Rootes

Following on from my post about a building set for almost certain demolition, I noticed that the old Rootes Building in Maidstone has just been given Grade II listed status, signalling it is "of special interest, warranting every effort to preserve". In fact, this means that it cannot be altered without consulting English Heritage. According to the Twentieth Century Society, it is "an unusual survival of an elegant 1930s industrial building which was purpose built for one of Britain's most significant motor companies." It was designed in 1937 by Edmund Howard and Ernest Souster, who had previously built facilities for Vauxhall in Luton. It is Art Deco in style, with lots of curved glass, and white faïence walls - including the tower shown in the drawing. Its location by an old millpond on the River Len helps, of course - the reflections on a calm day are almost poetic. The multi-storey garages inside are cavernous, and the roof carries ranks of ventilation stacks. The Rootes Brothers firm was founded in Hawkhurst, where they made bicycles. They later became car dealers and distributers, and gradually aquired the firms in whose products they dealt. By the time the Maidstone building was complete they owned such companies as Singer, Hillman, Humber and Sunbeam. After the war the company slid slowly into decline, and was bought in turn by Chrysler then Peugeot - shedding brands along with its reputation for quality along the way. The Maidstone building survived - unusually it and the dealership remain in the ownership of Peugeot, as opposed to being a franchise operation.

Oh I Do Like to Be...

Following the trip to Margate, I started thinking about how other seaside towns in Kent have gone about the business of regeneration. I found it interesting how art seems to have been used as a catalyst or driver for reviving a town's fortunes.

In contrast to the approach of Margate, which seems to have adopted a 'top down' strategy, with its landmark Turner Contemporary Gallery, Whitstable has exploited a healthy grass-roots arts scene to consolidate its regeneration.

I first came to know Whitstable in the mid-90s, when I was studying architecture in Canterbury. The town then was busy, with many traditional shops still thriving in the High Street. The focus of the town was the harbour - which the council had bought from British Railways some time ago. It was (still is) a busy commercial hub - large amounts of stone and gravel are imported and stored on the quay, and seafood is landed and sold wholesale as well as directly to tourists and locals.

Along the beach was the Royal Native Oyster Stores, which showed that a decent restaurant could be an effective tourist attraction. Owned by the Green family, it was the first hint that the town was on the up. It acted as a magnet to people to travel down the M2, to stay in one of the Green's 'fishermans huts', and enjoy a weekend by the sea. By the turn of the century, they had taken over a building I'd known only as a squalid boarding house, and turned it into the 'Hotel Continental'. The people attracted by these facilities provided employment for the town, and customers for other local business.

As a mere resident - not even a home-owner - I was pleased that the town was being improved. However, there was some disquiet over the Green's success from other quarters.

One of the other things the town had was a healthy community of artists. The centre for this community was a set of run-down buildings (one had been a bus garage, another had several incarnations - built as a church, converted to a supermarket - pictured above, in 2001) in the middle of town, in a block called the Horsebridge. There was a well-used community hall there, and an art gallery used by the local art clubs and societies as well as students from Canterbury Art School. Some of the small shops in town also came to be occupied by artists attempting to sell their work.

Other shops we had know as proper Junk Shops, had by now received a coat of Farrow and Ball's best, and begun selling the same stock as 'vintage'.

When Canterbury City Council proposed to renew the facilities at the Horsebridge by building a mixed-use development there were mixed feelings among the community, with a vocal element against what they saw as a co-opting of the community by over-bearing planners and vested interest.

There was the inevitable competition, won by local architects Clague, who designed a scheme which dramatically improved the spaces around the site, provided 34 new dwellings, and housed the community centre under an eye-catching 'up-turned boat' roof.

I can't say how much the community likes the new facilities (I haven't asked), but they are certainly well used.

More recently there was an attempt by the council to redevelop the harbour. The brief must have been vague, because responses included a supermarket, a 'traditional' English pub and others too outlandish to mention. This time feeling in the town was far from mixed, and the next time we visited we were glad to see the plans had been dropped, and the vacant space occupied by something much more vital.

Visiting the town now, in the middle of this huge recession, I am struck by how resilient it is - seemingly the right combination of community spirit, enterprise, council funding and (last, not least) natural resource can make a huge difference.

By the way - if you visit, make sure you get your Fish and Chips from Jones'.

Margate 2

Working, as I have, in various Kent architects offices over the last decades, the subject of Margate's new art gallery has often cropped up in conversation.

