Unknown Zoo elephant House blue print above, and Columbus Zoo's Asian Quest below
It's just so tacky--The Guardian
Wednesday 31 January 2007
Porthcawl's new Esplanade House is a building that "seems determined, single-handedly if necessary, to bring the fun of the beach resort back to the seafront". That's according to the Royal Society of Architects in Wales (RSAW). The 42-unit apartment block was one of six projects to land a Welsh Housing Design award last year, the judges praising its mix of "humour, charm, intelligence, populism and solid architectural pragmatism". Down on the seafront, though, Porthcawl's residents don't seem to be feeling the fun yet. "How would I describe it?" pondered a local 80-year-old outside Esplanade House. "It's an abortion." "We don't know what it's trying to do. It's just stupid," a young family agreed. Locals have taken to calling it "the bottle bank".
Most incensed has been the Porthcawl Civic Trust, which fired off a scornful letter to the RSAW last month, essentially giving them a good ticking-off for handing the building an award. "Those living inside this monstrosity may praise it; they have the good fortune of looking out of it at the delightful seascape," wrote the trust's chairman, Anthony Hontoir, "whilst we who walk along the promenade . . . must contemplate the bottle bank's ugliness, which is unlikely to improve as the years pass by."
Not even its architects, Stride Treglown Davies, imagined that Esplanade House would quietly blend in. The building's diamond pattern of bright green panels (patinated copper), its prominent porthole openings and bulging facade seem to completely ignore the cream-coloured livery of Porthcawl's promenade. It looks like a golfer in an Argyle jumper standing in the middle of a cricket team.
There are overt references to the seaside everywhere on the building: the stone pillars at street level resemble ice cream cones. Around the corner, a gabion wall - made of small rocks held within a large wire frame - incorporates brightly coloured plaster shells and fish, while the glass canopy over the ground floor shops is etched with starfish, dolphins and the like.
"We thought very carefully about what was Porthcawl," says Gareth Davies of Stride Treglown Davies. "There was the funfair, the seaside, kiss-me-quick hats and all that. The character of the town was reflected in various elements of the final design. There's stone like a seawall, a facade like a ship's hull, and the apartments at the top of the building are like beach lookout posts, plus the ice cream cone columns and things like that."
The civic trust has a different reading: "It's so bloody tacky, it's horrible!" says Hontoir. "You've got a complete mix of styles: a sort of rounded bit on the corner; a bit of artificial stonework or whatever it is; little balconies jutting out at the side, and those fish in the wall that look like bath toys - most of which have been vandalised already. If I was ever dragged kicking and screaming to Disneyland, it's the sort of thing I'd expect to see there."
This type of drama has been playing up and down the country since the days when wattle and daub was a vulgar new style. But the case of Esplanade House illustrates a wider problem: when it comes to deciding what good architecture is, the populace and the architects don't always seem to be on the same planet.
Situated roughly between Swansea and Cardiff, Porthcawl grew up as a 19th-century coal port, before becoming a resort town for miners from the surrounding valleys on their fortnight holidays. Today, the town is arranged roughly along class lines. There is a funfair and family caravan parks to the east, and a more well-to-do, largely elderly community centred around the golf club to the west. Esplanade House is slap bang in the middle.
The civic trust point out that Porthcawl's seafront is a designated conservation area - partly as a result of its own campaigning. The site of Esplanade House was previously occupied by the Esplanade Hotel, which dated back to the late 1880s. It was just about the grandest building in town - a four-storey edifice presenting a row of steeply pitched gables to the seafront. But it closed nearly a decade ago, and the building fell into disrepair. It was not listed, but was part of local history, says Hontoir. "There was a very strong feeling that if something had to be built on that site, could it not have been by preserving the frontage and building behind it, as has happened elsewhere? Or if that were not possible, could there not have been some effort made to preserve the essential elements of the frontage, perhaps by building something similar?"
But the old building was "unsalvageable", according to the architects. "The planners basically said, 'Look, we want you to push the boat out on this,'" says Davies. "We thought about what would really lift Porthcawl. Should we do a creamy-coloured render building with a slate roof, or do we actually put something there that stands as a marker for Porthcawl and elevates it to another generation, basically?"
