Neasden Hindu temple and the “rusty laptop” bandstand in Crystal Palace Park. The user of the app is also taken off the beaten-track to find buildings as varied as the Daimler garage and the alleys around Dr Johnson’s Gough Square. The most startling finds are those that appear to be the least London, from the sublime colours of Debenham House to the delightful and slightly-surrealist Michelin House, to the Arts and Crafts pseudo-basilica of All Saints, Ennismore Gardens. The more exotic buildings resound, but they are all tempered with some degree of London grit, including the Egyptian revival art deco of the Carreras Factory and the Constructivism of the College of Engineering and Science. The School of Slavonic and East European Studies would “not be out of place in Zagreb”. Whitehall Court is “relentlessly French” while the corner of 28 Dorset Square recalls Mussolini’s EUR. In some cases, buildings simply cannot escape the ghosts of their inspiration, such as Erich Mendelsohn in Sloane Square, Karl Friedrich Schinkel in the Athenaeum, Aldo van Eyck in South Hill Park, and Le Corbusier in Kensington. If there is one criticism of the helpful filters, it might be the absence of specific architectural styles alongside architects, centuries and building types. One reason cities are interesting is because concentrations of people give rise to concentrations of history. Jones and Woodward’s touch here is informative but perhaps too fleeting. We learn Hyde Park was one of Henry VIII’s hunting grounds, the Flask Inn was the meeting place of the Kit-Kat Club, how the Vale of Health housed Leigh Hunt and D.H. Lawrence, and Hitler was rumoured to have intended Whiteley’s Department Store as a base after invasion. These references are sadly more tantalising than fulfilling. William Burges’s Tower House alone seems worthy of accompanying essays and interior photographs. While it’s unfair to judge Jones and Woodward by aspects they left out, delving a little deeper into the historical contexts of the buildings via those who lived there would expand the experience. Peter Ackroyd’s London (2000) would make an excellent accompanying app if somebody were to make one. And so the question arises, what will the app be used for? Certainly, it’s
essential for architecture lovers, whether local or visiting. Yet it goes beyond built structures into realms of history, folklore and even just meaningful connection with the metropolis. The guide adopts a prose approach, but it could just as well serve as the basis for something more poetic. If, in the face of the creeping privatisation of public space and a concurrent housing crisis, London is to remain a flourishing city and not just a series of citadels, a sense of meaningful belonging needs to be fostered. People need a place to live and connect to. An approach such as psychogeography seems tired, monkish and overstated now (the guide is refreshingly sober compared to some of the more esoteric fare available out there) but there nonetheless remains something admirable in breaking away from the compulsions of routine, work and commerce, and being drawn around the city in the spirit of exploration by
Subjectivity runs through the guide and gives lie to the absurd claim that “beauty is objective” made by reactionaries with ulterior motives. other factors. The app hints at this, pointing to Lombard Street signs, gold insects adorning the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Jacob Epstein sculptures, which may appeal to those users interested in discovering relics or related ephemera such as ghost signs and Thomassons. A crucial part of psychogeography – or “attentive walking” as we might as well call it – is the awareness of what once was. The authors of the guide are well aware of the changes the city has faced from the Great Fire to the Blitz to dysfunctional planning. There are laments for lost buildings like Bunning’s Coal Exchange, the Caledonian Market, Holloway Prison and Euston Arch, as well as the disruption of surviving architecture by changes around it (Hyde Park Corner for one). Wren may have stated once that architecture aims for eternity, but eternity often has very different plans. Again, it is unfair to criticise the editors for absences they’d never intended to cover, but again the yearning remains for more (a sign of how enticing the guide is). Walking the routes, it would have been fascinating
Review
to find out, via an extra filter, about lost buildings such as the Beargarden, the Crystal Palace, Skylon, the half-built Watkin’s Tower, Mondial House, Wyld’s Great Globe and rookeries such as Jacob’s Island. This of course has strong nostalgic appeal, but it might also help reinforce our understanding of how the city got to where it is today and at what benefit and cost. A critical appreciation of Number 1 Poultry, for one, is bolstered by the knowledge of the building it rightly or wrongly replaced. Another filter might be that of, in the authors’ words, the “regrettably unbuilt” – from Holden’s glass-encased Art Deco Tower Bridge, to the Primrose hill mausoleum pyramid, to the Imperial Tower reaching high above the Houses of Parliament. It’s inevitable, as with any selective guide, that there will be some notable exclusions. Minor missing delights spring to mind, such as the Church of Notre Dame de France with its Jean Cocteau murals, the Turkish Bath at Bishopsgate Churchyard, the Sailor Society Mission in Limehouse, Westminster Tube Station, and numerous other features from cemeteries to tunnels to underground vents. There is a delight in finding your own corners. Jones and Woodward have, as discussed in a recent interview in The Guardian with Owen Hatherley, resisted the temptation of expanding the app through crowd-sourcing. In a sense, they’re right to do so. Drowning in a flood of information, we have never been more in need of enlightened guides. Yet you cannot but get the sense, as much as this is an exceptional epilogue to Jones and Woodward’s series of books, that it’s also a beginning. With 3D software and emerging augmented-reality technology, it will soon be possible to walk around cities that have been annotated and deepened with immersive data, as well as the virtual ghosts of lost and unbuilt buildings. What is a map after all? Not an end but an invitation. Guide to the Architecture of London is available for iOS from the App Store.