2011 Streak 102/365:Messing with buildings

2011 Streak 102/365:Walking - 3 miles, time - 1hr , Weather - Sunny but with cool wind

I will make no great claims for the Civic Centre as a building. It is no masterpiece but at the same time it is not a disaster. I it is quite well proportioned and I rather like the sparing use of blue. The only real problem with the facade is griminess caused by weathering. it may not be lovely but it is OK.

It was designed in the mid 60s by Clifford Culpin  & Partners along with the heath centre and Pavillion and the judgement of Pevsner was:

The buildings as a group are disappointing; too far away from the shops, too isolated by wind-swept open space in front, while behind car parks separate them from the river.

Since that has been written the Pavillion (which was a multi-purpose arts venue) has been demolished and its site is now a grassy patch. The Civic Centre is even more isolated. 

All the more reason to treat it with some sensitivity so that it looks as good as is possible. But that is not to be. Firstly they made a mess of the front door and disabled access; and now they have decided that their need for corporate branding trumps everything else.

The Dacorum green and white is rubbish against the blue in the building and a big tin sign is completely at odds with the rest of the building. Before the name was picked out with plain blue letters fixed directly onto the wall, which was in keeping with the look of the building and much more suitable.

The reason I worry about things like this is that we rely on the council's planning department to oversea the development of the town and impose some sort of standard. But if they are not to good with their own building what hope is there for the rest?

2011 Streak 98/365: Simplicity of design

2011 Streak 98/365:Walk - 3.1 miles, Time - 1hr, Weather - sunny, hot with a very blue sky

A notice board might seem an odd subject for a photograph, even if it is a rather splendid, old fashioned, notice board that probably dates from somewhere around the middle of the last century. But it is not the reason for the photo - it is there to indicate that the building we can partially see, behind it, is the Quaker Meeting House

I chose to show this fragment because the building does not have much of a frontage. There are a few steps down to a gateway, behind which is a small courtyard leading to the main meeting room. The label will have to stand for the whole.

It is a hot day but when you approach the building seems somehow calm and cool. This is an amazing quality common to a number of religious buildings but Quaker building tend to have the extra qualities of simplicity and modesty.  They are not immediately dated by the flourishes of decoration but by simpler things such as the shape and types of window. This building dates from 1718.

When I look at it I also think of the design philosophy of the New Town, which was recently highlighted for me by a few incidental sentence in an excellent article about the architect James Stirling

(in the immediate post war years) The public sector, now a spent force in architecture, was dominant. Like almost everyone who had talent, even Stirling spent a short spell working for the London County Council. Architecture was meant to be about social service, producing the best housing and schools affordable in an age of austerity. It was a noble vision, democratic and modernist, but it was the vision of puritans.

The architects of the New Town took the ethos of simplicity and plainness of form (along with the reductionism of modernism) and extended it over 6,000 acres. The result was rather dull.

The Quaker Meeting House is not