I’d say this one should have stayed in the “too pretty to demolish” category.
Then again, Oxford Street itself is a horrible place, best avoided, so I suppose I should keep my opinion to myself. Won’t, but should.
I’d say this one should have stayed in the “too pretty to demolish” category.
Then again, Oxford Street itself is a horrible place, best avoided, so I suppose I should keep my opinion to myself. Won’t, but should.
Comments
14 responses to “A handful of dust”
Oh, I dunno. The last time I was in London, I visited Oxford St, and found it jam-packed with shoppers, sightseers, and various kinds of thrill-seekers, from eager to clearly disappointed and indifferent. So, though I didn’t hang around, it must have something going for it.
I dunno. It’s not like it’s the Chrysler Building. Looks not so much pretty as plain and boring to me. The only thing of visual interest is the color. We could paint random sections of any boxy building orange for the same effect.
The windows! The columns!
After years and years of ignoring the urban core of Seattle, I’ve been traversing it often to change buses when exploring, and so I’ve been looking closely at the architecture. Some I hate, some leaves me cold, but a lot is beautiful, including some that’s plain [and boring in a sense] but hella pretty. I think this building is in that category.
I agree that the current building looks lovely. I do hope that the architects of the new building will be paying as much attention to æsthetics as they did back in 1930 when the current building was constructed; I also hope that they pay a lot more attention to accessibility than they did back then.
I’m with Ophelia; I think it’s pretty.
This is an excellent example of urban architecture of its time–attractive without being gaudy, large but not overwhelming, inviting at the street level. If they’re going to replace it, they should do their best to learn from this design while, as tigger mentions, making it accessible.
And the building they’re planning to replace it with has zero charm. I don’t hate all modern architecture but I don’t see any appeal in this:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14162249/Angela-Rayner-Marks-Spencer-demolish-flagship-Marble-Arch.html
I like lots of modern architecture – starting with the above-mentioned Chrysler Building, which I love with a passion. Seattle’s massive high-rise boom includes some very fun items, like one with external walls that tilt outward then inward, and one that emulates a pile of boxes stacked with the corners sticking out.
Ah, here it is – it’s called Skyglass.
yes, it’s architecture with a human scale – art Deco before it learned to love fascism.
@Nullius
The colour’s the key. You could do the same on a blank concrete wall and it would be interesting (maybe great) but it would be painting not architecture. With architecture the demands are so much greater which the modernist wannabes (as opposed to the real thing) never understood. They were too in love with Ayn Rand or something.
The current M&S building, co-incidentally, was built in the same year as the Chrysler building, which might explain the aesthetics.
I agree that the replacement is awful (thank you for the link, Arty; I managed to get a glimpse before the photos were covered by a demand for money). It looks more like something built on an eighties’ industrial estate than a considered replacement for an Art Deco building in an historic street.
I don’t think the M&S store is Art Deco. The Chrysler building is Art Deco; it’s PEAK Art Deco, Art Deco with bells on, Art Deco at the height of its power.
Art Deco is all about the curves. The M&S building is all right angles. The capitals on the middle columns are pretty much the opposite of Art Deco.
I see a lot of news outlets are calling it Art Deco. Sigh. They’re confusing the period with the style. Not everything built in the 30s was Art Deco, to put it mildly.
I think it just about qualifies as art deco. The simplified flat surfaces are very much an an art deco feature. Along with the geometric curves they pretty much define the style. But it’s wonderfully eccentric (Just through in a couple of ionic capitals because, why not). Which surely makes it worth saving. It reminds me of a song about London by the great Shane Macgowan which goes something like: “Your architects were madmen, your builders sane but drunk”, though in this case it’s probably the British government that is drunk.