But of course . ..

From the South London news . . .

Should pink elephant be Southwark's Olympic Icon?

Southwark residents have been invited to choose whether their borough should be represented by the Elephant & Castle or Shakespeare's Globe in a set of souvenir pin badges to be produced for the London 2012 Olympics.

Maybe they should have a model of the whole shopping centre. Or the Heygate.

Deja Vu All Over Again.

From the Guardian:

It sounds like a fairy tale - until you get there. But now a magic wand is poised over the Elephant and Castle.

From the article:

'This is the week that the London Borough of Southwark sets about asking local people and businesses what they'd like to be done about one of the city's oldest shopping centres. The Borough has a pretty shrewd idea of what to do, but is asking all the same.

'The Borough. . . spurred on by . . . it's intelligent and indefatigable Director of Regeneration and Enviroment . . . plans to transform the Elephant into a "new landmark of urban and environmentally-friendly design: a development that could be seen as exemplary, worldwide."

'The emphasis here is on public transport and the linking together of many railway stations and bus stops that serve the area. They may also include working with approved firms of architects - not just developers' puppets, but those who will raise the standard of architecture here to the highest global standards. This includes new housing and the renovation of existing stock.

'The borough insists that it is not trying to turn the Elephant into a new middle-class ghetto or just another shiny downtown development . . . in raising it's cultural sights, however, Southwark must be careful not to undermine it's indigenous population . . . It is, at heart, a working-class quarter of London, made up of many creeds and colours. What it needs to do is find ways of engineering in the hearts of those who live and work here a sense of belonging to a new world in which they all stand to benefit if and when the Elephant comes into it's own.'

Sounds great doesn't it? The problem? The article is dated, '15 March, 1999'.

I hadn't realized it until I read this article - I was away from England for over 12 years until I went back in late 2007 - but the regeneration process has been in place for a decade. The original company pulled out not long after this article was written and the plan languished ever after.

Today, from LondonSE1: Elephant and Castle regeneration: Southwark Council leader 'cautiously optimistic' that a deal can be reached with Lend-Lease by the end of 2009. From the article:

"I am cautiously optimistic about the chances of reaching a development agreement with Lend Lease by the end of the year," Cllr Nick Stanton told members of the cross-party Overview and Scrutiny Committee at the town hall on Monday night.

"I've said before that if Lend Lease were going to walk away from this they would have walked away by now. They clearly have walked away from a number of propositions where they felt that the numbers weren't stacking up for them."

"They are still very interested in the Elephant & Castle. They are talking with us and we have been doing some financial modelling work with them. I'm told that that's gone very well."

If a deal isn't signed, what happens then? Does the estate just sit there year after year, falling into total disrepair? Or will the council demolish it, no matter what the cost, just to get rid of it? What then? A vacant lot that sits on the site for years afterwards, taking up valuable land?

Painting Moths on the Heygate

Big Brush of the 'Paint the Heygate' project gives a moving description of walking around the nearly empty estate. On the massive Kingshill Building (she calls it the Aylesbury here, but I think she means Kingshill), they find a council worker who shows them round. They find exactly one person left on the whole building, out having a cigarette on the empty terrace. "No comment" he says, as soon as he sees them, obviously marking them for press.

Will Montgomery's 'sounds of the elephant

Photograph: Dollan Cannell.


Will Montgomery is a sound artist who has posted some sound recordings made inside and outside the Elephant and Castle Shopping Mall. In an article for the August, 2007 issue of Painted, Spoken, he writes:

"I've never lived on the Heygate and I'm glad of that. However . . . one night I was knocked over on the Elephant's north roundabout. The impact destroyed the joint at the base of my left thumb, and the Elephant, like the fused thumb, has nagged at me ever since. . . ."

Then, explaining his interest in the shopping centre (from the same interview):

"What interests me now is it's sound. In the late 199o's, I began to admire it's peculiarly roomy, dreamy acoustic . . .in the shopping centre you get, of course, voices speaking many languages . . . But more important to me is the combination of overlapping human voices with piped pop songs. Often you catch some ancient love tune . . . floating by. Perhaps some of the more worn-down uses of the shopping center went for those songs once. For me, the romantic love hymned decades ago by these tarnished old hits tallies with the pathos that now marks the hopes of betterment expressed in the architecture of the area."

