Positive 10: CentrePoint, West.

CentrePoint. London. March. 10.

Here's a walk that we undertook, in the interests of both an article and for a small amount of education, through Soho. At this point it is mostly just a photo essay. To begin with we made our point of embarkation (in this case from the number 55 bus) Central London's navigational Milion: Richard Seifert's Centre Point. Its name provided us with a suitable starting point, if somewhat ironic as apparently the right to build it came from providing a useful automobile junction being built underneath it. However with the proposed Crossrail works pedestrians may be able to claim this point back soon, as part of the increasingly walkable area of London.

 Chinatown Pak Choi. London. March. 10.


Our first foray outward lead us through Chinatown, and in particular down those tiny streets inhabitated by a collapse of pallets and trolleys outside those small vegetable shops like the one above.

Frescoe. London. March. 10.


One of the first objectives on our trek was the Notre Dame de France church on Leicester Place, where an early 20th Century Beaux Arts concoction. It was of particular interest for the artworks inside: a mosaic by the Russian Boris Anrep (above) and a mural by Jean Cocteau, the polymathic French artist. Both Anrep and Cocteau are colossal figures in European intellectual culture and the audience they garnered on this Saturday morning was a little disappointing, so please make the pilgrimage.
 

Camera Fayre. London. March. 10.


We set back off into Soho heading West toward Golden Square. I spied this CCTV garlanded with coloured ribbon (presumably a vestige from some previous event), and found the anachronism pleasing and jolly.

"RevueBar". London. March. 10.


Apparently London's first strip bar lies dormant and wanting, a sign of both the declining decadence and increasing commercialism of Soho.

Canaletto. London. March. 10.


A house on Broadwick Street which bore Canaletto when he moved to London to be closer to the English gentlemen who patronised his tireless views of Venice.

Espresso + Gravadlax. London. March. 10.

One of the major points on our journey was Nordic Bakery, a delightful (and delectable) eatery that oozed with good taste (real good taste not the faded romantic roccoco rubbish that passes for taste in near-east London). The detailing went from the Aalto chairs to the gravadlax, right down to the denim aprons on the typically blonde staff.

Almost ex-embassy. London. March. 10.

Our final objective and the one that marked the move from the quietening streets of Soho to the very quieted streets of Mayfair was Eero Saarinen's American Embassy. Or as we recently found, Eero Saarinen's soon to be ex-embassy (Kieran Timberlake's design for the new Vauxhall pad can be seen here). Which raises the interesting question of what this Grade II listed building will become when they move out. Perhaps just an office building, or some culturally mundane institution, but perhaps the US should use it (an example of an American bringing something great to Britain as an outpost for welcoming. An anti-embassy? Somewhere where we can learn that America is not just a lardy hillbilly state, and that it perhaps has something to discuss with the rest of the planet. This anti-embassy should be an outpost for all that is good that is American.

Positive 9: Hackney to Greenwich

 

Bethnal Green Gasometers. London. March. 10.


It is time for us to strike out for the territory, and chart lines across the capital in a manner that might live up to the title of this blog. The first real Urban Adventure takes the form of a walk from Kingsland Road, Hackney, to Greenwich.

We chose this route for its scenery - the route we take uses both Regent's Canal (or partly doesn't as we shall see), and the Thames Path. It forges a pictaresque route through some of the most diverse (socialogically/geographically/architecturally) parts of London.

Regents Canal, near Victoria Park. London. March. 10.


Quickly, after mounting the canal just before it is crossed by the shining new Overground line, the route had to be rethought. Regent's Canal affords (at least in some parts, currently, although as the Islington to New North Road stretch testifies, it is quickly being capatilised upon) some of the most revealing backyard glimpses of both lives and neighbourhoods. It cuts through the terraces and light industry, allowing them to spill inward toward the canal: to embrace its open-ness. The stretch of the canal alongside Victoria Park is currently undergoing major work and this allows us to catch a glimpse of its reality, the shuttered concrete walls, sluggish silty bottom, and floating traffic cones that lie beneath the normally attractive surface.

This gruesome striptease is a wonderful spectacle, and one that has revealed further appreciation in us toward the canal.

Regents Canal, near Mile End park. London. March. 10.

The slopes falling toward the canal around Mile End Park are the results of some very obvious and intentiona regenereation. Although quite who for is unknown, perhaps the sectre of the Olympic Delivery authority looms low over this stretch and this could account for such "Dutch" spectacles as the above bridge.

Graduate Centre, by Surface Architects. London. March. 10.

This Surface designed building for Queen Mary's University has an interesting and complex formal relationship to the canal, and this goes some way to explaining its somewhat scale-less form. The most exciting part of its design is the opening next to the building, it opens the space  beyond to the canal, and the canal becomes less cut-like, less linear. This is the sort of urban move that could invigorate and invite the canal into the city.

Roundabout Sculpture, Canary Wharf. London. March. 10.

The canal leads into the Limehouse Basin, where we have to break from it, and attempt to join the Thames Path, which leads us across the Isle of Dogs. A highly disparate pedestrian experience, one that takes us from corporate urbanism to empty 90s residential blocks. The route breaks from the vast expanses of the Thames-side walk, to the tight and place-less spaces further into the interior of the Isle.

Millwall to Canary Wharf. London. March. 10.

The above photograph expresses to us the discontinuity of the Isle of Dogs, and its disparity between the semi-detached suburbs of Millwall to the high-rise of Canary Wharf. Whether or not this stretches to a more troubled London relationship with towers or not, or if it is a ore local situation is hard to say.

Greenwich Tunnel, looking South. London. March. 10.

The suburbs of Millwall give way to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, which on the weekend that the Thames Tunnel was open before it became a branch of the Overground, was an enticing prospect. The archaic lift, with its genial supervisor, leads you to this eery and antiquarian stretch of Victoriana. This bizarre place leads us up into the heartland of tourist Greenwich, an incongrous transition, but one soon left behind, striking out to the South and East.