PODS AND MONSTERS

摘要

A medical research centre where scientists are banished to the basement and Iife-or-death matters are discussed beneath giant deep-sea creatures, orange bubble clusters and alien spacecraft… Martin Spring visits Will Alsop's most flamboyant, and contradictory, offering yet. Photographs by Morley von Sternberg. London's down-at-heel east end is the scene of the fullest, most flamboyant flowering yet of architect Will Alsop's surreal imagination. On a site behind the giant Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, four trademark Alsop pods have emerged, floating freely within a large airy void. Each is playful, curvaceous, hollow and equally outlandish in different ways. They range from what looks like a spiky deep-sea creature dressed in black oilskin to a zebra-striped tropical fish, a delicate, fabric-wrapped oval spacecraft and a cluster of shiny orange bubbles. All of which may suggest that this is the latest in fun-packed children's theme parks. In reality, however, the building is a strictly controlled, antiseptic environment that houses one of the most highly specialised, earnest- indeed, life-or-death - of human activities. It is an advanced medical research centre for Queen Mary, University of London.