1: Buildings

摘要

The civic. It's about an overall sense of place as much as a municipal building, say, but in Croydon's case its fine late Victorian town hall has long been counterpointed by a postwar neighbour, the Fairfield Halls complex, opened in 1962 and still clearly very influenced by the Royal Festival Hall of more than a decade prior. It has now been comprehensively refurbished by architect MICA and will be the centrepiece of a remade town centre with a lot of new housing. Differently grand is our cover star, the Naturalis museum in Leiden. Think we have difficulties with our public projects? You'll be amazed at the fistfight the Dutch got themselves into. But in the end, the sense of place is as much about the cumulative effect of lesser buildings. Like Peter Barber's new mansion block in Peckham where there used to be just a petrol station. Or Stuart Piercy's clever reworking of existing buildings in London's Spitalfields to make a new kind of workspace. Icons? Who needs them?