The Commonwealth Institute

Ah, The Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, the trendy, liberal cousin of the British Museum that eventually came a cropper. Whereas the British Museum is full of artefacts stolen from the natives, The Institute showcased items donated by our extended international family, not least the 25 tonnes of South African copper that comprise the distinctive ‘hyperbolic parabaloid’ roof.

Built as a showcase for trade between Commonwealth partners, it was designed by Sir Robert Matthew, who had worked as a London City Council architect from 1946 to 1953 and played a massive part in the Festival of Britain, as well as co-designing the Royal Festival Hall. Started in 1960, it was opened by The Queen in November, 1962. It comprised an administrative wing (it was a real Institute, not just a pretend one), and a large diamond shaped exhibition space with an art gallery and cinema attached, all set in ornamental gardens with walkways and waterways. It’s a lovely building, very 1962.

The exhibition itself was designed by James Gardner, who had created the exhibition inside The Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain, which looked at life on our small planet, and the proportionally enormous part Britain had played to date (sections included The Earth, Outer Space, Sky, Polar, Sea and The Land). The Commonwealth Institute’s exhibition was similarly comprehensive, with stuff from all the formerly pink bits on the map, all willingly given in the spirit of the new age of equality of peoples and a spirit of co-operation.

In 2000, the ownership of The Institute shifted from the Foreign Office to a Trust, the architectural equivalent of a football manager receiving a vote of confidence from the Chairman. It closed two years later and has remained closed ever since. Here it is in its rather sad, vacated state.

In 1969, the ITV kids show ‘The Tyrant King’ (which was basically a tourists guide to London and the suburbs), filmed several key scenes at The Institute, and the following screenshots give a flavour as to what it looked like with stuff in it. I love the central hub, although it is very frustrating that everyone in the programme who passes the centre looks down, and I have no idea what they are looking at.

The Hub

Not part of the permanent exhibition

The late Phillip Madoc checks out some ethnic art 

Some sort of African exhibit

Another sort of African exhibit

How much did Modernists love stair cases?

The building is due to reopen in 2014 as the new home of the Design Museum, although the interior has, apparently, been significantly remodelled. I wonder if there will be a place for a model of a Hong Kong junk, or a set of African drums? I hope so, but I very much doubt it (the majority of the exhibits were returned to their places of origin).

Speaking of Design, here’s the flag of the Commonwealth, a classic of simplicity and good taste, although I'm not sure it’s a coincidence that the beneficent golden glow encircling the earth has a gap where Russia and China are.    

Modernist Public Houses Of The Realm

God Comes To The Midlands

Talking of Sir Basil Spence, it's often forgotten that as part of the commission for his astonishing Coventry Cathedral (above), he also designed three parish churches in the area at the same time: St. Oswalds, St. Chads and the Church of St. John the Divine. Variations on a theme, the churches are part secondary school, part temple: a eminently practical arrangement that I'm sure Jesus would approve of. I particularly like the large crosses at the front of two of the churches, designed to be back lit and to project out into the community, like the beam from a lighthouse.

St. Oswald's

St. Chad's

Church of St. John theDivine

I'm not a religious person, but if any of these were my 'local', I'd go.

The Romance Of Modernism

There is a strange public opinion which holds that Modernist architects were in some way destructive rather than creative forces, as if their work was a deliberate and spiteful attempt to blot our landscapes with huge and unwieldly blocks of concrete. The opinion is usually based on the misconception that these new buildings were erected on the sites of half beam Tudor houses or whatever heritage buildings the Luftwaffe failed to bomb, and reinforced by the fact that this style of building has fallen out of fashion, and surviving examples are often neglected and unsympathetically treated.

Basil Spence (1907-1976) was a Modernist, but he was also a romantic, an idealist, influenced as much by the ancient as the modern, and by his hugely enthusiastic, almost child like view of the world (the short film below confirms this: not only does he say how much he admires children's art, he also sticks his tongue out while sketching, like a kid concentrating on drawing a castle). I don't have a massive amount to say about his buildings, other than that I like them enormously and I know that he created them in anticipation of a braver, newer world that still hasn't materialised.   

