Corduroy Mansions

17. Brutalism in Architecture

‘Arts and Crafts!’ exclaimed James. ‘Is this your place, Caroline? Corduroy Mansions.’

They had walked together up Ebury Street and turned into the side street on which, along with several other less distinguished blocks of flats, stood Corduroy Mansions. James, who had a strong interest in architecture, was ecstatic.

‘Look at your chimney,’ he exclaimed. ‘Pure Domestic Revival! And the sharply sloping roof. And the dormers. Oh, Caroline!’

‘Those dormer windows are fake,’ Caroline said. ‘William - he lives on the top floor - says that there’s nothing in the roof, just empty space.’

James became even more enthusiastic. ‘Fake windows! Even better. Can you think of one contemporary architect, just one, who would bother to put in fake windows?’

They were standing on the pavement outside Corduroy Mansions, both looking up at the building’s cream-painted brick façade and at the fake windows jutting out of the roof. Caroline tried to think of a contemporary architect who would resort to such decoration, and could not. Her problem was more profound, though: she was having difficulty thinking of any contemporary architect, whether or not he would resort to fake windows. She was weak on architects but she knew that there was one, at least, who was iconic. What was the name of the man who designed Stansted airport? Norman Foster. That was it.

‘Norman Foster?’ she ventured. ‘No, he wouldn’t, would he?’

James laughed. ‘Certainly not. Mind you, he’s all right, compared with some of them.’

‘Stansted airport,’ suggested Caroline. ‘I quite like it.’

‘Lots of air,’ said James, making an extravagant, airy gesture above his head. ‘And lots of light. Unlike most of Heathrow, which is a glorified souk these days.’ He gave a shudder. ‘All those low ceilings and tatty carpets and flashy shops. When you go to an airport abroad now - virtually anywhere - you find clean floors - stone floors - and ceilings that allow you to breathe. Everything has become so mean in this country.

‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘one shouldn’t just pick on Heathrow. There’s the British Library, a lot of people still hate that. I think it’s rather nice inside though. That poor architect. I don’t think he deserved all that criticism.’

He turned away from his inspection of the building and looked at Caroline. ‘Do you think that architecture and morality are linked, Caroline?’

Caroline had been thinking about biscuits, and wondering whether she still had any lemons in the fridge. It would be nice, she thought, to make lemon biscuits rather like the organic ones Prince Charles baked for his Duchy Originals. They were delicious, those biscuits, but a bit of a treat, not being all that cheap. She could afford them - her father gave her a generous allowance - but when one shared with others one should be careful about what sort of food was left lying around in the kitchen. Not that any of them would eat food that was not theirs (a nibble, perhaps, now and then); it was more a question of tact. Dee had no spare money for expensive food; she largely lived on food supplements and brown rice. And the others, though not as hard up as Dee, had to watch what they spent. Oedipus Snark paid Jenny a pittance, she said, and although Jo seemed to find sufficient funds to go on regular paintballing weekends in Essex - a bizarre activity even for a man, and doubly so, thought Caroline, for a woman - even so, she was always grumbling about the price of essentials such as milk and bread.

‘They’re not essential,’ Dee had once snapped. ‘You don’t need cooked grains. And milk is bad for you, as everybody knows. It’s full of chemicals that the cows pick up when they eat the chemical-covered grass. Chemicals, Jo, chemicals. There was an article about it in Anti-oxidant News.’

Jo had ignored this. ‘Back home in Perth,’ she said, ‘you never thought twice about buying something like milk. You just bought it. Here—’

Caroline’s train of thought was interrupted by James.

‘When I was at Cambridge,’ he went on, ‘there was a Fellow of Peterhouse called David Watkin. Heard of him? A very amusing, interesting man. He said that modernism in architecture involved a frightening, stern morality. Everything must be functional, stripped bare, stark. Brutal. Hence the South Bank Centre.’ He paused. ‘I think he’s right about modernism.’

‘Oh,’ said Caroline. ‘So . . .’

‘Of course,’ James continued, ‘we all know that buildings express an attitude to the world. And that means we can judge them morally.’

‘Stansted airport?’ asked Caroline.

‘Open. Reasonably friendly. Not scary. It’s OK from the moral point of view.’

Caroline was intrigued. She enjoyed James and his conversation. What would it be like, she wondered, to be married to somebody like him - somebody who would keep one entertained all the time? The world would be always be interesting with James by one’s side. She looked at him again. He was very good-looking; there was little doubt about that. And yet, and yet . . .

‘Give me an example of an evil building,’ she asked. ‘Can you?’

James did not take long to come up with an answer. ‘Anything commissioned by Mussolini,’ he said. ‘Or designed by Speer. Fascist buildings. Soviet architecture - you know, those great horrid blocks of flats that showed such contempt for the people who lived in them. Treated them like ants. Las Vegas - virtually everything there.’ He thought for a moment longer. ‘Or that Romanian dictator’s palace. You know, the one who was shot in his long winter coat when people rose up against him.’

‘What about prisons? Don’t they express . . . well, cruelty?’

‘I’m trying to think of famous prisons,’ said James. ‘I suppose, by their very nature, prisons will look unfriendly and hard. They have very small windows, you see, and that makes a building look threatening. The Bastille? San Quentin?’

‘Yes. Those are certainly cruel buildings.’

James sighed. ‘But look at modern fortress architecture. Schools with tiny windows and large swathes of concrete. Look at the Hayward Gallery, in all its brutality. How could they do it, Caroline? How could anybody make a thing like that?’ He sighed again. ‘And here’s this lovely building, your Corduroy Mansions. Crumpled - if a building can be crumpled. Utterly friendly and human. A building that says, “Come in, love.” That’s what it says: it calls us “love”, like a tea lady. A building that one would like to sit down and have tea with. That sort of building.’

They both looked up at the comfortable brickwork.

‘Those are our windows up there,’ said Caroline.

James smiled. ‘Lovely. Lovely windows.’

Caroline looked at him appreciatively. What other man would compliment one’s windows? As her younger sister would say - with the elongated teenage vowel that signified utter approbation - he’s sooooo sympathetic.

Was there a possibility? That business about stages - was there any truth in it? she wondered.

No, she must put all of that out of her mind. James was here to bake biscuits. Nothing more.