The judges at the RSAW sided with the architects. "There are people who tend to view Porthcawl itself through heavily rose-tinted spectacles - as an Edwardian seaside resort, which it quite frankly never really was," says Jonathan Adams, president of the RSAW and assessor of the Welsh Housing Design awards. "To me, even the best buildings on Porthcawl seafront are really nothing to write home about. On the other hand, the place is in desperate straits. Looking at it from the outside, it would absolutely be the right thing to do to carry out a development that completely rejuvenated a key part of the seafront. The new building is attention-grabbing. In certain situations, that is exactly what you need."
Adams is concerned, though, about the disparity between what architects and lay people consider to be good design, especially when it comes to awards. He is best-known as designer of Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre, which won several awards; but he agrees that architects can sometimes design for the benefit of each other, rather than ordinary citizens. "Again and again, you'll see buildings lauded and applauded that most ordinary people see nothing in," he says. He cites the example of Caruso St John's Brick House in London, which was shortlisted for the Stirling prize last year. "Architects love that kind of thing. Things like the detailing of the brickwork, the way the concrete roof sits on top of the bricks, the shape of the roof. To most, dare I say it, ordinary people, it would just leave them cold; they wouldn't begin to understand what was good about it."
Public scorn is usually reserved for more severe and austere buildings, hard-edged modernist creations, for example, that might reference Mies van der Rohe, but do little for the local high street. The notion of the high-minded, uncompromising architects who take it upon their shoulders to single-handedly improve society - as propagated in Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead - is still pervasive in the popular consciousness, if nowhere else. Esplanade House, by contrast, makes an appeal to the masses. It attempts to speak the language of the people, and still the people aren't hearing it. Does the public need to learn more about architecture? Or do architects need to learn more about the public? Or does everyone just need to talk to each other a bit more?
Even in its awards write-up, the RSAW says: "This is the kind of building some will profess to dislike, but which the majority of locals and regular visitors will come to cherish." Esplanade House's luxury apartments sold out in three hours. Hontoir, meanwhile, says he is so incensed he is building a model of the old Esplanade Hotel for the local museum. Adams, though, has no regrets. "It deserves an award for the risks that were taken. We need to be encouraging people to take those opportunities to be bold. If we don't, we're never going to get anything special".
Even the penguins hated it Five unloved award-winners
Penguin Pool, London Zoo
Originally from Georgia, Berthold Lubetkin came to the UK in 1931, and is best known for his elegant, spiraling concrete ramps at London Zoo. The pool is an icon of 1930s British modernism. Nobody thought to ask the penguins, though, who might have pointed out that the pool was too shallow, the concrete gave them aching joints and there was nowhere for them to conduct their courtship rituals. In 2004, the penguins were moved to another pool nearby, and are flourishing.
Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh
Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue's vision for the Edinburgh seat of power took more time and considerably more money than originally intended. Despite the controversy, it won the Stirling prize in 2005, and was described as "intricate, strange, beautifully crafted, the stuff of fairy tales". However, it was a frontrunner in Channel 4's poll to find the worst building in Britain, and the debating chamber had to be closed last year when a roof beam fell down.
Peckham Library, London
Will Alsop's 2000 Stirling prize-winner may have made libraries - and Alsop - hip, but its users have reeled off a litany of complaints. Too hot in summer, too cold in winter, and too noisy all year round. Much was made of the fact that you needed to bring in a cherry-picker crane just to change a light bulb.
Media Centre, Lord's Cricket Ground, London
Future Systems' forward-looking glass-fronted blob was praised by Stirling prize judges in 1999 as "a breath of architectural fresh air". Ironic, considering the high temperatures that built up inside the building, leaving reporters drenched in sweat. They also complained that the glare was so bright they couldn't read their laptops, and that they were closed off from the action.
Runcorn Housing, Cheshire
The man who gave the Stirling prize its name, a Riba gold medallist and Pritzker prize-winner himself, James Stirling still made his fair share of mistakes. His housing estate in Runcorn was a 1960s vision of bare-faced concrete, snaking walkways and circular windows. Loved by architects, hated by residents, it was demolished in 1990.
Steve Rose
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After spending half a lifetime in the BS world of show business, I delight in the similar world of Zoological architects justifying their "creation." Any one who enjoys studying and learning about architecture as much as I do, will appreciate the blog below. It is one of my favorites.sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy
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