Not now, Basil
A few other places worthy of visit: Citta Violenta has returned without me noticing; Ballard , English mysticism and 'building your own ghost cosmonaut' at Heuristic England; and via Things, a potted history and critique of science fiction and urbanism, and a photoset on Sir Basil Spence (from Wallpaper of all places). Spence is a rather fascinating figure - responsible for all kinds of 'inclusive', 'pluralist' soft modernisms like the Coventry Cathedral and University of Sussex, but also some out-and-out brutalist monsters, frequently placed in areas like Knightsbridge and St James' for extra bourgeoisie-epatering effect. His tendency to regard context as so much frippery is nicely exemplified by Southampton University, rising weightlessly and improbably from a wilderness of Mock Tudor. A story once told me about his Hutchiestown B flats in Glasgow involved an old dear slipping on the damp and exclaiming 'fucking Basil Spence!'
posted by owen hatherley at 6:47 pm
8 Comments:
"A story once told me about his Hutchiestown B flats in Glasgow involved an old dear slipping on the damp and exclaiming 'fucking Basil Spence!'"
Hutchesontown. And no joke: he was much hated, and not for no reason (the reason being his épating of le prolétariat, de haut en bas, and without being asked). For any "old dear" forced to live there, the damp underfoot was undoubtedly the least of her worries.
two more hutchesontown quotes from 'the spence' (his knighthood was conferred automatically as the designer of a cathedral, don'tyaknow...)
One; when all the wee wifeys were doing their washing the building would 'resemble a ship in full sail,' and two; that once the plant pots had filled up the building would be 'like the hanging gardens of babylon.'
There's a point to be made that his efforts, bespoke and everything, were the best of a bad bunch of prefab shit in the Gorbals, but of course they became the most symbolic of the lot (they only ever killed one person, though, and that was on their way down).
The wikipedia discussion on Spence has someone interestingly declaring 'this man should have died of shame for the visual genocide he perpetrated'.
Apologies for the Hutchesontown mistake - this post was written decidedly off the cuff.
Owen said:His tendency to regard context as so much frippery is nicely exemplified by Southampton University, rising weightlessly and improbably from a wilderness of Mock Tudor.
When I first came to Southampton, I was strangely puzzled why the dramatically cantilevered Faraday building was so familiar to me.
Years later, when my childhood stamp collection turned up when my parents were moving, I realised it one of the four buildings chosen in 1971 for the Royal Mail's set of stamps of "Modern University Buildings" - which artfully puts the building against a clear skyline.
http://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/displayset.asp?setid=111
Perhaps the dullest set of commemorative British stamps ever issued?
When I was the Secretary of the Students Union, I realised I was onto a loser with my campaign to demolish the inflexible 1930s West Building and replace it with something closer to Spence's original campus plan that might meet our space needs.
By this time in the mid-80s, the remaining pre-war "redbrick" was an important marketing tool for the University in stressing its superiority to newer universities.
I was probably alone in preferring Spence's buildings better than to Giles Gilbert Scott's hastily drafted sketches for the University Library and other buildings (executed IIRC by the wonderfully provincial- sounding local firm of Gutteridge and Gutteridge).
(The fact that it was impossible to clean the Student Union's windows below the cantilevered top floor without hiring a team of abseilers may have had something to do with this!)
bloody hell, how 'Ghost Box' are those stamps?!?!!
or perhaps Toby Paterson...
I have a first-day cover of those stamps!
Btw, isn't it Hutchesontown C on the inside cover of the Advisory Circle's Mind how You Go?
I have those stamps too, but, er, less for architectural than obsessive bored-child reasons I think.
Spence himself was aware of all this negative opinion. When presenting the Hyde Park Barracks to Her maj, she asked him.. "so what are you going to do now, Basil?", to which he replied "duck and run, ma'am!"
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