruits of our £24,177,000 effort to ensure that the deserving inhabitants of these isles enjoy all the manifold blessings contingent on floods of tourists being properly processed by British hotels?
Alas, surely, the answer is 'appalled.' Three quarters of the buildings are a disgrace to everyone connected with them, client, architect and planners. The remaining quarter are for the most part no better. The blame lies evenly in each case. The planners are in general to blame, for, having been caught with their pants down in 1969, they failed to suggest any policy until 1971 when a paper was produced 'for discussion.' It was hardly as if they had not had warning, the London Hilton was built in 1962 and clearly established the opportunistic pattern of raping a site regardless of the decencies of scale, location and surrounding character, regardless, in short, of the existing fabric of our city. The architects of this pioneering piece are Lewis, Solomon and Kaye. Apparently they have partners too. The traffic generated by a hotel is another issue on which the planners should be taken to task. Traffic flow has been at the front of their minds for some time, they have stipulated space for off-street loading and unloading and have been variously thoughtful about motor cars and motor buses. Some hotels, like the London Tara, have become frank traffic islands, with tiny reefs, covered by canopies, where timid voyagers wait for their 'clippers ' to collect them to go touring the unknown. But nowhere do the planners appear to have borne in mind the effect of these regulations on the street Frontage, which in many cases is eroded into a series of murky holes, as at the Central Park in Bayswater or the Cavendish in Jermyn Street. Clearly one of the disadvantages of planners who apparently only understand zoning and traffic flow is that they are incapable of guiding feeble architects through the architectural problems which they themselves have aggravated. As it is, the lower floors of any modern building present the greatest problems to an architect. It is here that you can sort out the purveyors of' curtain walling 'from those with some sense of the art of architecture. Remember the total confusion at the foot of Centre Point? Well, the Knightsbridge Gasometer — otherwise called Park Tower, has it; the Royal Garden's got it West Centre in the Lillie Road (by Raymond Spratley) has it. They've all got confusion round the ground. Actually Seitert ot Centre Point, Garden, Gasometer and Tower, can be quite entertaining with the curtain walling. To be sure the concrete at Centre Point rather reminds me of elderly ladies who overpaint their shrivelling lips into luscious bows, but he has improved: the cladding of the London Metropole is both mildly interesting and discreet. And if his London Penta is vile, and his London Embassy, though small and smooth, brutal to its neighbours on the Bayswater Road, well, you should see the Imperial in Russell Square for breathtaking tastelessness, or Sidney Kaye, and Eric Firmin's Royal Gloucester for the egregrious Rank in Harrington Gardens. One can see what they are trying to do but they lack the basic visual literacy with which to do it.
No one wishes to force them to build anonymous 'match boxes,' but the current imagery of the hotelier and his architect has a curiously defensive streak in it. Think of the International with its ramps (the portcullis was up when I was there) and the keep-like quality of the ' Gasometer ' and the Penta, whose central tower appears to enjoy machiciolation). The meaning of it all is: 'Exclusive.' And do you know that now Ulf:. even pull the shops inside these quite ' ordinary ' hotels? They deny their enlivening quality. to the street to buttress the ' exclusiveness ' of their patrons. But most of these hotels are also aggressive in the 'international ' size and sweep of their forms, and in the dramatic pattern of their windows. 'We are by no means insecure people, we international travellers. No siree! We are to be envied.'
Well the current example of this is the proposed South Bank Hotel. It is designed by Derek Stephenson and Partners for the discriminating Mr Gerald (" Beautiful is not an adjective I would apply to any building ") Ronson of the Heron Corporation: A sordid series of failures of judgement surrounds the project from the GLC Planning Committee to our old guardian, the Royal Fine Art Commission who had their usual toothless mumble about it, to the Royal Academy who proudly display the model in the current show (when will they learn?). The building will be sufficiently tall to dominate the new National Theatre and be visible from St. James' Park (' exclusive views '), the scale of the detail is vilely aggressive and the overall colour dark bronze. Dark bronze that will give the mannered design of the tower an even more looming character.
But there is hope, Mr Rippon has called the plans in. Let us pray that the failures of judgement surrounding hotels, of which this is a typical example, are finally halted.
William Wilkins, a distinguished artist, has a long family connection with architecture, going back to his great-great-grandfather, also William Wilkins, who designed the National Galery, University College, London,. and Grange Park, among other buildings.
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