Triton Court, is a white elephant. Originally several fusty old Edwardian insurance offices, it was slammed together in the early 1980s as a brand new financial HQ. This was the post big-bang, cash injected city of stripy shirts and braces - reeling under the heady fumes of American neo-liberalism. The interior was stripped of all vestiges of stuffy historicism, and re-imagined as a downtown financial hub. It contains all the de-rigeur trappings - scenic glazed lifts, marble columns, marble floors, water features, gold fish, plastic plants and vast expanses of blank beige cladding all centred around that most emblematic motif of 80s corporate culture - the glazed atrium. 

The retained historic facades struggled to keep this bloated money monster in check. A greedy double height mansard was added to maximise the floor area and large cubes of incongruous mirror glass bulge out through this at roof level. To provide speedy caffeine powered access to the atrium an out of scale po-mo glass entrance was torn into the Edwardian facade. 

The resulting sorry heap is a relic of proud English decorum impregnated with a bloated American interior. As such it was never the nerve centre powerhouse it was dressed up as. Both physically and ontologically Triton Court was always peripheral to the big games played in the square mile down the road. As the 80s and 90s wore through it became clear there was little of substance propping up the shoulder pads and the marble veneer began to crack.

I'm drawn to distant memories of the 1980s marketing for Milton Keynes below - very slick but we know what would happen if the camera angles were less well choreographed.

Thirty years later, it's getting ripped out. This is the recurring fate for skin deep make-overs that punch above their weight. This was no Broadgate or Lloyds of London - it was never a place for real financial superpowers just for those who yearned to look like them. 

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

Undoubtedly the most exhilarating architectural experience for a long, long time. Fredrick Gibberd's Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool took me by surprise and blew me away - it's astonishing. Worth a trip from however far . .

And if the kaleidoscopic abstract modernism is n't enough, the sepulchral crypt of the Lutyens designed original sits underneath it. Extraordinary

Rashaan - wish I'd seen him live

Many an old UK jazzer has mentioned the incredible performance of the late Rashaan Roland Kirk at Ronnie Scotts in the 70s - still playing two horns at a time after a stroke had paralyzed half his body. Having dug up some old LPs by the guy, I could never quite get what the fuss was about and tended to agree with a lot of Rashaan's critics who accused him of being a cheap circus act - playing gimmicks for laughs. Then I saw these - Kirk was one of the few who could push the boundaries of what the music could be AND burn an intense groove.

Lessons in Architecture

One of the mixed blessing of our new studio location is that I get to walk past one of my own buildings every day. Returning to the scene of the crime is something Architects don't do enough of. Five years after completion, I'm now a daily witness to the reality that minimalist detailing only works when the tenants share the designers OCD  . . and can afford a cleaner.

PR image at completion

rough at the edges

  

'Lived in'

Big Guns in Montenegro

I'm currently on site in Montenegro, which inspired the following . .

Tivat, Montengro - A sleepy backwater of the Albania Veneta until the Austrian army realised its potential as an inland port and created a naval base and arsenal there in the late 19th century. The town grew rapidly, witnessed a workers revolt in 1918 and then became a naval base for the Yugoslav army following WW2.

Submarine bunker nr. Tivat, Montenegro

Forward sixty years and a new revolution is taking place as Montenegro tries to shrug off its recent past; rescinding its tawdry reputation as a cheap 'place in the sun' to become the next luxury playground of the deserving super-rich. There is, we're told, a chronic shortage of superyacht berths available in the med . . .  Given the proximity in scale between a modern superyacht and a cold war frigate, the docks of Tivat are converting from a battle ship gray to well maintained teak. Where once there was there were barnacled balkan sea dogs knecking slivovitz in cramped barracks, there are now the supercilious mega-rich, sipping chablis with their sycophants. 

Portomontenegro development plan

Architectural legacies from the previous era still litter the site, with many arsenal buildings, barracks and hangars awaiting demolition or rehabilitation. Most imposing is the ex-milliray HQ - a robust piece of futurist modernism clad in over-sized white fans - clip-on military regalia in pre-cast concrete. The building now houses the offices and marketing suite for the new developments, the underground bowling alley once reserved for privileged officers now in the hands of Gucci clad sales execs. Its unrepentant design stance stands in stark contrast to the conglomerated mix-up of vernaculars that forms new development. There is a clear attempt to avoid the overbearing modernism of nearby coastal locations - but that's hard to do when you're jamming the apartments in. What results is a cascade of terraces allowing an intimate scale at quayside but scaling up to a mountainous heap when viewed from a distance.

Naval HQ, Tivat

 

Elsewhere the walls that once kept the curious public away have been opened up to allow pedestrian routes along the seafront. But although there are openings, the wall is still defiantly there - a reflection of the master-plan concept which suggests they want to interact with the rest of the town but are not quite sure how to do it. It must bemuse locals who have lived their lives unable to enter this large expanse in the middle of town. Now the wall is open, but what lies within is perhaps just as impenetrable as what was there before. Inside has been made for people form a different world - geographically, socially but most of all economically. 

It's easy to understand Montengro's desire to lure the big spenders in, and pursuing a plan of low density marine led development will certainly do that. But can this policy result in more than a series of foreign owned ghettos for the rich, offering nothing to those living next door but antagonism ? It's not an unusual situation for tourist development - think barefoot luxury resorts in rural India - but this is not an isolated peninsular but an urban centre. Potromontengro will change Tivat forever, let's hope this is done with  considered urban design principles and change is for the better.

Yugoslav submarines, Tivat

The same dock 10years on. A 100m megayacht filling up on €200k of fuel

The World is not enough

Some pictures I recently re-discovered from a surreal site trip to ‘The World’ artificial archipelago in Dubai. This was 2008 when the land was still selling for massive prices and Nakheel had recently announced their next proposed land reclamation scheme - ‘The Universe’.

 

These were taken from ‘Libya’ which was being re-branded as ‘Star Island’ - You can just about make out the Burj in the background. Even at that time there were erosion and silting problems and it seemed to be a massive task just to stop the islands floating away. Apparently the maintenance contract can no longer be afforded so presumably it’ll all just melt back into the ocean.