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Terry Farrell: Creating the Jewel of the Thames
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20092 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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2 / 1992 |
1,997 Words |
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Marcus Binney
Marcus Binney, is president of Save Britain's Heritage. |
London has a magnificent new landmark crowning one of the best of all views of the river Thames. Whether you stand on Westmister Bridge or Waterloo Bridge, the silhouette of Terry Farrell's Embankment Place building over Charing Cross Station forms a new climax to the whole riverfront from the Houses of Parliament to Somerset House.
The view is exhilarating, precisely because this stretch of the Thames is so wide, the north side scoured continuously over the centuries by the weight of the descending current and the incoming tide.
It was here that Farrell had the opportunity to build. What matched him particularly with the task was his keen eye for twenties and thirties architecture, leading him to draw resonance from neighboring buildings in a way no other architect working in London would have done. The new offices had to be big enough an distinct enough to hold their own among powerful neighbors, and large enough to support the huge costs of building over a railway terminus in constant use.
Yet nowhere do feelings about bulky new buildings run higher than on the Thames. Farrell's clients, Greycoats, however, went to him because, among all the rising stars in British architecture, he is the one with the two qualities most essential for this site a sense of context and a sense of scale. Terry Farrell is an architect who positively enjoys working with large masses. So much of twentieth-century architecture has concentrated on the character of spaces rather than the walls and roofs that enclose them. The desire for lightness and openness has meant that the tallest buildings are often intended to appear the most ethereal or
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