The architecture of the London Underground should be left alone, protected,
polished, and guarded for all time. Protect old London Underground architecture!
Slowly but surely they are ruining our stations with decor designed on the
slaughterhouse. Elegant buildings and tiles make way for clinical shiny plastic
surfaces and eurostyle metrohalls.
Save our old tube architecture!
They could at least make new buildings
that reflected the rest of the network, but quite often there are several designs running in alternation.
Where an antique station is flattened, a
sad modern design has gone up in its place. I dont think that the travellers
of the world have come to London to enjoy the newer station buildings, like
Brixton for instance. This is not London!
If I was in command of the system, then preservation would be more important
than tourism. I would rebuild anything that was destroyed, back to it's
exact specification. There would certainly be no more threats to the old
tube architecure.
If anything, sometimes there is a feverish desire to trash anything thats over
ten years old. Replacements can be so ill fitting and boring. This wealth of
sizzling architecture and invention should last a million years. This
defacement is an awful price to pay for token redevelopment.
And then theres the exteriors
that are defaced by advertisments, none of which seem to be artistic or in
good taste.
There's this spreading fungus of commercial
nastiness that's hiding what left of tubes cultural trappings.
I long for the day that London's tube is restored and rebuilt into victorian
splendour, and present day politicians and tube managers are rounded up and set adrift on the high seas.
At ground level, our tube atriums were landmarks of high art, welcome fixtures
of the capital. What a shame these cracking cornerstones were already being
wiped out by the start of the century. The unpleasant municipal building
mentality of the more contemporary street level entrance shows exactly
how hopeless things have become. They're absolutely dreadful.
How long before London's great tube becomes similar to that of a 21st
century hospital? I'm sure, by the designs of the new Jubilee line
factorial flop-out, that one can forsee nothing at all quaint about the future
of the subway system. How very dull indeed.
Heaven knows what the future holds for our great old tube architecture.
Only a few years ago, the system was left to rot, but at least it meant
that the old bricks and mortar were still in place, albeit in bad condition.
With the new finance of the network, a lot of refurbishment has meant
unsympathetic interference with the aged structures, and although some attention
has been paid to authenticity, I am generally unhappy with the methods
used in the clean up. Everyone knows that the powers-that-be do not like
old London at all, and want rid of any non-euro detail.
The London Underground is part of a valuable worldwide school of artistic tube
architecture.
Built over more than a century, this stock, like Paris or New York, has
not been complemented or preserved correctly. So many precious artifacts and
designs have been lost or simply plastered over.
If anything needs to be destroyed it's the latest in cold trendy designs that
adorn the Jubilee line extension. Why do they pick on stations that are
wonderful and antique?
There has been some preservation, but too little, too late.
I think that every inch of originality here should
be saved forever. We are so lucky
that these pieces of art are with us on our everyday travels.
We need to rescue whats left of underground victoriana, and restore everthing
to its original state. Any additions should be complimentary rather than
contradictory. Sure, improvementes can be made, but most mutilations have just
been whimsical interferance, or pandering to overpopulation concerns. How
shabbily our celestial heritage has been treated!
Charles (of London Town)
The London Destruction Website.
HOME
|
