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Zone 3

72. The ventilation grilles on the Piccadilly line

17 December 2012
Designs, Numbers 51-75, Objects, Piccadilly line, Zone 2, Zone 3
6 Comments

Air apparentWe’ve conditioned ourselves to ignore most of what lines the platform walls of the Underground, largely because most of it is worth ignoring.

Promotions for someone’s new DVD; promotions for a “laugh-out-loud” comedy or “feelgood hit of the year” that boasts quotes only from reviews in the Daily Star; promotions for novels that begin with the phrase: “You’ve read Fifty Shades of Grey…”; promotions for anything to do with Peter Kay…

These are all, quite rightly, things we have taught ourselves to filter and reject from our list of subconscious concerns. We look at them but we don’t see them. We’ve other things to concentrate on – not least, making sure it doesn’t look like we’re concentrating on any passengers standing nearby.

Three station platforms at the northern end of the Piccadilly line buck this trend by offering up things to which attention is worth paying. But chances are most people don’t see them. And why should they?

Green gaugeThese ventilation grilles are originals: installed when the stations were built in the early 1930s, and designed by Harold Stabler whose charming if sometimes idiosyncratic work I’ve encountered elsewhere.

They can be found at Wood Green, Turnpike Lane and Manor House. Each one depicts a brazenly romanticised panorama of the neighbourhood. You can forgive the shamelessness, however, because of the wonderful attention to detail and – dammit! – their reassuring parochialism.

The grille at Wood Green appears to show two birds and a deer frolicking on the titular parkland. Trees, plants, even the sun’s rays are all neatly aligned and symmetrical. If only life were really like that.

Next comes Turnpike Lane:

In line for a grillingHere it looks like a brigand of courtly gentlefolk are about to engage in some business, possibly – judging by the rider’s deportment and dapper outfit – of a mercantile kind. Or maybe they’ve just come for a fight. Whoever is arriving from the right, however, has already got the upper hand by virtue of showing up with TWO horses not one.

Could do with a cleanThese particular grilles aren’t really helped by sitting within such shabby-looking walls. Someone needs to attend to those tiles with a cloth.

Finally we have Manor House:

Manor maketh manI’m not sure whether this is meant to be an idealised version of the interior of the eponymous building, someone’s back garden replete with a snoozing owl and pot plant, or maybe the grounds of the manor itself. That fine-looking portal on the far right suggests it could be the latter. Those aren’t your average garden gates.

House proudAs with the tiles at Aldgate East, an even-closer inspection of all three grilles reveals the artist has smuggled in a namecheck for himself:

Harold the greatAnd who would begrudge him that? For here are a trio of objects that are properly worth looking out for on Underground platforms – that is, looking out for not merely to avoid seeing.

65. The entrance to Colliers Wood

17 November 2012
Architecture, Northern line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 3
1 Comment

Touch WoodFew of the stations that stud the Northern line as it snakes through south London have as much stately grandeur as Colliers Wood.

When the sun catches the entrance, the building feels more of a palace than a portal. It gives off a sort of calming authority, even a coolness, which was certainly welcome on the baking hot day I took these photographs.

Those unfussy yet imposing columns that glide airily up each side of the main window are especially lovely. I like how their width is matched perfectly by the distance between each of the vertical blue lines. And look how the roundel fits so snugly in the middle. You can’t beat symmetry when it’s done properly.

Palace of delightsThen there’s the way the building is positioned on the corner of the street, its sides slanting (never curving – heavens no!) gently inwards, guiding you almost subliminally towards the entrance. Plus you have those two outer, smaller wings of the station, whose reduced stature ensures that nothing jostles for attention with the regal facade, especially when viewed from a distance.

Colliers Wood is one of Charles Holden’s earliest efforts for the Underground, dating from 1926, but it scrubs up well compared with his later masterpieces at Arnos Grove and Gants Hill. That’s as long as people remember to give it a scrub, of course.

And let’s hear it for not one, not two, but three splendidly gleaming roundels, a real help for anyone trying to spy the station from afar, but a real treat for anyone giving it the once over up close.

All hail the red, white and blueThat’s my kind of red, white and blue.

57. The bridge at Kew Gardens

12 October 2012
Architecture, District line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 3, Zone 4
1 Comment

Kew E. D.Bear with me on this one.

I accept it might not look particularly attractive, or even create a fleeting impression of attractiveness. You might think it looks unarguably dull, or at the very least utterly unexceptional. I accept it’s probably not the sort of place you’d want to linger, even when – as here – the sun is bathing everything in a flattering, early autumnal glow.

But for all this, the passenger footbridge at Kew Gardens is rather special.

The more you linger, the more curious it looks – and feels. It’s possible to sense something a bit alien, a bit foreign about this bridge. The shape, the colour, the materials… none bear traces or motifs of homegrown architecture. There is nothing familiar in the structure, no parochial reference points in the design. There is no tang of London oozing from the brickwork.

What’s it doing here? And in Kew Gardens, of all places?

I mean, look at it:

Kew jumpingOf course, there’s a switcheroo coming up, and here it is.

Precisely why it is so unusual is precisely why it is so fascinating.

A nearby plaque explains all. The bridge was opened in 1912 and is a hugely rare and very early example of one made from reinforced concrete, using a technique pioneered by the French engineer François Hennebique. That feeling of other-worldliness starts to make sense.

Moreover, it was deliberately designed (I’m not sure who by) with those unusual high walls and those odd projections out of its sides in order to protect its users from smoke and dirt coming from passing steam engines. How thoughtful – and how daringly continental. There can’t have been many people native to Edwardian Britain believing that passengers ought to take precedence over machinery.

The whole thing was done up in 2004 thanks to English Heritage, the Kew Society and numerous other benefactors, including every person who’s ever played the National Lottery (that’s how the heritage fund works, isn’t it?)

Heaven knows what it looked like before its makeover – less attractive certainly, but also probably less intriguing. Even the furnishings seem to have scrubbed up well:

Hooray for the blue, white and redAll in all, a most agreeable form of Kew jumping.

Did I mention the views are pretty damn special as well?

Form an orderly Kew