Riot, Reconstruct, Realisation

From the far reaches of Tottenham many of us who live in or around Croydon suddenly found ourselves engulfed by the carnage that was the 2011 London Riots, I luckily found myself in Oslo during that period, although I say ‘luckily’ in the coldest of terms after experiencing the Oslo bombing. Yet the London riots were on a completely different social level to the Oslo bombings, the riots taken hostage by a rabid mob of youthful brain chaos rather than Oslo’s one-man utopian paranoia.

A great deal of damage was done during those nights, not just to the physical architecture and urban environments of Croydon but arguably more to local social and cultural context. I will always remember sitting at my friend Shwar’s house in Oslo when the image of Reeves Corner Furniture Store (Church St.) fully ablaze came alive on the muted television. Interestingly my first thoughts were neither ‘good on em’ or ‘the little blighters’ it was;

Why Reeves Corner?

When I arrived back home I grabbed the opportunity to visit Reeves as soon as I could and it was a shocking site, where Reeves used to stand as your local friendly traffic island you could quite literally now see straight through it. However my thoughts soon turned to the Eagle pub across the road. Why had this pub survived? My only experience of that pub was that it was empty and had terrible karaoke, burning that building down would have opened up such colourful architectural opportunities whilst in West Croydon people witnessed the burning and looting of many independent businesses one of which was Rockbottom (London Rd.). A music shop that has provided me with bass strings and the desire to own more guitars than I could afford for years, the shop counter was a great piece of craftsmanship in its on right using scaffolding poles to frame the counter effectively creating a space within a space sheltering all kinds of musical paraphernalia. Funny the rioters did not burn M&S or River Island, I would love to believe this was because they knew Reeves and Rockbottom were architecturally rich in character but I doubt it very much indeed.

I am no twenty-first century revolutionary but I would not burn down a century old discount furniture store to aid my direction to make a statement. Apart from the fact that a furniture store is ideal fuel for a fire the act itself makes no impact because there is no deeper manifestation. When you think about it architecture once again becomes the first victim, most of us take the urban environment around us for granted but once a riot, storm or graffiti slogan destroys or defaces our homes and familiar architecture we are quickly reminded of the hope and happiness we place in a great many of them. All that remains of these spaces in Croydon now is a series of empty voids amidst what is now a damaged streetscape. But there is still hope in the form of futures. Reeves corner is in a particularly dominant position to make a strong architectural statement through its position as an urban island, I would love to see a new architecture in its place becoming a hybrid of discount furniture store and homage to the riots, an education centre for future Croydon rioters if you will to aid them in understanding which buildings to burn and which buildings to appreciate.

tW