Hoarding the boredom

Imagine this scenario, you are finishing catching up on the mornings posts on Dezeen and enjoying a cup of green tea when your boss puts a virgin sketch pad on your desk and says it is now company policy for every employee to have one on their desk. Ok you think, but then your boss explains that you can't use the sketch pad. No reason is given as to why you cannot use the sketch pad but it has to stay on your desk and consume precious space, but more importantly look and be painfully dull. Its pages empty, its potential lost.

This is exactly what is happening to Croydon right now if you exchange the sketch pad for some site hoarding and the boss figure for the local council and / or landowners. An unsightly urban plague, these temporary hoardings turned long-term residents isolate spaces all over the expanse of the town from burnt out London Road buildings to the many unoccupied sites around the tired East Croydon redevelopment areas. The fact that these hoardings remain a completely unexploited artistic and graphic outlet is beyond belief, and you do not have to be the next Francis Bacon to understand the opportunities that exist from these otherwise useless additions to the street facades.

Ahead of Croydon's youthful and experienced artistic communities alike exists a definite and logical opportunity to seize a flexible variety of large scale blank canvases from what is currently a collection of over-scaled oppresive timber boundaries. As well as these boring hoardings that hoard further boredom there exists a bounty of other elements in our urban landscape that all have the real potential to become fantastic graphic surfaces by simply adding some imagination and medium, and there are without question a unique collection of people out there who would fulfill this dream for free. A plentiful amount of these characterless boundaries, alleyways and train bridges already exist around Croydon ready for these artists, but are presently all guilty of offering nothing towards the current direction in establishing the thought provoking aesthetic that Croydon is desperately trying to brew. 

This depressed element of the urban environment can be forced to re-evaluate itself, and just like in the 1970's when Jamie Reid and Malcom McLaren helped imagine the revelation that was the punk aesthetic, now is the time to use these canvases to express a fresh regionalist graphic for our small pocket of South London.

TW

...and so, we apologise for nothing (part 2)

There was a time when I was younger and many unique and genuine at heart places existed within Croydon, you could browse the catacombs of beano's record shop, enjoy a cold Belgium cherry beer at the Beer Circus or be inspired by a dictionary of colours and textures at Turtles haberdashery. Despite what would appear to be a collection of amazing spaces destined to be a part of the local scene for generations to come they no longer exist today and neither does a part of my childhood. The same can also be said for the late Astoria venue on Tottenham Court Road where I attended my first ever punk gig at the naive age of 14, where we had to in turn convince some boozy students in front of us to pose as our brothers to get us in. Drunken cooperative meant I got to see Millencolin that night and they still remain a big musical influence to myslef.

It could be argued that all this change whether found in central London or the southern reaches of Croydon is just part of the unstoppable parade that is 'development' and that this gradual loss and gain is simply the blood behind the modern western world that we find ourselves surrounded by, but there exists a more probing question. The broader idea of development encourages us as human beings to try and understand why we place value on the creation and loss of spaces, such as the ones previously described, but is all this change simply inevitable and really there is nothing to question.

Despite expectation Croydon has actually lost far less of its original urban gown than say central London or west London, the latter of which especially enjoys retaining its regal appearance and then polishing over the spaces in between to hide the dirt and shame, something not often seen in a South London setting. New architectural directions in Croydon are generally dealt a rough hand, but this is not without reason. Just like the people, businesses and social spaces Croydon's architecture is tested and toughened over time until it is thoroughly rooted into the local urban harvest. You may not get the overly warm welcome or the polished mirror finish of a central London crowd, but once a presence settles into Croydon whether as a person or a structure its becomes part of an existing camaraderie of sorts. 

By camaraderie I do not mean some poorly edited 'The only way is Essex' spectacle, people playing tennis with worthless compliments, but a curiosity and respect for the space and activity around your being that is hardly ever required to be spoken of. This relationship is not just limited between people though, but between structures themselves and our relation to them. As with Croydon's people the buildings tend to give off an honestly that is rarely recognised, take for example the old Croydon Advertiser building along Surrey Street with its faded painted sign and weathered brickwork which tells of a past life and function. A building that was once the home of a proud local newspaper with its own printing press now stands empty alongside a still vibrant street market, some people would like to call this kind of thing unsightly but I personally see it as a cultural scar of sorts. The shame really is that a greater number of these cultural scars do not still exist to generate a subtle alternative map of the town, indicating the years of urban redevelopment and reconfiguration that have bequeathed our age.

This idea of being able to read a place by means of a  'map of scars' hidden within the urban cracks and shadows is one that should apply to London quite successfully. The opposite is actually the reality. London, a city that has expanded and adapted to meet fresh ideas has developed so many layers that it has actually become harder than one would imagine to decipher the cities past colours. Probably a result of the ruthlessness of said rapid development it has meant that the old is replaced by the young so frequently that an appreciation of loss and gain on an urban scale is almost impossible. Presently however Croydon still has the time to absorb and learn from the loss it suffers and the empty spaces that chill its streets, and unlike our London father who is willing to place little long-term worth on its grassroots structures, Croydon can use this given time to manifest a sound and exciting streetscape and social climate that could last for a generation.

tW

La Tour

There is function and then there is form, with beauty and aesthetics lying somewhere comfortably between the two, this is something drilled into you within the first few page turns of the reading list at the beginning of architecture school. Yet, as a society it is more commonly the mysterious or ornate forms that catch our eye the majority of the time. Everyone romances at the organic form of an unergonomic contemporary garlic crusher but no one appreciates the functional balance of a trusty bread knife.

As with the example of the bread knife the same predicament between function and form viewed from an architectural perspective can be seen at Croydon fire station on the A236. Amusingly, as kids we all tend to be amazed by the fire trucks with their red armour and adult sized water pistols but neglect the fire station itself, the home of the much loved fire truck. Nevertheless, it is not the actual fire station or garage for those shiny fire trucks that is of special interest here but the proud radio tower within the yard.

To tower above is in itself to make a statement, like basketball players, fireworks or your father as a child, to peer upwards makes you become aware of this physical presence over yourself. Strange it is then that this situation is not the case with the radio tower at Croydon Fire Station. The lesson to be learnt here is that it is the honesty of its form that makes this tower blend into the busy suburban sea below. The radio tower, with its white sprayed concrete skin and hollow ant-hill skeleton is a monument of pure function to be set climbed and attached to and as adults this would arguably be a dream piece of jungle-gym equipment, yet we rarely question it's gentle presence.

Sadly though the reality is when this presence is discovered we have a tendency to try and dress up these monuments of function like that of a beauty in a vogue magazine. Standing open mouthed in awe as the image of function is erased slowly from our memories and all we see is mass. The materials that make the structure what it is, which mould the form it has, which creates the function it offers should all be honestly adopted or we risk only witnessing an urban crop of puzzling Stonehenge forms with no real use, and a handful urban fables to accompany. Architecturally as a society we should leave these monuments such as the radio tower alone, appreciated, but alone.

tW

(Photograph to follow)