The general consensus was that although Margate badly needed something to help start its regeneration, a new art gallery was probably not the right project. Margate, in the eyes of most people I spoke to (people who were Kent born and bred), would be much better off if it capitalised on its virtues as the venue for cheap, cheerful, fun family day trips - rather than attempt to reinvent itself as a magnet for cool, sophisiticated fans of contemporary art.

I tended to agree, in spite of being someone who, though not remotely cool or sophisticated, has been known to travel to see modern art. The viewpoint seemed all the more correct when the proposed gallery building was revealed to be neither 'iconic', nor a 'landmark', but rather a neutral, minimalist building of subtlety and restraint.

For the time being, the gallery is a success. Whether it has a long term effect on the town's fortunes remains to be seen. I can't see contemporary art long remaining as interesting to the public as it is at the moment.

Meanwhile, the town's attractiveness to funseeking families had been dealt a heavy blow by the closure of the Dreamland amusement park, and the fire which damaged the Scenic Railway ride (a grade II listed rollercoaster, opened in 1920).

Dreamland has been reinvented many times over the years. The first time we visited, it was trading as Bembom Brothers White Knuckle Theme Park. On the recent visit to the Turner Centre made us aware that plans are underway to reopen the park as a Heritage Theme Park.

Dreamland is not open yet, but that weekend there was a foretaste available in the shape of the travelling Carter's Steam Fair - a fantastic operation which proves that heritage and nostalgia can also be thrilling. I had a trip on the Dive Bombers - a terrifying loop-the-loop ride which I'd not seen since I was small, when I had found the mere sight of it awe inspiring.

Hopefully this twin-pronged approach to regeneration - art and fun - will stick.

Margate

We used to go to Margate sometimes. We had only just moved to Kent (this would have been around 1995, just after the recession), and used to go exploring on the train from Canterbury. The Far East of Kent seemed to have come out of the 1980s in bad shape. The coal mines had all shut down by then, and the rise of the foreign package holiday had evidently taken its toll on the British Seaside.

Shops in Ramsgate seemed either to be empty, boarded up and covered in fly-posters, or occupied by charities. The harbour was busy though, and there seemed to be a defiant glamour to the high-Victorian buildings which stood around. We had some friends who lived there, and so spent quite a bit of time in the town or on the beach.

Margate, on the other hand, was desolate in a different way. The sea front was still well appointed with garish illuminations, amusement arcades, nightclubs, ‘casinos’ and all. The brilliant highlight was Dreamland, which at the time still just about lived up to the billing, provided you didn’t focus too hard. Beyond the front, it was clear all was not well. There was no ‘defiant glamour’, or ‘faded elegance’ in the old buildings of the town. Everything seemed broken and dirty.

By then, we had moved to live in Whitstable, which in the mid 1990s had seemed to be somewhat in the doldrums as well. By the turn of the century, however, thanks to improvements in the road to London and canny exploitation of the rise of Foodie Culture, business was booming. All the quaint little shops in the High Street were full of businesses selling suitably arty knick-knacks to people we referred to disparagingly as DFLs (Down from London), who had been persuaded to pay to sleep in glorified sheds.

There seemed nothing in Margate to persuade the DFL set to travel the extra few miles. The attractions of Dreamland had been dismantled and shipped out until there just a very, very old rollercoaster. Eventually the whole place was closed up and the old rollercoaster caught fire.

Then, plans were announced to build a major new art gallery, apparently in an attempt to follow in the footsteps of St Ives (the picturesque Cornish fishing community which was the birthplace of a significant movement of modern British painting, latterly home to the second Tate Gallery to be built outside of London).

Around this time, just after the founding of the National Lottery, and the decision to mark the start of the Third Millennium, hundreds of projects were announced or commenced around the country, to build bridges, parks, museums and art galleries. It was hoped that many of these would help spark regeneration to areas run down in the wake of de-industrialisation. Lots of these projects succeeded – they opened on time, and have been enjoyed ever since. Some have failed to capture the imagination and since closed. I distinctly remember a Museum of Pop Music in Sheffield, of all things.

Margate’s Millennium Project was going to be a museum of contemporary art, ostensibly inspired by the fact that Turner spent some time in the area, and once wrote that ‘...the skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe”.

Kent County Council organised an Architectural Competition, which was won by a scheme which placed an inverted boat-shaped (or was it egg-shaped?) building on the harbour breakwater, literally on the beach. Images showed the waves crashing up over the £7.4M building filled with irreplaceable masterpieces.

