Pavilions: Building for pleasure

When I was growing up, I had an usual pin-up on my bedroom wall; a sight to gaze at longingly and incorporate into the daydreams I constructed around my future. The pin-up was the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. To my teenage self, with its domes which appeared to glow softly golden in sunlight and extravagant details like no building I had seen before, the Pavilion represented a world that was exotic and glamorous. It was also tantalisingly within reach and grounded in the familiar English environment of the seaside town. I vowed that, as soon as I was old enough, I was going to move to Brighton and start an exciting new life in a flat in a Regency terrace within walking distance of the Brighton Pavilion. Living the building’s distinctive shadow would surely imbue my life with excitement and adventure.

Although I didn’t end up moving to Brighton, the Royal Pavilion sparked an interest in pavilions that stays with me today, from temporary structures and pavilions as works of art, to permanent and now iconic buildings.

Pavilions, which are defined as buildings dedicated to pleasure, encompass structures ranging from humble sports pavilions housing changing rooms to Mies Van der Rohe’s Barcelona pavilion, which provided a setting for his now famous Barcelona chair.

Pavilions have often been used to showcase and show off technical innovations, from the succession of World’s fairs, held throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which dazzled consumers with everything from automobiles to the latest products for the home (and wowed audiences at the 1939 New York World’s Fair with the highway-based model city of Futurama, a display sponsored by General Motors), to the 1951 Festival of Britain which was held to celebrate the centenary of Great Exhibition of 1851. The main Festival of Britain site was on the South Bank of the Thames in London, where 22 pavilions told the story of the British people and their achievements in science, technology and industrial design, themed The Land of Britain, The People of Britain and Discovery.

Pavilions still give nations a chance to show off their innovation at EXPOs (or world’s fairs) today. British designer Thomas Heatherwick’s spectacular pavilion for the 2010 Shanghai EXPO, a twenty high foot structure inspired by seeds which was designed to sway in the breeze, comprised acrylic sections each holding a seed from Kew Gardens’ Millennium Seed Bank.

Brighton’s Royal Pavilion is very much in the tradition of showing off, albeit the wealth of a private individual. It was completed in the early nineteenth century on the site of an earlier Marine Pavilion. Designed by John Nash, it exuded Oriental influences, inspired by India externally and using China as the basis for its decor. The Pavilion was the seaside home of George IV (then Prince Regent), where he could live a life of pleasure and excess far from the constraining influence of his parents. As Jonathan Meades put it in his 2005 TV documentary about the Pavilion, it was a place for George to live, entertain and pose, ‘the stage for a perpetual party’. The Pavilion is completely out of place in the town and is an especially striking sight at sunset and at night when it is illuminated. It is now such a symbol of the city that a simplified version appears in Brighton and Hove council’s logo.

Tastes change, and now I’m a bigger fan of the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, just around the coast from Brighton in East Sussex, which was built in the International Modernist style. The sleek, streamlined Pavilion faces out to sea and has an escapist glamour, incorporating a sweeping staircase, sun terraces and big windows. Its sleek curves help the Pavilion settle into its surroundings: the bay windows of traditional seaside houses.

Whereas the Royal Pavilion was exclusive, extravagant and fanciful, however, the De La Warr pavilion is clean and unfussy, pragmatic and democratic, a public building that aimed to bring culture and leisure to the people of Bexhill, originally designed to incorporate an entertainment hall, restaurant and reading room. Like the Royal Pavilion, which featured gas lighting and flushing toilets (even for the servants!), the De La Warr was at the cutting edge of modernity when it opened in 1935 and was the first building in England to be constructed with a welded steel frame. It, too, was associated with a member of the aristocracy. The Pavilion was funded by the 9th Earl of De La Warr, who was mayor at the time. 