Further, he quotes Charles Dickens, and Walter Benjamin, writing about the Elephant, and mixes sound recordings of the shopping centre with pop-up photographs of the centre and the Heygate Estate. A nice testimonial. His site can be found at 'selvageflame.com'

Elephant Saved . . .

     (Times Newspapers)

Southwark Council has announced that the 'iconic' elephant statue which currently sits in front of the mall will be saved and integrated into the regeneration. 

From the London Paper: Ionic Red Elephant Is Saved

That's nice. We'll see what happens when it happens. 

Seizure

I heard about this exhibit a couple of months ago and knew it was in the Elephant - but didn't know where. 

Artist Roger Hiorns took a disused council flat, constructed a watertight metal tank moulded around the contours of the property then filled the structure with 16,500 gallons of copper sulphate solution. Two weeks later, he pumped out the excess, leaving behind a layer of blue crystals coating the flat interior. 

The National has a description of the flat and the exhibit. 

Some great photos of the Seizure exhibit on flickr. 

You can get a rough idea of what the exhibit looks like on, where else, Youtube courtesy of ArtReviewTV

The exhibit is not on the Heygate but another derelict, soon to be demolished housing estate up Harper Road in the shadow of Heygate Estate. I used to look out on this estate when I first came to London, living in a squat across the street. The estate is nowhere on the same scale as the Heygate - a bulky hi-rise with a low-rise in front, two duplexes connected by a single gangway which looked more like a bare-bones roadside motel than a housing estate. 

Hiorns had this to say about the estate:  

“These buildings were about containing large groups of people who were all living in the same kinds of places and being encouraged to think the same kinds of thoughts, These kinds of buildings don’t work; as a model they have not passed the test of time. They are symbols of a collective will, which treads on an individualistic attitude in the form of small, pokey flats. They give you very little architecture, the nominal amount of expression you’re allowed to have and were ungenerous in that respect,” 

As I wrote on my City of Strangers about an art exhibit on a street in Brooklyn awaiting demolition to clear the way for another condo (construction has been delayed after the developer ran out of money) this sort of exhibit seems to be inhabiting more and more transitional spaces, an I'm assuming subconcious comment on the role of art and artists in the process of gentrification. 

It's all very well for Hiorns to talk about the buildings 'treading on an individualistic attitude in the form of small, pokey flats" but these buildings, as uninspiring as they were, allowed poor people to live in the centre. Take them away, and you take away the poor people as well. 

The housing estate may not have passed the test of time - although the Trellick Tower and many other so-called sink estates which have been given proper maintenance have stood the tes test of time just fine - but buildings with 'very little architecture' and a 'nominal amount of expression' are still being built at an ever-increasing rate. In North America - and the UK - and even, it seems, Europe, they are called suburbs. Has Hiorns never seen a North American suburb? A big box mall? 

Perhaps it's important to note that as the working class and the poor are being pushed out of the city centres, and the affluent from the suburbs are colonizing the condos and refurbished neighborhoods of the centre, these bland, cookie cutter, conformist suburbs will become the new housing estates. Where will 'regeneration' be then? 

New Design Revealed for Heygate

From BD the Architect's Website: 

Panter Hudspith Designs Housing for Elephant and Castle

(image credit: Nick Wharton). 

A firm named Panter Hudspith (Panter? Hudspith?) has revealed plans for 145 homes at Stead steet and another 100 at Royal Road. The proposals are to go in early next year and construction begin in April (2010). 500 public housing schemes are to be built in total. 

In theory this looks benign enough - public housing on a human scale, etc. But I just wonder how long public housing like this, with parks, trollies, nice train station etc will remain public. I suppose the construction noise from ancillary developments will keep land value down for awhile. But not forever. 

But this is assuming Lend Lease and the council sign a deal. And the remaining residents are moved out (South London Press reported as mid-July 200 remain), and the estate comes down. 

Model of final design to replace section of the Heygate. 

The Londonist also mentions this story  - and  also mentions this blog, which is kind of them. Apparently, demolition was due to start in September, has been delayed though the council insists demolition will begin next year.