Hasta La Ideas

Assemble’s approach to transforming a public bathhouse into an art centre is refreshing, says Owen Hatherley, but the results feels a little too much like a celebration of poverty.

Nineteen years ago, I got to explore a normal area of London for the first time. In September 1999, I was enrolling at Goldsmiths College, where I would study for the next six years, as undergraduate and postgraduate. I’ve never moved further than a bus ride away since.

New Cross is a district of late Georgian, early Victorian classical streets. At that time some were still coated in soot, with ornate, often squatted pubs, Caribbean takeaways with pop-art signs – Cummin Up is still there, and probably ought to be listed – and the huge interwar faience picture palace of The Venue, then painted entirely black.

The college itself was never somewhere you’d go just to look at buildings. It consisted of Reginald Blomfield’s clipped, bright red neoclassical main building, supplemented by a dull brutalist tower (since clad), an early Allies and Morrison library (which seemed quite excitingly modern in 1999), barrack-like halls of residence and a succession of prefab buildings. These served as the studios where the irritatingly flippant conceptual art, for which the place was famous at the time, was produced. It was the temporary buildings that were the real hive of innovation, as Cedric Price always said they would be.

But what really caught my eye then was the former Laurie Grove Public Baths, a fabulous red and white jacobethan palace. Through an archway, the fanciful, florid detail led through to filthy stock brick, a water tower, bins and more prefabs. Opposite this was a Victorian shopping street, with the Edwardian and flamboyantly camp Deptford Town Hall on one side, and a dull brown 1950s block on the site of one of the second world war’s worst rocket attacks on the other.

That’s the sort of a place this was and still is – a mess of illusions and a historical pile-up. I’m glad it was my introduction to London.

For Goldsmiths to pick Assemble was a smart choice. There are few designers that could do this organised chaos justice

For Goldsmiths to pick Assemble as architects for its Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), carved out of the Laurie Grove Baths, was a smart choice. There are few designers that could do this organised chaos justice without smoothing it over and making it neat.

I walked to it through the archway that is part of the baths’ facade, which seemed the right thing to do – Goldsmiths proposes to demolish some prefabs to create a frontal, formal approach, which is a terrible idea. Taking this route, the CCA emerges organically, up mock-industrial steps, out of the alleyway. It’s a hulk of stock brick, with an angular chimney and a water tank, emphasised Smithsons-style as a found object. Next to it is a reminder of the last time Goldsmiths tried to do a landmark building – a multi-storey block by Will Alsop, with sheet metal siding and a spaghetti “sculpture” at the top, because this is an art school, yeah?

What Assemble have done here represents a very different approach. It isn’t designed to impress, and any artiness is all about space and surface rather than gesture. There’s a huge shift in British architectural fashion in the difference between these two adjacent buildings.

Assemble have turned the Baths’ back end into a frontage, of an odd sort, a Bernd and Hilla Becher industrial vignette, asymmetrical and eerie.

Inside, there’s the sort of montage you’d expect from the redesigners of the Four Streets in Granby, Liverpool, where the destructive effects of a botched clearance scheme were incorporated into the renovated houses. Thankfully, this time we don’t have to pretend that the buildings are solving the housing crisis.

There are fragments of white tiles, soggy bricks, liquefying metal, and unexpected views outwards, into the painting studios in the main baths, and downwards, into a double-height empty space below the ground floor. This creates a tightly packed, illogical maze.

It isn’t designed to impress, and any artiness is all about space and surface rather than gesture

To see what is strange and exciting about Assemble’s building, one could compare it to 6a’s just-opened renovation of a Camberwell fire station into an expansion of the South London Gallery, just a couple of miles up the road. Again, it’s a rough Victorian building that the architects have refused to prettify, but the approach is so much more polite and sensible, with none of the fetishism and weirdness Assemble have gone in for.

I loved the results, but it’s easy to imagine someone finding it all exceptionally irritating and mannered; the Goldsmiths CCA is a high-end art gallery, not a squat, and it is perhaps unseemly for it to pretend to be one, in a city where that sort of non-commercial activity has been ruthlessly marginalised. Nineteen years ago, there were several actual squats around the corner from here, but that sort of thing isn’t allowed to happen in London anymore. Here, at least, the feel of that strange city is retained, but how much of its spirit?