The De La Warr Pavilion was designed by young architects Erich Mendelsohn (who came to Britain shortly beforehand to escape the Nazis) and Serge Chermayeff. During the war the building was used by the military, and fell into disrepair. The Pavilion narrowly avoided becoming a Wetherspoon’s pub, but, after restoration in the late twentieth century, is now back to serving its original purpose bringing leisure and entertainment to the people of Bexhill, from exhibitions of nationally and internationally renowned artists to concerts and film screenings.

Another Pavilion that has seen its fortunes change since it was built is the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee, County Durham, which was back in the news in late-2011 after it was awarded Grade II* listed status. Built in the Brutalist style out of reinforced concrete, and originally functioning as a bridge over a lake, it was designed by renowned abstract artist Victor Pasmore to be the focal point of a new town in a former mining area. As well as acting as a giant, outdoor public artwork in itself, it incorporated murals by the artist. Pasmore was used to collaborating with architects (he designed a mural for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and another for Kingston Bus Station) and was appointed Consulting director of urban design with Peterlee development corporation, where his role went beyond that of mere artist to have an input into the design of houses and other buildings. Pasmore envisaged ‘a synthesis of architect and artist in which common factors…were pooled in the interests of a common end’, and wanted the Pavilion to be named Apollo after the 1969 moon landing. Like the innovative design of the town itself, the Pavilion symbolised a brighter future of hope, optimism and adventure.

Unfortunately, the Pavilion soon became neglected and vandalised (though, reportedly, Pasmore welcomed graffiti as he thought it ‘humanised’ the structure) and, in the 1980s, a local councillor mounted a campaign to demolish the Pavilion.

I first became fascinated by the Apollo Pavilion a few years ago after I saw artists Jane and Louise Wilson’s four screen video installation Monument (Apollo Pavilion, Peterlee) at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. Made in 2003, it shows local children clambering over the structure and using it as a giant climbing frame. It’s an image that has stayed with me ever since: the fusion of art and the everyday, the practical and the decorative. Though the post-war architectural optimism the Pavilion epitomises has long since evaporated, the Pavilion itself has stood the test of time and underwent a major restoration 2009.

Among my favourite pavilions are those designed by the American artist Dan Graham*. Since the 1980s, Graham has been constructing two way mirror pavilions that sit somewhere between art and architecture, acting as kaleidoscopic halls of mirrors to be explored by the public. Two way mirror glass is both reflective and transparent, and Graham’s pavilions raise questions about corporate architecture and surveillance: who can see in and who can see out? The audience is spectator but also performer, highlighting the gap between the way we are seen by others and the way we see ourselves. Installed in towns and cities around the world, often in public spaces and parks, Graham’s pavilions question boundaries and reflect their surroundings but also corrupt them, reinterpreting the everyday day environment as a place of play and leisure, a space where the real becomes real and the natural unnatural (and vice versa). They’re places to people watch and watch the world go round, or just observe the changing sky. Play is important to Graham’s pavilions, from those designed especially for children and old people to watch cartoons, such as the drop-in daycare centre Waterloo Sunset, an installation at the Hayward Gallery from 2002-2003, to his 1989 Skateboard Pavilion.

Another pavilion which makes you look more closely at your surroundings is Luke Jerram’s acoustic wind pavilion Aeolus, which visited Salford Quays in 2011 as part of a tour that  also took in sites as diverse as Lyme Park, Cheshire, and the Eden Project in Cornwall. The Pavilion consists of stainless steel tubes that emit a low murmur when wind hits strings attached to the pavilion at the right frequency and causes them to vibrate. Press your ears to ears to the tubes and they hum different notes, speak into them and your voice bounces back at you.

An accompanying exhibition in the University of Salford explained that the pavilion was influenced by the concept of a room where the silence is so complete you can hear your own blood, and the beauty of the pavilion is that it makes you stop and listen and makes you more aware of what’s around you, whether it’s trams and cars or passing people. The structure also reflects and highlights the light outside.