Once the winning entry, by the Norwegian practice Snøhetta was subjected to detailed design, the actual cost was established three or four years later to be nearer £25M. The project was halted without a sod being turned, and the council settled out of court to recover costs of £5.8M

Meanwhile, an artist from Margate called Tracey Emin RA had risen to become the rebellious face of contemporary British art. Still being referred to by BBC announcers as an enfant terrible (despite being in her late forties, a Royal Academician, and ploughing a furrow of emotional-incontinence-as-art which was old-hat ten years ago) Tracey became a much needed cheerleader for her home town.

The project hired architect David Chipperfield to provide a new scheme. His refreshing attitude (There is a pressure on architecture to be interesting. The worst criticism you can throw at a building here is that it is boring. The original scheme fulfilled this expectation by ‘looking funny’. But this is not a cathedral, it is not Bilbao. It is a good, local arts space.”) resulted in what some may consider to be a ‘boring’ looking building. It’s certainly not ‘funny looking’... The kind of mature, sober looking building which you feel could only really be appreciated by someone with an educated eye.

We went back to Margate on one of the recent Bank Holidays to see for ourselves. There have been a few changes. Prominent on the road from Canterbury is the Georgian frontage of the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital, recently derelict, now refurbished and reborn as upmarket flats. The road passes the railway station, and the sixties concrete tower block (popularly described as an eyesore); the wide vista of the beach opens up on the left and in the distance the new gallery is visible as two or three low white cubic forms, nestled into the cliff of the Eastern headland.

We parked the car beyond the gallery and walked down towards it, noticing the conspicuous way in which the hard landscaping and planting changed suddenly from traditional (neglected) to shiny new lottery-minimalist at the margin of the building. The path dropped down a canyon like staircase onto the plaza at the gallery entrance, where people were sitting in the sun drinking coffee - just as they almost certainly had been in the architect's drawings.

The entrance to the building also contains the capacious gift shop, and a reception desk. We lingered for a while near a large window which was adorned with a transparent yellow circular frame and mirrors in each reveal, framing and reflecting a view of the wind whipped sea, and a huge sky filled with racing clouds. The window, of course, was part of the architecture, but the yelllow frame and mirrors are, we learned later, art - an installation called Borrowing and Multiplying the Landscape, by Daniel Buren.

All the galleries are up stairs. We walked up another concrete staircase - I noticed the exposed concrete structure of the ceiling, interested in the fact that a mere 20 years ago that kind of detail would have only been allowed in a multi-storey car park - but we could have ridden in one of the biggest lifts I have ever seen.

Once in the gallery rooms we found and enjoyed various works, which were mainly inspired by the gallery and the town itself (what are called 'Site Specific' pieces), and a single work by JMW Turner - A volcanic eruption on St Vincent, 1815.

Emerging into the town, we found that quite a lot had improved. Some of the Georgian and Victorian buildings had been restored, and Dreamland seemed to be being revived as a Heritage Theme Park, incorporating the very old rollercoaster.

We will definitely visit the gallery again. The next exhibition opens on 17 September.

Schools for the Future

You may, loyal reader, have noticed a slight falling-off of my posts here since February. This was because I had a job.

I was helping provide drawings for one of the last Schools for the Future to be built, for the same company I was at about seven years ago. It was great to be back at work, albeit on a temporary basis. I relished the tasks I was given, and made the most of the social opportunities working provides.

It was also a bit sad. The company was the one which took over the work of the old Kent County Council Architects' Department - of which I had been a member between 1997 and 2001. The work and the staff were transferred to the private company then, and ever since then staff had been leaving as the work dwindled. Kent County Council decided it would call on other architects to design work on their building programme. Ironically, perhaps, many staff found themselves working for these practices, on KCC projects.

Consequently, although I knew the building, and some of the people, it was a completely different place. The design office was literally three-quarters empty; all the computers, filing trays, and paraphernalia cleared from the ranks of empty desks.

Now the real cuts in public spending are being fed through the system, the company (whose main business is providing services to local authorities) has been in a state of seemingly permanent revolution since the summer. The latest restructure resulted in the reduction of the Architects office by another 50%. As a temp, of course I had to go.

On the wall of one of the office corridors is a pair of original drawings, produced by The County Architects in the 1880s for the building of the Union Street School, Maidstone. The School has gone now - it was probably demolished about twenty years ago. All that remains is the boundary wall, and two pairs of entrance gates. It was interesting to note how few drawings were required to instruct the contractor to build this (admittedly fairly simple) structure - today the drawing would be heavily laden with notes, dimensions, references, and the steps and plinths would be laboriously detailed out. However, comparing the drawing and the gateway as-built, it seems the builder took a few liberties. Perhaps nothing changes after all.