Following the recent Grade II listing of the headquarters of Gwynedd County Council (see below), I went to have a close look at them.  It is scarcely believable that they were designed and built between 1982 and 1984.  Pevsner in 2009 was pretty dismissive, describing them as relying ‘on pastiche instead of eloquent restraint’.  This feels unfair.  Given the extreme sensitivity of the site, in a street right next door to one of the greatest of Edward I’s castles, it looks to me to be an intelligent and thoughtful way of inserting large modern office buildings into a complex grid of essentially medieval streets.  It was done by the county architects, but under the aegis and in conjunction with Professor Dewi-Prys Thomas, who ran the Welsh School of Architecture and was deeply interested in traditional Welsh architecture:-

https://c20society.org.uk/news/postmodern-pencadlys-becomes-latest-c20-cymru-listing#dismiss-cookie-notice

As a long-standing supporter of Neal’s Yard, both in Borough Market and, particularly during COVID, at Spa Terminus, I was pleased to be alerted to the attached, fascinating Guardian Long Read by Jonathan Nunn about its origins in 1970s counter-culture. 

I vaguely remember the atmosphere of Neal’s Yard as it once was, and particularly the Monmouth Coffee House before the days of ubiquitous coffee shops, but did not know the story of its rise:-

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/jan/23/nicholas-saunders-forgotten-genius-changed-british-food

We have never previously been to the National Slate Museum close to Llamberis – in fact, shamefully, I didn’t know of its existence.

It’s magnificent.  It occupies the workshops of the Dinorwic Slate Quarry, closed in 1969, reopened in 1972, so able to keep many of the workshops with the signage and equipment intact.

This is the entrance front, dated 1870, rather Eastern European in feel:-

The remains of the Quarry looms above:-

Old signage:-

The Power Hall:-

Through to the Foundry:-

To the blacksmith’s forge:-

Tools of the trade:-

It is the most evocative site of industrial archaeology I’ve been to since I first visited the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in February 2017.

I notice that most of the discussion about The Slab, including the Secretary of State’s very lukewarm support for it, couches the argument as one between ‘conservationists’ and ‘aesthetics’ versus economic growth.  It’s viewed as a victory for economic growth consolidating London’s position as a global financial centre.

This prompts the questions:  is there a proven link between high-rise development and economic growth ?  Who are the tenants of The Slab likely to be ?

I ask this question because my own experience of the leaders of global finance, including those who worked in the offices of the oligarchs, is that they liked relatively small offices in Mayfair or St. James which were in easy reach of their houses in the west end and so they could congregate in the clubs and smart restaurants for breakfast and in the evening nearby.

I don’t see them sitting in vast open-plan offices South of the river, just because it’s close to Waterloo.

The only time that I have attended a meeting for inward investors, London was being sold for the quality of its environment, its schools, its housing stock, the community of other investors, not because of the availability of vacant tower blocks.

So, does disfiguring the urban environment automatically lead to financial growth ?  I doubt it.

https://bnnbreaking.com/politics/the-slab-a-colossal-structure-redefining-londons-skyline-and-igniting-global-debate

A very fine piece of polemic by Simon Jenkins about the Slab has just appeared online.  He is right that it poses a problem as to what Labour Party policy should be.  Surely not so free market, Singapore-style abolition of planning controls as the current government has favoured, whatever it says to the contrary. 

So much damage has already be done to the fabric of the city that it will be hard to knit it back together.  What happens to Smithfield Market will be a test of future policy making.  And whether the destruction of Liverpool Street Station is approved.  It was Ken Livingstone and John Prescott who liberated controls on tall building, so policy on London has been cross party.

I sometimes wonder whether it might be worth re-establishing The Royal Fine Arts Commission which had an advisory function in issues of national planning.  But it was the Blair government which abolished it because they couldn’t bear Norman St. John Stevas, its chair.  But nothing effective has replaced it.

Before the Blair government came in, Mark Fisher and Richard Rogers published A New London on what architectural policy should be, a thoughtful and influential book which is what is needed now.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/08/slab-london-monument-ugly-expensive

I see that Michael Gove stops a long way short of saying that the Slab will make a positive contribution to its surroundings. In fact, of course, it will disfigure them forever, encouraging other big new development in the area as has happened in Nine Elms.

If he is so lukewarm about it, why did he approve it ?

Money, money, money.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/06/michael-gove-approves-the-slab-development-south-bank

Yesterday was a sad day for London. After it seemed as if Michael Gove might have half a spine when it comes to big new developments in London, he signed the approval for the so-called Slab, the biggest of them all. I suppose he is thinking of the forthcoming election and all those developers and city financiers who will have to bankroll their campaign. He will have been lent on by a host of lobbyists. At every fundraising dinner, party donors will have sidled up to him and made clear that they expected to be able to count on his support. So, I hope with a quivering hand, he will have signed the approval for the biggest development of them all – a set of towers which will overwhelm not just the local neighbourhood and the National Theatre, but will change the relationships of scale in buildings between the Houses of Parliament and St. Paul’s and including especially Somerset House on the other side of the river. It will be too big, full of offices which may no longer be needed. But Gove will be long gone. Gove Towers. It will be a monument to the end of effective planning controls.