One of the most impressive clusters of pavilions is in Venice, where the canal-side Giardini (gardens) holds 30 national pavilions built to to show off the talents of their countries at the city’s famous biennial art show (the city is also scattered with pavilions in old palazzi and churches). They were built in different styles over the twentieth century, from elaborate and neoclassical to solemn white cubes and light, airy modernist masterpieces, by some of the most important architects of the twentieth century including Alvar Aalto. Exploring the different pavilions is often as exciting as seeing the art they contain within – especially when the artwork transforms or disguises the building itself, for example Mike Nelson’s 2011 British Pavilion which turned the space into an uncannily lifelike recreation of a Turkish house. At the 2011 Biennale, the festival hosted for the first time para-pavilions – pavilions within pavilions curated by different artists – which comprised some of the most interesting exhibitions.

Since 2000, leading architects who had not hitherto built anything in Britain have been commissioned to create temporary pavilions, lasting for six months, outside the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Hyde Park. Architects have interpreted the brief in different ways, from Daniel Libeskind’s scrap metal-esque pavilion to Zaha Hadid’s marquee. Rem Koolhaas built a gas-filled orb, which was used for his regular collaborator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s 24 hour interview marathons, whereas Peter Zumthor envisaged a garden within a garden, installed in 2011. The Serpentine Pavilions can be purchased and reused, though they are generally not reinstalled in public places.

In Manchester, we have our own small bit of star architect. Tadao Ando was commissioned to design the Japanese Pavilion in Piccadilly Gardens as part of the redesign of city centre Manchester that took place after the 1996 IRA bomb and in the run up to the 2003 Commonwealth games. The Pavilion, which takes the form of a concrete wall separating the gardens from the bus interchange, has long divided Mancunians, who often see it as stark and unwelcoming. Ando has done some spectacular work, incorporating light and water into buildings such as museums and churches elsewhere in the world, but maybe there’s something lost in translation under the frequently grey skies of Manchester. My main complaint, though, is the use of the Pavilion: far from being an open public space for pleasure and enjoyment it holds, rather unimaginatively, a chain coffee shop and chain restaurant (neither of which I’ve ever felt any urge to pay to visit). With the city noticeably lacking bandstands from its public parks, couldn’t it at least be put to use as a space for performance and recreation, a stage for buskers?

*An engaging lecture by Graham on his pavilions from the Glasgow School of Art Vimeo channel:



Dan Graham, 'Pavilions' from GSA on Vimeo.

Manchester's Mr Blobby - and other decorations

You know it’s that time of year again when (aside from creeping TV commercials spreading thin, enforced jolliness for sale at Tesco and B and Q), the workmen start arriving in Albert Square.

It starts with the legs - four huge blocks big enough to support what comes next, the obese, oversize frame of Manchester’s own Mr Blobby. Early in November, Santa’s lifted into pride of place on the Town Hall, from where he can survey the town square in all its glory, his twinkling boxes of golden presents scattered across nearby lampposts.

His vantage point is dark until his welcome party, the customary Christmas lights switch on, when Santa reminds the city of his existence in a display of 100,000 glowing lights. This year, he was announced by X Factor winner Alexandra Burke plus, appropriately for such an over-the-top caricature, local pantomime stars.

Sitting atop a 32 foot structure, Santa wishes those below a ‘Merry Christmas Manchester’. Subtle it isn’t; at ten metres tall, eight metres wide and six metres deep, his scale is huge. Something so cartoonish is an absurd sight on Alfred Waterhouse's stately neo-gothic Town Hall. Santa completely overshadows other seasonal reminders such as the pair of discreet poppies that flank him on the town hall around Remembrance Day. They can’t compete; though they too are oversized, they don’t have his sheer bulk.Santa’s so fat he doesn’t even have legs, just bloated, blobby feet, and seems to prompt mixed reactions from shoppers at the Christmas markets below. A 59 year old from Swinton said: “I would prefer something more traditional. I preferred the old one in the tower, but it kept coming down. Maybe it will look better in the evening when it’s lit up.” His wife, though, said: “I like it. It’s only there for a couple of weeks anyway - it’s not like it’s permanent!”

