MEMORIALISING GOOD AND VILE BUILDINGS IN OUR ROYAL BOROUGH

'Architecture' at it blandest and crudest

Ugh!!

Has the Dame's steam launch passed by the former Lots Road Power Station recently?

It's still too early to consider how successful the repurposing of the glorious Venetian Power Station itself has been though to anyone with taste the scrubbing of the brickwork has been so violently overdone it now looks like a 'new build'. 

Retaining some of the industrial grime would have been more authentic and given the building more authority.
But what do the Dame and her cultivated followers think about the two smaller buildings at each end of the original 'Palace' ( as illustrated above?

Surely they must rank as the most boring buildings erected in the borough in the last decade? 

They have no echo of the original Edwardian construction and make only a passing reference to the industrial past of the site.  Historically factories & industrial buildings were never featureless or understated.    

This is an important area for the borough so who allowed the developers to get away with such mediocrity?   
It has long been my view that all major developments permitted in the borough should be compelled to display prominently a stone pylon or monumental plaque. 

This would record for posterity - for good or ill -which committee chair was responsible for the development. So who passed these?

Perhaps we could set a precedent with the Power Station development?
Indeed there are a few buildings that are so dreadful that the plaques should be required retrospectively. 

The Royal Garden Hotel is a case in point....  the atrocious Greek Embassy is another.  

In fact, the Greek embassy is so bad whoever gave it planning permission should be disinterred & their remains burned by the public hangman. The Borough having appointed & honoured a Recorder of our own without ourselves possessing a Court building sets a precedent. l am thus confident that the Council will be only too willing to appoint our own hangman - despite the absence of the death penalty.

What are the sage views of the Dame on both the Lots Road development and the proposal to record permanently & publicly exactly who is responsible for all significant changes to the local streetscape?

Yours sincerely

The Late Sir B Spence