More modest than many office blocks currently blighting London, this one is clad in rather striking ceramic tile:
Some other new buildings are also using ceramic, albeit in a rather different way:
But this is nothing new. Those eminently practical Victorians started using it in the intensely grubby atmosphere of Metropolitan London, and it was a tradition that carried on for many decades into the twentieth century:
So on an overcast weekend I had a random stroll around London, photographing architectural ceramics:
Obviously a lot of it was associated with shops and pubs -- places that needed to be kept easily clean and to convey an impression of hygiene:
Many of those facades remain today, long after the pub has changed its use:
Easily the most beautiful tiled facade I found was this one, in Spitalfields, where the pub has been converted to a delightful shop selling very, very traditional hardware (bees wax, enamel crockery, heavyweight cooking aprons and the like). But that malachite green tiling is so lush I want to lick it:
I did not have the same reaction to all the tiling I encountered:
And some of it was a bit tokenistic, to be frank:
Somehow in the second half of the twentieth century we seemed to lose the ability to use tiling in an aesthetically pleasing way -- consider this rather dispiriting affair in the Barbican:
But there are signs we may be rediscovering it -- with this incredibly lush green in Clerkenwell (but why hasn't it been finished?):
In this as in so many things, it was the Tube's architects that reached the pinnacle of success. Let's end with an interior shot of the amazing green wall tiling at Baron's Court (note particularly the elaborate ceramic window surrounds for the ticket windows):
The surprising thing to me is not that it is being used today, but that such a practical material ever went out of fashion.
4 comments:
Baron's Court is stunning - and I love those arced ticket signs. It's great that they're renewing the tiled platforms, rather than simply replacing them.
Do you remember those pieces of paper onto which mini-tiles were glued and which were used to clad facades? All very well until bits started falling off and landing on people's heads! If we're going to see cladding again let's make sure it's at least safe. I rather liked Vitrolite - the Mersey Tunnel was lined to waist level with it when I was a boy in the days when the Joint Committee were proud of it and maintained it lovingly.
You might have included the History Faculty building at Cambridge (James Stirling award-winning design) which was clad in tiles wittily imitating red brick. Unlike red brick they all fell off rendering the building unusable (too risky to approach). It flooded too (not nice for a library); and was unbearable in the summer and the winter as too much glass alternately boiled and froze the occupants.
But it was a masterpiece, because designed by a master. I spent much too long there once.
I'm not a huge James Stirling fan (though his Leicester university engineering building is rather interesting).
Basil Spence made extensive use of terrazzo cladding in his Southampton university buildings, all in a rather cool pearl grey. They still look pretty good, half a century on.
I'm in love with Baron's Court, though. And Labour and Wait.
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