A businessman visitng from the US said: “Maybe it’s there to draw people here, but I wish it was on a slightly more human scale! The colours and pretty and the lights are nice, but I didn’t notice it until you pointed it out!” On the other hand, 21 year old James said: “It’s a good piece of culture!” and a woman from Leyland said: “It’s lovely. I’m a fan of Christmas and all the things that go with it.”

When he was first unveiled (a similarly grotesque inflatable Santa was finally laid to rest in 2006 after succumbing to a growing shabbiness and propensity to puncture), Councillor Pat Karney proudly proclaimed: “'It is very hi-tech and very 21st Century'. It will put Las Vegas in the shade.” It’s as if the council has done a tour of those notorious houses which compete with rooftop displays every year, and decided to go one better with what they have on their roof.

Of course, it’s not just Albert Square that gets the Christmas lights treatment. The pollution of Oxford Road is offset briefly by rows of green firs. Deansgate is a wonderland of simple but wintry scenes. I have to admit, though, that my favourite is the unconventional Christmas tree in Piccadilly Gardens.

Eschewing a traditional tree (that honour is reserved for Albert Square, which hosts the fir tree that’s donated by the people of Stavanger, Norway every year), instead the shape of a tree is loosely represented in a 32 foot tower of illuminated silver balls. A real tree could look tawdry and forlorn rattling around in that empty concrete space (a conventional tree would have to be massive to make any impact on the open space of the gardens, and could too easily become tacky if overloaded with too many decorations or shabby if vandalised), but there’s something really simple yet effective about the sphere tree that I love. When illuminated at night, its fragile, delicate cages cast a monochrome white glow that offsets the coldness of Tadao Ando’s concrete pavilion. The pile of wire baubles somehow makes the sparse space, which is dominated by Ando’s minimalist concrete wall, more welcoming. What could be stark and lost amongst the rich architecture of Albert Square somehow fits in Piccadilly Gardens.

Piccadilly Gardens is no stranger to unusual takes on trees. The ball tree has replaced a cone tree that was previously installed at Christmas time, and at the other end of Piccadilly Gardens, there’s already another unconventional tree, the 11foot high steel Tree of Remembrance that was erected in 2005 to remember the victims of bombing in Manchester during the second world war. These two opposing visions of trees somehow make you appreciate the few bare trees growing around the area even more.

The ball-tree is a beacon, visible from the northern quarter, guiding you down the narrow streets late at night towards Piccadilly Gardens and the prospect of home. Its only potential downfall is Manchester’s unpredictable weather, occasionally falling victim to high winds.

However you feel about Christmas, the Christmas lights add a sheen to the city that could make even the most hardened anti-Christmas cynic believe in magic - or at least spread a little glow for a small period of time. It’s nice to see a bit more colour on the city streets (imagine if the fairy lights cheering up Piccadilly Gardens were made permanent, like those in the trees outside Piccadilly Station or around Sackville Street Gardens) even if it’s just for a little while.

Japanese Pavilion, Piccadilly Gardens

What? The Japanese Pavilion which dominates Piccadilly Gardens. Its most defining feature is a large concrete wall which is sometimes described as the Berlin Wall of Manchester. Anyone stepping off a bus or tram is greeted by the brutal expanse of bland greyness, made even worse by rows of portable urinals.

A pavilion should be a pleasant, relaxing place, though? The word 'pavilion' has connotations of pleasure and recreation, but Piccadilly Gardens isn’t exactly a place in which you want to hang around. The Japanese Pavilion is minimalist, cold and hardly welcoming - unless you’re gladdened by the sight of yet another Café Nero.

