Bravo, Renzo!

I had an interesting, uplifting experience this afternoon. Whilst wandering through the wet streets of London having visited my favourite shop, Stanfords Map Centre in Long Acre, I crossed a few roads on my way to Cambridge Circus and was stopped in my tracks by the new Renzo Piano building next to Tottenham Court.

It’s a curious construction. Stuck into a plot that is too small for it and mainly surrounded by West End side streets, it erupts into facades of different colours, dwarfing the majority of buildings surrounding it. Its faces are bright and cheerful; the horizontals of its windows and louvers crisscross the verticals to feel symmetric despite the contrasts of its angles and dimensions. Odd. I’m not that accustomed to being stopped in my tracks by modern buildings these days. Very rarely does a new development have this effect and, usually, only because it is a) neck breaking in scale, particularly height; b) a folly of humorous proportions, juxtaposed and marvellous in true surreal fashion; or c) original, groundbreaking, maybe contextualised into its environment. Central Saint Giles is not one of these but a slight combination of all of them.

It was also helped by the weather. It had been typical this weekend – the kind that receives a collective all zones moan (but secretly I adore it, like so many Londoners do of course): strong wind in gusts that blow the greasy auburn leaves around the streets, accompanied by grey rain at varying degrees of intensity. Yet the moment I saw Piano’s brainchild the sun momentarily peeked through the gloom to illuminate the south facing facade against a sodden and thunderous backdrop (reminiscent of the contrasts in Giorgione’s Tempest).

I’m sure others will begrudge it but I think it both titillates and titivates, and as such is a superb achievement. What with London Bridge’s Shard of Glass soon set to be a growing feature on the Southbank skyline, Lords Foster and Rogers will be looking over their shoulders and clasping their mantles of London leading architect tight.