When the gallery opened, protesters, drawing attention to an ongoing dispute over the pay and conditions of cleaners at Goldsmiths, unfurled a banner reading Who Keeps the White Cube White? One side of the double-meaning doesn’t entirely work – one of the most refreshing things about Assemble’s building is its refusal of the tedious white cube idea – but the other side does.

One of the most refreshing things about Assemble’s building is its refusal of the tedious white cube idea

Part of the reason why I went here, two decades ago, was that I wanted to study in London, not in a campus in London, and Goldsmiths was one of the places where you could do that. You were embedded in an ordinary residential inner city area, with no gates, lodges or quadrangles. Not only was this the opposite of Oxbridge, is was also the opposite of the main University of London campus in Bloomsbury. One of the things I would come to realise about this place was that in London, closeness can be deceptive.

Proximity to people different from you is something London does well, much better than most European capitals; but it isn’t the same thing as equality. This intriguing building opens at a time when inequality in the capital has been stretched to breaking point, with the staggeringly rich making even very ordinary places like New Cross as expensive as Manhattan – and we all know what role artists have had as the advance guard for that process.

I enjoyed Assemble’s building a great deal, because of how it refuses to tidy up London; but in today’s London, a refusal to make nice can feel like a simulation of poverty.

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Australian studio Biasol has combined unevenly-finished concrete walls with pale green fixtures and neon signage inside this day-to-night dining spot in central London.

Farmer J is situated on King William Street in the office-dense area of Monument. It is the second branch of the restaurant to open in the capital, joining an existing site in Leadenhall.

Selling healthy breakfasts, lunches and dinners, the restaurant caters to city workers as well as casual diners. The “all-day-trade environment” encouraged owner Jonathan Recanti to establish a new branch that aims to reflect the brand’s versatility and variety of service.

Recanti charged Melbourne-based Biasol with designing the restaurant, having already been a fan of its hospitality projects, including a marble-rich eatery inside London’s historic Royal Exchange building and a Wes Anderson-inspired cafe in Chengdu.

“By merging the concept of grab-and-go with a full-service restaurant, together with Farmer J we redefined the perception of fast dining, elevating the experience and brand,” said Jean-Pierre Biasol, principal at the studio.

The space has been arranged around a grooved timber counter where food is prepared. On the opposite side of the room is a curved bar clad in sage green tiles where customers can order coffee or enjoy cocktails later in the evening.

In between sits a mix of stool seats, leather-backed booths and communal tables intended to “blur the zoning of service types”.

All of the walls have been hand-rendered with concrete, with splashes of colour coming from an abundance of vine plants that wind down from shelving units, and a variety of potted succulents.

Lighting is provided by spherical white pendant lamps that hang from the ceiling.

“Our colour inspiration came through completing the freshness of the food offering and differentiating the Farmer J brand from any of its competitors in the marketplace,” continued Biasol.

“We wanted to evolve their brand, add a level of maturity, and help grow their business.”

A wooden arch has also been erected at the rear of the dining space, framing a neon text sign that states Farmer J’s brand motto.

Much like Biasol, London architecture studio Red Deer paired washed plaster walls with mint green floors and furnishings for the interiors of Soho delicatessen Lina Stores.

Photography is by Focal Interior Photography.

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South Korean artist Do Ho Suh has built a replica of his childhood home and installed it above a road in the City of London.

Called Bridging Home, London, the installation sees a traditional Korean dwelling built on top of a pedestrian bridge spanning Wormwood Street, a dual carriageway located near Liverpool Street station.

The simple, decorative structure offers a striking contrast to the high-rise buildings that dominate the area. Its features include a curved gable roof, a timber frame, brick walls and shuttered windows.

One of the house’s walls is hanging over the edge of the bridge, suggesting that the makeshift structure could collapse at any moment.

By modelling the design on the house he grew up in, Do Ho Suh’s aim is to make a statement about the migrant history of London, as well as to reflect his own experience of moving from one country to another.

It builds on themes covered by previous projects such as The Passage/s, which saw the designer create a sequence of passageways that represented all the different places he had occupied in his life.

“For me, a building is more than just space. It is not only physical but also metaphorical and psychological,” he explained.

“In my work I want to draw out these intangible qualities of energy, history, life and memory. While Bridging Home, London comes from personal experience, I hope it is something a lot of people can relate to.”

