Modular

The idea of modular design in both architecture and furniture has been around for a great deal of time, influencing the way we interact with space and the efficiency to which we use it. As a child there is an early opportunity of being introduced to modular design in the form of toys such as Lego or Jenga. These tactile toys provide modification and repetition that helps establish in a child's development that the constants of a smaller modular element can be augmented together to form a larger and perhaps more complicated form of related proportions. Then as time passes the toy blocks we played with as a child scale up alongside us to be the very bricks that build the houses we find ourselves living in as adults.

Architecture has arguably held a fascination with modular design since the first primitive shelter was ever erected, when the thought naturally accord as to how to make the process more efficient. Less leaves, more sticks, a rigid frame. Centuries on and the effects that global warming is evidently creating has in recent years generated a surge of efficient, and more importantly economic, modular design for disaster relief situations around the world, providing a new international revival in the search for the ideal modular structure.

However, although disaster relief is clearly where modular design could be most usefully implemented the idea is notoriously being fostered and bastardised in such places as China and India, where the need to build humongous and with haste is everywhere to be witnessed through social media or otherwise. So it was with excitement that I finally took the time to analysis a modular clad building that I have passed for many years, that is found living in the shadow of its close neighbour, no.1 Croydon.

To gaze at this building briefly from one of the windows of the many trams, busses or cars that pass around the East Croydon area, you would not be alone in arriving at the quick decision that 22 Addiscombe Road is just another poor architectural example from possibly the 1970's. The ASBO concrete jacket and rigid form could easily excuse 22 Addiscombe Road for camouflaging beautifully into the many other examples of such offices that exist within Croydon. However, to stand underneath the mass of this building and perhaps even feel the reptile like cladding is to gain an enlightened understanding of the aesthetic trying to be encouraged here.

The modular cladding component takes on the form of what is essentially a giant arrow, stacked together like a fraternity, pointing this way and that in a subconscious attempt to direct nearby vehicular movement. The facade is not limited to a singular plane though, and the modular cladding carries with it both a tactile and physical plane. The arrows grind in and out of the building facade, playing with shadow and the transfer of the buildings silhouette onto the horizon. The tough finish of the concrete offering the building a sculptural solidarity that is scarcely seen in most modern architecture.

Many new developments in Croydon such as the recent Saffron Square, have fantastic aspirations for social spaces and urban massing, but still lack a certain presence regardless of their heaviness. This idea of presence could be learnt from reticent existing examples such as 22 Addiscombe Road, where the cladding quite literally reaches out to you and provokes the surrounding space. Hopefully in the future modern developments will be seen that create external skins that connect with their local context, almost as if offering an architectural handshake.

tW