July 2008 Archives

Yesterday on the Stonegrove Estate in Barnet. People still live in this building (look at the fifth floor if you're in any doubt).

This is the Dave Musset story, a tale of property development set-aside.

    It all starts with 3 simple steps to permission...

1. 2000 - London Town buy paper merchants factory next door to the Tate Modern known as the Dave Musset building for a reported £7.6 million.
2. 2002 - planning application submitted for the erection of a 20 storey, 19 resi unit tower on the site. Planning permission refused at committee.
3. 2003 - planning permission granted on appeal.

 ...the building would have looked something like this:

But then things started to get complicated...

BROAD (Bankside Residents for Appropriate Development) objected to the scheme on human rights grounds and were supported by the Tate's director, Sir Nicholas Serota who said the development would "cast an ugly shadow across our entrance".

BROAD then took their objections to the high court where Mr Justice Collins rejected the residents appeal, saying that the planning inspector had ruled correctly. Undeterred they then took it all the way to the House of Lords, but the Lords also agreed with the planning inspector and allowed the permission.

However, the legal battle had cost London Town a reported £6.5 million, over £340,000 per private resi unit, which may have been a factor in their decision to sell the site to Meyer Bergman in 2005 who paid £11.2 million for it. Bergman then went on to sell the site to GC Bankside, a JV with Clan Real Estate Estates (itself a joint venture between the Duke of Buccleugh and Native Land) and Grosvenor. GC Bankside purchased the site after it gained consent for a 200+ unit scheme across the road on Holland Street, known as Project Bankside, which it bought off Land Sec for £24.5 million in 2005. Site preparation works are already underway on the development: 

which is going to look something like this:

But the important bit is that the consent for Project Bankside stipulated that the permission for a tower on the Dave Musset site would never be implemented, which must have pleased the folks at BROAD no end.

So it was with some surprise that I read an article about artist Scott King, who has been commissioned by the Architecture Foundation to create a site-specific graphic installation on the hoardings around the Dave Musset site. It's a hoarding with the words TEMPORARY EYESORE written on it. Surely if it's temporary then that means something else is coming afterwards... something permanent. 

Fear not members of BROAD, what comes next is also temporary. A pavilion designed by architect Jamie Fobert will be erected on the site in 2009 and act as a sales office for Project Bankside, it will then be left standing for 5 years to host a series of public exhibitions and art installations, after which it'll be demolished and returned to public use as an open space...however, the site opposite, next to the Tate Modern's entrance is going to look like this:

This is Herzog & de Meuron's revised plan for the extension to the Tate Modern. The Tate's director, Sir Nicholas Serota said that the design was "more imaginative and more mature" than the previous design.

This is the Grade II listed Frobisher Crescent office complex right in the heart of the Barbican. It's big, but you could drive past it everyday without knowing it was there. In fact there's only one limited view of it from the outside, on the left as you enter the eastern end of the Barbican tunnel just after Silk Street. But if you think spotting it is hard, getting to the building itself is a world of pain. There are, apparently, 36 different routes to the main courtyard, less than 20 meters away from Silk Street, it took me 15 minutes.

The courtyard or The Sculpture Court as it was originally known has no sculptures in it, a story that is echoed throughout the development. Let me explain. Erected in 1982, this nine storey crescent was originally designed to be residential, three rows of maisonettes on six storeys. It almost happened; they even ordered the kitchen units, which remain in storage to this day. But for some reason the building was never used as intended, instead its lower floors became home to the Barbican's Arts Centre admin department while the City of London Business School occupied the upper 3 floors. And there the story would have ended if it wasn't for the fact that a few years ago the Business School left the building and moved to their swanky new premises on Bunhill Row just down the road. The upper 3 floors have been vacant ever since.

However in July of this year things came around full circle when United House was granted planning permission to convert the 68,513 sq ft offices to 69 residential flats...all they've got to worry about now is where they stored those kitchens.

New behind a retained facade...

110,000 sq ft plus offices at 40 Gracechurch Street by Cadmus Investments, in The City, yesterday.

This is what Heron International's building on Moor Lane EC2 looked like in February of this year, protected and ready for demolition, and looking quite arty in an odd kind of way, although nobody's going to wrap up an entire building and call it art, are they...? 

This is Roman House on the corner of Fore and Wood Streets in the City. There's currently a planning application to refurbish it, although at the moment it lies empty. But, and this may come as a shock, that's not the most interesting thing about the site. On it's Fore Street frontage you'll find this plaque:

...and the other half looks like this:

One half is the owner occupier section the other contains the affordable housing element (study the pictures carefully and you may be able to spot the difference). So far, so normal. Most large developments have a mix of private and social elements, and of course the spec and style of the private stock is inevitably going to be better than that of the social element, but apart from that, the only difference between the residents is that some own and some rent. Until now. Thames Valley Housing Association who manage the social element has just introduced a curfew for children under the age of 15. The new rules state that they must be indoors by 9 pm and cannot congregate in groups of more than four. Failure to comply could lead to eviction. The rules of course do not apply to the other half, as thirteen year old Jack Newton says, "The people who've bought their houses - you see them playing football on the hill. I can't even play with my friends on the field behind our house".

I think I made my views on this building clear in this blog...

...thankfully Culture Minister Margaret Hodge agrees with me and has decided not to list the Robin Hood Gardens Estate as a building of special architectural significance. Now they can demolish it. Good.