Peoples Republic of South Devon

Devon architecture

August 10th, 2008

Our favourite architect Ivan Jordan takes a look the recent risers in and around Devon.

Big buildings have not been a strong point in Devon’s architecture of late. Good work has been done in relatively small packages: Exeter’s modernist-influenced Picturehouse, for example. In the meantime, a Devon vernacular has become established, consisting of timber boarded everything. Acceptable design in Devon, it appears, has to resemble corduroy on at least one elevation. And it has to be of a polite scale, with overhanging eaves. And a deck.

Then, like buses, three major construction schemes complete in the same year: Exeter’s Princesshay Scheme, Plymouth’s Drake Circus and The University of Plymouth’s Roland Levinsky Building. Each comes with a fanfare and each is undeniably an improvement on that which was there before. They are the three stories of building in Devon this year.

The opening of two new retail centres in Devon was to many a sign that the county, after years of waiting, was catching up with other cultural hotspots such as Peterborough or Croydon.

Plymouth’s Drake Circus hit that note with perfect pitch, but Exeter’s Princesshay was a pleasant surprise. Much revised from the original scheme of the 1990s, it is the best post-war urban design in Exeter. Elements such as the Roman Wall are successfully integrated within the public realm, and entirely new places in the city have been created. Jutting apartments give strong rhythm above the shops and express the mixed use of the buildings well, and curved sandstone cladding offers a lesson in contemporary use of a traditional local material.

However, Princesshay is not all good. The spatial design is often let down by the architecture itself: oversized blank elevations flank spaces that demand intimacy; glass buildings have no transparency; most disappointingly, the orientation of the entire development is made suspect by an ill-considered relationship to the cathedral.

Much has been made of the view of the cathedral, to which the main thoroughfare has been axially aligned. Sighting the cathedral towers, the visitor is given an expectation of a processionary route through the arcade, across Bedford Square and in to the cathedral precincts. Not so. Instead, one is drawn to a dismal anticlimax, the lost corner of Bedford square, flanked by a brick wall and the fag–strewn steps to the rear of Wagamamma. There is an abundance of precedent to inform the designer of other ways to use the view of the cathedral. For example, how exciting it is in Venice to have to find one’s way to St Marks through a maze of alleys and cloisters, afforded only the occasional glimpse of the tower. To promise a promenade to Exeter Cathedral and then fail to deliver it is a schoolboy error.

Despite the flaws, Princesshay offers a quality of space that is worlds apart from the high street that it runs parallel to, and for that reason alone the designers should be applauded.

Plymouth’s Mall by comparison is a monument to stupidity. As one approaches on the Exeter Road, it presents an extraordinary composition of overlapping huge-scale cladded panels fanning out behind the bombed out church, like a surrealist collage with ice cream wafers. Behind that is an indeterminate mass of car parks, curving up to present vast brick buttocks to the university on top of the hill. In the centre of all this is the shopping mall itself, fantastically anonymous. One does not know whether to laugh or cry at the ensemble.

So to the Levinsky building, which is the only one of the three that can claim architectural significance. Where Princesshay and Drake Circus are comprised of indentikit built forms, this is a stridently European object that plays expressively with roof, wall and window and with some success.

Not for this building the clear legibility of a David Chipperfield. It is origami on a seven-storey scale. The copper skin is cut and folded, forming edges that slice the foggy Plymouth atmosphere. Windows are patterned on its surface like clumps of pixels, and inner storeys are revealed in cross section beneath its crumpled shell.

Having set the challenge of a complex form, the building’s second act is to draw the visitor in with a strong, clear entrance to the South. Many non-classical buildings fail at this, somehow unable to present a legible face to the world, but the Levinsky leaves no one in any doubt. A wedge shaped chunk is cut from its bulk, with steps up to the entrance doors between dark stone flanks, overlooked by a terrace that mediates between the height of the “tower” behind and pavement below.

The complexity continues inside, but unhappily with less success. One arrives into a sky-lit four-storey atrium. This space ought to be huge, but the escalator and the fine art studios above feel shoehorned in. Walking along the gallery towards the first floor cafe, there is barely room for circulation without pushing the art students, hunched over laptops at two-seat tables, into the void.

Exploring the architecture and 3D design departments, one is presented with the same sense of the squeezing of functional areas into space designed for.. well, space. The seven storeys felt like a stack of boxes that one would only want to peek into. Progressing up the tower was also very noisy, infused as it was with the cacophony of the Plymouth gales outside and loud lift machinery.

Some of the buildings internal structure is beautifully finished, and the mezzanine levels at the top of the atrium could be excellent spaces for their purpose, which is the display and review of design and architectural work. The visual openness between the departments, across the open space they share, can only help to enrich the work done there.

Critics have made the point that the Levinsky was designed as a “flagship” building, the insides not fully considered at the early stages. However, as is often the case, the architects appointed at construction stage were not the firm that won the original design competition. It’s a common scenario: cost conscious clients seek to maximise the floor area of their investment, and out comes the metaphorical hatchet, chopping out the fun bits. We don’t know if this happened during the construction of the Roland Levinsky Building, but it would account for the sense of mismatched scales.

There are other flaws, such as the ground floor gallery with blank glass walls on to the pavement, but despite my misgivings, I think the Roland Levinsky is a brave building and I like it.

The stories these three schemes tell are very different. Princesshay is a Donna Tartt novel: well considered, with moments of brilliance, ultimately a pedestrian affair. The Roland Levinsky Building is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: an attractive, purposeful face presented to the world, with a confused soul. Drake Circus is the airport novela and proud of it – hysterical cover page and content crammed with every cliché imaginable.
To have three big schemes in Devon to compare is wonderful.

Perhaps in the future there will be smaller projects to consider that have attended to every detail, but recently, the best building completed in Devon is the Roland Levinsky Building. It could be better, but it’s a great place to start. And it has no timber cladding.

Ivan Jordan is an architect who lives and works in Devon. ivan@bsa-exe.co.uk 01392 271173.

Entry Filed under: Arts, Society