Risk Assessment

Seeing as it's currently the (fantastically vacuous) London Architecture Biennale a quick eulogy is in order to perhaps the finest architecture site around- the Twentieth Century Society's Risky Buildings list.



Here we have a list of modern structures under threat, the text a catalogue of astounding philstinism obviously designed to induce maximum ire. The threat usually comes from supermarkets, councils anxious to build another shopping centre, uppity hayseeds horrified by flat roofs- and frequently government itself, as in the current attempt by Tessa Jowell to de-list the budget Xenakis hyperbolic parabaloids of the Commonwealth Institute.



But what really makes this so eerily beautiful are the photos. A potted history of british modernism, from Elizabeth Scott's 1928 Shakespeare Theatre to Victor Pasmore's Apollo Pavilion in 1969, is shown now rusting, rotten, overgrown- Ballardian terminal sites, contaminated streams running through monuments to the space programme.