Innovation and Re-purposing

Modernism has always appealed to me. Perhaps it was a reaction to the grimy residue of the industrial past but, as a child of the RAF and an avid reader of the Dan Dare comic strip, it was the sleek new jet planes that excited me, not the creaky old propeller models left over from the WWII. Later, my attention shifted to the built environment and I developed a fascination for futuristic architecture and its hopeful, implied promise of a rational, equitable society housed in elegant, purpose-designed buildings. All of this, I considered to be progress. I remain a fan of modernism, though having seen that not all of it contributes to my imagined utopia, my enthusiasm is now tempered with scepticism.

I was sitting at a table on a sunlit pavement in London, drinking ‘artisan’ coffee. The location was Bermondsey, a one-time working-class area dependent on the wharves and warehouses on the south bank of the Thames. Now, with the old buildings having been adapted to commerce of a different kind, or converted into dwellings, the few new-builds look and feel like intruders shouldering uncomfortably into the small spaces and narrow streets. Nearby, the White Cube gallery is showing Tracey Emin’s latest work while, across the street, the Fashion and Textile Museum celebrates retro with Swinging London – a Lifestyle Revolution, an exhibition mainly of the work of Mary Quant and Terence Conran. In Bermondsey and elsewhere, elements of the past are co-opted for contemporary life. The future hasn’t worked out as I envisaged. I went to Swinging London to remind myself what all the fuss had been about and, as I had hoped, the excitement of that era of life-style-changing design felt as urgent to me as it had at the time although, disappointingly, it was not adopted universally.

Still, there is room in life for diversity and, even from the moderniser’s point of view, traditional ways and old designs have a certain charm – even some value (as long as they don’t stand stubbornly in the way of progress). Last week, I was treated to an excellent lunch at the Bricklayers’ Arms, somewhere in the depths of rural Buckinghamshire. The setting was ‘chocolate box’ perfect and, though I guess that it might have been forty years since an actual bricklayer was able to afford a drink in what is now a posh gastro-pub, the establishment has adapted to survive the onset of changes like the social ostracization of drunken drivers and the demise of ploughman’s lunches – and we are rewarded with the preservation of a picturesque chunk of old England.

Meanwhile, in east London, new pubs are being created that suit the requirements of a younger generation. My friend and I mingled with the millennials in Hackney Wick one evening, as we toured a couple of light-industrial estates where the leisure industry is colonising the sheds originally built for manufacturing and distribution. We sampled beers brewed on site in one shed, declined tickets to a stand-up comedy show in another and caught a live performance of rather good jazz at yet another, finishing off with supper from the pop-up noodle bar that had attached itself outside. Young people evidently prioritise socialising over comfortable seating and fancy facilities: any shed will do, as long as the beer is good and the place is buzzing. The beer was very good and, as for the buzz, we managed to find a corner in which to sit and observe it from a safe distance, the youngsters politely giving us a wide berth.

The re-purposing of buildings is not what I had in mind for my vision of the future but, all things considered, it does keep us connected to our history and, in the process, generates a more interwoven social fabric than would be possible if starting from the clean slate of a new environment. Maybe the grungy bars will soon make way for the developers but, meanwhile, cheers to them.