When and who? The council set up an international competition to redesign the gardens as part of the regeneration that followed the IRA bomb. It also coincided with the smartening up of the city that happened in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games. The winners were announced in 1998, and Japanese professional boxer turned award-winning architect Tadao Ando was enlisted, completing the building in 2003.
What was wrong with the old Piccadilly Gardens? The garden, which is the largest green open space in central Manchester, was created in 1914 where the basement of the original Manchester Royal Infirmary stood. By the time of the 1996 bomb, though, the sunken Victorian style ornamental gardens were seen as being both out of date and an unsafe no-go area populated by drug dealers. Now, all that remains of the original design are the statues, including the imposing figure of Queen Victoria.

What’s Ando's track record? He's designed churches, art galleries and housing, which often incorporate natural elements such as light into the design – see the Church of Light in Japan or Church on the Water, which is surrounded by an artificial lake. The problem is, given the above average grey element of Manchester's skies, the greyness of the pavilion serves only to emphasise the prevalence of our overcast skies rather than distract from them, and the grubbiness of the wall is in keeping with the shabbiness of the gardens as a whole, with their patchy grass and litter.

So it’s something to make Manchester proud? Let's take a look at another city, Sheffield, and what it's done to regenerate one of its public spaces. Visitors leaving Sheffield's train station walk out into Sheaf Square which, like Piccadilly Gardens, has fountains and a large wall. Sheffield's though, designed by international glass artist Keiko Mukadie, reflects (literally) the city's history.

Cutting Edge is a five metres high, 90 metres long sculpture made of the steel for which the city is famous, and depicts the fashioning of a knife blade as a tribute to the city's reputation for fine cutlery. Finished in 2007, it has lights embedded in it and its mirror finish gleams and excites more than our bland concrete block.

We drew the short straw, then? Yes. The Japanese Pavillion divides people – literally, as it's designed to separate the busy bus and Metrolink terminal from the rest of the space.

Didn’t the council have ambitious plans for the Pavilion? Yes - in September 2007 it announced plans to create a living roof, and work was supposed to start this time last year. The council wanted to make Manchester Britain’s greenest city and attract wildlife to the area. The roof would have attracted birds and butterflies and come alive in summer. But it would only have been seen from offices that overlook the Pavilion anyway.

That’s the main problem, isn’t it - the Pavilion is bit lifeless, especially compared to the hub of activity that goes on around it? The word on the street is that people would like to feel a bit more involved in the space.

But at least people are trying to enliven the place - in April 2006, Manchester International Arts covered it in 25,000 pink, scented flowers as an installation called 'Wall Flowers'.

And not very Manchester (there's a clue in the name)? No. Rachael Elwell of art knitting group ArtYarn says its “bleak” and “uninspiring” appearance is “a complete contradiction to what Manchester claims to achieve artistically”. She suggests a knitted panel covering the wall to bring back memories of “forgotten practises and ways of old living” from Manchester’s textile heritage.

What else do you suggest we do about it? We could have a mural, stick with the fairy lights that are there at Christmas and at least bestow the Pavilion with a little bit of warmth, or even have changing projections on the wall. It could be given to graffiti artists like the street art walls down the road in Stevenson Square, or provide a new home for the Afflecks Palace mosaics.

Morag Rose, founder of the Loiterers Resistance Movement psychogeography collective, came up with the most inventive suggestion: “one week cover it in glittery pink fake fur so stressed commuters could have a stroke or a hug.”

Sally Makison, an interior designer at Maddocks Design Partnership, thinks the tourist information centre should be moved from the town hall to a more central location inside the Pavilion.

As a Victorian city, how about updating a Victorian leisure tradition that's a welcome addition to any park and turning the pavilion into a bandstand? Offer city centre buskers, who provide one of the last remaining shreds of individuality amid the chain stores of Market Street, rotating slots in a rain and wind free environment, and give people a reason to stay in Piccadilly Gardens rather than rushing though it.