What price, progress?. Part 1- rail

It has always gone on, of course, old buildings destroyed by new roads, widening, railways, and underground works, but they used to replace them with things worthy of their predecessor. Now they just replace them.

Stoney Street in Southwark has always been in the way of the rail tracks, but now they want to knock even more of it down to double the railway's width. They demolished the north side of Green Dragon court to build the railway to Charing Cross, but now they want to wipe out the south side as well (despite a slight alternative route existing). The proposal is not popular, and people want to stop them, but if it goes ahead, instead of trying to rebuild as much as they can, the rail authorities will replace it with a glass box.

Green Dragon Court before the railway

Green Dragon Court after the first set of tracks to Charing Cross

Green Dragon Court after Thameslink "2000"

At Euston too, the track arrangement wasn't adequate. They needed to fit longer trains into the station, but the space was confined, and the station just got in the way. So they demolished it, everything had to go. They replaced it with something that can only be described politely as "municipal airport".

They demolished the streets in front of the station too. Drummond Street was in the way of the new concourse. Euston Street was in the way of building a concrete "piazza", a hostile windswept place known now as a favourite haunt of drug addicts. And they demolished the north side of Euston square just for fun, replacing it with two giant office block towers, linked by a solid black mass, just to make sure you couldn't see the station from the street, and to make the bus station dingy.

They could have moved the famous Arch forwards piece by piece, to a spot where it wouldn't be an obstruction, like the piazza. The demolition crew offered to move it there for free, or anywhere else deemed suitable, but the rail authorities didn't approve. They could have built the concourse as a replica of the much loved "great hall", at right angles to its original direction of course, but for them, everything had to be "honest" about its function, and not pretty, welcoming, or hospitable.

The original station.

The replacement.

The old hall

The new concourse.

Now they realise a mistake was made. The station is to be rebuilt once more. But the new design is barely different. Again a big glass box. The tower blocks will go, but to be replaced with a shopping centre, not the much needed homes, which once were there. Some people campaign to bring the arch back, but not the streets nor hall that once went with it, and the station builders won't put it in their plans.

The proposed station: an opportunity lost.

And there was a war in heaven.

Right. So this is where it begins. We all must start somewhere. And this has to be done.

Coventry was a really beautiful place once. People would visit for miles around. It would be one of our top tourist spots today. But its not. It was bombed. But then, so was Warsaw, and people still visit there. It still looks pretty. It still thrives.

Coventry destroyed by bombs.

Warsaw Old Town. Destroyed by bombs in 1944.

Like Coventry, Warsaw was rebuilt. But in Warsaw they rebuilt the city as it was, its heart and soul rose again. But Coventry was given to the functionalists. Gone was any hope of aesthetics, Corbousier reigned. Now no-one really wants to go there, and those that are sent have offended people.

Coventry as rebuilt 1956.

Warsaw as rebuilt in 1953.

And yet they keep going, after all the lessons we could have learnt, they keep ripping up pieces of cities and towns and villages for one excuse or another. Maybe some excuses are genuine, and it can't be any other way, but that never means you can't rebuild the building that was lost the way it was, but they don't.

Corbousier and his more recent cronies, glassism, and all the other kinds of blandboxism, keep eating away at the architectural fabric of this country, like a cancer slowly killing the very soul of the nation.

Its time for a cure.