THREE STRANGE BUILDINGS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 186, 4 May 1929, Page 29

THREE STRANGE BUILDINGS

ARCHITECTURAL ORIGINALITIES IN LONDON

Architecture has a way of getting out of hand at times. The danger of asking architects to be original is that they might take you at your word. It is like asking men to worship in a new ritual before they have resolved on a new religion. It is a danger always recurring; and it lies in the fact that there is no ethical conviction underlying men’s thought which is sufficiently strong to shape the extravagance of the imagination or resist the charms of novelty. Three of London’s recent buildings are original to a high degree. One is entirely black in external colour, another is distinctly modernist in treatment, and seems hardly to have any windows, whilst the third appears to be in a style unknown to the general run of architects. The first is the building for the National Radiator Company in Great Marlborough Street. It is a tall, plain, rectangular block, much higher than it is wide, and it is covered from base to attic in a black shiny marble. ’ It reminds one strangely of a huge black metal tea-canister, relieved only by the simple oblong holes for windows and at the top by touches of yellow and orange' enamel colour. This is not meant to be an unkind comparison, for the building looks surprisingly well; and the most surprising thing about it is that it does not look as black as one would suppose. Black, presumably, in so much the colour of London’s buildings that a building which sets out to achieve at the beginning what it must eventually achieve at the end by virtue of London’s soot and grime is not so remarkable after all. In fact, this great smooth mass of shiny black marble reflects the light and appears as light as most buildings. The marble exterior is no ordinary veneer, for it is built up in the Roman manner with huge blocks —five inches thick- —of Swedish black marble, cramped with copper cramps to the building behind. The unusual treatment of the building was dictated largely by the desire of the National Radiator Company to produce in London a building similar in character to their famous skyscraper in New York, which is covered similarly in black marble. The architect, for this was Mr. Raymond Hood, and he, with Messrs. Gordon Jeeves, F.R.1.8.A., is responsible for the building in London. •

The second building under review is The Times’ Furnishing Company in High Holborn. This has a hesitating modernist look about it. It has tall narrow shafts for windows, and a certain pylonie effect which is somehow characteristic of modernist work. Witness the work of Sir John Burnet. Adelaide House, London Bridge, and of

Mr. Syllvester Sullivan in Courtaulds’ building, St. Martin’s-le-Grand. The buildiiig in High Holborn is not so sure of itself. Its narrow windows seem to be there as a result of causes other than the modern predilection for plenty of wall space. The widths between the windows are about the same as the windows themselves, which, as everyone should know, is a bad thing in architectural design. However, this building does show some attempt to advance architectural thought, and is therefore infinitely more worthy of notice than many of the buildings erected in London during the last decade. It should be seen at night, for then ' it presents a very curious appearance. The beams from the flood-lights play on to the face of the building at such a flat angle that they show up the tiniest irregularities in the faces of the stone blocks; like the headlights of a motor-car shining across a bumpy road. Consequently the stone front seems to undulate in the most fascinating way. Some stones appear distinctly concave and others convex, although the variations could not be more than the minutest fraction of an inch. The third building is a new office block in Artillery Row. Victoria Street, beside the Army and Navy Stores. It conforms to no known style of architecture, and it is hardly original, for it seems to be compounded of many styles. It is a wide, tall building covered in a glazed terra-cotta of a pale coffee-coloured shade. Again jve have the tall pylons on either flank and the tall shafts of windows along the face of the building. Between each group of narrow windows rise great vertical ribs which look like Gothic buttresses. Indeed, there is a touch about the tops of them which suggests the Gothic pinnacle. These ribs incline inwards as they rise on au exaggerated curve—called a “batter” ; and above these Gothic buttresses there is an arcade of small arches in the Romanesque manner; and above the arcade—as if to confound our faith in the style—are large classical consols. Below, at street level, at the bases of the pylons on either flank, are the arched entrances. These arches have around them one moulding which might be Italian Romanesque, and another which might be a Norman billet mould, or a debased form of the classical “bead and reel.” Who knows? Running along the face of the building, above the first floor windows, and in and out around the buttresses, is an enriched band of a kind that suggests the “leaf and ball” enrichment of the Roman wreath. Yet this symposium of the styles s quite interesting in general form, providing one does not take its detail too seriously.