Life Guard Barracks, Hyde Park

Cannongate, Edinburgh

Glasgow Airport

Scottish Widows Building, Dalkeith

Swiss Cottage Library

British Embassy, Rome

Here's a short film that gives you a flavour of where Sir Basil was coming from, as well as featuring fantastic archive footage of some of his greatest works. The series is called 'The Pacemakers', and it documents 'people who change the world they live in'. Sir Basil certainly did that and, in terms of setting the pace, we still haven't caught up yet.

With regard to that idea that Modernists were insensitive to the requirements of real people, here's Spence's self-designed  holiday home in Beaulieu, Hampshire: he practiced what he preached - at the weekend, anyway.

Portmeirion Perspectives

A helicopters eye view

Mythical creatures seem to fit in here

It costs £10 to get in now

Through the round window

Sorry, wrong number

Sir Clough Williams-Ellis does his rounds

Some interesting views of the Welsh Portofino, from a 1994 documentary called 'On Show: Portmeirion'.

George Of George Hall

Ardleigh in Essex is a place I'm very fond of, having grown up in very near by Colchester. It's a quiet, rural place, far removed from what some people will tell you what Essex is all about (Mary Whitehouse used to live there, ffs). It's a big county, after all, and this corner, not far from the Suffolk border, is not part of the semi-legendary hinterland of fake tan, fake tits, fake fur and decorated genitals that apparently stretches west of Chelmsford all the way into the East End of London. Ardleigh is, for the most part, entirely free of flash and vulgarity. I say 'for the most part' because Bobby George lives there.

Bobby George is perhaps the most famous darts player never to win a World Championship (although he's been a runner up twice). Where he has triumphed, however, is in making himself a media favourite - the walking, talking embodiment of the game: Cockney accent, brash demeanour, mangled vowels and piled up with more dodgy gold than the floor of a Swiss bank vault. His home in Ardleigh is the self-styled George Hall, a more or less brand new ancestral pile, a triumph of self-determination.

The house, which Bobby claims he has mostly built himself, is an oddly shaped mock-mock Georgian affair, which looks rather like a piece of bent styrofoam packing. He has surrounded the house with a random series of plastic sheds and dog kennels. The pillared porch is a nice touch, as is the half dartboard which tops the door instead of a fanned pane of glass. Bobby is also one of the few people in Britain to have recently installed an analogue TV aerial. 

The inside, unfortunately, is hugely disappointing. Where is the gold? The monogrammed walls? The two feet deep shag carpet? The diamond encrusted chaise longues? Bobby, who likes to think of himself as 'the Elvis of Darts', lets us all down rather badly by sticking with decor that resembles the interior design of a mid-budget private care home, or a once decent but now very tired hotel. B & Q chandeliers and heavy velvet curtains do not a mansion make.

Let's take a look through the keyhole, rather unfairly comparing what we see to its counterpart room in Graceland, the world famous domicile of Elvis Presley, 'the Bobby George of Rock 'n' Roll'...

Bobby's front room

Elvis' front room

Bobby's dining room. What time does the regional sales conference start?

Elvis' dining room. Fried peanut butter sandwiches for eight, please

Perhaps the most successful room in George House is the full size pub, successful in the sense that at least pubs are supposed to look impersonal and unoccupied when empty. Same carpet as in the front room, too, there must have been a sale on. Elvis' leisure complex, the infamous Jungle Room, is far more intimate and compact and relaxed, although you'd have to be careful not to lose your shoes in the carpet.

The George Arms

The Jungle Room. Lawdy, it's gaudy

In case you were wondering, I'm not sneering at  Bobby or Elvis for their taste. I admire Elvis immensely for many things, not least his showmanship and excess. Bobby's okay, too, but I wish he'd gone all out on the inside of his ugly house, making it a suitably grandiose stage set for his outsize, gleefully brash persona. Bobby may himself feel that his vision was compromised, as he put the house up for sale last September. No takers as yet, but then he has priced the house (and the grounds with their fully stocked fishing lakes) at a cool £3.5 million pounds. That's Bobby for you, though, always a trier.