John McAslan has kindly send me an exploded axonometric of his design as I felt (and feel) that a drawing gives a better feel for the elegance of what he proposes, not just to architects.

It’s an arched structure which, rather amazingly, sits free of the train sheds:-

I forgot to mention that I went to see the former rectory of Sr. John Horsleydown at the weekend.

I had no idea that it still survived only a couple of blocks south of Tower Bridge – an early eighteenth-century rectory, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, at the junction between Fair Street and Tower Bridge Road.

St. John Horsleydown was one of Hawksmoor’s later, and less monumental, churches, designed jointly with John James when the Fifty Churches Commission was winding down and had lost its enthusiasm for spending a lot of money on new churches. It was badly bombed in the war, but was only closed in 1968:-

Anyway, the Rectory survives next door, fairly intact, in what was the churchyard, now a public garden:-

My blog post on the way home last night was possibly a bit too telegraphic even by my standards.

The event was extremely interesting and I thought completely persuasive.

First, there were two presentations on the last very clever and historically sensitive upgrade of the station during the 1980s when Simon Jenkins was a member of the British Rail Board. It was done by Nick Derbyshire who at the time was head of British Rail’s Architecture and Design Group (ADG). He extended the train sheds to cover the concourse and reconstructed the Victorian romanesque building immediately to the east of the Great Eastern Hotel. So, it is clear that it is perfectly possible to protect the original Victorian character of the station while at the same time modernising it.

John McAslan’s scheme is clever in that it accepts the need for new offices as required by the brief from Network Rail, but then provides a solution which is entirely in the spirit of the original train sheds, a piece of modern engineering, designed in partnership with Chris Wise, equivalent to the way they upgraded King’s Cross so successfully.

The current scheme by Acme which is vast and totally insensitive goes to the City’s planning committee in either February or March. They apparently approve 98% of schemes presented to them as compared to Maldon which only approves 40%.

So, the issue is: are the members of the City’s planning committee going to pay attention that there could be a better, more interesting and more ecological alternative scheme as designed by John McAslan ?

Could the board of Network Rail be encouraged to look at the alternative, not least its costing ?

As has been demonstrated at the Custom House, the City’s planning committee can on occasion come up with an alternative and better way forward which protects the character of the City while still allowing good quality new development. They should do the same at Liverpool Street.

I have just been to a presentation of John McAslan’s beautifully simple and elegant solution to the development of Liverpool Street Station: by hoisting an arched structure over the middle of the train sheds to supply the volume of office space required to pay for the necessary upgrade and modernisation of the station. 

60% of the office space supplied by the current Network Rail proposal, but for 40% of the cost.  So, more affordable.  And, more importantly for the 80 million people who use Liverpool Street Station, avoiding the 10 years of disruption which the current scheme will require.

So, my only question is: had members of the City’s planning department been invited ?

If not, they should have been.

I have been encouraged to post information about the auction in aid of the Georgian Group – such an obviously good cause and also, by the way, responsible for all the celebrations for Vanbrugh’s tercentenary.

Houses to visit, wine to drink, port, a cup of tea, lots of eighteenth-century architectural prints, some rare and out-of-print books where the estimates look cheap.  I can live without playing golf at Woburn, but would dearly love to visit Inveraray:-

https://mailchi.mp/georgiangroup/january-2026-update-17457746?e=8cf251615d

I have been reading Béatrice Grenier’s new book, Architecture for Culture: Re-thinking Museums, an exceptionally wide-ranging study of the changing morphology of mostly recent museums, inspired by a visit to the National Archives of Publication and Culture in Hangzhou, although compared to the museums she considers later in the book, this seems a relatively traditional combination of archive, museum and library, which were often combined in the nineteenth-century, as, not least, at the British Museum.  It looks amazing, designed by the inaptly named Amateur Architecture Studio.

The Museum du Quai Branly, so revolutionary in its time, already looks conceptually conservative and, indeed, was criticised at the time that it opened by James Clifford.

Having written myself about the Louvre Abu Dhabi, I admired her very clear account of the way it is structured and there are beautiful photographs of the Museum under construction – a combination of a souk and a universal museum.

Then, there is a description of the Fondation Cartier where she works as Director of Strategic Projects and International Programs.  It looks amazing under construction.  But can movable floors really be made to work ?

The merging of landscape and the museum is a very coherent chapter embracing the remodelling of the American Museum of Natural History by Studio Gang, the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas, Bjarke Ingels’s Kistefos Museum in Norway and the sensationally beautiful, but apparently empty Zaishui Art Museum in Rizhao, another conceptually innovative museum in China.

Then we get M+, more as bill board across the water than as collection, although I’m pleased to learn that it owns the Archigram archive.

The book is about conceptual innovation in museum architecture and the expansion of the Museum beyond its walls.  I don’t see it as a primer for the new wing of the National Gallery or, for that matter, the future of the Louvre.

I am a long-standing admirer of the work of John Alexander Skelton, a fashion designer, but whose work is closer to fine art.  I even have a jacket of his which only comes out in the high summer.

We sadly missed his fashion show last night, but I pedalled off to see it in Asylum Road, south of the Old Kent Road, this morning. 

It’s an amazing installation, sadly ephemeral, in a highly atmospheric space.

Entry:-

A first view:-

The sun was coming in:-

The imagery is Celtic:-

This is the setting:-

And here is the man himself:-

I called in on Three Colt Gallery in Limehouse which is showing quilts made by a friend, Monika Machon. 

A very nice and therapeutic space in which to admire her work:-

I am obviously not the only person who views what has happened at the Custom House as a good model for how to convert a bad scheme into a better one.  It’s not rocket science.  You just have to consult the interested parties and pay attention to their views.  Then, you get a better scheme.

See below for a description from the two people who made it happen:-

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lessons-from-custom-house-early-engagement-unlocks-uwkye?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android&utm_campaign=share_via

If you happen to be passing a newsagents which stocks copies of Country Life (not many do), you might like to buy a copy of this week’s issue (January 14th.), which has a cut-down version of a talk I gave in October about Vanbrugh’s changing reputation.

Surprise, surprise, everybody hated his buildings during his lifetime and then gradually came to acknowledge their power – ‘The Shakespeare of Architects’, as John Soane called him.

https://share.google/IKr3vYzTxHlUoaoJE