Gabion is the site of Hugh Pearman, London-based architecture and design critic. Hugh has been attached to The Sunday Times, London, since 1986, writes for a wide range of other design and consumer titles, is the author of several books, and frequently teaches and lectures. What you find here is a selection - by no means exhaustive - of his writings in various media, including the full, uncut versions of articles previously published in The Sunday Times. http://www.hughpearman.com http://www.hughpearman.com/images/banner_rss.jpg http://www.hughpearman.com 100 43 They are very keen, the Dutch museum people, on telling you that their Rijksmuseum � their National Gallery � is about history as much as it is about art, above all their 17th century Golden Age. It is also about objects as much as it is about paintings, though let�s face it � everyone goes there for the Vermeers and the Rembrandts. But there is another layer here: the building itself. As originally built in 1885 by Petrus Josephus (Pierre) Cuypers, in over-cautious redbrick Gothic Revival with an intrusive polychromatic internal decorative scheme, the product of a Roman Catholic church-builder in a largely Protestant country, it was eyed askance by the populace which never came to love it. Rightly so, I think, it was beast of a place, hard to navigate, and one that did the unpardonable thing of visually competing with some of the finest art in the world. Now however, it has reopened after a rebuilding programme lasting over a decade, and costing 375m Euros. For that time and money, you expect to find a marvel. It�s not quite that, but it�s good. http://www.hughpearman.com/2013/02.html 2013-04-06 It has been more than half a century since radical architects at what was then the London CountyCouncil designed the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex on the South Bank, between the existing Royal Festival Hall and, beyond Waterloo Bridge, the site of what was to be the later National Theatre. For half of their lifespan, the buildings have been seen as a bit of a problem: ugly, intractable. Starting in 1989, other architects- Terry Farrell, Richard Rogers - came up with successive plans to make them work, or look, better. Bar the drawing and talking, little was ever done. The Brutalist concrete assemblage, complete with high-level walkways and terraces, has occasionally been fiddled with but otherwise left alone. Now comes the next big move � a �120m project to make this part of the South Bank�s promenade as large and impressive and well used as the two cultural palaces on either side of it. This is nothing if not ambitious. http://www.hughpearman.com/2013/01.html 2013-03-10 1987 was the height of Prince Charles� throwback influence on architecture, with its premise that pretty much anything modern was rubbish. The anti-modernist rhetoric of the time often described concrete buildings, for instance, as �bunkers� or �missile silos�, as if the material, rather than the architecture, was all that mattered. So there is a piquancy to the fact that 25 years on, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has recently authorised a clutch of new listings including (as well as a regional theatre and some sharp-edged housing) a couple of actual former nuclear missile silos and a motorway service station tower straight out of Thunderbirds. http://www.hughpearman.com/2012/04.html 2012-11-27 The Shard. It�s a very tall building in London. Also outside London, on a clear day, given the distance from which you can see it. And when I say it�s in London, I mean RIGHT in it: London Bridge, where the city began. This is important. For tall buildings to work well as markers here, it helps for them to be built at the ancient city nodes. Routes radiate from them, which means they command all the best vistas. The �1.5 billion Shard, then, like the earlier Gherkin at the medieval heat of the City, is very well placed. So, of course, is St. Paul�s Cathedral with which it competes. Some find this irksome. I think we can tell the difference. http://www.hughpearman.com/2012/03.html 2012-07-12 What do they call those foam-plastic latticework socks they slip over your bottles of booze at airport duty-frees? Do they even have a name? Well, the new Western concourse at London's King's Cross station - most significant part of a �547m upgrade of the railway terminus and its surroundings - is a bit like one of those. Where the arching white steel structure suddenly funnels down in front of the original, re-revealed 1852 station booking hall, I keep expecting to see a giant bottle inside it. But this doesn't matter too much because the rest of the space is pretty good. It is an enormous, interesting, column-free semicircular room grafted onto the side of the old station, designed to relieve its chronic overcrowding. It has just opened for use. http://www.hughpearman.com/2012/02.html 2012-03-18 Oh, you think. This is a dream, right? You�ve gone up in a lift and there, at the top, at the end of a snaking gangplank, a boat is waiting. It�s called �Le Roi des Belges�. Why? And it�s perched on some kind of cliff. The river is way down below. And then you look around and suddenly � there�s the National Theatre! But seen from slightly above, as if � oh, wait. This isn�t a boat at all, is it? It�s some kind of penthouse. It�s got comfy seating, a big double bed, a kitchen sink, even a Welcome mat outside its front door, which is actually at the back, because otherwise you�d fall over the cliff. http://www.hughpearman.com/2012/01.html 2012-01-15