The installation will remain in place for at least six months. It forms part of Sculpture in the City, a programme that sees sculptures pop up all over the Square Mile, and Art Night, an annual initiative that commissions site-specific artworks all over the city.

“Do Ho Suh’s Bridging Home, London is an ambitious commission, one of his most significant in the United Kingdom to date,” said Fatoş Üstek, the curator for the installation.

“This unexpected apparition triggers a hiatus and a detournement, taking passer-bys to lands far away. Most importantly the piece activates feelings of home, belonging and remembrance that will resonate with viewers on their individual journeys.”

Photography is by Gautier Deblonde.

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Italian designers Simone Caronni, Paolo Stefano Gentile and Pietro Gaeli have created an ecological packaging for fries made from recycled potato skins, as a sustainable alternative to paper.

Called Peel Saver, the packaging is made of starch and fibre components that, after maceration and natural dying, bond with each other and harden.

The designers came up with the project after realising how much potato peel waste is produced by fries companies. They wanted to put this waste material to good use – and realised ironically it could be used to contain the food it is made from.

“Traditional street food packaging has a very short time of use, immediately becoming hard to recycle. Peel Saver is a sustainable remedy whose aim is to replace plasticised paper packaging,” said Caronni.

“Fries are thus served inside the same peel that originally contained and protected the potato, returning to the natural state in which it was.”

First the creators macerate and naturally dry the potato peels, before spreading them out into a circular mould. They then roll the resulting substance into a conical shape, much like an ice-cream cone.

According to the designers, the initial idea was to combine the peelings with a natural glue such as gelatine or latex.

However, after experimenting with various recipes they realised that the potato peel could provide a sufficient solidity on its own with the right processes.

As the packaging is made from 100 per cent potato peel, it is also fully biodegradable, returning to the biological cycle by becoming fertiliser for plants or animal food.

“Peel Saver shows a different point of view, a return to simplicity and to what nature already designed for us,” said the designers.

“We are satisfied with the process above all from the point of view of simplicity of concept and sustainability,” they added. “Today it is now a necessity that products and packaging are sustainable and recyclable, this project is a proof of how much can still be done in this direction.”

At the moment, the designers do not have sufficient funds to support the large-scale production of the packaging, but hope to continue the project and possibly find a company that could help them make the design a reality.

Other designers exploring ways to create sustainable packaging include Polish graduate Roza Janusz, who has created an alternative to plastic food packaging using a material made of bacteria and yeast, which can either be eaten after use or composted.

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Ironically often pronounced ‘Who Are We’, Chinese smartphone brand Huawei is, in fact, the second biggest smartphone company in the world, second only to Samsung (followed by Apple at third place). The company, although banned in the USA because of the US-China trade war, knows how to create phones that look stunning and captivating. They pioneered the metallic gradient that literally breathed a new life into smartphones, and also were arguably the first big brand to push out a triple-lens camera setup on the smartphone. Moving on, the company has embraced the metallic gradient and the 3-lens setup with their latest phone too, the Mate 20 Pro. However, to keep away from the herds (who’ve begun copying the gradient too), Huawei’s introduced a patterned back too, although they still have a very rich blue-purple-black gradient variant too.

What’s also interesting is the way the cameras are laid out. Rather than opting for the iPhone X-ish camera setup on the side, the Mate 20 Pro concentrates all three lenses in the middle, into a square, pushing three lenses in 3 quadrants and a flash in the fourth. Personally, I like the way it’s executed. It adds a big black square to the top of the phone’s back and that gives the phone some character, and the camera some gravitas. However, there’s a visible lack of a fingerprint sensor on both the front and back, but Huawei says the screen will feature its own in-display fingerprint sensor, which could be a game-changer, given how successful the brand is in the east.

The phone also packs a few features that could make it an ‘iPhone-killer’ (although I personally detest using that phrase). It comes with its own HiSilicon Kirin 980 system on a chip, which is a big deal, because after Apple’s A12 Bionic chip, the HiSilicon Kirin 980 is the second 7nanometer chip, and the first in an Android phone. The phone will feature a 6.3 inch OLED screen that still retains the notch that will feature the receiver and a front-facing camera. No headphone jack on this one, though, but that isn’t a surprise, considering how most flagships quite literally don’t give a jack… but I’ll forgive that transgression, because the Mate 20 Pro looks oh-so-pretty! More on this when the phone officially launches!

Designer: Huawei